GENIUS AND MADNESS NOTICED FROM ANCIENT TIMES

Genius is inspiration. It is very true that nothing so much resembles a person attacked by madness as a man of genius when meditating and molding his conceptions. When the moment of inspiration is over the man of genius becomes an ordinary man, if he does not descend lower.

This resemblance of an inspired personality to madness has been noticed from ancient times. In the words of Aristotle, famous poets, artists, and statesmen, frequently suffer from melancholia or madness, as did Ajax. In recent times such a disposition occurred in Socrates, Empedocles, Plato and many others, but especially in our poets.

GOETHE, NIETZSCHE AND SCHOPENHAUER

The French philosopher Diderot has said, I have often thought that these reserved and melancholy men owe their extraordinary, almost godlike, acuteness of insight to a temporary disturbance of their whole mechanism. One may notice how it brings them now to sublime, now to insane thoughts. ‘They themselves fancy that some godlike being uses up within them, seeks them out and uses them. How near is genius to madness. Yet one is locked up and bound with chains whilst to the other we raise monuments.’

In recent times, men of genius, like Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, themselves avow how near genius is to madness. Looking the other way round, we find that many schizophrenics show a marked resemblance to geniuses but of a twisted and distorted kind. It has been remarked that whoever has had the opportunity of observing with a sympathetic and understanding eye, a considerable number of acute cases of schizophrenia in the early stages of the affliction, cannot but be astonished at times, at the inconceivable power, richness and cosmic breadth of the experiences that suddenly break upon these individuals, even when they have the most commonplace minds.

Such experiences, so quickly to be extinguished, may occasionally lift even the most banal natures right out of themselves. In certain circumstances, abnormal ecstatic conditions of this kind, which are milder and do not lead to complete mental collapse, show a great similarity to the inspired experiences of genius, especially in the religious field.


A SUMMARY AND SOME CONCLUSIONS

The basal energy of the universe is the Energy of Consciousness. How it is transformed into material, organic, gravitational, electromagnetic or atomic energy, scientific investigations will show. We are at the very beginning of a radical change in the thinking of the race. This change will not be brought about so much by our efforts as by the force of circumstances, created by the racial Prana-Shakti, to draw out mankind from the present groove which is inimical to her spiritual evolution.

That there must be some variation in the brain or some other factor responsible for genius, extraordinary talent or paranormal faculties in human beings no one can deny. If it were not so, every average human being who tried hard for it could become a Plato, a Kalidas, a Shakespeare or a Newton. But such a transformation has never been possible to this day with any methods of education known to us.

SO MUCH VARIATION, ONE IS LOST IN CONFUSION

The actual position is that there is so much variation and such a prolificity of individual views in the books on Yoga and Tantra that one is lost in confusion. This has led to such a multiplicity of opinions and ideas that, strange as it may appear, one can support any point of view with a citation from one authority or the other.

Success in Yoga and other spiritual disciplines, whether achieved slowly and imperceptibly through the practice of Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga, or spontaneously, as the accumulated harvest of previous Karma, or suddenly with agonizing experiences, as the result of Hatha Yoga exercises, must be due to the same organic mechanism that has eluded detection so far. Prana-Shakti or the bio-electricity which is behind the organic activity of the body and the mental activity of the brain, can undergo a transformation either as the result of hereditary factors, as in the case of the examples cited above, or with the practices of Yoga, or as the harvest of any other religious discipline, as has happened throughout the past.

It is this alteration in the pranic energy or bio-electricity, with a corresponding transformation in certain areas of the brain, which is responsible for all cases of Illumination, whether brought about by voluntary methods or spontaneous, also for all cases of genius, paranormal faculties and, where the body or the brain is not adaptable to the change, for certain intractable forms of insanity.

THERE IS ONLY ONE LIVING ELECTRICITY

The association of Prana with every form of yoga is common knowledge in India and the United States. There is only one living electricity in the body and that is Prana. The popular image of a Yogi often depicts him as one who has drawn the entire Prana of his body into his head. It is immaterial whether this concentration of prana is achieved with the gentle methods of Raja-Yoga or the arduous ones of Hatha Yoga, but the medium affected is the same, namely prana. There is no other rival force in the body to which we could point as the one that comes into operation by Raja Yoga methods in contrast to the other activated by the techniques of Hatha Yoga.

Seals with the figure of a deity, like Shiva, sitting in asana, with phallus erectus, a symbolic depiction of the arousal of Kundalini, have been found in the excavations made at some sites of the Indus Valley civilization. There is also evidence to show the secret of Kundalini was known to the Egyptians, Sumerians, Persians, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, centuries and even thousands of years before the birth of Christ.

