I have worked out a preliminary protocol to support the fire of kundalini without getting fried and to prevent the years of depression-like fallout that often happens after an awakening. As the science of kundalini progresses such a protocol for adaptation or higher homeostasis will be refined and expanded. Till then, please be aware dear reader that this is an experimental book, the research that will give us the definitive answers to this mystery has yet to be done. In the past we have had no scientific understanding as to what was actually happening to us during kundalini. Now in with modern science we can begin to understand what is really going on.

Whether it be from a spontaneous awakening, the result of spiritual practice (sadhana) or through Shaktipat from a Guru, metamorphosis tends to be such an overwhelming cataclysmic process that the more knowledge and tools for the road we have the better. What we really need to do if we are going to submit to our own evolution, is to strengthen ourselves to be able to endure the all-consuming flame of spirit. My aim in writing this book is to help others to support their chemistry so an awakening can be sustained rather than go wildly up and down. For in my experience after a full-on six month kundalini peak it takes about five years to recover.

"Our challenge is to recognize and develop the biological potential within. This is the true goal of life." Joseph Chilton Pearce

My story starts in rural New Zealand at the age of 16, when inflamed with the heat of Eros and the Muse, I drew pictures of this curiously beautiful man with a conical spiral hat on his head. I knew the pictures I drew were of a new type of human I called the Universal Man, who would be born out of the old. Even back then I was aspiring to the mystic civilization.

Kundalini is operating in all of us to a degree, occasionally however it sparks up into what is known as a kundalini awakening, transmutation, metamorphosis, transfiguration, spiritual alchemy or spiritual awakening. In this book you will see me call this initiation "popping." People pop to various degrees. Some fizzle like soda, without the cork popping drama of champagne. Others pop spontaneously at 17 years like Ramana Maharishi without any prior spiritual practice. He just read a book on the lives of the saints and so identified with them that he practically instantly became one. His experience of going into death, was his ego recognizing its own demise as the Atman arose within. Gobi Krishna's initiation was through meditation. Philip St. Romain was sparked off through prayer. Meher Baba awakened when he was hit on the head with a stone as a boy. Joseph Chilton Pearce popped in his 60's by shaktipat from Muktananda. Some spend all their energies preventing themselves from the Ego-death of popping at all and so never really live.

"Following the way of Yoga a man must reach the state of Samadhi, that is, of ecstasy or enlightenment, in which alone truth can be understood." 249, P.D. Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe, Dover, 1997

Our modern cultural conditions such as sedentary lifestyle, removal from nature and cooked-clogging diets are not conducive to kundalini flow or awakening. This means when we do pop it tends to be explosive rather than an ongoing thread of alchemy throughout our lifetime. Still I don't think it should be the aim of spiritual practices like yoga and meditation to have a nice smooth calm awakening. Safe growth is translation not transformation. It is the machination of the ego to want to control the process of evolution, either through balance or through exaggeration of the extremes. Spiritual practices however can tend to tame the ego's resistance to the process so that less friction and damage to the organism occurs, thereby making the metamorphic process more thorough and enduring. If one wants to establish a kundalini practice then I personally think that fasting, a raw diet, overt-generosity, compassionate action and adventure to be a better method of popping than preoccupation with yogic practices.