According to Osho, Kundalini Yoga is the science of awakening the human being’s total potential energy—kundalini—so it moves from seed to full manifestation in harmonious flow. Ordinarily only a minute, conflicted portion functions; awakening makes it integrated, unsuppressed, and organic, producing bliss. For the West’s fragmented, conflict-driven lifestyles, Kundalini Yoga restores inner unity, resolves tensions between social demands and instincts, heals the split of conscious and unconscious, and unleashes creativity and wellbeing.
It’s a way to wake up all your inside energy so it works together instead of fighting, making you peaceful and happy even in a busy, demanding world.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is kundalini yoga and how can it help the west? Why is your method for awakening kundalini chaotic rather than like the traditional, controlled methods?
Awareness of the thought process will change the quality of the mind; asanas and pranayama will change the quality of the body. Then the moment comes when your body and mind are one, without any conflict at all. When they are synchronized, you are neither body nor mind. For the first time, you know yourself as the Self. You transcend. You can transcend only when there is no conflict. In this harmonious moment when body and mind are one, with no conflict, you transcend both. You are neither. Now you are nothing in a sense: no-thing. You are simple consciousness. Not conscious of something, but just awareness itself. This awareness without being aware of anything, this consciousness without being conscious of anything, is the moment of explosion. Your potential becomes actual. You explode into a new realm: the ultimate. This ultimate is the concern of all religions. There are so…
Osho, in the Nargol camp you said that shaktipat means the Divine power has descended into you. Later, in discussion, you said there is a difference between shaktipat and grace. These two statements seem contradictory. Please explain.
Shaktipat is always the Divine’s. But if a person becomes the medium, we call it shaktipat; if no person is the medium, it can sometimes happen suddenly—and it can harm. Yet if someone has waited endlessly, and has meditated with infinite patience, then the descent of power will also happen as prasad. There will be no medium then—but there will be no accident either. For his endless waiting, his infinite patience, his unbroken ardor, his unshakable resolve create in him the capacity to withstand the Infinite. So there is no accident. Thus the event happens in both ways. But then it will not appear to him as shaktipat; it will be known as prasad, because there is no medium. Only an egoless person can be a medium There is similarity in both, and there is difference. I am in favor that, as far as possible, prasad be available; as far…
Questioner: you said at the nargol meditation camp held recently, that the sadhana or discipline of kundalini is a way of preparing the body. Will you please explain it?
In a deeper physical sense, the awakening of the kundalini means that you have so much energy with you that your old channels are not able to contain it, and so it irresistibly seeks new avenues and new doors. As a result, many new and subtle senses within you will become awake and active. These extrasensory centers will make you telepathic and clairvoyant; you will begin to see and hear things which are beyond the reach of your ordinary eyes and ears. You will experience certain things your normal senses have nothing to do with. Altogether new sense organs will become active within you. And the most profound result of the intensification of the new senses will be that you will begin to know the invisible world which lies hidden in your body, which is the most subtle and imperceptible part of your body, and which we call the atman…
Osho, I want to be rich, I want a high position, and I want a beautiful woman too. What should I do?
A man once placed an advertisement—meant for people like you: “Send two rupees and learn the formula to become a millionaire overnight.” Now who wouldn’t want to become a millionaire for two rupees! Almost a hundred thousand people sent their money. A week later, everyone who had sent the two rupees received the reply: “Do exactly what I did.” He had indeed become a millionaire overnight! One lakh people sent two rupees each—two lakhs landed in his lap. This is how you’re being duped—through gambling, matka. And it’s not only people who run these scams; governments do it too. Governments that claim to be Gandhian run lotteries! A lottery is gambling—a cheat dressed up nicely. But the greedy get hooked: “Just one rupee for a chance at lakhs. If it comes once, that’s enough…!” But what will you do after getting lakhs? There’s a famous story by Tolstoy: A tailor…
In traditional yoga, one starts with the body -- through hatha yoga methods. Why is it that you do not teach hatha yoga .
It is good to start with the body, it is necessary. But it is not sufficient. There are many problems with Hatha Yoga particularly for those in the West, because the system of Hatha Yoga and its related techniques were all developed in a very different milieu -- really, for very differently constituted bodies as well as for different minds. Not only is the mind different today than it was when these techniques were developed, but the body is also not the same. Everything has become artificial. The whole environment has been so changed by science that you do not have the same kind of body that people had before. Your body is different. Your mind would not be different unless your body had become different. When you start with a modern body, the same techniques will not do. Something else has to be added. Hatha Yoga can be used…