The notes below are designed to give prospective readers an idea of what to expect from the book, and to aid in making a decision on whether to buy it.
Kundalini Yoga, Swami Sivanaanda Radha
General Notes
Kundalini energy manifests itself in as many ways as the sun has rays. In most people the energy is latent.
Pitfall is ‘life must always be exciting’, prevents development of inner peace and harmony.
Surrender and humility are the most important requirements.
Sincerity is the key.
Ha is the positive, the sun.
Tha is negative, or the moon.
Hatha yoga brings bodily urges, emotions, and misdirected willpower under control.
The less that is fed to the mind, the more insight you get by yourself. Have I experienced this, or have I only imagined an illusion based upon what I’ve been told?
Write down your most cherished beliefs, take the opposite viewpoint, and observe what you feel.
Divine mother Sakti is energy. Intelligence, discrimination, and psychic powers are her manifestations.
She lies dormant in the Muladhara Chakra.
She is pure, blissful consciousness. Dvi is Sakti of Lord Siva. The body is Sakti.
All is Shakti. Ying and Yang.
When Kundalini sleeps, we are awake to the world. When she awakens, we sleep.
Sakti accepts the burden of renewal after destruction. Female doing. Male (Siva) un-manifest.
Mulhadara: circle, completeness/perfection, Vam, Sam, Sam, Sam. Triangle because power comes from above.
All pairs of power must be balanced before Kundalini will rise.
Susumna connects all the chakras.
Wine symbolic for spirit; staff pure or empty mind; water symbolizes water of life.
Devi - Goddess of speech.
What is behind your urges? (e.g. don’t want to talk for fear of silence).
Advisable to practice silence.
Refined speech is a song, sung in glorification of a power greater than our own.
3.5 coils of Kundalini represent satteva (purity); rajas (passion); and tamas (darkness).
Sex is bonding. Sex, birth, and death cannot be separated.
When an individual has passed on into the light there will be a favorable re-birth.
Four 25-year stages at asram:
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Learning
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Duty (family)
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Learning under Guru
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Becoming Guru
Stop being careless in the choice of words.
Svadhisthana, 2nd Chakra. Lotus.Vibrations of drum.
Listen to conch shell as voice from within. Realize different tastes with different foods.
When desires are diminished and seeking of them decreases, meditation occurs naturally. This is a pure mind.
Water’s flow can be directed. Water’s flow is unpredictable. Water responds to the slightest breath. Is your mind like water? The steady dropping of water wears down even the hardest rock. Still water reflects the sky.
Manipura, 3rd Chakra, Laksmi (intelligence), thunderbolt as a symbol of power; compulsive talking with Sakti.
A magnetic/electric field is created by the chanting of mantras. Voice can become a magnet that attracts others.
Is the voice soft because of fear of saying the wrong thing? Or poor self-image?
Focusing on something improves it. The power that has created the eye can see.
Consciousness is energy.
The path of Kundalini is precise. By recording thoughts, dreams, daily evidence, outcomes of those instructions, all of which mirror who we are, can help us anticipate the next steps.
The warnings about the Kundalini yoga without the help of a well-founded teacher are well founded themselves.
Like seeing a huge mounting in the distance, but as we climb the sight of the peak is obscured.
Faith is not gained until we are willing to accept darkness.
Grooves of the old mental records have to be changed so that the nervous system can get used to a different rate of vibration.
Love is the center of being. Inhale inspiration. Exhale despair. Hold the breath, sailing thought on the mental lake, music of the waves, smell their fragrance, feel their vibrations, see the fragrance of the flower, all energy vibrating in unison, luminous light, on the thousand petaled lotus.
Anahata, 4th Chakra, Heart Lotus, Air (vayu), tough (feeling), very shy, fast, graceful moving. Controls air and touch.
Chakras, as levels of consciousness, represent dynamic processes in people.
Wishing tree located just below the lotus heart.
Prana touches every part of your body and moves within it.
Explicit recall is important.
Greatest obstacle to self-discovery is lack of mental discipline.
During sleep sensations are perceived on a different level of consciousness. They emanate from a plane of finer forces.
Impatience is an expression of arrogance.
Mind is a miniature universe. Universe is the expansion of the mind.
Sakti is the great mother. Femininity and masculinity exist wherever there is creation.
All Kundalini yoga must be understood as an approach to Devi. She is the form, the ideal, the power.
When thought is put into action, we make an emotional investment. We may feel tired or exhausted.
Opinions, concepts, and beliefs are all loosened up through the practice of the Devine Light Invocation.
Healer to let this energy flow through and direct it to the person who is in need of additional energy.
The Divine Light cannot be told what to do.
Humility and gratitude go hand in hand.
Sex is not a sin. Light blends into light.
The true guru’s purpose is to set the devotee free.
Worship is not done for the benefit of God or the guru, but simply for the spiritual aspirant to recognize his or her own level of development.
Each aspirant should develop worship personally.
