he bore responsibility for his family’s welfare. He
did not attend university because he did not pass
a major examination. In reaction to his father’s
decision to leave the world, he vowed to live as
a householder. And in shame over his failure at
examination, he took on a practice of MEDITATION
in order to refine his concentration.
While employed by the Indian government,
he practiced meditation for 17 years and devel-
oped the ability to sit for hours in concentration
without discomfort. In 1937, while meditating
and imagining a lotus at the crown of the head,
he felt a roar like a waterfall and felt a stream of
liquid light entering the brain through the spinal
cord. This was his first experience of the serpent
power of kundalini, a power said to reside as a
latent force at the base of the spine that can be
awakened so that it travels through and opens the
seven CHAKRAS (energy centers along the spine).
His report of this episode, for which he was totally
unprepared, described a vast circle of conscious-
ness in which the body was but a point, bathed
in light and in a state of happiness impossible to
describe.
Shortly after the initial experience, he experi-
enced a continuous “luminous glow” around his
head. He began to have a variety of psychological
and physiological problems and even thought he
was becoming mad. Although he read accounts
of this phenomenon, he found no one who could
help him through this difficult period. The mental
and emotional destabilization lasted for several
years. Aware that a fundamental change had taken
place in him, he believed that his entire nervous
system would be slowly reorganized and trans-
formed. He viewed this energy, once activated,
as an intelligent force over which one has little
control.
His autobiography records this experience and
its aftermath in one of the most detailed accounts
of the unleashing of a psychospiritual power and
spiritual transformation. He describes the dif-
ficulties and dangers of the spiritual path and the
pressure that it can exert on the physical body.
However unbalanced his experience, he main-
tained in all of his subsequent writings that the
awakening of kundalini is the means of spiritual
evolution for humanity.
Gopi Krishna was not a GURU in the classical
sense of one who has disciples. He did not found
a movement or a sect but remained a seeker who
later became a teacher. He documented his expe-
riences in a number of books that attempted to
teach the reality of the kundalini experience and
to help others who encounter this extraordinary
phenomenon. He died on July 31, 1984.Further reading: Gopi Krishna, The Awakening of
Kundalini (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975); ———, Higher
Consciousness: The Evolutionary Thrust of Kundalini
(New York: Julian Press, 1974); ———, Kundalini: Evo-
lutionary Energy in Man (London: Robinson & Watkins,
1971); ———, The Secret of Yoga (New York: Harper
& Row, 1972).Krishnabai, Mother (1903–1989) teacher
who embodied the love of service
The child who later became known as Mother
Krishnabai was born in 1903, although little else
is known of her childhood. The first years of her
life were turbulent. When she was 10 her father
died. At age 13 she married K. Laxman Rao, who
passed away seven years later, in 1926, leaving her
a young widow.
In 1928 she encountered Swami RAMDAS, who
provided uplift from her sorrows. Krishnabai
became a devoted disciple and attained self-real-
ization by strictly following the swami’s teaching.
As the foremost disciple and successor of Swami
Ramdas, she embodied the love of service and
provided for the spiritual and material needs of
the poor. Under Swami Ramdas’s guidance she
helped to establish Anandashram in Kerala, South
India. She worked with her beloved teacher there,
becoming a mother to all who went to the ash-
ram. In 1963, upon the death of Swami Ramdas,
she assumed leadership of Anandashram. In spiteKrishnabai, Mother 241 J