Is it awakening… or a breakdown?
When spiritual awakening hits hard, it can feel disorienting—even terrifying. In this raw and insightful conversation, I sit down with Steven Taylor, PhD, psychologist and expert on spiritual awakening, to explore what happens when consciousness expands faster than your system can handle it.
We unpack the psychology behind Kundalini awakenings, and how to navigate the fine line between transformation and overwhelm.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
🔹 How to tell the difference between psychosis and spiritual awakening
🔹 What a Kundalini awakening really looks and feels like
🔹 How to support your nervous system during spiritual emergence
🔹 Why awakening is part of the natural evolution of human consciousness
Whether you’re in it, afraid of it, or just curious—this is your invitation to bring grounding and understanding to your spiritual journey.
💃 Join me for a FREE Kundalini Dance Party => https://www.brettlarkin.com/dance
GUEST EXPERT: Steve Taylor PhD | @stevetaylorauthor
Steve Taylor PhD has many best-selling books on psychology and spirituality, including The Adventure, Extraordinary Awakenings, The Leap and Spiritual Science. His books have been published in more than 20 languages, and he writes the popular ‘Out of the Darkness’ blog for Psychology Today magazine. Eckhart Tolle has described his work as ‘an important contribution to the shift in consciousness which is happening on our planet at present.’ Steve lives in Manchester, England, with his wife and three children.
Find Steve’s books and offerings: stevenmtaylor.com
FREE Practice: 10 Min Kundalini Kriya For Awakening For Beginners | GUIDED KUNDALINI MEDITATION
Relevant Blog: How to Resolve Kundalini Awakening
Relevant to Today’s Episode:
🔮 Kundalini 200-hour YTT
✅ 200-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training
🎧 Also Listen to:
#316 – Origins of Kundalini & the Yogi Bhajan Scandal – Part 1
#322 – Origins of Kundalini & the Yogi Bhajan Scandal – Part 2
© 2025 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com
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Transcript:
Brett Larkin:
It’s time for you to walk through the world with the confidence and serenity of someone who’s deeply tethered to their inner wisdom. If you have this insatiable hunger to uplift your personal life and make a bigger impact in your wellness career, leveraging yoga’s ancient wisdom, welcome. I’ve certified thousands of yoga instructors online, I teach to over half a million subscribers on YouTube, but I still haven’t remotely quenched my thirst for more yogic knowledge.
I’m Brett Larkin, founder of Uplifted Yoga, and this is the Uplifted Yoga Podcast. Let’s get started. Is it an awakening or is it a breakdown?
I’ve had so many students come into my different Kundalini courses over the years asking that question because when spiritual awakening hits, it can often feel disorienting and terrifying, especially if your consciousness is expanding faster than your system can handle. And this is why I’m so excited about this week’s episode and the very raw and I think insightful conversation I’m going to have with Stephen Taylor, PhD. He’s a psychologist and expert on spiritual awakening.
So he and I are going to unpack the actual psychology behind what we call a Kundalini awakening or spiritual awakening and how to navigate this fine line between transformation and overwhelm. In this episode, you’ll learn how to tell the difference between psychosis and spiritual awakening, what a Kundalini awakening really looks like and feels like, as well as how to support your nervous system or the nervous system of your students as they go through this process. So whether you’re in it, afraid of it, or just curious, this is your invitation to really go deep into the psychology behind Kundalini awakening with me.
I would love to have you join me in my Kundalini yoga teacher training, the 200-hour teacher training this September. This is the perfect time to join and get information on that. Or if you want a foundational Hatha Vinyasa knowledge first, my foundational Hatha Vinyasa yoga teacher training is actually on sale through July 4th.
So make sure to check your emails and stay aware of all of these promos. I also have my Kundalini demystified course, which is like a smaller bite-sized home study program. And if you liked this episode, you might also really like the podcast I did on the Yogi Bhajan scandal.
So I’ve linked those up for you in the show notes as well. I’m so excited for you to hear this conversation and let’s dive in to this week’s episode. Hello, yoga family.
Welcome back to the show. I’m really excited for today’s episode. I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time because I have Steven Taylor, PhD with me.
He’s wrote many bestselling books on psychology and spirituality. And we’re going to talk about the psychology of a spiritual awakening. What so many of you I know reach out and talk about having maybe a Kundalini awakening or an experience that was too fast, too furious.
And this is something that Steve specializes in. So, Steve, welcome to the show. I know you’re joining us from across the world.
Steven Taylor:
That’s right. From England. Hello, Brett.
It’s great to be with you.
Brett Larkin:
So how did you get interested in this? Where did this journey start for you?
Steven Taylor:
It started when I was born, I guess, because there wasn’t really anything in my background or environment which drew me towards spirituality. But it seemed to be inside me from a very young age. Certainly when I was a teenager, I had what I would now describe as spiritual experiences.
Although at the time I didn’t understand them. I thought maybe I was crazy. But in retrospect, I had moments of feelings of connection and oneness with my surroundings.
Feelings that, you know, I was part of everything around me and everything was in harmony, that there was a meaning to life in the world. And it was only later that I realized that, you know, I could understand these experiences in the context of spirituality.
[Brett Larkin:]
And it sounds like those experiences were positive.
