April 1988

When the Kashmir yogi, Gopi Krishna, died in the summer of 1984, he undoubtedly felt that his mission of exploring and expositing the mysteries of kundalini was unfinished. And one wishes he could have lived the full 120-year life span he envisions for future humanity. Yet in his eighty-odd years he did accomplish much and represented for our century - along with many others - man awakened to his penultimate nature.

We say penultimate because kundalini is the primal and primary energy that unleashes man's consciousness into God Mind states far beyond the range even of Gopi Krishna's. Still his constant beingness and sensory-expansion in kundalini is extraordinary, inspiring and evocative.

Kundalini For The New Age is a broad collection of Gopi Krishna's writings drawn from his earliest to his final words. The book is meant to carry on Krishna's interests in exposing as many people as possible to kundalini knowledge and to help establish verifiable scientific research into the kundalini phenomenon.

Toward this, editor Gene Keiffer - longtime friend, supporter and fellow mystic of Krishna's - has stitched together a series of chapters that take the reader into and through Krishna's mind: up to the breathtaking, giddy heights of his vision and down into the valleys of his detailed warnings about nuclear destruction and kundalini going malignantly wild. The reader is guided toward Krishna's conclusion that kundalini is the transforming grace and evolutionary destiny of mankind.

As such this book, for the cost of a pair of socks, is a fabulously rich treasure trove of firsthand knowledge, insight and theorems into the soul's most sacred, powerful energy. It is not the final word - there is no final word on so ineffable a subject as kundalini - but it is very informative and provocative.

Every thinking, aware Hindu should have this book in his personal library available to be reread or loaned to inquiring friends. Though not exclusive to Hinduism's vault of mystic wisdom, kundalini is nevertheless most exhaustively described and taught in Hindu scriptures as Gopi Krishna often acknowledges. Krishna's descriptions and ideas are a fine lens for understanding other Hindu writings on kundalini.

One of the magnetic qualities of this book is the writing itself, which Krishna attributes to his awakened kundalini-indeed Krishna attributes all high and extraordinary expressions of artistic genius to some degree of fountaining kundalini. Until he was in his fifties, Krishna wrote rarely and roughly. Yet, one day he describes how words and sentences began appearing "like falling snowflakes that, from tiny specks high up, become clear-cut, regularly shaped crystals when nearing the eye." So it was that he wrote-often perceiving the entire book in one intuitive totality-fifteen volumes with remarkable skill of expression.

Though Krishna was cognizant that the brain is "but the receptor of a transmission entirely beyond the range of our thought," he did theorize that the brain itself is evolving toward a more advanced condition capable of fully and constructively utilizing the kundalini force. Further, he personally felt that he was the paradigm of that evolved brain, a model of the new man. Much of the book is devoted to this discussion, which is similar to Aurobindo's doctrine of the evolved "superman." But it should also be noted that this brain-evolution theory does counter the fact that legions of men and women both in history and pre-history have equalled or vastly surpassed Krishna's kundalini plateau. And though Gopi Krishna eloquently speaks of humility as a hallmark of beneficent kundalini, his "I am the new man" hymn isn't a song of humility.

Article copyright Himalayan Academy.