Desires arise from memory of experiences of the past. They are also projections into the future. Take the battle axe of Devi to cut off comparison and competition.
The preparation for perfection in yoga is control of the mind.
Only half the moon is visible but the whole moon is always there.
Can you give thanks with true feeling?
Consciousness is Energy (Sakti) and energy is indestructible.
Speech beyond words is also saying something by a gesture, touch, or expression of the eyes.
In the stillness of mind light can be experienced. For a brief moment the mind was free from thoughts.
Listening is an art, ability to concentrate, the ability to mentally relax and receive.
Speech is of no relevance if there is no listener.
True listening means the ability to surrender.
It becomes more complicated to control the ego if we think in short negative sentences.
Can I discriminate between self-will and surrender? Or Self-will and Divine will?
Do I have the humility to ask for help when the ego puts up a fierce battle?
The highest cannot be commanded and, if invited, will come only after we have prepared ourselves. We must surrender and wait patiently for his immense moment.
Only when there is ‘clear listening’ will one be able to hear the voice of the state of sleep-dream. Little signposts of gentleness, peace of mind, courageousness, and forgiveness.
I will be more accepting of people. I am created by the Divine Light.
Beware of making identifications. You are forgetting your Divine nature when you do so.
Surrendering is necessary to be able to truly listen.
The physical surrender as in Shavasana means the balance of body, mind, and speech.
Habitual thinking patterns are interconnected with emotions. One of the traps is exaggeration.
Audible sounds (spoken works) and inaudible sounds (mind speaking) are both vibrations that give rise to creation.
The light of the sun reveals all things, but the light of the sun can only reveal itself.
Sit Padmasana. Light floats over the pituitary and pineal glands. See the flash of light illuminating the brain matter, become a pinpoint, imagine light going down the center of the spine. And touches the lotuses as it goes down. Stay quiet and see if some perception arises. Do not do more than once a day.
Ajna, 6th Chakra, two petaled lotus, vortex of energy (1/4th moon).
Practice neutrality with everything. One may leave the body or stay on to encourage others to have no attachment to pleasures.
Death is understanding as the physical returns to the vortex of energy.
To understand is knowing from experience rather than just intellectualizing.
During mediation, all colors and images will begin to disappear, and one will see only the Divine Light.
So, the door to the 7th Chakra, the exit, is opened. The drop has returned to the ocean.
Mysteries become more comprehensible because the foundation has been laid.
New love is indeed pure and has become free from all self-indulgence, all possessiveness.
What you call life is a day, what you call death is a night.
The physical guru is the steppingstone to the guru within.
Om represents the life force, the universal sound.
You create Divine Mother in everything that is most beautiful, most perfect, most forgiving.
Guru has a habitual attitude of seeing only the Divine in others. Using the same energy as originates in the Mulhadra Chakra.
Sakti is power, Sakta is the source of power. The source of light vs the light itself.
Pineal is the source of memory, like the register or an enormous filing cabinet without power of discrimination.
Pituitary is the master gland. The pituitary is considered to have the power of reasoning.
Two petals that connect the beautiful circle. “Resting in your own Atman” or “Functioning from My True Center.”
Aspirant knows at the time of death to place prana in the adobe of Visnu (Anja Cakra) and to pass away.
In Eastern thought the mind is considered the 6th sense. In West, mind is the interpreter of the 5 senses.
What you are thinking now may have no value in 3 years or even 3 months.
The mind operates on the conscious, subconscious, and super-conscious levels. There are sensational, rational and intuitive aspects: the comic, infinite, and universal aspects of the mind.
Three gunas or aspects—sattva (pure), rajas (action/passion), and tamas (ineria, ignorance).
Sattvic is non-colored mind: detachment, desirelessness, dispassion, and surrendering to what is.
Rajasic aspect: infinite possibilities to create and destroy.
Tamasic mind: instinct and desire. To move from darkness to light. Selfish clouds of understanding. Everything starts in the mind.
When its values are clear, the mind has all it needs. Know thyself and be free.
Roaming mind is inefficient, losing energy, and weakening the whole person.
A drifting mind is dangerous.
The aspirant must become aware of mental background noises.
When desires are strong, their effect has to be recognized.
Free of all conditional by concentration, meditation, and contemplation. Achieved by willpower, ability to focus, to give attention, to accept, and to let go.
Clouded thinking is replaced by clear thinking (clairvoyance, clairaudience).
Hypnosis can be effective without a trance state, no flow of any type, body contact is not needed, rapport is not needed.
Loaded words have no effect. Cannot lead to Samadhi. Helpful tool.
Body, because of its own consciousness, puts ideas into the mind.
Trance - sleep by suggestion.
Predications are possible when the mind can hold a deep state of reflection for a long time.
What do I open myself to and why? Who and what is it that I invite into the mind? Discrimination!
Be courageous but do not gamble.
Be associated with forces most high but not expressions that seek their own glorification.
Yoga helps to be in control of the power of any kind of energy manifestation.
