Awakening Kundalini (Lawrence Edwards)
Glittering Territory, Glitched Map
[My 3-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Awakening Kundalini: The Path to Radical Freedom by Lawrence Edwards.]
To non-experts on Kundalini and esoteric Yoga philosophy, author Lawrence Edwards may seem like a veritable guru on said subjects. But to the spiritual cognoscenti, he is a glitch-prone amateur when it comes to demystifying Kundalini and spiritual awakening.
Anyone with a cursory knowledge of Shakti Yoga can describe Kundalini as Divine awakening Power, but when Edwards gets into the nuts and bolts of esoteric anatomy and the process of spiritually awakening, he reveals his limitations to those in the know.
First off, he describes the sahasrara (crown chakra) as “the transcendent domain of pure Consciousness.†This is patently false. As the greatest 20th-century guru, Ramana Maharshi makes clear, the Hridayam, the spiritual Heart-center, located (or felt-experienced) two digits to the right of the center of one’s chest (and distinct from the anahata chakra), is the immanent locus of Divine Consciousness, the “place†where Self-realization occurs in an individual. Contrary to what Edwards says (and I speak from personal experience on this subject), the union of Siva (Consciousness) and Shakti (Clear-Light-Energy) in a yogi occurs in the Heart-center, not the Crown.
Edwards informs us that sushumna nadi (the central channel of the subtle body) “contains the impressions called samskaras†and that “Kundalini Shakti travels up the susumna nadi, clearing the samskaras and transporting one’s consciousness to higher levels.†This is complete nonsense. The samkaras are stored in the Heart-center as one’s “storehouse consciousness†(Alaya-Vijnana in Yogacara), and are only undone by the full descent of the Shakti (Dharmamegha Samadhi in Yogacara Buddhism and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras) into the Heart-center (Tathagatagarbha in Yogacara).
Edwards writes, “That bound space and time, where our Infinitude has been negated, but the multiplicity of finite forms has yet to arise, is called the causal body.†This is a very poor description of this body. In reality, the Causal Body is Anandamaya kosha, the fifth and final sheath (which veils the Self) in Advaita Vedanta’s 5-sheath paradigm. Anandamaya kosha is the same “body,†or dimension as Iccha Shakti, which functions as Maya Shakti when it “causes,†or manifests as, creation, and as Anugraha Shakti (Grace) when it “causes†one’s Enlightenment.
I could go on and on deconstructing Edwards’ spiritual “nuts and bolts,†but since this is just a review and not a book, I’ll now turn my attention to a couple of other problematic (at least to me) aspects in this book.
Edwards fairly gushes with praise for his late guru Swami Muktananda (1908-1982). But what he conveniently fails to mention are the rampant charges of pedophilia leveled against Muktananda (Google the subject for details). Apart from these charges, Muktananda’s teachings do not impress me, as they represent a perversion of nondual Kashmir Shaivism which has likewise “infected†Edwards’ Dharma.
Edwards misleads neophytes into thinking that Shakti is inherently feminine -- the Divine Feminine, or Goddess.
This is hardly the case. As I have written elsewhere, “The Spirit [or Shakti], in reality, is neither mother nor lover; it is simply God’s Energy, and we are free to conceive of this Energy in whatever way best serves our spiritual practice. Female and homosexual spiritual practitioners, for instance, are welcome to think of the Energy in male terms. The fact that the grammatical gender of the word “Spirit†is masculine in Latin (“Spiritusâ€), feminine in Hebrew (“Ruach HaKodeshâ€), and neuter in Greek (“Pneumaâ€) tells us that God’s Energy can be thought of as male, female, or neither.â€
Edwards’ personal experiences of the Shakti, some of which he details, do not impress me. For example, when he describes his vision of the six goddesses of the six chakras, it only told me that he had a vivid imagination and a tendency to reduce the formless Divine into formful divinities.
Given my biting criticism of this text, one might expect me to ding it with a one or two stars. But because it’s an engaging, uplifting read, has lots of information about Kundalini (though much of it is wrong), and pushes my favorite Dharma, Kashmir Shaivism, after some internal debate, I’ve decided to give it three.
