Pandit Gopi Krishna

Gopi Krishna (1903 – 1984) was an Indian yogi, mystic, writer, teacher, and social reformer who was committed to the evolution of human consciousness and to the establishment and continuance of world peace.

 

His birthplace was a small village about twenty miles from the city of Srinagar, the summer capital of the Jammu and Kashmir State in northern India. He spent the first eleven years of his life growing up in this beautiful Himalayan valley.

 

Krishna worked in state government, and he lived as a householder, marrying and raising a family.  Early in his career, Krishna also became the leader of a social organization devoted to helping the disadvantaged in his community, particularly with respect to the well-being and rights of women.

 

Two unlikely events led him to the practice of yoga. First, his father renounced the world to lead a religious life leaving his twenty-eight year old mother with the responsibility of raising him and his two sisters. His mother as a result pinned all her hopes for success on her only son.

 

Second, he disappointed his mother by failing a college house examination which prevented him from attending the university. He attributed this failure to his lack of mental discipline, as he had spent his time at college pursuing enjoyable subjects and ignoring those that would be required for the examination.

 

He felt great shame at this failure, and resolved from that point forward to live a life of simplicity and austerity. He would restrain his desires, reduce his needs, and gain mastery over himself. He rebelled against his father's choice of leaving the world, and instead chose to live as a householder and raise a family. He also adopted a routine of meditation as part of his mental discipline and practiced concentration exercises for a number of years. In spite of his religious orientation, he did not have a spiritual teacher and was not initiated into any spiritual lineage, which would have been a common practice for a religious Hindu.

 

Over a period of years, he developed the ability to sit for a period of hours in concentration without any discomfort. In 1937 At 34 years of age, Krishna experienced a sudden and forceful Kundalini awakening occurred while he was visualizing "an imaginary Lotus in full bloom, radiating light" at the crown of his head. In his autobiography, Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man Krishna described this experience, which occurred during that morning meditation:

 

Suddenly, with a roar like that of a waterfall, I felt a stream of liquid light entering my brain through the spinal cord.

Entirely unprepared for such a development, I was completely taken by surprise; but regaining my self-control, keeping my mind on the point of concentration. The illumination grew brighter and brighter, the roaring louder, I experienced a rocking sensation and then felt myself slipping out of my body, entirely enveloped in a halo of light. It is impossible to describe the experience accurately. I felt the point of consciousness that was myself growing wider surrounded by waves of light. It grew wider and wider, spreading outward while the body, normally the immediate object of its perception, appeared to have receded into the distance until I became entirely unconscious of it. I was now all consciousness without any outline, without any idea of corporeal appendage, without any feeling or sensation coming from the senses, immersed in a sea of light simultaneously conscious and aware at every point, spread out, as it were, in all directions without any barrier or material obstruction. I was no longer myself, or to be more accurate, no longer as I knew myself to be, a small point of awareness confined to a body, but instead was a vast circle of consciousness in which the body was but a point, bathed in light and in a state of exultation and happiness impossible to describe.

(Krishna, Pandit Gopi, Kundalini: Path to Higher Consciousness. New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1992, pps. 6-7)

 

Gopi Krishna's experience radically altered the path of his life. He came to believe that our brains were evolving and that an individual's profound mystical experience was a foretaste of what would eventually become an all-pervasive transformation in human consciousness.

 

Shortly after the initial experience above, Gopi experienced a continuous "luminous glow" around his head and began having a variety of psychological and physiological problems. At times he thought he was going mad. He attempted to contact people reputed to know something about the Kundalini system of yoga, but could find no one who could help him through this difficult period. He adopted a very strict diet which helped him maintain his precarious mental balance, and for years refused to do any meditation (since he attributed all his troubles to the yogic concentration exercises he had been doing).

 

He was aware that a fundamental change had taken place in him after his experience of Kundalini. He believed that this experience began a process in which his entire nervous system would be slowly reorganized and transformed by the Kundalini energy that he awakened within himself. He conceived of this energy as an intelligent force over which he had little control once it was activated.

 

Gopi spends a great deal of time describing the fear and anxiety he had in dealing with day to day events after the above experience. The food he ate and the time he ate it became like a branch which a man grasps in rushing flood waters which saves him from drowning. He also acknowledges the importance of his wife's devotion and support in helping him maintain his sanity during the decade following his first encounter with the Kundalini. This portion of his account could be described as a heroic effort to deal with something bordering on a nervous breakdown. He was required to make a perilous journey into mysterious regions of the psyche, and he found it a very difficult and drawn out process.

 

Being from a culture that was steeped in the yogic tradition, Gopi Krishna looked there for an explanation for what seemed to be happening to his mind and body. Immersing himself in the ancient teachings on the subject, he discovered that much of it was in symbolic and cryptic language. He learned one reason for this was that the tantric yoga masters had not wanted the knowledge to fall into the hands of those who were not fully prepared for the experience. It was believed that premature or incorrect awakening of Kundalini could cause a number of frightening symptoms, including searing lights, horrific heat, and deep depression. Some ancient yoga masters even believed that the incorrect awakening of Kundalini could cause insanity or death.

 

However, Gopi Krishna also discovered that the esoteric teachings contained a number of simple practices that might help bring the energy back into balance after it had been awakened incorrectly. A few of these practices, particularly those related to living a moderate life-style, helped him begin a long process of bringing the energy back into balance.

 

Gopi Krishna’s experiences led him to hypothesize that there is a biological mechanism in the human body which is responsible for creativity, genius, psychic abilities, religious and mystical experiences, as well as some aberrant mental states. He asserted that ignorance of the working of this evolutionary mechanism was the main reason for the present dangerous state of world affairs. He called for a full scientific investigation of his hypothesis and believed that such an objective analysis would uncover the secrets of human evolution. It is this knowledge, he believed, that would give mankind the means to progress in peace and harmony.

 

Gopi Krishna's graphic accounts of his experiences stand out as among the clearest journals documenting a spiritual transformation of any this author has encountered. He is honest in describing the difficulties and dangers of the spiritual path, and the intense pressure it can exert on the physical body. He is not a guru in the classical sense of one who has disciples. He is more of a seeker who later became a teacher documenting his experiences with the Kundalini energy in a number of books, in hopes of being helpful to others who encounter this extraordinary spiritual phenomena.

 

 

“I thirsted for rationality in religion, for the worship of truth, whatever and wherever that might be. There was no spectacle more painful for me than the sight of a conscientious and intelligent man defending an absurdity simply because it formed an article of his faith. Conversely, the irrationality of those who attempted to squeeze the universe within the narrow compass of reason was no less deplorable. The unknown entry that inhabits human bodies is still enveloped in mystery, and the rational faculty, one of its inseparable possessions, is no less an enigma than the owner itself. As such, the attempt to explain the cosmos purely in terms of human experience, as interpreted by reason, is an irrational endeavour to solve the riddle of the universe.”

 

Gopi Krishna - Kundalini: Path to higher consciousness.