Joan Shivarpita Harrigan Interview

Summary

The conversation explores Kundalini Shakti as the divine presence within, how it guides spiritual transformation, and how it differs from physical energy or unusual experiences. It also examines the layers of mind and experience, the risks of spiritual materialism, and the role of disciplined practice in moving toward genuine realization.

Questions This Interview Explores

• What is Kundalini Shakti, and how does it guide spiritual growth?
• How can someone distinguish a genuine Kundalini awakening from energetic or psychological experiences?
• What are the koshas, and how do they relate to spiritual realization?
• Why can intellectual ideas of oneness become obstacles on the spiritual path?
• How should spiritual practice relate to the tension between direct realization and gradual progress?

Key takeaways

• Kundalini Shakti is the divine presence within, not merely a form of physical energy.
• Clear inner guidance emerges as ego, conditioning, and sensory distractions become quieter.
• Pleasant meditative states are not necessarily the same as genuine realization.
• Spiritual materialism can turn awakening into a pursuit of powers, special experiences, or personal gain.
• Conceptual oneness does not replace direct experience of nonduality.
• Disciplined practice helps the mind move beyond dullness, restlessness, and attachment.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awake or awakening people. There have been nearly 300 of them now. If you would like to check out the archives, go to batgap.com, look under Past Interviews, and you will see them categorized in about five different ways.

We also rely on the support of people who appreciate the show in order to be able to put all the time and attention we do into it. If you feel like donating, there is a button on the right-hand side of the page.

So my guest this week is Joan Harrigan, and her spiritual name is Shivarpita. I am really excited about this interview. I met Joan briefly about six or seven years ago, before I even started this show, but I don’t think she remembers me from then.

Joan: I do.

Rick: She came to a meeting we had in Fairfield, where we had this weekly satsang thing going. She has a center down in Tennessee called the Patanjali Kundalini Yoga Care Center. A lot of my friends have gone there, and probably more. We will be explaining during the course of the interview what that center does and what Joan does.

I have been reading her books in preparation for this, as usual, and I am just really impressed with the depth and breadth of her knowledge and the background through which she acquired that knowledge. I think you will see in the course of this conversation that this knowledge would be really useful to the contemporary spiritual scene.

There are so many people who have had an awakening and are not quite sure how their awakening fits into the grand scheme of things, whether it’s preliminary or final. Many times, people feel their awakening is final, but then it turns out not to be. I have often felt that there should be much more systematic understanding of all the various possibilities, and it would be very helpful to seekers and aspirants to have that understanding.

It would safeguard and facilitate their path, and I think Joan’s work really does provide that understanding if you take the time to study it. It is not just an intellectual thing. She actually has a way of helping—she can correct me—sort of diagnosing where a person is at and how their Kundalini rising might be stuck or diverted in certain ways. She is able to provide specific training or instruction to get it unstuck and going in the right direction.

So we will talk about that, but I think this should be really valuable for people, and I am really pleased to have her on. So thanks, Joan, for doing this.

Joan: Thank you. I am happy to…

Rick: So let me just start by reading a bit about your bio and about the Patanjali Kundalini Yoga Care Center, and then we will go into a little bit of your background.

Joan Shivarpita Harrigan is the spiritual director of the Patanjali Kundalini Yoga Care Center, or PKYC for short. She has practiced, studied, and taught Raja Yoga and Advaita Vedanta for more than 30 years. She has been tutored as a designated successor in America in the Kundalini Vidya lineage founded by Gomutigiri Maharaj, learning the oral commentary teachings of traditional Kundalini Science from her spiritual mentor, Chandrasekharanand Saraswati.

She is a retired psychologist. She has been a brahmacharini, a novice, in the Shankaracharya Vedic monastic order since 1987. She is the author of

Kundalini Vidya: The Science of Spiritual Transformation .

I was reading it on the plane last night. I just came back from seeing Amma in Boston for a couple of days. You also have a new book, Stories of

Spiritual Transformation: The Fulfillment of Kundalini Process , which I have also read part of. That book is not published yet, is it, Joan?

Joan: No. I hope to have it out this fall.

Rick: Incidentally, apologies to those who had hoped to watch the live streaming of this interview. We just spent half an hour trying to fix it, and it’s not working for some reason. I will just have to diagnose that during the week and get it working for the next one.

For general knowledge, most of these interviews are livestreamed, and there are usually anywhere between 40 and 80 people watching live. It’s kind of nice because they send in questions during the interview relevant to the interview, and it helps to enliven things.

As I mentioned, I feel like Joan has dedicated her life to this thing and has a wealth of knowledge. It is almost like there is this reservoir, and I have to bring as large a pipe as possible up to the reservoir in order to extract as much water from it during this process.

I really hope to do justice to what Joan has to offer, and maybe we will even do a second interview one of these days as well, because I am sure we cannot cover everything in two hours.

What is Kundalini Shakti?

Rick: I think we should start with some basic questions. Everyone has heard the word Kundalini, but I think there are probably a lot of different understandings of what exactly it is, and Joan has a very specific understanding and definition. So let’s start by getting that. What is Kundalini Shakti?

Joan: Kundalini Shakti is basically the divine presence within every human soul. It motivates and guides our spiritual yearning and intention, and makes it clearer to us what we need to do to cooperate with that spiritual source within us, to get deeper and deeper to the source.

Rick: Why is Kundalini Shakti often referred to as “She”?

Joan: According to the Vedic scriptures, the Mother Divine is the source of the manifestation of all of creation as it unfolds and cascades forth from the One. So it is given a feminine-principle gender to acknowledge that it is manifest, even though Kundalini Shakti is the least manifest of all the cascades of manifestation.

Rick: So it is like the initial sprouting of manifestation.

Joan: That’s right. Yes, exactly.

Rick: For those who are not familiar with that concept, the idea is that the manifest universe arises by degrees. In physics, it is sometimes called sequential spontaneous symmetry breaking, where one begins to diversify and then becomes more and more diversified. Then we end up with millions of different laws of nature, qualities, and everything else.

But if we get right down near the source, the diversification is very minimal, and it just barely begins to break into the four fundamental forces. Then those multiply, and so on and so forth. So there is an equivalent understanding of that in the Vedic tradition.

Joan: Exactly. It is depicted nicely in the Sri Yantra, which has interwoven triangles going up and down, set in a square with gates, circles, petals, and rims. The triangles get smaller and subtler until, finally, there is in the center a dot, a Bindu, which is the One.

Kundalini Shakti is anthropomorphically depicted as having her big toe on that point in the middle of the Sri Yantra. So the goddess is the personification of the geometric symbol of the entire universe, which the Sri Yantra depicts.

Kundalini Shakti is the divine presence within every human soul.

✨ Consciousness, intelligence, and the koshas

Rick: One thing that fascinates me a lot is the fact that intelligence is ubiquitous. Anything you consider—near, far, big, small—if you really think about what is going on, even in terms of what science has told us, it is absolutely brimming with intelligence, packed with intelligence, as evidenced by the amazing order and perfection with which the complexity of life is administered.

I get the feeling from what I have been reading of your work that, in your tradition, this would be understood to be the province of the goddess, or of Kundalini Shakti, which gives rise to the universe. Whereas consciousness, the Shiva value, does it contain intelligence also, or is it just flat, unmanifest, and the intelligence conducting the universe is attributed to more of a divine feminine quality?

Joan: Well, the divine feminine is said to have the first describable attributes, the first tiny degrees of phenomenal qualities that can be described. Pure consciousness, however, is nothing—it is not void; it is awareness. It is sometimes described as pure light. It is all-pervading, eternal, one without a second.

It is the ground from which the manifestation cascades, but because it is beyond mind, beyond space and time, it cannot actually be described. It must be experienced.

So as we go inward in the spiritual journey, from the gross to the subtle through the koshas, as they are described—the sheaths, the veils, or shades surrounding the light—the grossest is the physical, material world. Then there is the pranic, the energetic or life-giving force.