Attaining the power of Chakras is humanities’ potential.
First chakra is pure energy—it is the beginning of speech.
Siva/Sakti: I am the glow of the fire, the birth of all things.
The light, too great, too blinding, will scorch the mind.
If I eliminate all of my self-will and remove all self-protective screens, I can put myself in another’s shoes.
Discard all racial prejudices and see people in terms of “time-space circumstances.”
Energy is available for anyone who wants to make use of it.
Maybe now you will look for your guru.
Celibacy can invoke hallucination and some stories of the gods and goddesses.
Purpose of life is the attainment of higher consciousness which comes from liberation of ignorance.
One highly kept secret of Hatha yoga is symbolized as an upside-down tree. Must practice to understand.
Filling the light with the spine is more than a concentration exercise. It changes the atomic structure of the brain.
Union of Siva and Sakti is as one body, not two united.
Kundalini is not for the person for whom life is a continuous seeking of pleasures or achievements for fame.
The effects of Kundalini are negative if rethinking has not been done and if the conscious mind has not been sufficiently trained to accept changes.
Psychic energy is not something unusual but must be given continued energy.
Life is not linear but a wave.
The old mammalian brain seems to be functioning only in a limited way in humans.
Those among them that were most passionate became women.
The Soul turned at one time towards matter. She forgot her original dwelling, her true center, her everlasting life.
Knowledge
Those who have laid the foundation via learning achieve self-mastery; it can be controlled but must be learned slowly and carefully.
A person of high intellect can learn from the suffering of others and not need to always suffer themselves.
“I assume” means “I really don’t know”.
Self-control is achieved by the exercises. Increased concentration, control of emotions, growing awareness, loss of fear, growing courage, an inner knowing and security.
Mere dabbling is dangerous. Half knowledge is worse than no knowledge at all.
To pursue the highest, we may have to learn to wait in humility.
The purpose of the path of Kundalini is to wake you up from sleep and ignorance.
Freedom from all sin is achieved at the first stage by recognizing mistakes, by controlling impulses, by learning through reflection, and by making the simultaneous connection between learning and knowledge.
Pain is a great teacher.
Divine Light Invocation
Tense body and then release it. See light coming down, filling your head and then your entire being.
“I am created by divine light. I am sustained by divine light. I am protected by divine light. I am surrounded by divine light. I am ever growing into divine light.”
Then you can stand with palms facing forward.
Send divine light to circle another, circling feeling clockwise then surrounding entire person.
See divine light cocoon at night before sleep.
Must be meaningful.
Yogi clears cupboards of the mind, divine light invocation indescribable results.
Instructions/Tips
Hold stones when you go to sleep and see how it changes how you feel in the morning.
Watch your dreams. Write them down. Write down your moods at different times of the day.
Another way to develop gratitude is to look at yourself and to see the marvel of the human body and the intricacy of the sensitive organs.
Use worship to cultivate the senses, escalate the mind, and achieve greater perception of the divine within.
Think about how is pain experienced. What is my concept of energy? Is light a byproduct of energy or vice versa?
Visualize your food and how it is obtained.
A good way to understand the power of self-will is to choose someone and submit to the wants or suggestions of this person for a certain length. The chosen person should have no knowledge of this decision. The choice should be made alone, silently, and with the desire to understand self-will.
Watch dreams carefully, noting them down.
Always remember that your own sincerity protects you.
Suck air in hands and blow it back out. Transfer warmth to spine. Stand on shoulders and imagine taking light down it and filling a glass with light.
Focus on the space between the eyebrows. Meditate on the Rainbow.
You must come to me naked and unafraid.
Prana and Pranayama
Prana is life force. Prana is consciousness. Often presented as breath.
Yama is the lord of death. Ethical discipline as well.
Ayama means extension, stretching, or restraint.
Pranayama is to attune to the cosmic rhythm. Controlled by inhale, suspension, and exhale.
Pranayama must be practiced in conjunction with character building. Given by the guru to awaken the dormant Kundalini energy of Sakti.
The yogis teach that we only have so many breaths in a lifetime.
Practice of pranayama increases the alpha waves in the brain.
Relaxation is essential for praynayama. Lungs filled 3/4th. Do the practice of 4, 16, 8 pranayama with finger counting. No more than 6 rounds per day for 6 months.
Benefits of Prayanama: Karma can be burned up. Illusion is destroyed. Vagus nerve is brought under control. Relax the whole body.
With alternative nostril breathing no retention at first, then 4, 16, 8. Then add in AUM at end.
Kundalini pranayama. Concentrate on Muladhara. Inhale through left nostril for 3 Oms, close left nostril and retain breath for 12 Oms. Send current down spinal column to Muladhara. Imagine current hitting lotus at Muladhara. Exhale slowly via right nostril for 3 Oms. Repeat, alternating sides.
Pranic healing: let light flow through you but never from you. See yourself as the channel of healing light.
Conscious, subconscious, and super-conscious are a result of active prana.
Prana is translated as life force.