THERE MUST BE A NATURAL PROCESS

Kundalini was known to the Mayas and is mentioned in the traditions of the Hopi Indians in America. There is no other spiritual discipline, religious observance, esoteric practice or occult ritual even half as widely known with as many ramifications and as extended to the remotest periods of time as the cult of Kundalini. It has been a universal method for gaining mystical vision, oracular gifts and occult powers for the past thousands of years.

Kundalini is the profound secret behind all spiritual and cultural achievements in India. It is this all-important secret which drew and still draws crowds of seekers after spiritual illumination from all parts of the earth to India, the land of sages, from the Vedic period to this age. It is now admitted that even ancient Egypt borrowed occult knowledge from this land. Can it be imagined for a moment that commonplace disciplines and cheap practices, which are the stock in trade of not a few teachers of our day, could form the secret teaching which distant seekers traversed thousands of miles on foot to learn, risking their life and limb in the hazardous expedition in olden times? Why to suit our own preferences do we try to belittle a still-hidden knowledge that was valued beyond all the treasures of the earth by the greatest sons of India in the past?

There must be a natural process for liberation as there is an inexorable organic process for incarnation, conception, embryo, birth, childhood, prime, old age, death, etc., repeated time after time. It cannot be that while the process of internment spreads over ages that of release should occur in a day, through a magically potent sadhana or a glance of favor from a guru.

THERE IS NO ONE METHOD

There is no one way to reach the Eternal. There is no one method that would suit everyone. The illuminated men and women born in different parts of the earth have been divergent in their philosophy, metaphysics, methods of attainment, the nature of the reality, the nature of the Soul, ideas about the Hereafter and the state of the Soul after disembodiment. But all this divergence does not mean that there is a chaos in the spiritual world or that the illuminated of the past knew all that is to be known of this profound Ocean of Knowledge of the Self. How few really succeed in the enterprise we know only too well. The reason for this extreme poverty of results in the spiritual quest lies in the ignorance about the real nature of the mechanism Kundalini responsible for success. The research project proposed here is designed to greatly add to this knowledge.

SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESIS

Introduction

Our science-oriented culture has created a peculiar social environment ideally suited for highly sophisticated minds with a strongly marked polarity that makes them talk in one way and act in another. In other words, the evolution of political thought has not kept pace with the speed at which knowledge has expanded. We now need a much more balanced and penetrating intellect than that which is operating at present in order to adjust the society to it.

This anomaly has a marked subconscious effect on every man and woman, each experiencing the effect without awareness of the cause behind it. The main reason why there is discontentment in almost every country, including the most advanced, is not because the leaders are less competent than before but because the human mind has attained a degree of sensitivity, and the environment a state of complexity, where a more evolved type of men and women are needed to create confidence and enlist the cooperation of the general public.

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS WITHIN YOU.

According to various estimates, most of us use only ten percent of the brain. That means 90 percent of the brain is unutilized, that there is still a large margin in the brain which could be used for other purposes and that nature has provided it for certain purposes which have not yet been discovered.

Among the adepts in ancient India, this untapped region of the brain was called the Brahma-rendra, or cave of God. This region can be activated by certain disciplines, and when activated it can give to the individual the same vision of the universe which all great mystics have described.

But when it is awakened, the normal energy of the body or the blood is not able to fuel the center. It needs a more powerful and concentrated psychic fuel. This fuel comes from the reproductive system, which is transformed into a kind of radiation, and that radiation awakens and makes the center function. A current of silvery light rises from the spine and radiates through the whole brain, causing a tremendous expansion of consciousness.

When this occurs, one does not continue to see the world as a solid, real, objective creation but as consciousness. The real objective creation is then seen as consciousness everywhere. For example, the ocean, the sky, the earth, the mountains, are seen as if they are living. This life or consciousness is not something which is dead or which can be understood. It is infinite, deathless. It is something so unique, so elevating, that there are no words to describe this extraordinary state of being.

But those who have experienced it have become geniuses of the highest order, and it is repeatedly said in the ancient manuals that they would not change this state of consciousness for any treasure, not even a kingdom. This is probably what Christ meant when he said that the kingdom of heaven is within you.

From a scientific point of view, it can be said that a certain region in the brain has been awakened to activity. It means that nature has already provided a potential in the brain which has to be awakened in order for it to evolve to a higher level of performance. It also means that the human brain is still organically evolving in the direction of the great mystics and prophets, in the same direction of the great geniuses.