[Steven Taylor:]
Yes. Although in general, as a young man, I was very depressed and alienated, particularly in my adolescence and in my early 20s. But occasionally I would have these moments of euphoria when I was suddenly lifted above my depression and alienation.
And in retrospect, I wonder if my spiritual experiences were somehow produced by the turmoil and trauma I was going through. It was almost as if, you know, I suddenly shifted for no apparent reason from a state of depression into a state of elation.
[Brett Larkin:]
So let’s talk more about that and maybe the common patterns that you write about or see when someone is going through a rapid period of spiritual development and the different things that can happen either in the body or psychologically at that time. Because I think there’s kind of like different patterns that at least I know I’ve seen with students over the years of how a spiritual awakening can show up.
[Steven Taylor:]
That’s right. Yeah. I usually suggest that spiritual awakening can manifest itself in three different ways.
The first is when it’s innate to somebody, maybe a bit like I was describing about myself. It’s something that you’re born with, that you never lose as you grow older. I mean, many people have spiritual feelings when their children lose them as they become adults.
But, you know, in some cases, people never lose those feelings. So these people are the lucky ones. They don’t need to meditate or do yoga.
They don’t need to undergo a sudden moment of transformation. They just are naturally spiritually awakened, maybe because of something that’s happened in their previous lives. Maybe it’s something they’re carrying over from a previous incarnation.
The second way in which it manifests itself is when it’s very gradual due to following a spiritual path, like the path of yoga or it could be the eightfold path of Buddhism. It could be really any spiritual path which suits somebody and which brings them spiritual growth. So, I mean, there are millions of people around the world who are following some form of spiritual path.
And I think they’re all undergoing a gradual awakening. Sometimes a gradual awakening is so gradual that you don’t notice it’s happening. You’re moving so slowly that you don’t realize that you’re actually moving.
It’s only when you look back, maybe 10 years later, you think, oh, wow, I’m a completely different person to how I was 10 years ago, because you’ve undergone gradual awakening. But the third way in which spiritual awakening can manifest itself is when it happens suddenly and dramatically, spontaneously, often out of nowhere, often to people who don’t know anything about spirituality. In a traditional context, people who are maybe not religious, maybe they describe themselves as atheists.
Suddenly, for some reason, they have a spontaneous inner shift, a shift in identity. And sometimes that happens for no apparent reason, but usually it’s connected to intense turmoil and trauma.
[Brett Larkin:]
I’d love for you to define for us what does a spiritual awakening mean to you or how do you define that? So, for example, many from the yoga world, we’ve had this illustrated to us as an ascension of energy up the spinal column through Sushumna Nadi. So kind of like this journey from bottom to top.
And I think that almost like the Kundalini serpent, right? Moving up the spine, moving through the chakra system, merging with divine consciousness at the top of the head. I mean, that is one lens which we could use to look at or define spiritual awakening.
You also just use the phrase a shift in identity. So maybe you can walk us through like what your definition is and maybe some of the, well, then we can talk maybe some of the misconceptions.
[Steven Taylor:]
Essentially, I think you can define spiritual awakening as an expansion and intensification of awareness. And that can come about through different ways. It can come about through a Kundalini type experience.
It can come about through, you know, months of regular meditation. It can come about through turmoil and trauma. But there’s an opening of awareness.
I think normally human awareness is quite restricted. A lot of people live in a very narrow state of awareness. They’re not really aware of much outside their tiny circle of perception in their everyday lives.
You know, a lot of people are not really aware of the world around them as they live their lives. They don’t really see what’s around them. And then they feel a sense of separateness from the world around them.
But in spiritual awakening, it’s as if suddenly the gates open wide and suddenly we’re aware of much more. So the world around us, I mean, you can break it down into different types of awareness. So we become more intensely aware on a perceptual level.
Everything around us looks more real and more beautiful. A bit like recovering a childlike awareness, a child’s sense of wonder. You can define it in terms of a change or an intensification of inner awareness, because we become aware of deeper levels of our own being.
Our relationship to the world around us changes. One of the essential things is that we overcome separateness. Another normal human trait is that we feel separate to the world around us.
We feel that we’re enclosed in our mental space. But in spiritual awakening, the genie escapes from the bottle, if you like. We feel, you know, I’m not just me.
I’m not trapped inside my mental space. I’m actually part of the world around me. I’m actually participating.
I belong to the world around me. Another really important aspect is the expansion of what I would call, as a psychologist, intersubjective awareness. And that simply means that we become more connected to other people.
Again, partly because we overcome separateness, we feel an increased sense of empathy and compassion towards other people, which leads to, you know, an intense, a more intense altruism, greater kindness and benevolence. And finally, we have a more kind of an expansive awareness of the world. We have a global perspective.
I often refer to the experiences of astronauts. A lot of the original astronauts who went to the moon came down to Earth with a new kind of awareness. It was sometimes called the overview effect.
They had this sort of holistic vision of the world. They no longer thought in terms of countries or nationalities. They were just aware of the world in itself and the human race in itself, irrespective of boundaries or borders or nationalities.
So that kind of global awareness arises in spiritual awakening too. So yes, essentially this opening and this expansion of awareness.
[Brett Larkin:]
I really love that definition. And obviously that expansion of awareness, it’s so interesting because I’m thinking like that is a good thing, right? That’s a good thing.
