Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality (Philip St. Romain)
Misses the Mark
[My 2-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality: A Pathway to Growth and Healing” by Philip St. Romain.]
I’m intimately familiar with both Kundalini and esoteric Christianity – and this text does neither of these subjects justice nor properly explains the link between Kundalini energy and Christian spirituality. In short, the author has not “cracked the cosmic code” and ineffectively gropes to explain the interrelation between Christianity, Eastern spiritual philosophy, and the Energy common to both – Kundalini-Shakti.
I’ll consider some of his statements, which reflect his ignorance regarding Kundalini and Eastern spirituality:
The author writes that “I don’t know if I believe in prana.” It is incomprehensible to me how someone writing on Kundalini cannot be intimately familiar with the palpable exisence of prana.
The author does not understand what the astral body is, and mistakenly conflates it with the Kundalini as an energy body. He writes, “As the process has moved along, this astral or energy body [Kundalini] has made its peace with the physical body, from which it has sprung.”
The astral body has not sprung from the physical body, and the astral body is not the energy body; it is the “star” body, the complex of psychical seed tendencies that comprise one’s soul-matrix, located in the Hridayam (Heart-center).
The author writes: “In beginning these reflections on the meaning of kundalini, I must preface everything that follows with the assertion that there is much more that I do not know about kundalini than I do know. Even after sifting through the rather extensive (and largely Hindu) literature on this topic, I am still left with many unanswered questions.”
Unfortunately, the author read, and gathered his information from, mediocre and less-than-mediocre sources on Kundalini; hence he is unclear about the subject. He read Gopi Krishna (see my one-star review of Krishna’s “Kundalini: the Evolutionary Energy in Man”), Swami Sivananda (see my two-star review of Sivananda’s “Kundalini Yoga,” Swami Muktananda (see my two-star review of Muktananda’s “Play of Consciousness”), and Lee Sannella (see my three-star review of Sannella’s “The Kundalini Experience: Psychosis or Transcendence”). And whereas the author resonates with Itzhak Bentov’s “scientific” physio-Kundalini model, elaborated in Lee Sannella’s text, I don’t. The author also cites Da Love-Ananda (a.k.a. Adi Da Samrak), Bubba Free John) as a source for information about Kundalini. But the author didn’t even begin to absorb Da’s profound teachings on Kundalini-Shakti, for if he had, he wouldn’t have come to some of the erroneous conclusions that he did regarding Kundalini.
The author, erroneously believes that Siva and Shakti (Kundalini) unite in the 7th, or crown, chakra. This is incorrect. They unite in the spiritual Heart-center (Hridayam, not the Anahata chakra). The author only understands Shaktipat as Kundalini energy transmitted by a guru (such as Muktananda, who taught a perverted version of Kashmir Shaivism). Shaktipat means “Descent of Divine Power,” but the author does not differentiate between the “Lower” spinal Kundalini and the “Higher” descending Shakti, which en-Lightens a disciple when it unites with contracted Siva (one’s soul) in the spiritual (or Sacred) Heart-center.
In addition to his flawed understanding of Kundalini, the author is also clueless about esoteric, or mystical, Christianity, and doesn’t understand or explain how the true, or mystical, Eucharist and the Trinity relate to Kundalini-Shakti and the en-Light-enment process. I’m an expert on esoteric Christianity, and I say that no one will become clear on the relation between mystical Christianity and Kundalini energy from this text.
This book contains lots of information about the author’s personal experiences with Kundalini and his attempt to understand it in the context of his Christianity, which will make it an interesting Gopi-Krishna-like read to some; but because it fails to deliver in terms of properly explaining the relation between Kundalini energy and Christian spirituality, I don’t think it deserves more than two stars.
[My 2-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality: A Pathway to Growth and Healing” by Philip St. Romain.]
I’m intimately familiar with both Kundalini and esoteric Christianity – and this text does neither of these subjects justice nor properly explains the link between Kundalini energy and Christian spirituality. In short, the author has not “cracked the cosmic code” and ineffectively gropes to explain the interrelation between Christianity, Eastern spiritual philosophy, and the Energy common to both – Kundalini-Shakti.
I’ll consider some of his statements, which reflect his ignorance regarding Kundalini and Eastern spirituality:
The author writes that “I don’t know if I believe in prana.” It is incomprehensible to me how someone writing on Kundalini cannot be intimately familiar with the palpable exisence of prana.
The author does not understand what the astral body is, and mistakenly conflates it with the Kundalini as an energy body. He writes, “As the process has moved along, this astral or energy body [Kundalini] has made its peace with the physical body, from which it has sprung.”
The astral body has not sprung from the physical body, and the astral body is not the energy body; it is the “star” body, the complex of psychical seed tendencies that comprise one’s soul-matrix, located in the Hridayam (Heart-center).
The author writes: “In beginning these reflections on the meaning of kundalini, I must preface everything that follows with the assertion that there is much more that I do not know about kundalini than I do know. Even after sifting through the rather extensive (and largely Hindu) literature on this topic, I am still left with many unanswered questions.”
Unfortunately, the author read, and gathered his information from, mediocre and less-than-mediocre sources on Kundalini; hence he is unclear about the subject. He read Gopi Krishna (see my one-star review of Krishna’s “Kundalini: the Evolutionary Energy in Man”), Swami Sivananda (see my two-star review of Sivananda’s “Kundalini Yoga,” Swami Muktananda (see my two-star review of Muktananda’s “Play of Consciousness”), and Lee Sannella (see my three-star review of Sannella’s “The Kundalini Experience: Psychosis or Transcendence”). And whereas the author resonates with Itzhak Bentov’s “scientific” physio-Kundalini model, elaborated in Lee Sannella’s text, I don’t. The author also cites Da Love-Ananda (a.k.a. Adi Da Samrak), Bubba Free John) as a source for information about Kundalini. But the author didn’t even begin to absorb Da’s profound teachings on Kundalini-Shakti, for if he had, he wouldn’t have come to some of the erroneous conclusions that he did regarding Kundalini.
The author, erroneously believes that Siva and Shakti (Kundalini) unite in the 7th, or crown, chakra. This is incorrect. They unite in the spiritual Heart-center (Hridayam, not the Anahata chakra). The author only understands Shaktipat as Kundalini energy transmitted by a guru (such as Muktananda, who taught a perverted version of Kashmir Shaivism). Shaktipat means “Descent of Divine Power,” but the author does not differentiate between the “Lower” spinal Kundalini and the “Higher” descending Shakti, which en-Lightens a disciple when it unites with contracted Siva (one’s soul) in the spiritual (or Sacred) Heart-center.
In addition to his flawed understanding of Kundalini, the author is also clueless about esoteric, or mystical, Christianity, and doesn’t understand or explain how the true, or mystical, Eucharist and the Trinity relate to Kundalini-Shakti and the en-Light-enment process. I’m an expert on esoteric Christianity, and I say that no one will become clear on the relation between mystical Christianity and Kundalini energy from this text.
This book contains lots of information about the author’s personal experiences with Kundalini and his attempt to understand it in the context of his Christianity, which will make it an interesting Gopi-Krishna-like read to some; but because it fails to deliver in terms of properly explaining the relation between Kundalini energy and Christian spirituality, I don’t think it deserves more than two stars.