For this evolution a certain type of life is necessary. For instance, throughout our life evolution is going on and we have to cooperate with it. When we do not cooperate with the inner evolution we create problems for ourselves.

All of the religious teachings of mankind, beginning with the Vedas, then the Buddha, the Old Testament and New Testaments, the teachings of Moses, Christ, Mohammed, Guru Nanak, and all the ancient prophets of the Bible, were meant to give directions for how to live, how to regulate our lives, while the brain is still evolving.

At the present time, the human brain is evolving much more rapidly because from morning until evening we are applying our brain to some task, reading, watching television, working in an office, solving problems, etc. This was not the case when people hunted or tilled the soil. They had not need to apply their brain in such a concentrated way as we do today. In other words, we are meditating almost continually, although on material objects, and this is accelerating the evolutionary processes at work in the brain and nervous system. This has resulted in many thousands of partial awakenings of the Power, especially in the industrialized countries, albeit in a haphazard and often unhealthy manner. Often in the case of such awakenings, the benefits can be quite fruitful, transforming such individuals into more productive, creative, loving and more compassionate personalities.

A great many of the patients now crowding our mental institutions, whether for schizophrenia or manic-depressive states, could be correctly placed in this category. Psychiatrists and psychologists are at a lost to explain why. Because of the limited extent of our current knowledge about this phenomenon, it is extremely rare far more rare than genius itself that the Kundalini raises to the highest center in the brain in a healthy way, resulting in Illumination or Enlightenment. This is one more reason why research such as proposed herein is of such vital importance at this time.

In order to bring about a harmonious change in society, the leaders of the world have to be convinced of the existence of Kundalini and its effect on our everyday lives, and for that to happen a scientific experiment is necessary. We have to demonstrate that the brain is evolving, and that this evolution needs a certain kind of harmonious way of life.

In the experiment, a number of healthy young men and women will practice mental and physical disciplines designed to greatly increase the brain’s activity, and its effect will be found all over the body. There will be metabolic processes and other physiological changes which can be measured. The goal will be to awaken the dormant center in the brain responsible for mystical experience and genius. Once the evolutionary mechanism, called Kundalini by the ancient adepts, has been activated, there are definite biological changes in the blood, the nervous system, the cerebrospinal fluid, and in the composition of the brain itself.

The experiment is designed to prove that there is the potential in every human being which can transform him or her from a mortal into an immortal and that in within each of us there is an eternal source of happiness. A more harmonious, more peaceful, happy, more contented humanity can be expected to result from this research. More importantly, it will show the way for every generation to produce people who have reached the higher dimensions, and they will become the political leaders, scientists, and educators, who will help to guide the race higher and higher and higher.

For this evolution a certain type of life is necessary. For instance, throughout our life evolution is going on and we have to cooperate with it. When we do not cooperate with the inner evolution we create problems for ourselves.

All of the religious teachings of mankind, beginning with the Vedas, then the Buddha, the Old Testament and New Testaments, the teachings of Moses, Christ, Mohammed, Guru Nanak, and all the ancient prophets of the Bible, were meant to give directions for how to live, how to regulate our lives, while the brain is still evolving.

At the present time, the human brain is evolving much more rapidly because from morning until evening we are applying our brain to some task, reading, watching television, working in an office, solving problems, etc. This was not the case when people hunted or tilled the soil. They had not need to apply their brain in such a concentrated way as we do today. In other words, we are meditating almost continually, although on material objects, and this is accelerating the evolutionary processes at work in the brain and nervous system. This has resulted in many thousands of partial awakenings of the Power, especially in the industrialized countries, albeit in a haphazard and often unhealthy manner. Often in the case of such awakenings, the benefits can be quite fruitful, transforming such individuals into more productive, creative, loving and more compassionate personalities.

A great many of the patients now crowding our mental institutions, whether for schizophrenia or manic-depressive states, could be correctly placed in this category. Psychiatrists and psychologists are at a lost to explain why. Because of the limited extent of our current knowledge about this phenomenon, it is extremely rare far more rare than genius itself that the Kundalini raises to the highest center in the brain in a healthy way, resulting in Illumination or Enlightenment. This is one more reason why research such as proposed herein is of such vital importance at this time.

In order to bring about a harmonious change in society, the leaders of the world have to be convinced of the existence of Kundalini and its effect on our everyday lives, and for that to happen a scientific experiment is necessary. We have to demonstrate that the brain is evolving, and that this evolution needs a certain kind of harmonious way of life.