However, we know that, I don’t know if we want to call it a dark side or sometimes the repercussions of this potentially sudden expansion in awareness or being in that overview effect that you described is fantastic. But what about if you need to care for a crying child or have immediate tasks in front of you, right? So, I mean, there’s so many things we can pick apart here where it’s like, once we have that spiritual awakening, how do we integrate it?
And then also, you know, a spiritual awakening for so many, which results in all these beautiful things, can feel intensely traumatic. And I think, you know, you talking about this, you know, you feel more. I think sometimes it’s helpful to ground this stuff in like practical stories, right?
So there’s an article on my blog that I co-authored with a friend of mine who went through an intense traumatic Kundalini awakening as he described it. And it was triggered by a breakup. So it was actually the end of a romantic relationship.
And he couldn’t get off the floor. He had to quit his job. Like he was having so much sensation in his hip area, his low back area, his groin.
And I think when, you know, he described parts of this as maybe pleasurable, like, you know, but also like, whoa, you know, this is too much. This is too soon, which is like a definition of trauma. So what are some of the ways that you see the spiritual awakening that’s a good thing, you know, end up happening to people in ways that maybe have difficult implications in their life?
[Steven Taylor:]
These are really important points because one of the general myths about spiritual awakening is that it’s a blissful, easy process. That suddenly you transition into this new state and wow, everything’s perfect. Life is incredibly easy.
But often it’s not like that. Occasionally it’s like that. There are some people who are lucky enough to have an easy transition.
Usually when it’s gradual, it is an easy transition because that’s one of the definitions of gradual awakening is that it’s easy to integrate because it happens so slowly. I can sometimes compare it to becoming famous. If you become famous very gradually over many years, it doesn’t really affect you.
You get used to it. But if you become famous really suddenly, everybody’s staring at you and everybody wants something from you. You can’t deal with it.
It’s just too, it’s such a big shock. And, you know, and it becomes very challenging. So sudden awakenings can be like that.
It’s such a drastic shift that on one level, it’s confusing, particularly if you don’t have a background in spirituality. Then you probably will think you’ve gone crazy. And that many people I’ve interviewed in my research, they did think they were going crazy because they didn’t have a background in spirituality.
And also it can be disruptive. It can disrupt some basic psychological functions like memory, concentration. It can make social interaction difficult.
It can make work difficult. And particularly when it manifests itself in a Kundalini type awakening, when there is this kind of explosive energy that surges through you, that causes physiological disturbances as well as psychological disturbances. You know, I think the kind of things you mentioned in that case, inability to sleep, shooting pains in the body, restlessness, strange energies shooting through you all the time.
So, yeah, I mean, these are sometimes described as symptoms of psychosis. So, again, it may be further evidence that you’ve gone crazy if you don’t know about spirituality or Kundalini awakening. And that, by the way, that’s why it’s so important to give people a framework to make sense of what’s happening to them so that they don’t go to the psychiatrist and he, you know, gives them medication or she gives them medication or whatever.
So, yeah, these are these are challenges which can be managed to a certain extent. And I found in my research that eventually the disturbances do fade away, particularly if a person understands what’s happening to them, particularly if they have a supportive environment and if they manage it in a correct way.
[Brett Larkin:]
So if this is happening to someone or if, you know, there’s a lot of yoga teachers who listen to the show, too. So if they hear of a student telling them like something like this is happening or they’re feeling things, you know, what what are the guidelines or best practices from your research that you might advise one to do if they’re starting to feel a lot of energy moving when they meditate or if it’s feeling like too much too soon or they’re getting headaches or migraines? That’s I know one thing that students often tell me that to me is usually a sign like there’s too much energy moving.
Right. Like your your meditation practice should not be giving you a migraine. But, you know, I think one of the things I wrote about in my article with my friend was this idea of he really found out what worked for him was using other people to co-regulate his nervous system.
So getting on, you know, a really easy schedule of, you know, eat at the same time, have lunch at the same time. You know, he really had to simplify his life, but even keeping track of those things was hard. But he found when he actually kind of went on retreat and those things were happening with a group of other people who were who were regulated that it’s almost like he was able to co-regulate using other folks.
So I’m just curious if there’s things like that. Yeah. Tell us about that.
[Steven Taylor:]
That’s very good advice. I think, first of all, you know, presumably if somebody is already involved in yoga, they’ll have a, you know, they’ll have a framework to understand what’s happening to them. But that framework is really important to make them aware that they are not going crazy.
They’re going through a transformative process and which is potentially positive and which can change their lives drastically for the better. But yeah, as you say, it needs to be. So another thing is they need to be aware that it is a process and it’s a temporary process.
It is a process which has been set in motion and which will eventually work itself out. I sometimes compare it to an earthquake. It is a it’s a psychological, physiological earthquake and it can be disruptive as well as earthquakes are.
But, you know, eventually the ground settles after an earthquake and eventually, you know, it returns to stability. So this kind of awakening is like a very, very slow motion earthquake. So you need to allow yourself to settle again.
You need to allow that process to play itself, play itself out. So while that is happening, while the process is organically working through you, you have to live quietly. You have to make sure that you stay away from stress.
If you can, take time off work and don’t go traveling around the world or don’t go to any pop concerts or anything that’s too stimulating. You need to stay away from stimulation. And I think diet is important too.
