Individuals who undergo a Near Death Experience (NDE) report a number of effects encountered during and after the experience. The same goes for those who undergo a Kundalini experience. What's interesting is that some, but not all, of the effects are shared between the two. In any case, there's a definite overlap, even though they are two different experiences.
More important, medical researchers are beginning to lend credibility to NDE, as evidenced by this Fresh AIr interview:
"In his new book Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death, Dr. Sam Parnia, a critical care doctor and director of resuscitation research at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine, examines the experiences patients describe, but whereas much discussion around the experience of death has been philosophical or personal, Parnia is looking at the subject scientifically.
"'What we study is not people who are near death,' Parnia tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. 'We study people who have objectively died. ... And therefore what we've understood is that the experience that these people have of going beyond the threshold of death, entering the period after death for the first few tens of minutes or hours of time, provides us with an indication of what we're all likely to experience when we go through death.'
"'One of the big problems that we have,' Parnia says, 'is that because we've never had a science, we've never had an objective method to go beyond the threshold of death and study what happens both biologically and from a mental and cognitive perspective.'"
For the moment, however, no physical science is able to attest to the certainty of the effects as reported. They lie outside what is perceivable with our five physical senses, and therefore what is perceivable with scientific instruments at this time. In other words, the effects experienced during these events take place within the metaphysical (meaning beyond the physical) dimension. In the future, who knows? Perhaps instruments will be capable of penetrating beyond the physical universe. It is not a question of belief; it’s a question of technology.
One universal characteristic of mystical experience is a sense of immortality or lack of fear of death. For those who have had this experience, there is simply no question that our basic essence, whatever that may be, transcends the body and continues on after we die. But since we have no way of verifying this belief for ourselves, short of having this type of experience, there will always be an element of doubt, no matter how strong our faith is. The anecdotal evidence provided by people who were clinically dead for a period of time—Near Death Experiences or NDEs—would also tend to indicate that our consciousness does not disappear after death. People who have had an experience of this type almost invariably return from it with the conviction that death is not the end of our existence. But again, unless we actually have the experience, doubt will always remain.
~ Bradford, Michael. Consciousness: The New Paradigm (p. 172). Institute for Consciousness Research.
Anyway, because NDE reports are so similar — in spite of the origins, locations, backgrounds or morphology of the participants — various university psychology and medical departments are now saying that these anecdotal accounts cannot be only imaginary — that they are worth investigating.
I dreamt I was a Busker in a former life
As a corollary to this conclusion, it follows that, because the NDE and Kundalini share effects, it is worth studying the Kundalini experience as well, using present methods, and any future methods/techniques that may surface.
According to Sri Ramakrishna, “A man's spiritual consciousness is not awakened unless his Kundalini is aroused.” Kundalini is evolutionary biology. Kundalini is also the motivating catalyst behind the transcendent experience. It's the key to changing our state of being. How? Kundalini stimulates neuroplastic activity in the brain, and consequently, the ability to see and experience life beyond the material, physical dimension.
How do we know this? The effects induced by Kundalini are akin to those of the near death experience (the NDE). Kundalini shares a series of effects with the NDE. NDErs frequently return from their experience with residual knowledge of the metaphysical dimension. What’s striking is that these types of experiences are commonplace, and, one to another, very similar in nature, in spite of the individual's age, cultural background, geographical location, or religion. The individual returns with a greater understanding of his/her connectedness, enhanced creative impulses, the appearance of a strong white light, and the intense certainty that there is no death. According to Moshiya de Broek, "The common points are: traveling through a tunnel, life passing in revue and meeting loved ones. Most of them also speak of a heightened awareness in which they seem to enter an all-knowing consciousness that seems to know the answer to each question mankind has ever asked."
Moreover, the individual often returns with a feeling of no longer belonging to the physical world, or at least a feeling of the severe limitations of this world. Kundalini shares all these effects.
Cosmic Consciousness
The NDE offers a strong argument for disembodied cosmic consciousness. Again Moshiya de Broek:
"These experiences happen during a time that the heart and brain show no activity on either the ECG or EEG scales (a flatliner). That some might argue the stop of blood flow does not mean there cannot be some weak electrical activity deep within the brain — an EEG only measures the electrical activity on the surface of the brain — is for the moment beside the point. They should ask, according to neuroscience, is there enough brain activity to constitute being consciously aware? Decidedly, those types of brain activities appear totally absent in these patients. In fact, there is another problem which would seem to contradict present scientific insights: at a time when awareness should be reduced, if not totally absent, patients actually experience a clearer, wider awareness both in seeing and in hearing, although with a lessened brain activity. Present science says that it is improbable for someone to experience awareness with the absence of measurable brain activity."
