The fourth, fifth and sixth chapters of the book of I Samuel describe the capture by the Philistines and the eventual return to Israel of the Ark of the
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Covenant. While it is difficult to draw direct correlations between otherwise unrelated ancient cultures, it is striking to note that during the period that the Philistines possessed the Ark the idol of their god Dagon was mysteri ously toppled and disfigured, and the entire population was struck low with hemorrhoids. It would certainly seem that neither the Philistines nor their god could digest the Ark’s shakti. When they consulted their diviners they were told to return the Ark to Israel with a trespass offering consisting of five golden hemorrhoids and five mice, also made of gold. Is it a coincidence that hemorrhoids appear in the physical body near the location of the Muladhara Chakra, or that the mouse is the vehicle of Ganesha, the Lord of the Muladhara? Or does this imagery reflect similar subtle realities?
Siddhi means success at sadhana. While a “siddha” is technically anyone who succeeds at sadhana, Vimalananda used the word Siddha exclusively to mean one who has achieved immortality and supernatural powers as a result of sadhana. The freeing of Kula Kundalini is a sort of siddhi, though it may not necessarily make one immortal.
Kula, which also means “totality,” “the giving up of egoism," and the road of Sushumna,’ is Shakti, the manifested universe, while Akula, Shiva, is the Absolute Unmanifested. A Kaula maintains that since Shiva without Shakti is inert, and may not even exist, the two are perforce equal in our world. In the human body as in the universe, consciousness may come down from on high, but it must be manifested from the bottom up; Adam and Eve must leave the Garden if the world is to flourish. Creation occurs when Kundalini projects from Akula into Kula, and destruction when She returns to Akula. It is in this context that Kundalini is called a harlot, because she alternates between union with creation and union with Shiva. Unless your Kundalini is under your conscious control these two states fluc tuate so fast that they seem to exist simultaneously.
Vimalananda’s reference to the family into which you have been born" is not limited to one’s consanguinous family:
“Yoga is meant to make every home a happy home. When every family member is giving out his or her best to unite the family and make it a suc cess, that is real Yoga. And I don’t mean the family you were born into or married into, necessarily. Whoever you live with is your family. As we say in Sanskrit, “vasudeva kutumbam”—we are all members of God’s family.’” (Aghora, page 43)
The idea of a “kula” as a family of like-minded sadhakas who after reform ing their errant Kundalinis follow similar paths toward Reality may have been inspired by the Vedic idea of gotra, or lineage. A gotra is a cowpen, a
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“protection for the cows”; because a group of families from a single lineage used to protect its cows together in a single pen, the word came to refer to the lineage itself. Gotra also means “protection for the senses”; each gotra originated from a Rishi, its members sharing genes and chromosomes which would enable them to easily succeed at a particular variety of sadhana. Per haps as time passed it became more difficult to transmit one’s spiritual lin eage directly to one’s child via the gotra system and so the kula system arose. Only a few genealogical families in India have preserved their spiritual lineages; most teachers, like Vimalananda, find that their spiritual children come to them from other biological parents.
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