A reader by the name of Dave recently left this fantastic comment:
It’s interesting you start with shamanism because i recently found links between it and yoga practices myself. What i want to ask you is if you will explain the kriya yoga techniques in your book, not specifically kriya yoga—which stems from hatha yoga principally—and the facts of human hibernation. Catalepsy is a real condition and i think that the kriya yoga techniques enable this state to be entered, chiefly through kechari mudra [in which the tip of the tongue is arched backward to touch the uvula]. I could be wrong about this and would invite you to shed some light on it. However, considering all the nerves and arteries in the neck which are manipulated by kechari and fasting (shamanic torture technique which reduces metabolism) all have specific effects on the physiology of the body, i believe a trance state of catalepsy is indeed possible.
The only previous clue I had come across that was at all related to this was for jyoti mudra. There, in pressing on one’s eyes with the little fingers, one unintentionally invokes the oculocardiac reflex, which measurably slows the heart and respiratory rate even in adults (and can kill infants). But when you look into catalepsy at all, it’s intriguing how closely it matches Yogananda’s description of the suspended-animation state of sabikalpa samadhi:
My body became immovably rooted; breath was drawn out of my lungs as if by some huge magnet…. The flesh was as though dead, yet in my intense awareness I knew that never before had I been fully alive.
From Wikipedia:
Symptoms [of catalepsy] include: rigid body, rigid limbs, limbs staying in same position when moved (waxy flexibility), no response, loss of muscle control, and slowing down of bodily functions, such as breathing.
From The Catalepsy Test: Its Ups and Downs:
[C]atalepsy can be induced [in mice] by neck and, to a lesser extent, tail-pinch… These environmental stimuli may potentiate catalepsy by triggering the animal’s natural defense mechanisms. In fact, morphine catalepsy itself may be an “artifically” magnified defense mechanism, that is, “playing
dead”….
The closest (vestigial) thing we human mammals have to a tail is the coccyx or tailbone. And the lotus posture, with each foot placed atop the thigh of the opposite leg, often while sitting on a cushion (or soil, or slanted rock) to arch the pelvis forward, places significant pressure on one’s coccyx, and on the nerves in it. If one were looking to effect a “tail pinch” on our species, one could hardly do better than that.
Interestingly, “catalepsy can be measured without any apparatus, by simply placing the rat or mouse in an unusual position on a flat surface or in the home cage. The experimenter can place the rat into a ‘buddha’ position (by crossing the limbs) and measure the latency until the posture is changed.” That’s not (AFAIK) for there being any relation between the assumption of lotus-like postures and the induction of catalepsy, but is rather just because lotus-like postures are the “worst” way you can twist up a body, to then see how long it takes to untwist it.
However all of that turns out in the biology and neurology, Dave’s comment is exactly the sort of thing, and exactly the sort of delightfully “reductionistic” thinking, I was hoping to solicit when I opened comments here. Catalepsy is indeed a neurologically and biochemically real state; and wouldn’t it be amazing if various “neck and tail pinches” in yoga and meditation were unknowingly invoking that state, with that then being mistaken for the outward signs of divine communion via the “withdrawal of life-force into the spine”?
And then, geek that I am, I remembered the real, physiological basis for the Vulcan nerve-pinch:
It is possible to lose consciousness when pressure is applied to the vagus nerve in the neck. This can occur through internal stimulation such as vomiting, or can be an on-the-field treatment for people who have tachycardia. Since the vagus nerve directly influences the heart, a massage on it does slowly decrease the heartbeat rhythm. However violent hits to the vagus nerve can cause (in weaker hearts) heart failure completely.
Similarly, the subclavian nerve pinch is known in certain Asian martial arts. Properly applied, it can render a human unconscious for several minutes.
Just as shocking, monkeys too are susceptible to pinch-induced catalepsy:
[L]earned helplessness has been studied in Rhesus Macaques using inescapable shock, evoked through stress situations like forced swimming, behavioral despair tasks, tails suspension and pinch induced catalepsy; situations that render the monkey incapable of controlling the environment.
As to whether humans, too, are then susceptible to the same manipulation, to some significant degree: If you’re a betting man….
Hi Geoff, sorry if the following comment is a bit long winded.
Thanks for the shout out. I had a feeling you would enjoy my comments on physiology. I used to post at cultbusters SRF. I’ve left some messages there going into more detail about the physiology stuff. But having done a little research myself (i am not a doctor) i’ve been trying to understand the cataleptic state from a purely physiological point of view. The only reason i bothered pursuing it is because of Hamid Bey’s feat of burial, which has specific and real methods of accomplishing. Let me speak a little of what Bey did.