You need to have a very kind of simple diet, a grounding diet. You know, in other words, not too many spicy, enlivening foods. Obviously, stay away from alcohol and drugs.
So anything that is too stimulating, you have to stay away from. And even anything that can sort of, you know, bring you, make you emotionally intense. You need to try to stay away from that.
Even, you know, watching the news can be traumatic because you’re often shown images of people suffering from around the world. And, you know, that can be triggering. If you’re in a highly sensitive state, that can be, you know, potentially traumatic for you.
So yeah. So basically living as quietly and simply as possible for at least a few weeks, possibly months until the process begins to settle.
[Brett Larkin:]
What do you think about or do you have to say about people who actually want to like induce this state? Right. Like I feel like there is within the yoga community, there’s like this subset of people who like they want to have the awakening, right?
They’re like they want this to happen. And they’re maybe chasing it right through like intense kriyas or intense breath work or they’re going to go do ayahuasca. They’re going to go, you know, like trying to cultivate this.
Did you come across people like that in your research? Or like what are your overall thoughts of like, you know, kind of chasing this as like a high that people are trying to do?
[Steven Taylor:]
Mainly my research is focused on people who have a kind of spontaneous awakening without wanting it. But I have come across people like that. I think, you know, anybody who’s involved in spiritual circles or spiritual groups occasionally meets people like that.
I once met somebody who said – he’s quite a young guy. He’s probably 25 years old. And he said, I’m determined to become enlightened.
I’m going to become enlightened by the time I’m 35 in 10 years’ time. So I’m going to read every spiritual book. I’m going to do as many spiritual practices as I can.
I’m going to meditate four hours a day. And that kind of attitude is like treating enlightenment or awakening as if you want to become a millionaire, you know. It becomes an egoic goal rather than an organic goal.
So on the one hand, that kind of dooms it to failure in the beginning because the ego cannot be involved in awakening because awakening is a transcendence of the ego. It cannot become an egoic goal. It will never arrive.
But also, there’s a danger that if you chase it too hard and then you have a glimpse of it, then you’re not ready for it. You’re not ready to process it. It can be too shocking, as does sometimes occur in psychedelic experiences.
There’s sometimes just too much for people because they haven’t organically prepared for it. They haven’t undergone a gradual ascent. They want to sort of force themselves into a sudden ascent.
So that can be dangerous. It can even be psychologically disorientating and even disturbing because you’re suddenly plunged into this higher intense reality. And you’re not, you know, you haven’t adjusted to it.
You don’t understand it. You can’t orientate yourself in it. So, you know, I think unless your path to awakening is gradual and organic, it won’t be successful.
[Brett Larkin:]
Yeah. And I think, you know, we just don’t hear enough about the gradual, successful path. Like one of the things I’ve written about and posted about, I feel like I’m having a, you know, 30-year-long Kundalini awakening, right?
And it hasn’t looked for me personally like dramatic or beautiful or intense or white lights or, you know, like my yoni’s on fire. Like none of that has been happening. But I really do see that it’s awakening, right?
Like there is, I am so different than 10 years ago. I see how I’m showing up. I feel the difference in my energy.
And I think because we hear about the intense stories, right? People think that if they haven’t had an intense experience that they’re doing something wrong, right? Or they want to try more activating Kundalini practices.
They want to try. So, I mean, but before we go a little bit more into your research, because I’d love to hear a little bit about maybe some case studies or anecdotes you can give us. Is there anything you want to say about that?
[Steven Taylor:]
Yeah, I write poetry and that reminds me of a poem I wrote a couple of years ago. The idea of the poem was that, I can’t remember the exact wording, but I said in the poem that you shouldn’t seek extraordinary experiences. And that shouldn’t be the measure of your awakening.
And if you don’t have those extraordinary experiences, it doesn’t mean you haven’t undergone awakening. I said that real awakening or the real fruit of your spiritual awakening manifests itself in your day-to-day life. And the way you treat the people close to you.
And the way you respond to strangers. And the tiny acts of kindness you perform. And the connection you have to your community.
You know, your relationships with your neighbors. Even the way you treat your pets. That’s there, that’s the real fruit of awakening.
Not those extraordinary experiences. And they can be wonderful. They can give you a glimpse of a higher reality which transforms your life.
But yeah, another point is that it’s difficult to live at that level of intensity. As you said before, it’s difficult to drive your car and pay your bills and bring up your kids. When you’re living in a state of blissful oneness with the whole universe.
So you have to stabilize and integrate into everyday life.
[Brett Larkin:]
Well, what I like that you said about the gradual awakening. And what that actually looks like is, you know, really about how you treat people around you. And to me that means like heart chakra, right?
That means the fulcrum chakra. So that makes me think that, right, this awakening we’re talking about is about centered and, you know, connectedness in the heart. Rather than, you know, seventh chakra shooting out the crown of the head and being, you know, out there.
Like unified, right? Because if we’re unified, we can’t potentially love our partner and our neighbor and our kids well.
[Steven Taylor:]
Yeah, that’s right. I mean, one of the biggest changes I found in my research when people shift into wakefulness. Is that they shift out of a mode of taking from the world into a mode of giving to the world.
You could also say that they shift out of a mode of accumulation. As in accumulating power, accumulating wealth and success. Even accumulating experiences or spiritual experiences.