Then there is mind, which would be lower mind. This would include the collection of all our karmic material through many lifetimes, and the sensory-motor mind—manas—that the senses go out and take in data; and the ahankara, which identifies with and takes ownership of the beliefs and preferences.

Rick: That’s the ego, right? The “I-maker”?

Joan: Yes, the “I-maker.” So the Chitta is this vast storehouse.

Rick: What’s the relationship between ahankara and Chitta?

Joan: These three functions of mind are in the manomaya kosha. Chitta is the storehouse of vasanas, which are desires and drives, and samskaras, which are the impressions from all of our past experiences. The grooves get deeper and deeper through lifetimes, and we come in with certain patterning.

Rick: If vasanas are desires and drives, and samskaras are the impressions, the impressions must very much guide and influence the drives, or the vasanas, right?

Joan: The drive, for example, would be hunger, and the samskara would be chocolate in particular.

Rick:(Laughter.) Right. Or if you had some addiction to food, then you must have heavy samskaras around food.

Joan: Yes. So vasanas are desires, and samskara is the particular way that manifests. All of that is basically our karmas. Our subconscious is just filled, overflowing with this material from so many lifetimes.

Ahankara identifies with that material and owns it—the ego structure, that “I-ness,” the “I-maker.” Then manas wants to go out through the senses to objects to fulfill what the Chitta is stirred up about. Ahankara just says, “Yes, that’s who we are, that’s what we need, that’s what we do.”

Then there is higher mind, the Buddhi, which is responsible for discernment and being able to tell what is really real, what is unreal, what is helpful, what is not helpful, what is really going to bring us to spiritual fruition, and what is illusion and in the way.

Beyond even that is Anandamaya Kosha, which is the peacefulness beyond mind. That is the dwelling place of Kundalini Shakti as she is veiled by the subtle body, which is prana, lower mind, and higher mind—Buddhi. Beyond the causal, where she dwells, veiled by the subtle, is the One, which is the source.

Rick: It is interesting that the blissful Self is regarded as a sheath, or as something which can obscure oneness.

Joan: Exactly, and that is one of the spiritual materialism traps. People think, “I just want to be happy, and I can get this high from transcending and meditating, and it’s lovely,” and it becomes an escape and it becomes an attachment. If that is what one is after—just a pleasant mental experience, or even a glimpse perhaps beyond mind that is sattvic and peaceful—it has not gone far enough to really be the goal.

Why Kundalini can be misunderstood

Rick: There are a lot of theories and understandings out there about what Kundalini is. There are all kinds of people recommending all kinds of things to either enliven it or avoid it. In the course of doing these interviews, I have done a number of them with people who just go along minding their own business and end up having a rather profound Kundalini awakening. They didn’t even know what it was and started doing research on the internet, initially thinking they had some kind of disease. I know of cases where people ended up in the hospital because they went to a doctor and the doctor said, “Well, this is weird. Here are some drugs.”

So Kundalini has a bit of a bad reputation in some quarters as being something scary and dangerous because some people have had difficulties. Maybe we should address that right now.

Joan: I think there are four main ways currently of looking at Kundalini. The first would be secular or psychological, which is more like what you just described. It might come from a medical model that Kundalini is a weird, horrible, capricious energy that might attack you unexpectedly at any time, wreak havoc in your life, and render you a strange kind of ill that people can’t figure out and that is very difficult to treat because, of course, it is not a physical malady. It is also not just difficulty with the energy system.

Usually, when people have such a spiritual emergency, they just want it to go away. If they haven’t had any spiritual training, it is difficult for them to get the overview and the perspective and attitude that there is something holy and sacred at the core of this; that this dramatic experience is an intense invitation for me to learn how to cooperate with what is wanting to happen, to try to understand it and relax into it; and that maybe there are some things that I need to change about my behavior, my attitude, and the way I am in myself and my life that would enhance my experience rather than just fighting this discomfort.

So, in this spiritual-emergency sort of model, sometimes people are told to stop all spiritual practices if they are doing any, not to meditate, to eat a lot of meat, and to do everything external they can think of. They are told they need to be grounded. This may give some temporary relief from symptoms, but it does not address the source of this dramatic, big message that the person is receiving. That message is that it’s time to change something very fundamental and significant, and allow this living process to go the way it needs to go in its own wisdom.

The second way Kundalini is looked at is from an esoteric viewpoint, where people think, “Oh, there are siddhis to be had, and there are occult techniques that can be applied to get some real magic going. I can improve my psychic ability, my healing powers, and my intuition.” Of course, for the benefit of humanity is usually how it starts, so that I can ply my esoteric gift more skillfully and enhance my repertoire of abilities. But that is a slippery slope, and it can be ego-aggrandizing. It is not spiritual, actually. It’s again spiritual materialism. It is looking for the goodie instead of the purpose.

The next way people might look at Kundalini is if they have some yoga training. Then you get the standard idea that, at some point, some force will come up the spine, explode in the head, open the chakras—energy centers in the central column—sequentially along the way, and thus enlightenment can happen. This is a much-simplified version of some of the ancient teachings that have been westernized and sort of co-opted into a psychological model mainly, and also used for healing and so forth.

Rick: It is simplified. As you point out, there are a variety of routes that Kundalini can take. There are various cul-de-sacs that it can end up getting caught in. It’s not as cut-and-dried as it is sometimes presented to be.

Joan: Exactly.

Rick: Also, you can have all kinds of stuff going on that might seem like a Kundalini awakening in your head, and it actually is not that. It is the vayus doing something, and Kundalini may not have fully awakened in any of the lower chakras.

Joan: This is the biggest misunderstanding around Kundalini. People say, “Kundalini energy.” Kundalini is not energy. Energy, as we saw in the description of the koshas, is just the second sheath, right there inside the material, physical, gross-level material world. Kundalini Shakti is the very last, right at the edge of oneness. So to say that Kundalini is energy really makes it much more manifest and gross than it actually is. It is the Divine within. It is Divine, and not the Divine’s energy.

Kundalini Shakti is the Divine within. It is Divine, and not the Divine’s energy.

Rick: You mentioned Kundalini kind of guides people’s spiritual progress, and that is interesting. I had always felt guided, and I still do. I feel like there is some intelligence that knows better than I do what direction I should go in and, if I am sensitive to that and cooperative, then one thing leads to the next in a very nice way.

Even this show: there was a lot of guidance around having it turn out the way it has so far. I had intentions that would have taken it in a different direction, and those were not being supported. When I just sort of relaxed a little bit and went in other directions, then it was supported.

But I have always kind of almost thought of that as some intelligence external to myself, like guardian angels or some broader intelligence that was orchestrating me like a puppet.

Joan: Spirit guides or something…

Rick: Yes, something like that, whereas what you are saying is that the Divine presence is very much within us.

Joan: Definitely.

Rick: So when we have deep, genuine intuitions, which are like subtle impulses of “go this way” and “go that way,” would you say that is Kundalini guiding us?

Joan: Usually, yes, if we can get our “I-maker” out of the way, along with all of the desires and impressions from the storehouse of chitta and the sensory temptations from the manas. If we can clear our way through that to a deeper source, then we are hearing the real prompting of the Divine within, who just wants us to come home to that source and not get confused and take little detours—big detours.

Rick: So it almost sounds like each person has their own Kundalini Shakti that is coiled up in the root chakra and has to progress through their own system, and yet the Divine we usually think of is universal, all-pervading, and omnipresent.

Joan: There is microcosm and macrocosm.

Rick: As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind. As is the human body, so is the cosmic body, and so on. When we speak of Kundalini within the body, is it correct to say that it is like an individual expression for this person of that cosmic intelligence or cosmic presence?

Joan: Yes. It is just like there is the Jivatman, which is the individual Self, and then there is Brahman. Atman is Brahman.