Firstly, look up fakir on google and you should find a page that describes the methods fakirs use to induce catalepsy. It doesn’t give the actual methods but just generally describes them. Google “hamid bey fakir”. I wish i had a link for you but hey.
So Bey wrote a book called “my experiences preeceding 5,000 burials”, wherein he describes the general method of inducing his catalepsy. He fasts for a few days beforehand, then he does some kind of meditation, then he presses on the carotid arteries in the neck, his tongue automatically goes backwards and in with an inhalation, and he falls into catalepsy. The pulse registers about 3 bpm. He reduced his heart rate from the resting rate of about 87 bpm (note, this is much higher than normal) to around 25 bpm. The pressure on the neck etc reduced it to 3 bpm.
The neck seems to be where a lot of the action occurs. The carotid arteries are pressurised by putting the head on the breastbone (jaladhanda mudra), by bending the head backwards, by constricting the epiglotis, by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth or by kechari mudra. Undoubtedly, kechari seems to exert the most pressure. If you look in an encyclopaedia on respiration you should find the details of the various nerves, glands, arteries, veins etc that are in the neck.
There is a magic book called “Swami Mantra” which gives the instructions on how to enter catalepsy by pressing on the neck. Swami Mantra is like dangerous magicians tricks from the East. Try to find the technique online and you will come up with zero on it. You have to buy this book to find out. I didn’t bother getting it because i smoke and this trick is dangerous for weak hearts.
Now, there are frogs that hibernate in the winter, and their tongues go back and somehow they survive on inward secretions of glucose. Interestingly, when i googled kechari mudra i found a website that said that there is supposed to be a part of the brain the tongue can touch which is the amrita (nectar) said to drip from the brain, and that this nectar is like food which keeps the yogi alive. You should be able to find this in a google search. It was from Swami Satyananda Saraswati of the bihar school of yoga.
So, a few things more are worth mentioning. Hypnotists in the last century used to be able to put certain people into a trance of catalepsy. These days, magicians refer to catalepsy as the body just being rigid so that they can stand on a body placed between 2 chairs. The old form seems to have been forgotten. People sometimes appeared to “die” and were found alive in the morgue. The “playing dead” thing appears to actually happen to certain people. I can’t think of exactly why this would have arisen evolution-wise.
Hamid Bey played dead when he was in a war zone and survived.
I recommend you get the book “the mysterious kundalini” by Vasant G Rele. He identifies kundalini with the right vagus nerve. The lotus posture isn’t the ideal one for putting pressure on the perineum. The half lotus is for that. Then a bandha that contracts the anus muscles and perineum area slightly upwards, is used. Chin lock is used. There are 3 mudras, only 2 of which i recall being mentioned. These are, surprise surprise, yoni mudra and kechari mudra. It is too complicated for me to go in to, so i highly recommend you get the book if you are interested.
So, to kriya yoga. There are 4 main techniques. Maha Mudra, which utilises the chin lock and holding of the breath. Then navi kriya, which is chin lock, then a sudden thrust back of the head which is held for a little while. Then the breathing part. This breathing, slow and deep, is basically hyperventilation except you use the abdomen and not the chest and you try to slow the breath to 2 breaths per minute. It is hyperventilation because overbreathing in oxygen causes the carbon dioxide levels to decrease and blood vessels in the brain constrict, which lowers the amount of blood oxygen to the brain. Then finally there is yoni mudra, which is a sensory deprivation technique and pressing on the eyes.
My guess is this: kechari plus hyperventilation and pressure on the eyes, slows the metabolism by reducing the amount of blood the heart pumps through the body so that the pressure of the bandhas and mudras “squeezes” the blood from the designated areas and makes it go inwards closer to the heart. Because the yogi is sitting still for long periods of time, metabolism and carbon dioxide levels go down and the resting rate allows suspensions in breathing so that there may be 1 breath per minute. It may be possible for people to practice for years so that their basal heart rate is very low to enable them to sit there not breathing for 5 minutes.
As for the yogi burials, my guess is that placing the body in a cold place affects the temperature of the body and acts like a kind of “freezing chamber” which significantly reduces metabolism. Some people have been saved from drowning because the mammalian reflex has kicked in and “frozen” their body to stop them from drowning.
Ok, so far so good. What all this amounts to is the effort to consciously induce an NDE and an OBE. Seeing light “at the end of the tunnel” happens to people when they have an NDE, it just doesn’t always look like the spiritual eye. Anil Nerode, famous mathematician and son of Sri Nerode, one of Yogananda’s early teachers, says that he sees light but it differs from the classic visuals of the spiritual eye that Yogananda depicts. And Anil believes all these effects are physiological, not mystical. He knew Yogananda when he was a boy! He said Yogananda used to use parlor tricks like mediums.
