By the time the humanistic and transcendental psychologists had begun to visit Gopi Krishna in the early 1970’s, his published works had made the relationship that he saw between the awakening of kundalini and the challenges he faced in the early years evident. Over the years, Gopi Krishna’s thinking on the relationship between kundalini and mental disturbences would become further clarified. When the kundalini hypothesis was eventually formalized, it would include certain classes of mental illness along with the attributes of mystical experience, inspired creativity and genius, and paranormal phenomena. It was Gopi Krishna’s contention that these classes of mental illness were associated with awakenings that had somehow gone awry and not with healthy awakenings, particularly those that were result of a gradual, natural, ongoing evolutionary process.
The person Gopi Krishna discussed this aspect of kundalini with in the most detail was no doubt DR. Elizabeth Hoch. A Swiss psychiatrist, Dr. Hoch arrived in Srinagar determined to practice there, eventually becoming head of the psychiatric studies at the Government Medical College and superintendent of the psychiatric hospital there. Not long after her arrival in 1972 she met Gopi Krishna, and by 1974 the two were in close communication. Over the years she not only discussed many psychiatric cases with him, she succesfully applied his suggestions for treatment. Dr. Hoch also provided him with detailed case histories (of course minus identifying information) on patients whose condition she believed was related to kundalini awakening. It seems evident from this that, although it would be years before the kundalini hypothesis was formalized, Gopi Krishna was exploring this aspect of awakening.
According to Dr. Hoch, there was one area where they disagreed. In her opinion it was Gopi Krishna’s contention that all mental illness was the result of some form of kundalini awakening. Wether her opinion in this was correct may well be debated by those intimately familiar with his writings. Regardless, she firmly believed some cases of mental illness she dealt with were indeed related to kundalini awakening and expressed gratitude for his insights. Into the treatment of those cases. A more contemporary view on the aspects of the kundalini hypothesis that deals with mental disturbances postulates that kundalini awakening, when unable to proceed in a healthy, natural matter, might evetually be responsible for some forms of mental illness or be mistaken for mental illness. Beyond this, it is worth nothing that for Gopi Krishna, Shakti in her manifestation in the body as kundalini-shakti and prana-shakti was the energy of consciousness, of mind itself. In this sens, anything at all to do with the mind was perforce related to kundalini.
Regardless of how Gopi Krishna’s view on this is interpreted, it is important to reiterate that, from his earliest pleas for research onward, he repeatedly insisted that no premise he proposed should be left unexamined: it should instead be subjected to the most rigorous scientific study possible.
Source : Gopi Krishna, A Biography, Kundalini, Consciousness, and our evolution to enlightenment (short review)
Institute for Consciousness Research : https://icrcanada.org
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