Rick: Ultimately, essentially.

Joan: Atman is the microcosm, and when the illusion of separation from the individual self leaves and merges one with the One, there is only Brahman, and that is all there is. Then we realize that the individual is universal.

Likewise, with Kundalini Shakti, the Divine within, we each have that precious beloved at our core—that is who we really are—and the Divine, of course, is universal as well, all-pervading, and eternal.

🕊️ Progress, glimpses, and spiritual bypassing

Rick: Many people seem to jump ahead. They say, “Okay, well, the individual is cosmic, Atman is Brahman, and ultimately you are that oneness, and therefore you really don’t have an individuality and there is no person.” There are some teachers who base their whole teaching on this, saying over and over again that there is no person, there is nobody doing anything. Some of these teachers even conclude that there is no reincarnation because, if there is no person, how could there be reincarnation? What is it that would reincarnate?

I think it is kind of a conflation of levels myself, but how would you comment on that perspective?

Joan: Well, until you are actually self-realized and experience true nonduality—I don’t mean oneness like, “I would like to buy the world a Coke because we are all a big happy family.” Conceptual oneness is clearly just the theoretical thing. People can get it philosophically, but before having it experientially, we are still in dualism, which means we have to deal with mind. We have to deal with the fact that we are embodied; that the prana system needs to be vitalized for us to make good progress; and that we have to abide by certain laws of the universe and nature that will keep us healthy and help us focus the mind.

The gunas, the qualities of nature, are at play. Tamas—dullness and darkness—and rajas—the activity and restlessness—and sattva—peacefulness—are all intermingled. On the spiritual path, we are attempting to get beyond tamas, which just keeps us sluggish and ignorant, and use a little rajas to make us curious, find out things, and do some spiritual practice.

Finally, we attempt to really establish ourselves in a sattvic lifestyle and develop a sattvic mind through spiritual practices, which start with things like the yamas and niyamas in yoga and the four qualifications in Vedanta. Then, with a more sattvic mind, we can be peaceful enough to get through the koshas, from gross to subtle, and have increasingly frequent and clear insights as to the pure nature of reality; not get distracted by the senses and mind; and settle into the awareness beyond mind.

Rick: In some circles, progress is sort of a dirty word. There is a debate between the direct path and the progressive path, and the direct people seem to be saying, “You are already that, so why mess around with years and years of practices and progress?”

Joan: Absolutely. They are absolutely right. But if you are just sitting in your living room waiting for whatever day it is that your karmic number comes up and enlightenment arrives, what do you do in the meantime?

Rick: Unfortunately, what a lot of people do is read a lot of books, and these books convince them that they are That. They often mistake that understanding for actual realization.

Joan: It is discernment. And it might be a bypass. There are philosophical bypasses, and there are psychological, mental, and emotional bypasses. One can have an experience. It may be enthralling. It may be uplifting and inspiring. It may be a gift of grace. It may be a glimpse. But it may not be the actual true goal. It is discernment.

Rick: I have met many people who have had glimpses. Some know that they are glimpses, and they had this wonderful experience. And then there are other people who have awakenings that are really significant. They think, “Wow, this is it.” Then maybe two years down the road, they lose it again. “What happened? How did I lose it?”

Joan: There can be reasons that one would have an actual experience of some kind and lose it if they didn’t follow through, support, and keep supporting what the Divine inner guide is directing them to do. If they get into rajasic and tamasic activities and thoughts, and they are not unloading the subconscious—really letting it go, not just watching it, but really allowing it to leave—then the nice experience that they had may not last. It gets gunked up with the old karmas falling in and filling up this beautiful opening that they had because they are not supporting it with sattvic, spiritual, virtuous living.

Kundalini across lifetimes

Most of the people that we have worked with came into this lifetime already having had an initial Kundalini release in some previous lifetime. So they come in with the Kundalini process already underway. They are not waiting for that big initial release. They have already had it—how many centuries ago, we don’t know; how many lifetimes ago, we don’t know; how it happened, we don’t really know. But it is active within them.

At some point in their life, it might ripen due to some karmic moment or a blessed stimulation—the proximity of a saint or holy place, or reading scripture that will inspire them. On the other hand, it could be some very difficult thing in their life, a loss or something painful that punctuates the moment when they become aware of this process that has already been percolating.

Rick: These types of people who have come into this life with Kundalini already awakened to some degree—is there something about their lives as children growing up that is different from other people?

Joan: In reviewing scriptures, and with our own case studies—which include about 300 people who told their stories by way of getting an assessment of their Kundalini process—we have found that people with a Kundalini process tend to be much more aware of the workings of their mind and of their energy system.

They feel prana flow. They feel currents, surges, tingles, and pinpricks. They feel heat. They feel activity in the brain area. They feel pressure, perhaps. They are more aware of their inner life. They may be more imaginative, more creative, and more intelligent than the average bear.

They are sometimes more dissatisfied. They may be frustrated and seeking, and have a yearning for something. They may not know what it is—even the truth, a teacher, a better kind of wine—but they want, they want, they want. They are not satisfied.

Rick: Everybody wants something. Everybody in the world is looking for fulfillment, but that does not mean everybody has had a Kundalini awakening. This is a deeper level, and it is more subtle and fundamental. It is not just, “I want money,” or, “I want pleasure.” It is more a sense of, “I don’t really belong here. I am a stranger in a strange land. I don’t fit in.”

Joan: Exactly. People with a Kundalini process will say, “From childhood, I didn’t fit in. I was strange in some way. People didn’t understand me. I felt like a misfit.” Some people actually have special talents as little children—not just artistic talents. You can also have a talent for management or organization, less flashy kinds of talents rather than tap dancing.

Rick: Can we generalize to say that gifted people are likely to have had, or come in with, Kundalini awakening? Somebody like Mozart is probably quite Kundalini-enlivened?

Joan: I would say Mozart, yes, but not everyone with special skills has a Kundalini process, because special talents, abilities, and powers come from brain-center activation. They are the petals of Sahasrara, the thousand-petaled lotus. When these are opened or activated, there may be a special ability that comes forth, but these can be cultivated without any Kundalini process through occult formulas and methods.

There are ways to get the gifts without involving spirituality. So it is very tricky when people think, “Oh, my God, this person has so many siddhis. They know what I am thinking and predict the future, and there is a charisma and power about them.” It might just be brain-center activation.

Rick: So their Kundalini could very well be just sitting down there in the root chakra.

Joan: If they are like a wizard rather than a saint, they could have wizardly ways and just activate the powers. Actual saints and sages also have powers. So it takes a lot of discernment.

Powers are not enough to judge whether this person is enlightened, realized, or a spiritual teacher. Some spiritual teachers manifest hardly any siddhis, but they are there. They are present. They are in truth, in reality. You can feel it.

Rick: Yes, you can feel it.

Joan: It is not flashy; it’s deep.

Powers are not enough to judge whether this person is enlightened, realized, or a spiritual teacher.

Stable and unstable risings

Rick: Can Kundalini regress? You get it up to the heart chakra in one lifetime, and the next thing you know, you lose that and it goes back down again?

Joan: There are certain kinds of rising that fluctuate. So it is not that they actually regress, but they do go up and down within a particular nadi, or subtle energy channel or tube.

Rick: And then there are other ones which, once they reach a certain stage, could not go back down.

Joan: They don’t go back down again. For example, once they go through Sushumna to the throat chakra, they will stay at the throat chakra and not go down; they will go up. That’s a stable rising.

Rick: I first started having Kundalini symptoms in about 1970, after a one-month meditation course. There were spontaneous movements and weird grimacing in my face sometimes, and I thought, “Okay, oh, this is cool. Something good is happening,” because I had that training already.

But I would by no means consider my process complete. I am sure it isn’t. So it has been 45 years, and this is still an ongoing thing. Sometimes I have this experience that I feel like there is a chick picking its way out of an egg in my third-eye-center area. It feels like there is a little chick, and sometimes it showers bliss down the scalp and all this stuff. But it is a work in progress.

