12) Vril, Prana and Kundalini
At the time Abrams was building his first device, many occult schools were aware of energetic concepts with their origins in India, China and the Middle East. Prominent among Eastern religion are the Indian terms for subtle energy, Prana and Kundalini. In the simplest interpretation, prana is the life energy circulating throughout our body; a living fluid at the core of our physical and mental being. Kundalini is a concentration of prana, the evolutionary force of nature, embedded in the physical body with the express purpose of effecting biological and cognitive transformation.
The importance of Eastern energetic concepts to the occultists of Europe and America cannot be overstated. Essentially, they offered a competing worldview to scientific materialism. The success of science in harnessing invisible forces like electro-magnetism had pushed the occult believers into looking for parallel technologies from Prana and Kundalini. The quest became, can subtle biological energy be made manifest and demonstrated? What can turn it into a physical force that can do work?
No writer has had more direct experience with kundalini and prana than Gopi Krishna. Mr. Krishna's direct experience with kundalini was spontaneous, unexpected, utterly transformative and irreversible. The actual experience of kundalini arising in his body and awareness was also very difficult for him to cope with when it occurred. His exploits are well documented in his own works; consider how he observed and defined these energies:
"Kundalini is the ancient Sanskrit word for a form of bioenergy, the life force in humans which drives evolution and leads the race to a higher state of consciousness."
"In its cosmic form prana is a highly diffused intelligent energy spread everywhere. But in the individual it takes a specific form as the bioplasma or individual prana composed of an extremely subtle organic essence drawn from the elements and compounds forming the body. It is this essence which, transformed into psychic energy, becomes the fuel for thought. The bioplasma, sustained by the cosmic ocean of prana, permeates each and every cell of an organism. In fact, it is the life of the cells as also of the organism itself. The nervous system with its countless extremely fine threads floats like a serpent on this pool of bioenergy, which is itself surrounded and permeated by the boundless ocean of universal life."
Mr. Krishna is adamant about the difference between how bioenergy is perceived in the West versus the East. "For them (the West) this energy, whatever the manifestation by which it can be identified, assumes the same position as other material energies in the universe. The underlying idea in the minds of the investigators is often the same as that which influences their study of physical energies, namely to understand their nature and laws to harness them for pragmatic purposes.
"But for the ancient (or contemporary) Indian adept, bioenergy or prana is the super intelligent cosmic life energy to which he owes his own existence and the existence of the world around him. He considers himself to be no more than a transient bubble, blown up by the action of this almighty force, which continues to work day and night through all the period of his life, to maintain the ego-bound flicker of consciousness which he knows as himself.
"Research on bioenergy implies entry into the realm of the spirit, into the subtle plane housing the energies and forces of life." Prana exerts a type of radiation on the brain that alters consciousness. This is the essence of the traditional, mystical view of subtle energy as experienced by Gopi Krishna. Prana is perceived as a form of "vital fuel", stored in every organic cell of the body whose function it is to sustain the activity of life and consciousness.
"The extremely dim glimmer of sentience that regulates the conduct of a single cell, when combined and magnified with the marvelous mechanism of the human cerebrospinal system, gives rise to the wonderful world of awareness present in us. The pattern and volume of the mental activity exhibited by a human being or an animal depends solely on the pattern and volume of the bioenergy supplied to the brain. When this supply fails, the connecting link between the organism and the world of life is cut off and death ensues."
Krishna's view of bioplasm is that of energy drawn from every cell of the organism by the nerves up to the brain, fostering the growth of intellect, talent and genius in an individual. It is likened to milk, or semen in the body in yogic metaphor, and is identical to the reproductive substances but with a different function.
"The whole cellular structure of the human body has the genetic principles present in it. From the point of view of the bioplasm also, every cell is a radial center of this energy. The activation of the kundalini merely makes use of a potential already present in the body. The evolutionary mechanism is constructed in a way that, by stimulation through certain disciplines or of its own accord when ripe for the experience, it can be activated in a manner that makes the human body a virtual dynamo of live electricity or psychic energy which can stream into the brain with shattering effect.”
"In fact, it is this transition of the human organism from the normal condition to the state of a powerful generating plant of high-grade bioplasm which is designated as the arousal of kundalini. Every neuron in the brain, every nerve, and every nerve filament becomes a participant in this whirlwind activity that starts in the body on the awakening of the serpent power."