In the experiment, a number of healthy young men and women will practice mental and physical disciplines designed to greatly increase the brain’s activity, and its effect will be found all over the body. There will be metabolic processes and other physiological changes which can be measured. The goal will be to awaken the dormant center in the brain responsible for mystical experience and genius. Once the evolutionary mechanism, called Kundalini by the ancient adepts, has been activated, there are definite biological changes in the blood, the nervous system, the cerebrospinal fluid, and in the composition of the brain itself.

The experiment is designed to prove that there is the potential in every human being which can transform him or her from a mortal into an immortal and that in within each of us there is an eternal source of happiness. A more harmonious, more peaceful, happy, more contented humanity can be expected to result from this research. More importantly, it will show the way for every generation to produce people who have reached the higher dimensions, and they will become the political leaders, scientists, and educators, who will help to guide the race higher and higher and higher.

SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVES

The goal of this research project is to demonstrate what happens upon the awaking of Kundalini psychologically, mentally, psychically, and physically. So long as genius and mystical experience continue to be regarded as subjective phenomena, without any relation to the organic frame of man, it will always be difficult if not impossible to show their common factors and design methods to cultivate either one.

The mechanism of Kundalini can be understood in the following way: Upon activation, two different activities start in the body. First, the whole network of nerves begins to manufacture a more potent form of psychic energy, called prana or nerve energy and to pour it into the brain through the spinal duct. This altered form of prana is distinguished by its appearance as a luminous cloud in the brain.

Operating in average men and women, the energy does not have this property. But for the mystic, the visionary experience is almost always bathed in light. This is one of the most important points on which the research will be focused, and it is the reason why virtually all of the ancient texts refer to Kundalini as the sun or moon, or to lightning or fire. The flashes of light or other forms of luminosity experienced by many people during the course of meditation are often due to a sudden, brief upsurge of the more potent prana into the brain.

At the same time or shortly afterwards, another activity begins in the genital region. Upon the awakening, the reproductive fluid is drawn up in an unknown way, in a form of radiation, into the spinal canal. Exactly how this suction is applied will have to be determined by research. This stream rising through the spine represents the nectar or ambrosia repeatedly mentioned in the texts on Kundalini. Its entry into the spinal cord, and then into the brain, is marked by exquisitely pleasurable sensations far exceeding those of an orgasm. This phenomenon is referred to as Urdhavaretas in the yoga manuals.

During the course of its ascent into the brain it is ramified into smaller streams which irrigate the visceral organs through the nerve plexuses or the chakras, and this can be distinctly felt moving into the various organs; the stomach, liver, intestines, heart, lungs, etc., thus preparing the body and the brain for a higher manifestation of consciousness. The flow of a more potent prana, and this stream of secretions into nerve centers and the brain, is what is implied by the phrase "penetration of Kundalini."

THE ROLE OF THE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM

The lingam-yoni symbol, which has been in India from the remote past, denotes the reversed action of the cerebrospinal system, utilizing evry spare ounce of the bio-energy normally used for amatory purposes, for the remodeling of the body and the brain under high pressure, in which all the organs of the body become inextricably involved. With the flow of the nectar, distilled by the nerves from all parts of the body into the brain, the area of rapture is transferred from the genitals to the cerebrum. The phonomenon is ancient and so widespread that it is amazing that modern science has no inkling of it even now.

It was because of the tremendous physiological effects on the body experienced on the awakening of Kundalini that the ancient yoga masters devoted so much attention to the enumeration of the signs and symptoms that occur at that time. For instance, they would not have made repeated mention in their writings of the phenomenon of lights and sounds even describing the nature of the sounds heard and the lights seen comparing the former to thunder, the humming of bees, roaring of waterfalls, or the pealing of bells; and the later to the luster of the moon, the radiance of the sun, the glow of fire or flash of lightning.

In their treatises, these authors provide precise descriptions of the chakras and specify their particular location on the cerebrospinal axis. In fact, the ancient masters took pains to pinpoint the exact location of the Kanda, i.e., the inverted triangle below the navel, on which Kundalini rests, leaving no doubt that it is the region intimately connected with the reproductive organs.

SCIENTIFIC PARAMETERS AND PROTOCOLS

The scientific models and protocols proposed will be designed to monitor the levels of transformational changes with emphasis on the following:

BIOLOGICAL METAMORPHOSIS OF THE BRAIN

To document accelerated activities in the brain.

To identify the reversal of the reproductive system.