Joan: Yes, and there are ways to accelerate the process as well, and that is what Kundalini Vidya specializes in. It is not just a theoretical framework that describes stages of spiritual development, although that certainly is there, and ways to determine where someone is on that continuum. There are also methods relevant for an individual based on who they are, what their karmic bag is like, and what kind of Kundalini process or kind of rising they have.

Rick: So if just about anybody who is listening to this interview felt motivated to come to your center in Tennessee, do you have an approach that diagnoses them in a way and determines pretty accurately where they are in terms of their Kundalini awakening?

Joan: Yes, that is our specialty. We request that applicants write their three histories, which are their personal history, their health history, and their spiritual history, based on an outline of items that I created. So they tell their story.

From contemplating the information that the person shares in their own words, and sort of being with that person in that way—reading between the lines and becoming aware of what is going on with them on the level of their Kundalini process—the process becomes clear. In that way, we give an assessment.

Rick: So you are saying that, to a certain extent, the assessment is a result of not only your knowledge and background, but also your cognitive or intuitive ability?

Joan: Swamiji told me early on, “Mom, if you use your mind, it will never work. So go beyond mind to a way of knowing.” That is used both to understand what kind of process the person has and to determine which practices will be the right match for them at that point in their development. I also have wonderful training from Swamiji, so it is not like a psychic reading; it is beyond mind.

Rick: When I was on long meditation courses, it was very delicate. Even when I used to teach TM, there would be a kind of intensity that would build up, and you had to be very careful, lest your senses just run amok. It felt like going into town and having a pizza in the middle of a long meditation course.

I had one experience where I had to leave one of those courses abruptly in the middle of quite a long meditation practice, and it took me months and months to get balanced and integrated again. There is a sort of disconnection thing going on. Something about the necessity of a disciplined life, a healthy lifestyle, and a spiritual lifestyle if the Kundalini process is in progress. You cannot just do anything you feel like doing.

Joan: Sometimes interventions that might seem to the mind or senses intriguing, fascinating, or, “Wow, that is really powerful; I am going to jump into that,” might be too much for a person’s system at a given time.

So you have to be very discerning and really tune in deep, deep, deep, and not get enthralled with some of the interesting things that are available, but truly just follow that quiet inner voice of the Holy Spirit, who only wants spiritual development.

Even so, the vehicle must be prepared. The prana vitality must be developed and maintained. The mind must be trained not to be dull or restless, or to fluctuate between the two, but really to be one-pointed—to be able to concentrate on one thing—and that can eventually flow into a meditative state.

To do that, we have to work very consciously to create a sattvic environment in our gross material setting; in our work, family, and interpersonal life; in our emotional life; and in our entertainment and habits.

So spiritual life is one choice after another. Do I want this exciting or pleasurable whatever, or do I want to go clearer, more still, and more inward to the source?

To be a true, sincere spiritual seeker is not an easy thing. Americans, perhaps in particular, are accustomed to wanting quick results, so they may be more attracted to modalities that promise a quicker kind of thing that doesn’t require a whole lot of effort.

But even if you get some kind of quick result, to maintain it, all the great spiritual traditions say that you have to have a container and develop your vessel so that it is strong, clear, and capable. Basically, it is the tabernacle of the Holy Spirit, and if the tabernacle is tattered, difficulties happen.

Rick: Yes, you cannot pour new wine into old wineskins.

Joan: There you go.

Rick: I think this is an important point. There is not a lot of awareness of the notion that the body and the nervous system are instruments through which realization is attained, and that you have to take care of the instrument.

When I was 18 and still doing drugs, I had this realization one night. I was sitting in my bed on an LSD trip, and I thought, “I am stuck in this body, and if I damage it, I am going to be stuck in the damaged body.” So I said, “That’s it. I am going to stop taking drugs and learn to meditate, and kind of clean up my act.”

Joan: That’s Divine guidance. You had a knowing: “This is teaching me something about an altered way of looking at reality, but ultimately I feel it is probably not truly good for me in the long run or for my spiritual life.”

🕊️ Psychedelics, diet, and spiritual safety

Rick: Speaking about drugs, what do you think about LSD? Ayahuasca is all the rage these days. People are all flying down to Peru to take Ayahuasca trips. Have you dealt with people who have done that, and have you seen any positive outcomes?

Joan: It depends on the individual. I have seen some positive outcomes. They say with LSD that your head does not come down in the same place, and you have a true experience of a totally different way of perceiving what you thought was real.

You understand cultural relativity; you understand the relativity of states of consciousness. There are lots of different ways of being in reality. That lasts, and it is a paradigm buster.

You can’t remain a gross materialist, a gross analytical rationalist, having had that direct experience. You know there is more going on than meets the eye.

However, this glimpse is risky. Some people don’t make it past their first trip. They are delicately poised, and particularly because people with what we call deflected rising, which is unstable rising, are more at risk than others.

Young people don’t know, “Am I at risk for a psychotic break, or do I have deflected rising, and this might whack out my subtle system more than it would my friends?” There are all kinds of possible negative results.

Plus, with many of the sacred medicines, no matter how purified they are or how careful the setting is, there still may be toxins that build up in Ajna or in the brain centers, and they have to be cleared out later. Some also affect the solar center, so there are consequences.

Rick: Some people have been meditating a long time and then think, “What the heck? I am going to try some drug or something,” and end up probably regretting it. It doesn’t go so well.

Joan: I prefer to err on the conservative side. Why risk it?

Rick: So what you would say, then, is that with your approach it is a safety-first approach?

Joan: Sattvic, gentle spiritual practices, not the exciting, intense practices.

Rick: Speaking of intense practices, I know people who started to do a lot of intense pranayama hoping to get somewhere and gotten into trouble.

Joan: Too much may be too much. Gentle, sattvic practices, and a good match for the person’s system.

Rick: Kundalini sometimes has a bad reputation because so many people have so much difficulty with it.

Joan: The word has become redefined in the modern West. The original spiritual meaning—the fourth meaning of Kundalini, which is that it is the Divine within—and the whole spiritual process are not understood.

The spiritual emergency, the dire examples of wild Kundalini experience, have basically come to define the whole. They are just a tiny part of the whole continuum of Kundalini experiences.

So I always capitalize the word Kundalini to indicate that it is the name of God, that it is Divine, and that it is sacred and holy, and not a mere wild energy. When I am using kundalini in the standard secular way it is used, I use a lowercase k just to show the difference.

Rick: I think you would say that in many cases the progress of Kundalini can be very undramatic, almost unnoticeable.

Joan: Absolutely. Those are the healthier examples among people who are really trying to create a sattvic, virtuous, healthy, spiritually focused way of living, thinking, and being. Their processes generally are easier.

The kinds of processes that would be termed spiritual emergency or Kundalini crisis, which need treatment to subdue them and just make them go away, are much more dramatic manifestations.

Often, people in those circumstances are so frightened and so debilitated by this big experience that they may not even have a spiritual urge. One person told me, “I didn’t do anything spiritual to make this happen. I certainly don’t intend to do anything spiritual to make it go away. Just fix it.” There was nothing I could do for her.

Rick: Because you needed to give her something spiritual.

Joan: The only solution is a spiritual solution.

The only solution is a spiritual solution.

If the person is not willing to embrace a spiritual orientation, spiritual perspective, spiritual practices, and really make changes—if someone is not willing to change—progress in spiritual life is not possible.

In our work, we specialize in sincere, dedicated spiritual seekers who are willing to do the work, willing to do regular spiritual practice, willing to follow the yamas and niyamas—the values and virtues that all the great spiritual traditions have in some word or another—and to open to the workings of the Divine and allow it to happen.