If this is true, it means that our consciousness, or some portion our consciousness, resides outside the brain, outside the body, in a metaphysical dimension, unseen by normal people. If a person is deemed clinically dead, yet is able to observe goings-on in the physical world as well as the metaphysical, there has to be a strong case for disembodied cosmic consciousness. It would be one thing if a report of this nature came from a single individual, but that is not the case. Thousands, as cited above, have reported the same states, the same effects. There are even verified accounts of certifiably dead individuals witnessing an event or a proceeding that takes place only during the time the individual was considered clinically brain dead. For instance, a woman lying on the operating table, verifiably flatlined, while another woman enters the room wearing a certain dress. The woman leaves well before the patient comes back to "life." Three days later, the now revived patient sees the woman in the hospital hallway and asks her about the blue dress she wore on the day she visited the operating room. You can draw your own conclusions, nevertheless the evidence points to the patient's "consciousness" remaining intact outside the physical body during the brain dead phase, meticulously noting the activity in the room before being "reconnected" with the body at the end of the NDE. What's interesting about these types of incidents is they only occur within the lapse of time that the patient is deemed dead. There is no overlap, eliminating the possibility that the individual witnessed the event or phenomenon before or after becoming clinically dead. And these accounts have happened more than once and have been verified as true by third party witnesses.
"Parnia's research has shown that people who survive medical death frequently report experiences that share similar themes: bright lights; benevolent guiding figures; relief from physical pain and a deeply felt sensation of peace. Because those experiences are subjective, it's possible to chalk them up to hallucinations. Where that explanation fails, though, is among the patients who have died on an operating table or crash cart and reported watching—from a corner of the room, from above—as doctors tried to save them, accounts subsequently verified by the (very perplexed) doctors themselves.
"How these patients were able to describe objective events that took place while they were dead, we're not exactly sure, just as we're not exactly sure why certain parts of us appear to withstand death even as it takes hold of everything else. But it does seem to suggest that when our brains and bodies die, our consciousness may not, or at least not right away.
“'I don’t mean that people have their eyes open or that their brain’s working after they die,' Parnia said. 'That petrifies people. I’m saying we have a consciousness that makes up who we are—our selves, thoughts, feelings, emotions—and that entity, it seems, does not become annihilated just because we've crossed the threshold of death; it appears to keep functioning and not dissipate. How long it lingers, we can’t say.'”
If NDErs can observe metaphysical activity during metanormal states, why shouldn't we expect the Kundalini practitioner, who shares many of the same states and effects, to be capable of this, and even much more? If NDErs can experience super-consciousness in a "brain-dead" state, why not suppose that Kundalini practitioners, with their super-stimulated brains, could experience a much greater set of metanormal effects? And if they do experience super- or cosmic-consciousness, wouldn't this activity actually transform DNA over time. A super form of neuroplasticity that ultimately influences evolution by modifying DNA. All these changes in the brain are the result of an evolving consciousness, all of them eventually passed along to future beings in our DNA.
How Does the NDE Compare With Kundalini?
People who have experienced one or the other phenomenon share many of the effects mentioned above. However, in the case of permanent Kundalini, there are some effects that the NDE does not share. Kundalini triggers a superset of metanormal effects. By stimulating neuroplastic activity, Kundalini triggers autonomic self-healing mechanisms, restores health, and transforms consciousness. As opposed to the NDE, with Kundalini, brain cell regeneration is a constant. Why? The Kundalini process uses sexual energy to refresh brain cells. Kundalini revitalizes the entire nervous system. It is impossible for Alzheimer’s disease to exist in a permanently awakened Kundalini body. This sounds like an extreme statement, obviously one in need of peer review. But if we concede to the Kundalini practitioner the ability to experience metaphysical activity, especially since they, by definition, live in a permanently metanormal state, shouldn't a brain stimulated by sexual sublimation evolve? And shouldn't these evolutionary characteristics be passed along to future generations?
What's more, with Kundalini there is a change in the decision-making and lifestyle processes. That is what happens with a change of consciousness. The old individual is reborn in a Karmic sense. He or she is able to see and understand, sometimes for the first time, the moral and logical implications of each decision. Gone one-by-one are the old addictions, the old habits and the old emotional prisons. Finally, this new state of consciousness changes one's nature. Over time our perverse emotions vanish. We are no longer cogs in the machine.