They shift from that into a mode of contribution to the world, you know. They could be contributing their creativity or helping their community. Or in a more general sense, protecting the environment or whatever.
But their main impulse is to give something to the world. So, yeah, you could explain in those terms a shift to a heart-centered life. And also another change, interestingly, was a different relationship to their own body.
I found that many people before their awakening, this includes me actually. When I was younger, I had a very kind of unhealthy relationship to my body. But in general, people shift to a much more caring attitude towards their own body.
A much healthier diet. They’re more conscious of exercise. Part of that is that they feel more integrated with their bodies.
They no longer feel that they’re entities that inhabit their bodies. They are their bodies. And they realize that their body is sacred.
The body is spiritual. So, yeah, that’s also a much more integrated way of living.
[Brett Larkin:]
I love that the research showed that. Because I feel, you know, we have this paradigm, right? Of like the yogi meditating in the cave and they don’t need anything.
And they’re high and they’re disassociated from the body. And so much of the even postural yoga that’s taught today seems to be, you know, like somewhat like chasing that ideal, right? So, I love the somatic approach and the somatic yoga I’m teaching, right, is really about, you know, like what’s this down and in current that’s equally as important as the up and out current.
So, it’s really cool to hear that actually in people you studied who had had these kundalini awakenings or spiritual awakenings, even when they were intense, you know, as they resolved and the earthquake settled, they felt more embodied at the end. They felt like they were more in their, you know, like physical meat suit of who they were. And I’ve noticed that too.
Like I’m taking care of myself much more in this stage and age of life from thinking about like when do I need to go to bed? And, you know, what do I need by my nightstand? Like what does my animal body really need to feel safe or to feel nourished?
And those aren’t questions that I was asking, you know, 15 years ago.
[Steven Taylor:]
That’s right. That connects to another myth about spiritual awakening or kundalini awakening. And it’s that spiritual awakened people become less involved or more indifferent to the world.
It’s kind of the myth of the yogi who lives in a cave and doesn’t care about what’s going on in the world. He’s just, or she’s just immersed in a bliss. But it’s not like that.
Almost everybody in my research became more concerned about the world because they felt more empathy. Towards other people’s suffering. They felt more empathy for the suffering of the earth and the suffering of other species.
So they often became vegetarians or vegans. They often became more environmentally conscious and they became more conscious of global issues, you know, social problems.
[Steven Taylor:]
And it all comes from that transcendence of separateness. When you transcend separateness, you feel other people’s sufferings more. You feel the sufferings of the world and other species more intensely.
And obviously that triggers an impulse to try to alleviate those sufferings.
[Brett Larkin:]
I absolutely love that because I do. I think there’s so much of what we think of as spiritual practice, or we kind of have in our mind’s eye, like the gold standard, right? Like being able to go on a 10-day Vipassana retreat, like being, you know, it’s a lot about like reclusing ourselves, right?
Or being so whole that we don’t need anyone else. And so I love this really powerful reframe that, you know, the awakened state is actually one where we’re more plugged into our community. We’re more in touch with our neighbors.
We’re receiving and giving love in an embodied relationship with our body. And then also, you know, having more empathy for the world around us and social issues and wanting to give back. It just paints such a really beautiful picture of what an awakened person looks like.
I’m curious, because I know you’ve interviewed so many people who’ve been through an intense traumatic Kundalini awakening, which is of high interest to our listeners, obviously protecting privacy and everything. But is there any story that stands out in particular with Kundalini or energies that someone was feeling in the body, kind of like the one I mentioned, that maybe stands out as an anecdote that you’d want to highlight or share to help listeners, you know, kind of really understand this process or what it looks like for folks who are going through it?
[Steven Taylor:]
There was one gentleman I interviewed. He was an English guy like me. He was a very, I guess you’d say, ordinary guy.
He worked as a car salesman. He was a big soccer fan. He had no interest in spirituality.
You know, he just liked to watch football and go to the pub and so forth. But he went through a very intense, stressful phase in his job. He had a kind of a psychotic manager who made life really difficult for him.
And he started to feel really stressed and he wasn’t able to sleep. And this went on for a few weeks. The pressure was building up further and further inside him.
And eventually, after another, one more sleepless night, something just gave way inside me, just snapped. But it wasn’t, at first he thought it was a breakdown, like a lot of people do who don’t understand spirituality. But he realized it wasn’t so much a breakdown as a kind of a rising of something inside him.
He suddenly felt this explosive energy just shoot through him. And obviously, he didn’t know anything about Kundalini awakening. He’d never heard the term before.
So he thought he was going crazy. He thought something was seriously wrong with him. And he went to the psychiatrist because, you know, he was in a very disturbed, restless state.
All these strange energies shooting through him, making his body move in strange ways, making it difficult for him to sit down, let alone sleep. Because he was so filled with electrical energy. And obviously, the psychiatrist assumed he was suffering from psychosis and gave him medication.
But he had this sort of feeling that he shouldn’t take the medication. There was this inner voice inside him that said, you know, this isn’t the right thing to do. You’re actually going through, he knew intuitively somehow that he was actually going through a positive process.
So he just put the medication to one side, shoved it away in a drawer, decided not to take it. And he took some time off work and just, you know, just tried to calm himself down, tried to settle down. And after a few days, he started to have, you know, enlightened visions, enlightenment experiences, where the whole world around him would be filled with light.