To do that, one has to keep prana vital. That means don’t overwork, eat good food, and take rest when you need it. Do your dharma, but do it in a way that really fulfills your life calling and destiny. You have family responsibilities, but don’t exhaust yourself, because if your prana vitality is depleted, you cannot make spiritual progress.

Likewise, if your mind is scattered and attached and full of desires, you can’t keep it one-pointed and focused, and you won’t make spiritual progress. These are prerequisites, and they are required.

Physical symptoms and discernment

Rick: I know some spiritual teachers whom I respect a lot and consider quite advanced, who are clear as a bell, and who still eat meat.

Joan: The Dalai Lama is a carnivorous atheist, and he is fabulous.

Rick: So you wouldn’t correlate diet and enlightenment?

Joan: Tibetan Buddhists eat meat, and they believe in no-self. Jesus ate fish.

Rick: Buddha died from eating rancid pork.

Joan: I said the correct diet for one’s constitution. If your DNA strain has been Northern European forever, there has probably never been a successful vegetarian in your lineage.

Rick: I think I saw in your book somewhere that there are a lot of diseases, like fibromyalgia and migraines, and a lot of things that might actually be related in some way to Kundalini issues.

Joan: An unstable Kundalini process, or one that is intensely stuck, strains the entire subtle-body system. When the subtle-body system is strained, and the vayus—which are the pranas—are flowing in a way that is just trying to get the Kundalini process unstuck, pushing and urging and sort of banging on the walls, the whole system is out of balance and strained.

The prana system is the basis for the physical system. As light turns into waves and waves turn into particles, it manifests on the gross level. So if something is really out of whack at the subtle level, it can manifest on the physical level. Also, karmically, there can be difficulties in the Kundalini process, and karmically that person may have diagnoses on top of that.

Rick: Do you think there is an optimum age for spiritual progress?

Joan: It depends on the individual again. The karmic timing for the ripening of their yearning and their focus on spiritual life is what it is. The median age for people coming to us is 53. We have people in their 20s all the way through their 80s who have successfully progressed.

But in people’s 50s, once they have done their career thing and their kids are launched enough, there is a turning inward. Jung said, really, what’s the point of working with someone for deep analytical work until they are 40? They don’t understand themselves well enough. They haven’t had enough life experience to really be clear on their values, their purpose, and who they are.

Joan: There is something to be said for a time of seclusion, either definitely at a given time each day or for a certain period of time, because the inner work cannot be bypassed.

The unloading of the subconscious and the emptying of the karmic bag only happen with this gentle tipping point, this turning point—the sacred shift of getting to Makara point, which is at the top of the sushumna nadi in the upper Ajna chakra.

When that sacred shift happens, it is like popping the cork on the chitta. The unconscious material can flow forth with a simultaneous establishment of objectivity, discernment, and nonattachment, so you are not identifying with the material and it can flow forth. But this takes a lot of time, even for the first big clearing.

Then, when one gets into the actual stages of samadhi, which are still dualistic, there is the refined purification of the baseline—the silt and algae at the bottom of the lake of mind. That silt at the bottom is characterological, preverbal, ancient—stemming from how many lifetimes—and so much a part of who we have become that it’s almost invisible to us. It is like a fish being aware of water. It is just what we live in. It’s our worldview; it’s our interpretative filter.

To empty that out—oh my God, it is painful. The ego fights against it, and ego is tricky, tricky, tricky. It doesn’t want to be unplugged. It is like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Rick: “Dave, stop, Dave.”

Joan: It seems so sweet. And it will kill Dave. It just wants to survive. It knows the jig is up and that it will cease to be. It has to cease to be.

All of that stuff has to be emptied out for one to truly be one with the One. There can’t be anything in between. The individual has to have the vitality, one-pointedness, nonattachment, and discernment to expand, expand, expand until finally it is one with the

One: no separation, and there is only One. That is all there is.

Rick: Is it possible for the merging of the individual self with the universal Self to happen quickly?

Joan: Very rarely. But even after that experience, the hard work of emptying out the contents of the chitta, disengaging the ahankara, and training the manas, which is the senses and desires, still has to be done.

So the whole spiritual bypass—if people imagine that they can just jump over the level of mind—is a problem. “Yes, I am going to go straight over chitta into buddhi and bask in the light of the One.” But chitta will bite you at some point. It will be attended to; it will pull you down if you don’t face it.

Rick: This is why the spiritual path starts with an ethical code; it starts with virtue.

Joan: Exactly. Some stuff is harmful to the subtle system. Some stuff is distracting and depleting. So, choices every minute, every day—there are choices, and it makes a difference.

From Makara to Bindu and Para Bindu

Rick: You have mentioned Makara a number of times. As I understand it from your book, it is sort of the upper level of the sixth chakra, right?

Joan: Makara is the crocodile animal in the second chakra that will pull you under into the water element of desire. Makara is the full-moon experience of catching the gap between thoughts and having the first true glimpse of beyond mind—buddhi.

Rick: Is it possible to have a glimpse right from the start?

Joan: Yes. In fact, there are methods that specialize in giving a glimpse of experience. It can be inspiring and motivating; it’s a sneak preview of more to come.

Rick: And it does. In a way, those glimpses have been almost daily all these decades, but never with the degree of clarity that is possible. It is always sort of like: dive in, soak it up, come out into activity integrated, and there is just this continual cycle and refinement. So, in a way, the goal is all along the path.

Joan: The goal is, as the Advaitins know, ever-present because it is beyond time and space. Atman is here now, and mind is in the way. So mind makes the duality. It is the maya factory, and it produces all of these veils and obstacles that keep us from realizing we already are one with the One.

But if we are one with the One and don’t have a direct experience of it, it is just theoretical. So we have to eliminate the veils, get through the koshas. Particularly, mind is the great barrier reef, and that’s why all of these recommendations around lifestyle and thought, and the wonderful grace and blessing of glimpses of light or insights of truth, keep us going and keep us motivated.

Actually, make a list of those glimpses, so that when in doubt you can say, “Yes, I had that true glimpse experience. It’s real. There is more.” Or if there is a visage of a great holy one, then you just look at the blessed face and know the Divine is shining through.

Rick: “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all else shall be added unto thee.” It’s a matter of what you put your attention to. Or, “Seek and you shall find.” If you just keep your attention on this stuff and act accordingly…

Joan: That’s right. Even if you can’t get yourself to do actual practices, if your heart is still yearning, if your mind is still trying to figure it out, that also is a practice.

Rick: I have seen that a lot with people. When they have that yearning, the Divine hears it and answers the call.

Joan: Yes. That which is seeking is that which is being sought—Saint Augustine.

Rick: If you have that intention sincerely, you will be supported and met along your way.

Joan: Yes, it is answered. It is reciprocal.

That which is seeking is that which is being sought.

Rick: It is not a dumb, mechanistic universe; it is a divinely intelligent universe, and you are not alone. If you have a sincere desire for higher possibilities, then enliven that to whatever extent you can. Your efforts, which may even be effortless, whatever you give to it will be rewarded. Maybe not immediately, but it will be rewarded.

Joan: Patience is very important. We want bigger results, faster results, sure results, but it is one baby step at a time, often for quite a while. Then there is a tipping point.

The thing is, you have to really tune in to that inner discernment, because if you are following a method that isn’t the right match for you, you can follow and follow and follow, and it’s not going to yield what you are hoping for because it is not the right match.

So, blind faith—“By God, this is what I picked, and I’m going to stick with it”—isn’t always the answer. Sometimes jumping ship, if the ship is not going or is not your style of ship, is necessary. Sometimes one has to jump ship because the rivers go into the ocean no matter what ship you are on. The ship has to match you.

Rick: Sometimes people have guilt around changing teachers. My attitude has been gratitude for every step of the way and an openness to what is needed.

Joan: That’s right, because it is the bigger picture. It is about the individual soul merging with the universal soul, and that is independent of religion or teacher. It is spirit to spirit.

