Lately I’ve been reading a few of the articles on yogadangers.com. I first came across this site a few months ago when it popped up in the Google ads I was trialling on my blog. I read through it then, but revisited it the other day after a recent incident.
On Friday night on the bus home from Atma Yoga I got chatting with a guy who told me he had not been back to the Sunday Feast since I last saw him there because his digestion was “cactus” (Australian for b0rked). When I enquired what was wrong and how it had happened, he explained that it was “tantric misadventure” and then gave me a bone-chilling account that mirrored some of the ones I had read on yogadangers.com about Kundalini awakening gone wrong.
He told me that he had done tantric practices (he didn’t say if they were of the left or right-hand path) “without even believing that they’d do anything”. Next thing he knew, it was like someone was holding a blowtorch to his meridians, one after another for 30 minutes each, like clockwork, every time he ate. All his hair fell out. His energetic system is now completely disturbed.
Two things arise from this:
First of all, yoga practice is not a joke. Most people are not going to experience a partial or complete Kundalini awakening, but some people, due to past activities or whatever predisposition, are susceptible to it. Without the complete practice of yoga, a complete framework that gives you a context to experience and interpret the psycho-physical changes that will take place, Kundalini awakening will be a very disturbing and dangerous event.
Simply doing a few postures, some breathing, and a bit of meditation without the complete orientation and lifestyle that go with yoga practice, while statistically speaking safe, does leave a person open to the possibility of misfortune. Again, most people are going to be perfectly safe, but there are some people who are predisposed to Kundalini awakening. Definitely yoga practices which are designed to awaken the Kundalini should not be taught indiscriminately. Do you know what to do to help someone whose Kundalini energy partially awakens?
If not, don’t play around with it.
One more time for clarity. Most people are going to be fine. Most people will never experience the things described on yogadangers.com. There are 76 case studies on one site - for the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people around the world who practice yoga in one form or another. At the same time you mitigate the risk by practicing yoga holistically and doing things gradually and under guidance, and by not teaching or practicing Kundalini practices unless you know what you are doing and are ready to take full responsibility for the possible outcomes.
Kundalini awakening is a sideshow on the road of yoga practice, however. And when yoga is practiced properly, you might not even notice it happen.
The second thing comes from reading a number of Christian experts commenting on yoga on that site.
I’m a Christian, and I’ve taken the time to research deeply yoga and the philosophy behind it. Unfortunately many Christians commenting on yoga mistakenly identify yoga philosophy with the philosophy of Sankaracharya, not that most of them would know that, or even know who Sankaracarya is.
Sripada Sankaracarya was a 9th century AD philosopher who preached kevaladvaita philosophy - the idea that the soul (atma) and God (param-atma or Brahman) are identical and non-different.
According to the kevaladvaita philosophy of Sankaracarya, the apparent difference between ourselves and each other, and ourselves and God, is due to illusion only, and when this illusion is overcome by yoga practice, then we again realize our oneness with God and merge into that non-dual existence.
This makes a nice strawman to tilt at. It’s a strawman because Sankaracarya’s philosophy originated in the 9th century AD as a response to the philosophy of Gautama Buddha, who said basically the same thing, but substituting “the void” for “God”. Buddhist philosophy is technically atheism as it denies the existence of a persistent soul or God. At liberation the living entity merges into the void, like a candle going out. Sankaracarya’s philosophy is point for point equal to Buddhism except that he says that there is a soul, but it merges into the Supreme at liberation, like a drop of water returning to the ocean.
Buddha preached around 500 BC. Sankaracarya preached around 800 AD.
Yoga practice, on the other hand, predates both of them by thousands of years. Figurines found in excavations in Mohendro-daro depict yogis practicing asanas. The civilisation of Mohendro-daro is over 4000 years old.
Sankaracarya’s philosophical sleight of hand was useful in that it was used to reestablish the traditional authority of the Vedas, and drive Buddhism out of India to where it survived in China. The philosophical basis that was used for argument was secondary however, to the social egalitarianism that had given Buddhism its foothold in caste-conscious India, and that Sankaracarya co-opted when he asserted that birth was not the only criteria for social standing.
The reason that Buddhism had found such favor with the mass of people in India was the repressive caste system based on birth. Buddha threw this out, and with the bath water the baby of God, the soul, and the scriptures that describe both. Sankaracarya made adjustments to the doctrines surrounding the caste system, asserting that birth does not limit one to a particular social standing, then reintroduced the scriptures describing God and the soul, using a layer of philosophical interpretation that he wrote in his commentaries on these scriptures to make them appear more Buddhist-like in their conclusions.
This social egalitarianism, which was also a hallmark of a later reformer, Sri Krishna Caitanya, has been the basis of religious reformations and revolutionary philosophical movements throughout Indian history.
Due to his triumph over the Buddhist school, and his reestablishing traditional Indian cultural norms and scriptural canon on a basis of greater social egalitarianism, Sripada Sankaracarya and his philosophical conclusions have enjoyed wide spread support, and continue to do so today.
Later commentators, such as Ramanujacarya and Madhvacarya, further reformed the tradition and explained the theistic conclusions of the scriptures that Sankaracarya had reintroduced, continuing with his conclusions on social organization and explaining that his kevaladvaita commentary had actually been a ruse to make the scriptural canon more acceptable to a people who had been accustomed to the conclusions of Buddhism for over one thousand years.
Sankaracarya’s doctrine of saguna and nirguna brahman, on which he bases his monistic interpretation, are not found anywhere in the scriptural canon, but are in fact constructs that he describes in his commentary Sariraka-bhasya. Most Christians and the majority of followers of the “Hindu” religion generally do not know these facts about Sankaracarya and his place in the history of religion and philosophy in India.
Many Christians who have commented on yoga have cited as evidence the expert testimony of “followers of Hinduism” who have confirmed that yoga is part of their “Hindu religion” and that the philosophy of Sankaracarya is in fact what “Hinduism” is all about.
Unfortuately, letting Sankaracarya speak for “Hinduism” is about as valid as letting Sam Kekovich speak for “Australianism”. I’ve got a lot of time for both of them, and I’m sure that you could find some Australians as expert witnesses who would quote Keka chapter and verse, but Australia is a big place with a lot of people in it, and so is Hindustan (India).
Sankaracarya’s philosophy is not what yoga is about. It’s not what “Hinduism” is about. “Hinduism” is an invention of the British. “Australianism” is the invention of the marketing company behind Keka’s ads. How long until we have dedicated followers of that?
The real purpose of yoga is described by Lord Kapiladeva in Srimad Bhagavatam. The purpose of the asanas is to clarify the body and make it a suitable vehicle for spiritual practice. A healthy body and mind make for a powerful instrument for spiritual practice and service. The ultimate goal of yoga is union between atma and param-atma, the soul and the Supreme.
One commentator, identifying yoga with Sankaracarya’s philosophy, cited as further proof of the kevaladvaita (monistic) goal of yoga the fact that yoga means “union” (it gives us the English yoke). Unfortunately for that argument word religion means the same thing - the latin ligare means “to bind”. When you yoke, or join or bind, two things together, they become one in a sense, but they also retain their individual identity, and so it is with yoga and religion. Simultaneous oneness and difference - understanding yourself as a part of the whole in an intimate personal relationship.