He would see all the human beings around him as if they were radiant beings, radiating brilliant, translucent light. And he felt this light shining from him as well, a real kind of powerful spiritual radiance. But he still didn’t understand what’s happening to him.
But luckily, his wife was understanding. And she sort of helped to support him and cared for him and looked after him. So after about, I think this went on for about three months, and it slowly began to settle.
He started to feel more integrated. He went back to work and felt as though he could cope. But he still didn’t really understand what had happened to him.
But then he found a book, I think of a friend of his. He told a friend of his what was happening to him. This friend said, you must read this book.
And it was The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. And, you know, he’d never heard of Eckhart Tolle or didn’t know anything about spirituality. But something about the book just hit him straight away.
He thought, ah, you know, I’ve not gone crazy. This is what’s happened to me. He’s describing how I feel.
So suddenly he had this framework to make sense of what was happening to him. He suddenly realized that he’d had a spiritual awakening. And it was a real revelation, you know, and a massive relief to find out that he wasn’t crazy.
And he started to go to spiritual groups and started to meditate. After about six months, he felt as though the process had settled down and he’d started to integrate it. And that was around the time that he contacted me.
And it was really beautiful and inspiring to see the transformation in this guy, you know, and how different his life was. He felt as though he had this sense of compassion, empathy, even though he was doing a kind of quite a routine job as a car salesman. He felt as though he could bring this empathy and compassion into the job and treat people really well.
Even the manager, who was so nasty to him, he felt love for this manager. And, you know, he wasn’t affected anymore by this guy’s behavior. And he also, ironically, he said that he still likes football or soccer, but he didn’t feel attached to any club anymore.
He’d been a big fan of one particular club. But now he said, I don’t care who wins. I just enjoy watching you.
I don’t feel any allegiance to this club. I just enjoy watching the game. So he transcended that kind of group identity of supporting a particular soccer club.
[Brett Larkin:]
I love that anecdote. And I love that story. I think with some of these other stories you’ve heard, what are the commonalities?
I know we’ve talked about some of them, but I’m just curious. It’s interesting to me that you mentioned three months as kind of the, you know, you’re riding the wild stallion kind of period, because I feel like that’s a little bit, obviously, I have not done as much research as you, but that’s kind of anecdotally what I’ve also heard. And then, you know, six months is maybe a place where that’s feeling more comfortable.
Is there anything that you’ve seen in common with these stories in terms of the trigger, you know, like the thing that caused it to happen? You know, you mentioned stress. Maybe we can talk about trauma or, you know, because we call them spontaneous, but it’s like, are they really spontaneous though?
Like I know one of my students, it happened after a car accident, right? So regarding the trigger or the length or like things they did to resolve it, like what other things have you seen?
[Steven Taylor:]
It seems to be related, at least in some people, to a mode of acceptance. I found that in some people, the moment when they underwent transformation was when they accepted and acknowledged their predicament. I’ll give you an example.
There was a woman I interviewed who I’m still in contact with, who is actually now a spiritual teacher called Ananta, and she won’t mind me telling you her name. But her path to being a spiritual teacher occurred when she was in prison. She was in prison in Japan for sentenced to four years for drug possession.
And the conditions in Japan were incredibly brutal. In the prison, they were forced to work 16 hours a day in a factory. They had almost no contact with daylight.
They weren’t allowed any privileges. The food was very basic and they weren’t allowed to speak to each other, which was one of the worst things. She went through this ordeal in the prison for about three months and she felt as though she couldn’t take it anymore.
There was just too much for her to deal with. And she felt one night she went back to her cell and she was feeling so much pain that she felt she was going to break. The pain was just too much, both physically and emotionally.
It was just too much for her to deal with. But she had this kind of realization. She decided that rather than trying to resist the pain, try to push it away, she should just accept it and just allow herself to drop into it.
So she actually physically or psychologically did that. She allowed herself to let go. She just let go of her resistance and dropped into the pain.
And suddenly she felt that she was not dropping into pain. She was actually dropping into bliss. She became aware that as she was going deeper into herself, she was touching into this bliss, this deep reservoir of radiant bliss.
And this bliss suddenly started to rise through her like water rising from a well. And it seemed to engulf a whole inner being. And then she looked outside her and this radiant bliss seemed to engulf her whole surroundings.
The whole prison cell was filled with radiant bliss. And she did actually have a bit of a background in spirituality. She’d been a follower of Osho a few years ago, the Indian guru.
So she had an idea of what was happening to her. She actually thought, well, maybe this is what Osho was talking about. Maybe this is the kind of enlightenment.
Maybe this is what he meant by enlightenment. And luckily it remained inside her. Once this radiant bliss had emerged, it didn’t fade away.
And it transformed her life. In prison, it no longer seemed like such an ordeal. She was able to cope with the dreary, cruel environment.
But also she did have difficulties, particularly a few months later when she was let out of prison. She found it really difficult to cope in the everyday world. She found it difficult to speak to people.
She found it difficult to work. She couldn’t concentrate for long. She couldn’t hold social interactions for very long.
And even though she knew it was something to do with spirituality, she wasn’t really aware of what had happened to her. Until when she went back to England, she met a guy who said, you know, you’ve become enlightened. This is what enlightenment actually is.
You’ve definitely become enlightened. But suddenly she thought, wow, maybe that’s true. Maybe I’ve become enlightened.