Rick: For some people, it might be appropriate and fruitful for them to stay with one teacher all the way. In other cases, it’s like the education process, where we have one teacher in third grade, another teacher in fourth grade, and then other teachers in college.

Joan: There has to be a good reason for switching. You want to go for the depth, not the breadth, at a certain point. Get the overview, but then pick a path that you really resonate with, that you have studied, and your discernment says, “This is a true path. This is a true teacher. There is a natural fit, and I really resonate with it. I can benefit, and I am going for the depth with this one.”

🛤️ Joan’s path and the Kundalini Vidya lineage

Rick: In your own case, you have devoted your life to this sort of thing. You got married when you were young, your husband died, which was devastating, and then you devoted your life to this. He was a spiritual person also, and you guys were already doing yoga and things together. You have devoted your life to this sort of thing now for decades.

Joan: I hope to be a good example.

Rick: To what extent do you feel like you have progressed as a result of all this, in terms of stages of awakening relative to what stages are possible?

Joan: I am not done yet, I can tell you that.

Rick: Is anybody?

Joan: I think so. I think it is rare. There are great saints and sages from all around the world, from all different eras, who are realized. Their autobiographical writing conveys it. It comes off the page as a living presence still.

I have been very fortunate to have had some very good spiritual education. I was brought up in a religious family. I had 12 years of Catholic schooling, and I had good nuns and priests—no problems. We were taught theology and critical thinking, and how to be with scripture in a way that allows it to come forth, as well as the importance of virtue and the examination of conscience.

Then it all fell apart, shockingly to me, on senior retreat. It just sort of collapsed and didn’t make sense. My whole culture was Catholic, and everybody I knew was Catholic, and it didn’t make sense to me anymore.

So it was the end of the ’60s also, synchronistically, and I did a lot of exploring. Shortly out of college, I found a really good yoga class with a spiritual orientation, using gentle asana, teaching the yamas and niyamas, gentle pranayama, and basic mantra meditation.

It was in the Sivananda lineage. I practiced that and realized there was a philosophy behind it. So I studied the Yoga Sutra and started studying Vedanta. By the time I met Swamiji in 1986, I finally got a free trip to India.

I landed in Rishikesh and stayed behind to do my own practice. Swamiji was coming and going to teach some Sanskrit, and I felt very stuck in my process. He was clearly no ordinary swami, and I finally asked him for help. He gave me particular practices, explained them to me, and my process just started to unfold beautifully. A wonderful shift opened for me.

Rick: Can you elaborate on what the wonderful shift was?

Joan: In Kundalini Vidya, it is called the Makara point. I reached Makara through sushumna. I already had rising through the sushumna nadi.

There are six Shakti nadis; three are very rare. Mainly, the three that Shakti can enter are Vajra, Saraswati, and Sushumna. Vajra and Saraswati are unstable and called deflected.

Rick: And these are pathways from the base chakra to the top?

Joan: Yes. And I came into this lifetime with rising through the Sushumna nadi to the heart level.

So I practiced Raja Yoga for 10 years by the time I met Swamiji, and I had meditated and studied the philosophies. But the particular practices that he gave me hit my subtle system in a different way, so that the vayus were quickly trained to do something different than they did with just the standard asanas and pranayamas.

Rick: Better define vayus?

Joan: Vayus are the ways the prana operates. Each chakra has a vayu particular to it and an element particular to it. So the vayus generally stay in their own location, at the chakra that is their seat, but in spiritual practices, they are trained to combine and elevate, so that they leave the area in which they normally function for purposes of keeping life functions operating—digestion, respiration, and so forth—because they animate the corpus.

So for spiritual improvement, the vayus have to be trained through spiritual technology, spiritual practices, to do something different than they would ordinarily do. This is to be done gently, not in a big, fast, hard, dramatic way that would be rajasic intervention. Spiritual intervention should be sattvic. So, not to say they can’t feel intense, but they are gently intense.

Through these practices, I could feel that I already had symptoms and signs of the Kundalini process. There was a lot of heat generating from the chest upward. My heart would flutter and hop and spin. I actually went to a cardiologist complaining of a spinning heart. We did the sonogram, and he concluded I had a heart like a horse, and hearts don’t spin.

But it did feel as though it were spinning, because the prana vayu was spinning in the heart chakra, and that is what I was feeling. People with risings can feel the movement of the vayus, of the prana.

When I started doing these practices, I had one night of intense kriyas, and I was basically rolling in different ways all over the floor. It was sort of a shaking out. It hardly sounds gentle, but it was quite natural and comfortable, actually. It just felt like a good stretch, like you might do when you wake up.

Pranayamas became automatic. There was spontaneous retention. There was spontaneous, very gentle bhastrika.

Rick: I get that a lot when I meditate.

Joan: It’s purification and vitalization. Because I had the process stuck at the heart chakra, it felt, when I did a particular practice, as though there were a stiletto in my heart. It was very painful. But I knew it was in the energy system, because as soon as I stopped that particular practice, the pain went away, and every time I did it, the pain came back. So I knew it was working on an obstacle.

At any rate, I had tremendous grace, blessing, and help. One night, Swamiji set me to meditate, and there was an opening and a vision. I just went up into white light that was illuminating, and I was gone. Then, at some point, I came back. So my Makara experience was more definite than many. I think partly because I had farther to go, and partly because Swamiji was there, and his Great Master was there and initiated me at the same time.

Rick: On the subtle level?

Joan: On the celestial level. So my particular story is a different one.

Swamiji then started teaching me Kundalini Vidya, and later started coming to America once my process had developed enough that he could teach me more. I had to have the experience before he would fill in more about the theory, so it wouldn’t be like a self-fulfilling idea. Once I described the experience, he would take me to the scripture and show me.

Later, when he started coming to America and people started coming for our service, I would learn more and more about Kundalini Vidya from each individual, because I could see the case study. I knew their history. I saw them get to Makara. I heard about the experiences they had post-Makara.

Then, as years went by and we were in regular contact through ongoing consultations for spiritual direction, they came back for more retreats, and we started providing more spiritual education. I could see the trajectory. I could see the difficulties people got themselves into, and I could see how practices yielded different things with different people. Swamiji, all the while, was explaining this to me.

Rick: Fantastic education.

Joan: Fabulous education. Our lineage teaches one person at a time in this way, because he was teaching me to be able to be a practitioner.

Rick: Isn’t that a bit risky? What if something had happened to you? That would break the lineage.

Joan: Lineage is in charge of itself and its destiny.

Rick: So you are training someone now?

Joan: Swamiji is now training another person for his work in India, and he has allowed me to be responsible for the work in America.

Rick: There are a lot of teachers and gurus who have given gurus a bad name by seemingly being very awake, enlightened people and then doing bad things. Do you think that such people could have reached Makara and still have moral irregularities that need to be worked out? Or do you think they are probably not as enlightened as they and their followers might think they are?

Joan: There are lots of varieties of Kundalini experience. With a deflected rising, a lot of the brain centers are activated automatically. These are unstable risings; they don’t even touch Makara, because Makara is the top of sushumna. Those risings have to be diverted into sushumna for a person to get to Makara.

In order to access the upper routes to Bindu and Para Bindu, you have to go through Makara point. But you can get a lot of brain-center stimulation, a lot of siddhis, and a lot of charisma without Makara. At the lower brow, which is just short of Makara, there is a clairvoyance window that can open, so you can get a lot of siddhis in that way, too.

That is a stable rising, and people are very bright and insightful with that kind of rising. They have got something special, but there is a possibility for ego aggrandizement and temptation at that level, and there can be siddhis with temptation. But even at Makara, you are not home free.

Rick: You can still have ego aggrandizement and temptation at Makara, but you are not going to fall back from Makara. So you have this stable state from which you can still be a schmuck? Is that possible?

Joan: Yes, alas. And of course, the consequences are more dire for a person at Makara, because they have this wonderful blessing. The stakes are higher. The subtle body takes it harder if one misbehaves post-Makara.

