Factors that trigger both schizophrenic breaks and kundalini awakenings include circumstances of impossible dilemmas, double-binds, and avoidance/attraction etc… That is situations in which we cannot proceed in a logical-prefrontal manner, but which force us to spin our wheels and to experience angst, perplexity and frustration. Since energy is not utilized in a normal fashion it builds and leads to a psycho-energetic crisis—the energies of flight fight, having no resolution basically kick off either a psychotic breakdown or breakthrough—usually a bit of both. Koans, of course operate in a similar fashion to confound the normal rational thinking process leading to the overload of the nervous system and the sudden progress to a new level of awareness.
Symptoms of schizophrenia include: thought disorder, withdrawal-retardation, hallucination, estrangement, psychosis, sensory gating deficits, voices, delusions, obsession, paranoia, feels out of time, out of space, loss of body boundaries, and non-existent as a person.
The perturbation of everyday consciousness reduces the filtering system and presents a scale of consciousness that spans from schizophrenic to mystic. This transnormal impact of consciousness if interpreted adequately by the rational mind is then called mystic revelation. If however the rational mind is off kilter then ones interpretation is called schizophrenic.
When we penetrate beyond everyday consciousness we are both more animal-essential and more Godlike-omnipotent. We experience a range and subtlety of interconnectedness that would be simply frightening and crazy-making to our normal socio-conditioned repressed mode of being. Thus we only get to sense the true nonlocality of consciousness during peak events—either awakenings or breakdowns. That is not to say that our super-senses are not there in ordinary life, it is just that we simply filter out the information in order to cooperate with the dumbed down operational level that society adheres to. There is an enormous "leveling" system that goes on unconsciously in communities where noone is "allowed" to be more awaken than the others, and we are subtley or overtly punished if we are.
It seems like embeddedness (attraction/aversion) in duality leads to nonduality. For if were not "affected" by the symbols, myths and archetypes that we use to give "story" to our lives, no psychic tension would arise to propel us out of the vice of "normal" consciousness. As the subtle-psychic levels arise we become hyper-affected by the imagery and our story of duality and this builds up such a psychic tension that a kundalini awakening is sparked off.
After an awakening we become psychosomatically differentiated from the images, symbols, myths, stories and personal identity that we were so involved in before. Thus consciousness has become separated from its contents. Perhaps this is the difference between a schizophrenic and a mystic. The mystic has become emancipated from the persuasions of psychic content, while the schizophrenic has become lost in them.
The perturbation and removal of normal consciousness and the consequent disruption of egoic-metaprogramming is not regression—it is not going backwards—but merely the removal of adaptive/repressive functioning in the present. This creates an entirely new consciousness that has never occurred in ones history, yet may have features similar to infantile being. This loss of the sense of the known self (ego) is standard procedure in many of the extreme kundalini events and in the overall metamorphic process itself.
Contributing to this perturbation of consensus-adaptive consciousness is both the extreme amplification and expansion of consciousness during peak events and the consequent damage done by neurotransmitters, free radicals and metabolites. The higher we climb above the "norm," the further we thus fall into the downside of these acute neurological events. This is the shamanic journey to the heavens and then into the hell realms. Both extra-normal conditions could be classed as regression by an ignorant observer; but both high and low are equally part of the path toward the emergence of the life of the Soul. There must indeed be a suspension or cataclysmic breakthrough of the norm for the infinitely larger soul's life to be born. So rather than "regression" in the service of the ego, we could more aptly state that during a kundalini awakening we undergo "suspension" of the ego in the service of the soul.
For those that are breaking out of consensus mind and who are leaning toward inflation or the schizophrenic end of the scale, this vulnerable condition is NOT the time to be intensive meditation, shadow work or primal processing. For these people stabilizing and structure building is needed more than uncovering therapies as the interpenetration of the levels of consciousness proceeds. Humor, because of its trickster element is a great tool for establishing rationality, because laughter builds up the prefrontal lobes. The practices for the periods of unstable integration between the levels of consciousness should be of an embodiment and boundary building nature. Of self-definition through internal exploration via neo-shamanistic practices of a self-originating nature. The work of Miguel Ruiz, Byron Katie and Alberto Villoldo would be valuable at this stage to establish the self/other boundary and build up the core-self.
Therapists attending to people undergoing kundalini awakenings could benefit from reading Ken Wilber's writings on schizophrenia such as Chapter 17 of The Atman Project. This piece entitled Schizophrenia or Mysticism is very good, yet I would like to add a distinction. I think that awakening from "normal conscious' runs a scale between schizophrenia and mysticism and each of us has a gravity to a particular point on that scale. But throughout the duration of an awakening we may sometimes be closer to the schizophrenic end of the scale and sometimes closer to the Mystic end of the scale depending on how stable and adaptable the rational faculty is at the time.
Some of the chemistry could be similar between kundalini and various mental illnesses, because of kundalini's perturbing revelatory quality, nothing is left unseen and unfelt within one…there is no where to hide. The former repressive hold of the ego is released by the dissolution and so the psychic tension is let fly…in whatever form we have stored within us.