And slowly she began to adjust to the everyday world. You know, she began to function, to speak to people again, to work. And again, it took several months, as we’ve already discussed.
But eventually she did become a spiritual teacher, as she is now.
[Brett Larkin:]
There’s this phrase in Kundalini yoga, which I’m not sure if you’re familiar with, but it often gets tossed around and teachers often say it, which is that like it takes pressure to make a crystal. And they’re often saying it in like a yoga context, a postural yoga context of like, you know, holding your arms out for a long time is hard or, you know, having your arms up or doing something challenging on the mat, whether it’s a Kriya or a difficult breathing technique or meditating for 61 minutes or chanting long Ekam Kars for, you know, hours, whatever. But like it takes this pressure to make a crystal, meaning like we have to put ourselves through the fire that like Sanskrit word, like tapas, like we have to go through the heat in order to experience transformation, which we also see in like all these spiritual traditions from across the world, right?
There’s a struggle in order to get there. And what’s, you know, calling these stories, I feel like are resonant of that a little bit in that like someone’s really at a difficult place in their life, whether it’s like a manager who’s, you know, just making your work life miserable or, you know, you’re rock bottom in prison. And I’m wondering, like, do you think it’s like when the nervous system doesn’t have any ways to cope with the current strategies that it’s, that it knows that this other energy comes online, like?
[Steven Taylor:]
That’s one way of looking at it. I actually wrote a paper. The title of the paper was Two Modes of Sudden Spiritual Awakening.
So I think it can happen in two basic modes in psychological terms. One is what I call ego dissolution. When the pressure of your situation becomes so intense that your ego collapses, like a house that collapses in an earthquake.
Or it can also be through a long process of psychological attachments dissolving or breaking down. That happens a lot in addiction, for example. There are many cases of people who undergo spiritual awakening after a long period of addiction.
And it’s usually when they’ve lost everything and they’ve broken every psychological attachment to their relationships have broken down. They’ve lost their career. They’ve lost their ambitions.
They’ve lost their self-respect. They’ve lost everything. And then the ego collapses.
You know, the ego collapses when you take away as many psychological detachments as constitute the ego. Like when a house collapses when you take away a certain number of bricks. So ego dissolution can bring about spiritual awakening because in some people it’s almost as if there is a latent spiritually awakened self inside them which is waiting to emerge.
And it can only emerge when the ego breaks down or dissolves. So that’s one way in which it happens. The second mode of sudden spiritual awakening is equivalent to or the same as Kundalini awakening.
It’s when there’s a sudden release of this intense energy which normally resides at the bottom of the spine. And that is a real, I’ve never thought that the Kundalini phenomenon is just symbolic or just a philosophical idea. I think it does refer to a real energy.
And in some people that energy, that release of the energy is very tangible. And that can also happen through intense stress as in the case of the person I mentioned earlier. It often happens, you know, something related to sleeplessness.
I found a lot of cases of Kundalini type awakenings in mothers who recently had a baby and they were tired and stressed in an altered state of consciousness. And that triggered a release of this explosive energy. And it can sometimes happen in a sexual context that intense sexual experiences, sometimes in psychedelics.
But yeah, so, you know, I think that you can understand it in terms of those two modes of sudden spiritual awakening.
[Brett Larkin:]
I like how you broke that down. And it’s so crazy because literally earlier today, I was talking to someone who had that exact situation in postpartum. She had a postpartum, what was called a manic episode where, you know, she was like, she had gone crazy and she actually was arrested.
But she was laughing the whole time and thought, you know, to her, it felt almost like blissful. So it’s interesting that you say that and, you know, sleeplessness being tied to that, probably as well as a lot of hormonal changes. Super, super interesting.
What is the difference, before we start to close out here, between psychosis and spiritual awakening? Because it’s like when we’re looking at the symptom list, these things seem so similar. I mean, I’m just curious, like, what’s your definition of psychosis?
And when, if ever, do you think it’s like, okay, this is a sign that a medical intervention is necessary? Or, I mean, I know some Jungian perspectives would be like all psychosis is like the, you know, the spirit trying to wake up or whatnot. So, you know, just touch on that.
[Steven Taylor:]
It’s a difficult question because a lot of psychiatrists do interpret spiritual awakening as psychosis. But I think there are, I mean, I’m not one of those psychologists who believes that every psychotic experience is potentially a spiritual awakening. Some people do believe that, as you said, but I don’t believe that.
I believe there are distinctions between spiritual awakening and psychosis. One simple distinction is that when a person has a spiritual awakening, a bit like the first case I described earlier, the car salesman, they are actually aware of what’s happening to them. There’s a part of them which kind of stands back and observes what’s happening, which isn’t completely caught up in or immersed in what’s happening.
Whereas in psychosis, a person is totally immersed or swept away about what’s happening to them. They can’t stand back and think maybe this is something potentially transformative or positive. They’re just too immersed in it.
So that sense of detachment or observation is one important difference. But I think maybe most fundamentally, the difference is that, you know, if you go back to the metaphor of a house which collapses in an earthquake, I think I mentioned that earlier. In spiritual awakening, the house collapses, but something new emerges in its place.
A new structure emerges in its place. And it can be, that emergence can be quite tricky. You know, it can take time.