[My 3-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Awakening Kundalini: The Path to Radical Freedom by Lawrence Edwards.]
To non-experts on Kundalini and esoteric Yoga philosophy, author Lawrence Edwards may seem like a veritable guru on said subjects. But to the spiritual cognoscenti, he is a glitch-prone amateur when it comes to demystifying Kundalini and spiritual awakening.
Anyone with a cursory knowledge of Shakti Yoga can describe Kundalini as Divine awakening Power, but when Edwards gets into the nuts and bolts of esoteric anatomy and the process of spiritually awakening, he reveals his limitations to those in the know.
First off, he describes the sahasrara (crown chakra) as “the transcendent domain of pure Consciousness.†This is patently false. As the greatest 20th-century guru, Ramana Maharshi makes clear, the Hridayam, the spiritual Heart-center, located (or felt-experienced) two digits to the right of the center of one’s chest (and distinct from the anahata chakra), is the immanent locus of Divine Consciousness, the “place†where Self-realization occurs in an individual. Contrary to what Edwards says (and I speak from personal experience on this subject), the union of Siva (Consciousness) and Shakti (Clear-Light-Energy) in a yogi occurs in the Heart-center, not the Crown.
Edwards informs us that sushumna nadi (the central channel of the subtle body) “contains the impressions called samskaras†and that “Kundalini Shakti travels up the susumna nadi, clearing the samskaras and transporting one’s consciousness to higher levels.†This is complete nonsense. The samkaras are stored in the Heart-center as one’s “storehouse consciousness†(Alaya-Vijnana in Yogacara), and are only undone by the full descent of the Shakti (Dharmamegha Samadhi in Yogacara Buddhism and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras) into the Heart-center (Tathagatagarbha in Yogacara).
Edwards writes, “That bound space and time, where our Infinitude has been negated, but the multiplicity of finite forms has yet to arise, is called the causal body.†This is a very poor description of this body. In reality, the Causal Body is Anandamaya kosha, the fifth and final sheath (which veils the Self) in Advaita Vedanta’s 5-sheath paradigm. Anandamaya kosha is the same “body,†or dimension as Iccha Shakti, which functions as Maya Shakti when it “causes,†or manifests as, creation, and as Anugraha Shakti (Grace) when it “causes†one’s Enlightenment.
I could go on and on deconstructing Edwards’ spiritual “nuts and bolts,†but since this is just a review and not a book, I’ll now turn my attention to a couple of other problematic (at least to me) aspects in this book.
Edwards fairly gushes with praise for his late guru Swami Muktananda (1908-1982). But what he conveniently fails to mention are the rampant charges of pedophilia leveled against Muktananda (Google the subject for details). Apart from these charges, Muktananda’s teachings do not impress me, as they represent a perversion of nondual Kashmir Shaivism which has likewise “infected†Edwards’ Dharma.
Edwards misleads neophytes into thinking that Shakti is inherently feminine -- the Divine Feminine, or Goddess.
This is hardly the case. As I have written elsewhere, “The Spirit [or Shakti], in reality, is neither mother nor lover; it is simply God’s Energy, and we are free to conceive of this Energy in whatever way best serves our spiritual practice. Female and homosexual spiritual practitioners, for instance, are welcome to think of the Energy in male terms. The fact that the grammatical gender of the word “Spirit†is masculine in Latin (“Spiritusâ€), feminine in Hebrew (“Ruach HaKodeshâ€), and neuter in Greek (“Pneumaâ€) tells us that God’s Energy can be thought of as male, female, or neither.â€
Edwards’ personal experiences of the Shakti, some of which he details, do not impress me. For example, when he describes his vision of the six goddesses of the six chakras, it only told me that he had a vivid imagination and a tendency to reduce the formless Divine into formful divinities.
Given my biting criticism of this text, one might expect me to ding it with a one or two stars. But because it’s an engaging, uplifting read, has lots of information about Kundalini (though much of it is wrong), and pushes my favorite Dharma, Kashmir Shaivism, after some internal debate, I’ve decided to give it three.