This is why, again, the yamas and niyamas and the four prerequisites of Vedanta must be lived. One cannot be unvirtuous. There is no cultural relativity: “Well, it is okay because whatever…” No excuse.

Rick: I had always come to understand that there is a correlation between higher states of consciousness and moral behavior. If you are really up there in terms of a high degree of enlightenment or awakening, then everything you do should be a spontaneous expression of life-supporting intention. You are not going to do anything that would harm, disillusion, or hurt anyone.

But then I came to see so many examples to the contrary that it really confused me. Is there a state at which one is finally really established and no longer susceptible to such things?

Joan: As long as one is in the body, the senses are engaged. I think through the practice of virtue and adamant yearning for liberation in this lifetime, people form deep grooves of virtue, and they can withstand temptations much more easily. But as long as one is embodied, as long as one has a mind, there is a possibility.

A lot of the Eastern teachers who came to the West were brought up and trained in a very restrictive culture. They come to the West and see a whole other environment, and it is harder for them. Their strong habits of virtue can fall prey to a different cultural setting, which is my explanation for why so many of them have fallen.

Rick: Could there be a legitimate scenario in which some teacher comes from the East and really is established in a very enlightened state, but has tendencies that never got worked out because of a monastic life?

Joan: The saying in India is, “Live the vows or remove the robe.” If you are not able to live the vows, you are no longer a Swami. Go live the secular life and do it as virtuously as you can, but don’t pretend to be a priest if you are not living as a priest or a monk.

Be true to the inner. It’s not easy. And so, when asked the question, “How far along are you?” there is a lot farther to go. I am very grateful for what I have been able to experience, but I can say with complete truth that there is a lot more to be dealt with.

I am acutely aware of the work that I have yet to do, because it gets more refined and more difficult the farther along you get.

Live the vows or remove the robe.

✨ States of consciousness and liberation

Rick: You have alluded to stages above Makara, and then Bindu and Para Bindu. Can you elaborate on what these various possibilities might be above Makara?

Joan: People who have no Kundalini process at all, we can say, live in a gross material, rational world of the waking state of consciousness. People who have a Kundalini process pre-Makara live in a dreaming state.

Rick: Metaphorically?

Joan: Metaphorically. It means the subtle body, the energy system, and the mind are prominent for them. So it is the life of mind, the life of sensitivity, the life of subtlety.

When you get to Makara, there is another shift, and that is to being conscious in the deep sleep state, which is the state of concentration going into meditation, where you can catch the gap between thoughts and start to go beyond mind.

According to the Mandukya Upanishad, in spiritual development, waking enters into dreaming; waking and dreaming enter into deep sleep; and waking, dreaming, and deep sleep enter into turiya, beyond the koshas, the sheaths.

Rick: I have often discussed consciousness or pure awareness during deep sleep as being a sort of earmark of a certain degree of awakening. Is that an absolute criterion?

Joan: Every individual is different, and it does not necessarily mean that, while I am in bed in what a sleep researcher would call the deep sleep state, I am always conscious. That happens, and there is a carryover that would be internal awareness of deep sleep. It can also happen while one is meditating.

But then it also carries over into activity. I am in activity, externally engaged, and yet I am also conscious of the deep sleep state in a sort of presence, while I am also aware of the dream-time realm and clearly engaged in the waking state.

Rick: There is a sense of living as if in a cave of being while at the same time engaged in dynamic activity, and a feeling like I am not doing anything—nothing is happening. There is this pure silence, and yet all this wild stuff is going on. How does that relate to what you just said?

Joan: This is a mind trained to be one-pointed. You can find the still point with the mind concentrating while you are carrying on various external activities.

Rick: And you are not trying to find it. It is just the condition that you are spontaneously in.

Joan: Because the mind is trained. You have trained it to be one-pointed.

Rick: Well, a lot of times in meditation I feel that my mind is anything but one-pointed. I am having all kinds of thoughts.

(Janet hands Rick a note.)

My wife just handed me a note saying I am talking about myself too much.

(Laughter)

Joan: This is what marriage is for. You have a constant mirror.

Rick: I am just trying to gain a clear understanding of some of these experiences and place them into the context of what you are talking about.

Joan: Everyone wants to self-assess. It is not as easy as it seems. It is complicated. Sometimes one kind of rising, because of the karmic material and the temperament of the person and all of that, will look like something else.

Rick: Please keep going.

Joan: From waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and beyond. The transition from having some kind of initial rising, but not having reached Makara yet, means you are living more in the dream realm even while you are in activity. At Makara, this sacred shift happens: you are now able to access the deep sleep state with awareness, and this is where real meditation happens.

There is a difference between practicing a meditation method and meditating. When you are meditating, the mind stays still.

Rick: It doesn’t waver—like a lamp that does not flicker in a windless place.

Joan: Yes. But when you are practicing the meditation method, your mind can still be dull and restless, fleeting all over the place. You are practicing it, but you are not meditating.

Meditation is an experience. It is also defined as a method. So people say, “I meditate.” Well, they practice a method; they may not actually be in the state of meditation when they do that method. Those are two different things.

But post-Makara, you can actually meditate, and the cork is popped. Kundalini Shakti chooses an upper route. The routes vary; they each have their own particular characteristics. But the first big job is to clear out the major things in the karmic bag. Then, when the stages of lower samadhi, or dualistic samadhi, start happening progressively, the more refined clearing out happens.

When that is cleared out enough, then it is described as visarga, where Shakti starts merging into Shiva, and the individual self merges into the universal Self. The first experience of that is Bindu, that point at the middle of the Sri Yantra beyond manifestation.

It can be just a brief experience, but then it recurs, and one goes back—one commutes to Bindu again and again and again. Then there is said to be what is called a four-inch gap between the individual self and the universal Self. The expansion of awareness increasingly fills this four-inch gap until the individual self and universal Self are one, and that is Para Bindu, or turiya.

When that is really well established, that is turiyatita, beyond turiya. That is jivanmukta, who is in all four states—waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and beyond, in turiya—and has brought turiya back up into the waking state, so that they are simultaneously in all four states twenty-four-seven, liberated in the body.

Rick: My understanding of turiyatita was always that it is not being here in all four states simultaneously. Rather, you are always in turiya, the fourth state, pure consciousness, whether you are in waking, dreaming, or sleeping, so that those three will cycle along, but there is a continuum of pure consciousness as they cycle.

Joan: The continuum of pure consciousness really starts at Bindu, at turiya, and in turiyatita there is some fluctuation. Now I am more in dreaming; now I am more in waking. But they don’t go away.

Rick: It doesn’t sound very desirable to be in all three. Why would you want to be in sleep and dream while you are in waking?

Joan: Think of it as material, subtle, causal, or celestial, and beyond. Obviously, when they are eating and walking, there is more waking activity going on, but they are also aware of things from the celestial level and from the subtle level.

Rick: So what you are saying is that one is aware of the subtle realms while riding the subway or something. You might see celestial beings on the subway, and you are aware of the causal while you are in the middle of regular worldly activities.

Joan: Yes.

Rick: There are many gradations of subtle. Some of those entities you might not want to hang out with.

Joan: Exactly, which is why it is tricky to travel around the subtle too much. There are still the pairs of opposites. There are good guys and bad guys, just as there are on the material plane.

Rick: Have we finished, or is there yet more to the experience?

Joan: Jivanmukta—liberated while still in the body. That is the ultimate.

But there is also the person who is at turiya and not fully liberated on an everyday basis, but who, at the time of death, enters into the experience of being one with the One. If they leave the body in that experience, then they are liberated, and they don’t have to be reborn.

📚 Celestial masters and thin places

Rick: Are celestial masters fairly common on the celestial level? Are a lot of enlightened people able to continue helping us from that level?

