One of the worrying things about the current Evangelical emphasis on the “Holy Spirit Experience” is the comparison a number of people have made between it and the phenomenon of “kundalini energy” in tantric and yogic Hinduism. Such concerns are, to this writer, compounded by the fact that since the time of Wesley, an apparently identical experience has been tied to radically different theologies (“an experience searching for a theology”). It’s been to different groups intended for sinless perfection, for holiness, for service, for joy, for love, for spiritual gifts or just for evidence. Furthermore, one searches in vain in Scripture for such a pivotal “second experience,” unless already conditioned to find it there. That’s a serious omission on the Spirit’s part.
As a “neutral” example this scientific study takes for granted the “ecumenical” nature of the kundalini experience, noting that it is regarded as a spiritual awakening in all its cultural settings:
In this study we aim to focus on kundalini awakenings, defined as spiritually transformative energetic awakenings, occurring across a variety of cultural traditions, including China (the vital energy is termed chi), Japan (termed ki), the Hebrew tradition (termed shekinah), the Christian tradition (termed Holy Spirit), and that of African tribesmen, the !Kung (termed !Kia). Across traditions characteristics of these awakenings may include mystical phenomena such as changes in egoic structure or sense of self, a sense of union or merging with universal consciousness, and shifts in perceptions, beliefs and behaviors; the initial experience may also range from mild to dramatic.
In this lumping together, they seem justified by the results of their questionnaires amongst disparate groups:
Results: Subjects reported that the entire energetic awakening experience was mystical, involving feelings of expansion (including conscious awareness leaving the body), and a sense of being enveloped in light or love. Of descriptors of experiences of energy, 85% of participants reported unusual flows of energy through or around the body. Principle triggers for these experiences included concentrating on spiritual matters, the presence of a spiritually developed person, and intense meditation or prayer.
Compare this with what Nicky Gumbel has written about the Alpha “Holy Spirit Weekend” (old quotes, which may well have been updated in new literature, but without any fundamental revision):
People doing Alpha are told to expect all manner of things might happen to them. We are told, “Sometimes, when people are filled, they shake like a leaf in the wind. Others find themselves breathing deeply as if almost physically breathing in the Spirit.” (Gumbel 1994:136). It is not restricted to this, however.
“Physical heat sometimes accompanies the filling of the Spirit and people experience it in their hands or some other part of their bodies. One person described a feeling of ‘glowing all over’. Another said she experienced ‘liquid heat’. Still another described ‘burning in my arms when I was not hot’.” (Gumbel 1994:136)
I’ll leave these parallels to your consideration, though remember that Gumbel’s formative experience arose out of the Toronto Blessing phenomena. You may choose, like many Charismatics, to say that every spiritual truth has its pagan counterfeits. But of course that begs the question of whether the “Pentecostal experience” is a spiritual reality, if it is not clearly taught in Scripture.
Here, though, I want to use the comparison to launch an examination of the question of notorious fraud and spiritual abuse in Christian Pentecostal cults, from Latter Rain to the New Apostolic Reformation, starting from the same phenomenon in a kundalini Cult. John Collins’s research website on William Branham includes an article about a student of Kundalini Yoga who discovered that her mentor, Yogi Bhajan, was deeply involved in “sexual abuse, child abuse, homophobia, exploitation, business fraud, and drugs and arms trafficking.” Now, in Hinduism, kundalini energy is about spiritual enlightenment, so how could the enlightened guru who enables students to experience enlightenment too be such a villain?
The uncomfortable answer must be that whatever it is, it is the same reason that a succession of Pentecostal and Charismatic leaders, down more than a century, have been exposed for pretty much the same range of evils – including political violence, at the Colonia Dignidad torture centre in Chile, closely linked to Branhamism. The real difficulty is that these sharks have been tolerated and celebrated in the Church for the very reason that they have been able to impart the spiritual experience they promise in public to their followers, who are for the most part well-motivated folks seeking the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and often receiving it, as far as they can judge.
But it’s more than that. As I’ve noted here before, the testimony of converted “escapees” like Costi Hinn is that the villains (like his own Uncle Benny) actually believe their own teaching at some narcissistic level. The “backroom” shredding of prayer requests, internet searches for “words of knowledge,” suitcases full of cash, and so on, are paradoxically accompanied by unfeigned backstage religiosity. John Collins’s inside knowledge suggests that the leaders’ moral failings are excused by a genuine belief that they are apostles bringing God’s Kingdom in; and he even suggests that miracles known to be fraudulent are intended (weirdly) to increase people’s faith for real miracles. What this suggests is that the spiritual experiences they minister to thousands, by slaying on of hands or flourishing of jackets, are experiences they have themselves had in the past, and attributed to Jesus.
It seems to me impossible, biblically, that the receiving of the Holy Spirit can coexist with “sexual abuse, child abuse, homophobia, exploitation, business fraud, and drugs and arms trafficking.” And it is equally problematic to suggest that such people, operating under some other power either spiritual or physiological, could ever be used by God to impart the Holy Spirit to genuinely seeking believers in Toronto Airport Vineyard, IHOP Kansas City, or wherever, without impugning God’s own holiness.
And that brings me to Simon Magus, who in Acts 8 is described as gaining some kind of belief in Christ and being baptized. But he was roundly condemned by Peter for trying to buy the ability to confer the real Holy Spirit (rather than a particular Charismatic experience) with money. Tradition has it that Simon went on to be a thorn in the flesh of the early church by leading a proto-gnostic, sexually promiscuous, cult. But can anyone suppose that, condemned for offering money for the ability to confer the Holy Spirit, there are any circumstances in which he could do so after Peter’s rebuke? It doesn’t seem beyond the bounds of possibility, though, that a magician like Simon could have discovered how to control whatever kundalini energy is, thus imparting to his followers “a sense of being enveloped in light or love,” which he would naturally attribute to the Spirit of Jesus whilst raking in the cash. And if he could, why wouldn’t he?
The experience would have been genuine – but not the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ. So maybe the criteria for having the “guarantee” of the latter (2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:14) are completely different from an experience shared across many religions. Perhaps that’s why such an “awakening experience” doesn’t actually appear in Scripture, much as we might want it to.