Relationships are particularly good at triggering kundalini awakenings because our brain's primary matrix is constructed in relationship to our primary caregiver in infancy—thus relationship later in life can trigger the release of incredible psychic forces bound up in such complexes as avoidance/attraction, double-bind, relentless dilemma, rejection and abandonment. Complexes, are webs of associations created by intense or repeated activation of an archetype. Psychic storms based on these kinds of primary archetypal patterns build slowly over the course of a life, underneath the repressive lid of our ego's coping mechanisms and defenses.
One wonders what is left after all our compensations and camouflages are penetrated; is there a life at all if we are not doing all this secondary work of trying to prop ourselves up, defend ourselves or kill ourselves? But unless things build up to popping point, unless kundalini sparks up, we will remain in the clutches of the vice that we built to protect ourselves from the reality we were born into. The ego will not voluntarily go into that "hole" in our primary matrix…spirit however willingly goes there in equanimous embrace to find light in the dark. Kundalini is a spiritual force that arises spontaneously to save ourSelf from our self.
If you are congenitally schizophrenic, or interpret events in a mythic or highly personal way then it is best to steer clear of trying to raise kundalini, because the "self" is just not strong enough to ride out the dissolution of self and the intensity of archetypical psychic contents that arise during an awakening. Kundalini is a radical amplification of our subjective eye and subjective experience that is why those with unstable neurology can be driven over the deepend. I think this is probably what happens in the majority of mental breakdowns. Under kundalini's incideous power even the strongest brains can fall into morbid-grandiose-hypersubjectivity and think that the universe is made for them and that they control the weather and the stars.
I think this state of pathological grandiose inflation is the fate of many a Guru and rather than true transcendence it represents infantile fusion and indissociation, that is magically and mythically charged (e.g. the purple and red in spiral dynamics). This subjective-fusion with manifestation is similar to an infant's magical uroboric perspective; a state of oceanic indissociation or egocentric fusion, which is undifferentiated or "one with" local environs.
Some of the schizophrenic type symptoms of kundalini awakenings could be due to hypertonality of the nerves activating the release of Ca2+ thereby killing off neurons, axons and reducing the number of NMDA glutamate receptors. That is during the peak kundalini stage first there is abnormally high concentrations of glutamate and over excitation of nerve cells, followed by a hypo-glutamate period of burnout and recovery lasting 5 or more years until the glutamate receptor systems have reinstated themselves. Thus glutamate toxicity leads to a glutamate deficiency.
The NMDA receptor is activated by the neurotransmitter glycine as well as glutamate. It appears that it might be advisable to take glycine supplementation during awakening as it has calming rather than excitatory properties and is used in bipolar treatment and for hyperactivity. Also to reduce kundalini it might be worth investigating inhibitors such as L-lysine which functions as antagonist to glutamate receptors. Since lysine blocks the NMDA receptors it might protect them from damage during radical kundalini events. It is likely that it will also reduce the severity of such events.
In his book What Really Causes Schizophrenia, Harold Foster proposes that schizophrenia is not caused by excess dopamine but by excessive levels of a metabolite of adrenaline—adrenochrome. Adrenochrome acts as a hallucinogen, free radical generator and neurotoxin that interferes with biochemical systems and damages the thyroid. Dr. Foster suggests that treatment should include methods to reduce adrenaline producing stress and slow down its metabolism to adrenochrome. Sugar consumption and allergin exposure should also be reduced. Coupled with a supplemental program that includes high doses of niacin, thiamine or coenzyme Q10 along with desiccated thyroid to help thyroid damage.
There are common themes in the symbols and archetypes that arise during the energy flux of both kundalini and schizophrenia. As these images arise biochemically within us they themselves become the resonant filter via which we find synchronous information and events in the outer world to reinforce the energetic power of the archetype we are preoccupied with. This process of alchemy via correspondence between the inner and outer worlds is mostly geared into the visual cortex it seems. We project our interiors and this adds fuel to the heat of our internal flame. At this time the repressive mechanism of the prefrontal-Superego is reduced and we have more access to potent dream visuals, visions and the full spectrum of psychic supersenses—including precognition (temporal penetration) and bio-telepathic-navigation (nonlocality/spacial penetration).
Dreams are reflections of the archetypal psyche. Note that the dream life we have is inclusive but transcendent of who we are as a conditioned being. Dreams offer us a deeper human experience and understanding than we can arrive at during our waking state. They have originality, depth, genius, profundity and transpersonal meaning way beyond anything arrived at via the intellect. Dreams impact us at a species level to affect alchemical transformation via emotional-cellular retuning. Since dreams are our greatest teacher, that means that the archetypal layers of the psyche are actually superior to the intellect and the associative mind is a mere student or tool of this mind beyond the mind which is inconceivably vast and unfathomable. If we were exposed to the full impact of this greater mind without our normal restrictive filters we would probably never return to the limited state that we call sanity. Because the complexity, interrrelatedness, exquisite beauty, portent and love of the archetypal realm of the Gods would be such a shock to our habituated dissocation.
Cheese 'n' Rice…You wrote a book!