Joan: I think so. I think that’s sort of the Vedic version of the bodhisattva: there are great adepts and certainly Christian saints, certainly Jesus, who will be with you always, even to the end of the world, for the purpose of spiritual guidance, blessing, and assistance.

The adepts and great ones on the celestial and beyond are part of whose dharma, for some of them, is to preserve, protect, and make available the great spiritual teachings of the world, so that they never disappear and are available when they are needed.

The whole purpose of incarnating into a human body is liberation, so we need those teachings. They don’t go away, and the more we want them sincerely, the more they come to us. The more we seek assistance, the more it comes to us.

This is one of the great boons of devotion to a great saint or sage and pilgrimage: if we go to the holy places where the Divine has been present, or where a great saint or sage has lived in a state of liberation, or where the faithful and devoted have gone to worship century after century after century, the Celts called them the “thin places.”

When we go to these “thin places,” the celestial blessings, the presence of the holy ones, Divine assistance, and inner spiritual education are more readily available for our spiritual well-being.

When we go to these “thin places,” the celestial blessings and presence of the holy ones are more readily available.

Rick: It is a beautiful explanation. I love that phrase, “thin places.” It implies permeability there. Whereas if you hang out in some kind of strip joint or bar or something, pretty thick.

Joan: Very heavy, low tamasic vibe, and a lot of sex-addicted astrals wanting you to misbehave. Don’t go there.

Rick: There are Vedic injunctions, and I am sure in other traditions as well, to hang out in the company of spiritual people. That would also explain why you can make a thin place by having a spiritual gathering of some sort.

Joan: Satsang. Where you really bring your sattvic vibes, get into a meditative state, and talk about spiritual topics. It makes a nice vibe in the place, and then you keep it purified with incense and candles and sacred images, and you don’t do lower-vibe stuff in that particular place. That’s why it is nice to have a sadhana place in your home.

Animals, physical symptoms, and assessment

Rick: Do lower life forms—animals—have Kundalini, and can they get enlightened, or is that reserved only for human nervous systems?

Joan: I know Ramana had a cow.

Rick: That supposedly got enlightened.

Joan: According to what I know of the Vedic perspective, domestic animals especially, and beloved pets, are either on their way to or on their way back from human incarnation. Human incarnation is sought, and you kind of go up the cascade of life forms until you have a human incarnation.

Human beings have the full subtle-body system that is required for liberation—all the chakras, all of the nadis—whereas other mammals may not have all of the chakras and nadis that are necessary to support Kundalini Shakti. So they all have purushas, according to Samkhya, but their Kundalini Shakti doesn’t have the subtle-body equipment for the liberation project.

Rick: Nor does their gross nervous system. Even a crocodile has a reptilian brain; it doesn’t have a prefrontal cortex and all that stuff, which presumably is necessary for the kind of awakening we are talking about.

Joan: Well, according to neurotheology…yes.

Rick: Linda from Boulder, Colorado, asks: How can one tell if physical conditions that arise are related to Kundalini Shakti? I had my initial Kundalini awakening about thirty years ago, and I have wondered since then if certain body experiences, such as chronic pressure in the back of my head, are related to spiritual blockage or opening. I have a strong spiritual practice, including mantra chanting. Is there anything else you would recommend, or is it so individual that I would need to come to see you? Also, thank you for the Kundalini Vidya book; it’s fascinating.

Joan: It’s a good question because it involves discernment: Is this physical, or is it process? Someone who has a Kundalini process lives in a body and has a subtle body, along with Kundalini, that is trying to finish the liberation project. So it’s sometimes a hard judgment call.

If one thinks this might be a physical difficulty, go check it out with a regular MD if the test is not invasive. When I got the sonogram for my spinning heart, I was reassured that there was nothing wrong with my actual physical heart; ergo, it’s the vayus, it’s process.

Pressure in the back of the head can often happen with a Kundalini process that is trying to progress upward. Pressure in the head in various places is not an uncommon sign or side effect of the Kundalini process.

Rick: Would you really need to see her in person to figure out exactly what’s going on?

Joan: We always work with individuals. You just can’t say exactly what’s going on without having the three histories and speaking with the individual. The three histories and the assessment really are the first steps in what we do, other than education through an interview like this or the book Kundalini Vidya.

Rick: Do you always do that in person in Tennessee, or do you sometimes consult people over Skype?

Joan: No, we do it by phone. They mail in their three histories. Once they have written them and sent in a photograph and such, then I give the assessment over the phone.

Rick: But then, to actually get more practical instruction, do they have to come to Tennessee?

Joan: They do have to come. We work in person with individuals, so when I do a retreat, I work with usually two to five people.

Rick: You like to keep it small.

Joan: Keep it small. I used to work with eight people when Swamiji was here, but that’s too much for me these days. I am trying to make my own life a little gentler.

Rick: How long do these retreats last?

Joan: Two weeks. Just short of two weeks. We are small, and it’s not like three hundred people are coming for a weekend.

One of the filters that we have is that we want people who are stable in their life situation, stable enough health-wise, stable enough emotionally and psychologically, and really spiritually motivated.

The fact that we require you to write your three histories means that you basically send your story to a stranger. The fact that it costs a few thousand dollars to do this retreat means that you have the financial stability to have a spiritual savings account that you use for your spiritual life, and it’s not going to break the bank to go on a retreat.

It also means that you return to a stable life situation, that you have the time for spiritual practice, and that you have the spiritual motivation to continue doing spiritual practice and living a stable, virtuous life. It’s not for everybody. We are selective.

Rick: So what percentage of people do you accept out of all those who apply?

Joan: There is synchronicity at play, and I believe the Divine helps people find us. Most of the people who have come to us have turned out to be qualified.

If they are not, I simply ask them to wait, that they are not ready yet. There are clearly some things that most people can do to make their lives more stable and their prana systems more vital, and it requires some choice on their part.

If people are living in chaos, that’s not a setting for spiritual life. They have to tone down the chaos as best they can.

Closing thoughts

Rick: Great. Well, there are all kinds of things we can talk about, and your book is a gold mine of interesting information, but we will have to leave it at that for now because we have been going on pretty long.

Obviously, I will be creating a page on batgap.com with a little bit about you and with links to your website, where they can get your book and stuff. If people are interested, they can always find out more and contact you directly.

I will definitely be interested in doing a second interview with you at some point—maybe a year from now, when people have had a chance to digest all this.

Joan: And by then the second book will be out.

Rick: Great. That might be a good time to do it. But I really enjoyed this, as I knew I would. You are a delight to speak with, and I respect your whole path, your whole life, what you have done with it, and what you are doing with it.

Joan: Thanks to the lineage of Kundalini Vidya and the blessings of Swamiji, who taught me so carefully and diligently.

Rick: Even the fact that you have dealt with a relatively small number of people, I don’t think is significant, because you have a function that serves people at a certain stage of their evolution, and such people are not too common. So you are kind of like a finishing school or something.

Joan: That’s a good way to put it. It’s not a beginner’s way.

Rick: Right. It’s not for the masses.

Joan: Not for the masses.

Rick: But it’s an essential tool, I think, in the spiritual marketplace that will be great for certain people.

If you are new to this show, it’s an ongoing series, generally once a week. Go to batgap.com and explore the menus, and you will see information about all the past and future interviews. Apologies to those who wanted to tune in for the live feed today; it didn’t work. We will get it fixed.

Most of the interviews I do are live-streamed, and it’s nice to do that if you can because you can send in questions as we go along. There is an email sign-up if you want to be notified by email each time I post a new interview.

There is a podcast, which still works for some people. There is a donation button, which I mentioned in the beginning, that enables us to do this whole thing. It’s those who support it who make it possible.

So, thanks for listening or watching. Thank you again, Joan. It has been great fun talking to you. I hope to meet you again in person one of these days.

Joan: Thank you, Rick.

Rick: Thank you. Namaste.

Joan: Namaste.