Many occult practices and traditions in the East were designed to strengthen Prana or arouse Kundalini. Though Prana and Kundalini have physical manifestations, they are generally discernable only as an aspect of consciousness. In any discussion of subtle energy, it is of paramount importance to distinguish whether the energy under discussion is perceived through the senses in the external world or apprehended internally by the mind. Of those practices that invoke kundalini, change in the mechanism of perception is most often the desired outcome, not circumstances in the outside world.
Kundalini-like effects are widely experienced today via plant hallucinogens and psychedelic drugs. An argument can be made, theoretically, for viewing a synthetic chemical compound like LSD as a form of occult technology. Although the resulting inebriation is predictable, the subjective outcome of the experience is not. For better or worse, in terms of widespread reliability and results, laboratory spawned hallucinogenic compounds are probably the most pervasive occult technology ever designed by man.
How significant hallucinogens are to the discussion of the occult and its technology will not be resolved here. There is little doubt that these and other drugs often play a substantial role in occult ceremony, but there is no evidence connecting those to practical methodologies like Radionics.
Different manifestations of subtle energy demand their own respective language and tools. Many cognitive subtle energy disciplines have evolved aesthetic technologies, like Yantra drawings and Mandela paintings. Almost all shamanistic ceremony is considered technology by its adherents. Tantra, which includes the manipulation of sexual energy, can be used to expand consciousness or to develop occult power. Both disciplines have resulted in the creation of artworks which are considered tools for the manipulation of consciousness toward predetermined ends. These types of art are used for manipulating energy, much the same as Radionics, but their goal is primarily metaphysical. However, they can be and have been used for pragmatic ends, like healing and for environmental purification. Ancient megaliths and sacred architecture are examples that many writers describe in terms of aesthetic technology, used to manipulate energy for both practical and metaphysical purposes.
When it comes to altering consciousness a wider range of tools and methodologies are available. These tools don’t have to change anything in the external world, so it is more difficult to describe them as technology that does work. One intriguing crossover is psychokinetics (PK). PK or psi consists of mental action directed upon the physical world, such as telekinesis (levitation), aerokinesis (control of wind & weather), pyrokinesis (control of fire), electrokinesis (control of electricity & magnetism) and minitelkinesis (control of small objects. PK likely plays a substantial role in Radionics as well as other occult technology.
In the West, PK is not considered in the same category as consciousness technologies utilizing prana or kundalini. Rather, PK is considered more similar to electricity, magnetism, light and the sub-atomic forces. The notion of PK being something to engineer or to detect with an instrument came to the fore as modern science began investigating natural forces.
By 1949, a comprehensive 534 page text-book by a geologist, Dr. S. W. Tromp, PSYCHICAL PHYSICS was available that thoroughly and scientifically examined every aspect of the divining phenomena. In Tromps exhaustive study, every aspect of electrical, magnetic, geophysical, biological, electrostatic, and psychical activity that he could imagine as impacting dowsing and Radiesthesia, and therefore by implication, Radionics, were discussed. Wherever possible, Tromp and his associates devised experiments to test their hypotheses and evolving theory of the dowsing reflex. The results of which are faithfully recorded, complete with graphs, diagrams and photographs in his book.
In the concluding paragraphs of his text, Professor Tromp had these words (taken somewhat out of context) to say about his research efforts: “We have reached the end of chapter III and of this publication on the science of the divining phenomena. We have endeavored to demonstrate that an enormous number of fundamentally unknown phenomena occur in the living world which should be united into an independent science, the science of divining phenomena. This should be the sphere of interest of the Laboratories of Psychical Physics all over the world.
“It is a sign of narrow-mindedness that these experiments are often rejected by scientists because the explanation sounds unscientific and might be completely wrong. It is not the interpretation which is important, but the facts. Interpretations given by even the most prominent scientists often had to be changed during the history of mankind, but the facts remain. Most scientists of the 20th century seem to lack the courage and the romantic feeling to tackle problems which at first sight seem incredible and without any practical prospects. It is the unconventional scientist who enables the work to progress more rapidly.”
Like Tromp, Abbe Mermet, Abrams and subsequent Radionics inventors would be inclined, I believe, to argue PK as a “force of nature” detected by their instruments from muscular reflexes. They would argue that the psi hypothesis will eventually be reconciled scientifically, in a quantitative, measurable fashion like any other physical force.
For the time being however, it is practically impossible to state in unequivocal scientific terms how any technology that incorporates subtle energy of the mind or biological energy of the body actually functions. Both mind and body, joined through consciousness, are uniquely dependent upon the influence and characteristics of whatever tools and techniques are used to describe them, be they the limitations of scientific instruments or the mindset of the observer. What can be examined is something about how an occult technology like Radionics evolved and was perceived by the people that designed and applied these novel tools.