Absorption of generative fluids and hormones into the visceral organs as they ascend into the brain

To establish that the brain is still in an organic state of evolution toward what could be the next plateau in human evolution.

Every major organ begins to function at new levels of activity.

Cells are charged with more potent bio-energy.

Metabolism is greatly amplified or enhanced.

Biochemistry of the organism is significantly altered.

Hormonal variances charted.

Accelerated activity of the entire nervous system.

Verify the transformation of the genes.

Identify the heart-mind-body connection.

Affects upon the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

PSYCHOLOGICAL

Emergence of a new, more refined personality.

Identify powerful new modes of cognition and perception.

Demonstrate greater mental abilities as natural byproducts of extended consciousness.

To demonstrate that genius can be cultivated.

To verify that noble traits of character are prerequisites to higher states of consciousness.

To identify what sort of lifestyle most ideally conforms to the laws ofevolution as they are hypothesized.

To build a database of individuals reporting higher states of consciousness and comparing their descriptions of these states and experiences with those recorded by saints, sages and prophets.

INTUITION AND PSYCHIC ABILITIES

To demonstrate that the same disciplines designed to awakening Kundalini can lead to the development of enhanced intuition and psychic abilities.

GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE RESEARCH

The Kundalini Research Foundation, together with its affiliated Foundations and Institutions, stand alone in the research we are proposing. There is every likelihood that eyebrows will be raised and open doubts expressed both from the sides of religion and science, inasmuch as every important discovery in knowledge invariably took the world by surprise. As Gopi Krishna writes in "The Biological Basis of Religion and Genius", once the possibility of spiritual rebirth with the arousal of Kundalini is accepted by science, the knowledge obtained through this research will point the way to the most sublime enterprise for the pure-minded and intelligent spirits of our age.

As we propose to demonstrate, the finished products of Kundalini must tran-scend the normal limits of the human brain. If this transcendence does not occur, the visionary experiences are either a delusion or myth. This raises another important question: If Kundalini is the source behind genius and extraordinary intellectual or artistic talents, as postulated, it must also be a factor behind the evil geniuses of history, the highly talented military commanders, dictators and demagogues, and also the human monsters who, dead to every moral sentiment, commit the dreadful acts reported almost daily in the media.

What we are suggesting, and intend to demonstrate through this proposed research project, is that one single law is at the base of all phenomena of the mind that science, at the present moment, finds inexplicable. Only one remarkable series of changes, caused in the psychic or nerve energy that serves as fuel for thought, is responsible. The greater incidence of insanity among the men and women of genius, for instance, and the seeds of eccentricity in many of them, clearly establishes the existence of a common link between the two.

The research will tend to show that the evolutionary impulse cannot be active only in the individuals but must be operative in a collective sense as well. The influence of evolutionary processes on the ecological development of a whole species or group is now clearly recognized by the biologists and that in order to meet the needs of the evolutionary growths, changes in the environment social, political and moral, would be necessary from time to time to meet the demands of the development of the psychomental fabric of the individuals and of the race too.

Where this adjustment is delayed, causing a retardation in growth, revolts, revolutions, and wars intervene to effect, with widespread suffering and bloodshed, what could have been achieved by peaceful means provided the underlying Law were known and its mode of operation understood. The ancient civilizations and cultures, after attaining a certain level of achievement, fell victims to decadence because the lives of the people did not conform to these standards. Actually, a revolution in the life of humanity should have occurred a century ago, when the theory of evolution was first propounded. But the evolutionists at that time, due mainly to prejudice against religion, and for a long time afterwards, held to a theory that cut at the roots of the idea of Intelligence and design in creation, effectively blocking any further discussion based on a spiritual point of view.

A single man or woman of the stature of a great prophet or scientist can have the power to change the world. Imagine what possibilities can be held forth if a crop of dozens of such geniuses were to be cultivated in each century or generation.

[In "The Secret of Yoga", Gopi Krishna summarizes the foregoing in these words:]

We live in an age of surprises. At the same time, we experience the horror of man-caused calamities. But no surprise has been so great as will take place when this Law is empirically demonstrated, and no calamity has been so devastating as might befall it, in the present stage of technological development, if the law is still ignored. The development of the human brain and the intellect is an unavoidable consequence of evolution, but without spiritual discipline and enlightenment the results can not only be unwholesome but also fatally poisonous.

In other words, it is essential in order to ensure smooth progress and safety on the hazardous path of evolution that humanity should not only be possessed of temporal knowledge but should also know the laws that rule her spiritual growth.