It can be challenging, but it does slowly emerge. And within a few months, you know, just like it takes a few months to build a house, within a few months, the structure, the new structure is in place. It’s quite stable.
But in psychosis, there is no structure. The house is just knocked down and there’s nothing to replace it. So it’s a kind of emptiness.
It’s a kind of vacuum. Whereas spiritual awakening is, you know, is the birth of a new self. No matter how challenging that can be, you know, it is a process which moves towards completion.
[Brett Larkin:]
I think that’s just so beautifully said, like, and very clear to understand. So thank you. Because, you know, I have a family member with schizophrenia, right?
And for him, it’s like there’s no internal voice that still has an awareness of what’s happening. He is like living these narratives of what he believes to be true, right? And this distinction of like, there’s one small part that’s aware, like even with the car salesman who had no background in spirituality or hadn’t read an Eckhart Tolle book, right?
Like there was somehow some presence that was like, I’m not gonna take the medication. I think there’s something, something happening there. And then, yeah, that second distinction being, you know, the process tends to organically resolve, even if it’s slow, compared to, you know, not resolving and being like this empty vacuum that just keeps pulling the person down and down and down, in which case it’s more, you know, falling under that psychosis category.
So, so interesting. Is there anything else, based on all the things we’ve touched on thus far, knowing that you’re talking to yoga teachers, Kundalini yoga teachers, maybe some enlightenment, you know, high chasers, people who are also scared of that, like that you’d want to say before, I just tell listeners a little bit how I found you and then how they can find you.
[Steven Taylor:]
Maybe I’d like to finish by saying that spiritual awakening is a natural process. I think everybody, at a certain point, maybe not in this lifetime, but maybe in the next lifetime, everybody will move towards spiritual awakening. Awakening is, to me, ultimately, it’s part of the process of the evolution of consciousness.
The evolution of consciousness, right from the beginnings of life, has moved towards more consciousness. It’s become more expansive and more intense, right from the simplest life forms, right up to human beings. So in a sense, spiritual awakening is a continuation of evolution.
It’s part of the evolutionary process. It’s just natural for us to expand our awareness and to become more connected to other people and to the world. That’s why it feels so right, you know, when we do undergo a process of awakening or a process of spiritual development, it feels so right because it’s what we’re meant to do.
We are meant to grow, to expand, and ultimately, to become one with the world and one with each other.
[Brett Larkin:]
Yeah, it’s like this transcending polarity, which I meant to mention earlier, the word polarity, which I love. That’s a very positive outlook, Steve.
[Steven Taylor:]
Yeah, it is. I am. In spite of everything, I am optimistic.
[Brett Larkin:]
Yes. Well, you know, but I think there’s something interesting about that too. It’s like there’s this tug of war, right, in Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan, which I don’t teach anymore, but the, you know, he always talked about the Aquarian Age, right?
And that this idea that they were in this moment of awakening and it’s tying into some of those same themes. And at the same time, I think as a process that is that good and that is that right is happening, you know, polarity, there’s equal and opposite reactions. Like there’s going to be a pull that really wants the opposite of that at the same time, like as that develops.
So, you know, I think that maybe explains, like some of what we’re seeing in the culture.
Steven Taylor:
Yeah, that’s right. I think as waves of awakening grow stronger, the opposing waves also grow stronger. As the light grows stronger, the darkness grows stronger because the darkness feels threatened by the light.
Brett Larkin:
Yeah. So, I mean, that explains so much. I think of like the polarization, but I think this is such an important message because I think, especially people who have a spiritual practice or who maybe listen to a podcast like this, I mean, we feel so disappointed in the state of the world, right?
We feel so sad. But when we understand like the way energetics works, it’s like this is a natural byproduct of this very positive evolution of consciousness that’s happening. It’s an unfortunate, but necessary byproduct.
You know, you can’t have darkness without light. You can’t have, you know, vice versa. So I think that’s a really, really beautiful note to end on.
Steven Taylor:
I agree.
Brett Larkin:
Steve, tell listeners where they can find you. And I know you’ve written so many books. So maybe you could also point them in the direction of what book out of all of them you think would be most interesting to them based on what we talked about today.
And maybe just a little bit about, I mean, I don’t know if you’re still doing research, but if they know someone who’s going through a Kundalini awakening as yoga teachers, you know, we have a big network here. So, you know, can they send people to you? Just talk us through how folks can find you and your work.
Steven Taylor:
My website is stevenmtaylor.com. Steven with a V, N for Mark. stevenmtaylor.com.
And I guess the book of mine, which is most relevant, well, there are probably two books of mine, which are relevant to what we’ve been discussing today. The first one is a book of mine called The Leap with the subtitle, The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening. That’s a general overview of the different ways in which awakening manifests itself and the characteristics and effects of awakening and the challenges that awakening can involve.
Also a book called Extraordinary Awakenings When Turmoil Leads to Transformation. That’s specifically about the kind of traumatic awakenings we’ve been discussing and how they can be managed and what changes they ultimately bring to people. And I’m always doing research.
So yeah, if people would like to contact me or share cases, or if they seek assistance, you can do that through my website. There’s a contact icon on my website.
Brett Larkin:
Well, we will put the link to your website in the show notes. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, being with all of us here today and listeners, thanks for being with us here to the very end. I’d love to hear your insights on this conversation.
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