To me, it is significant that the only people who claim to see the spiritual eye that i have written to and describe it the way Yogananda did are familiar with SRF. This leads me to believe that some form of hypnotism or suggestion is involved. I recently purchased “How God Changes Your Brain” by Andrew Newberg and he says that our capacity for being susceptible to suggestion is very high, especially in meditative states. However, it appears to me that the “light at the end of the tunnel” effect is pretty universal and it basically has to do with a lack of blood oxygen to the brain.
So put it all together – hyperventilation, pressure on the eyes, still posture, bandas, mudras and voila! – a self induced NDE with a light at the end of the tunnel.
Sorry to make this so long, but i have been pondering all this for years. One last thing. The optic nerve, pineal gland, medulla oblongata, and vagus nerve are all connected. Therefore, by lifting the eyes (sambhavi mudra) pressure is put on all these places. If we assume that the kundalini is the vagus nerve, and this nerve is directly connected to the heart via the medulla, then we have somewhat of an explanation for what may be happening to people who have kundalini experiences. It appears to be the case that when the heart rate dips below the basal rate, various contortions of nerves occurs, the tongue could go back by itself, the fingers assume mudras by themselves, people perform yoga postures automatically, and so on.
I decided to test something out myself. I rolled my tongue back to constrict the back of my throat, and let the tongue resume its normal position while keeping the throat locked while i meditated. Lo and behold, after about 20 minutes my tongue began to slowly go back by itself! I seem to have changed my body now because every time i decide i want to meditate the tongue goes back automatically.
Couple of interesting things to look into – sleep apnea and fasting. A study was done on fasting which showed that on the 3rd day into it, the cells completely stopped decaying and rejuvenating. Obviously, this three day measure must have some importance for budding fakirs!
Dave, thank you for all that amazing information—I hadn’t even known that those books existed. As you noted, you’ve done years of (humbling) research there that I hadn’t even thought of doing. I’ll definitely follow up on all of the pointers you’ve given, and will greedily incorporate that info into SOTB.
Vasant G. Rele, Mysterious Kundalini: The Physical Basis of the Kundali Hatha Yoga in Terms of Western Anatomy
Hamid Bey, My Experiences Preceding 5,000 Burials
Sam Dalah, Swami Mantra. Unfortunately it’s out-of-print; but there’s this review … and holy fuck, it’s available as a PDF! But they only accept Visa/AmEx or AlertPay for payment! Arrrgggghh!! But, if you register for an AlertPay account and log in to make that payment, then suddenly—magically, even—it will accept MasterCard!!!
Sometimes I just want to scream.
P.S. Not to tell tales out of school, but this and this is what happens when you leave Directory Browsing enabled on a website. What you do with that information is between you and your conscience/FSM; you may wish to consider the fact that those scans of not-in-public-domain books are (probably) themselves breaches of copyright, for which the original author is, in all likelihood, receiving nada. (Just because a book is out of print doesn’t mean that you can legally make copies of it: copyright and in-print status are completely separate ideas. That is, a book can be in copyright but out of print, out of copyright [i.e., in public domain] but in print, in copyright and in print, or out of copyright and out of print … multiplied by every country in the world.)
If you steal from a thief (who appears to be working out of Bangladesh) who doesn’t rightfully own the stuff he’s fencing in the first place, is that really theft?
Hey Geoff, i am humbled that you will incorporate some of the info i gave you. I really did honestly think you would have known a lot of this stuff already. well, we all learn all the time i guess.
Yeah, i found that site with the PDF of Swami Mantra as well and it didn’t bloody work! Hopefully you can get the book from somewhere. Let me know how the catalepsy is accomplished if you do get the book. I’m not going to practice it on myself though – the fakir has to be taken out of the condition by other people and i probably have a weak heart from years of ciggies. Incidentally, the studies on yogis that were conducted by none other than Swami Dhirananda (Basu Kumar Bagchi, who actually wrote a lot of the SRF lessons) showed that when Yogis claimed to be able to make their hearts stop or calm, they performed the valsalva maneouvre. Kids do this to themselves. They hyperventilate then try to breathe out while not allowing the breath to go out. This actually momentarily stops the heart beating, rendering the person unconscious. Needless to say, this is very dangerous for older and unhealthy people. Don’t try this at home, oldies. lol
You play the guitar right? I do too. Probably not your style, but i love playing Satriani. I’ve been trying to send you a private message but you don’t leave any contact address anywhere except for MySpace, and i live in the UK which means i cannot access it. When i posted the above message before a screen came up blank so i didn’t know if you received it.
I’m sure you will get to the bottom of this phenomena called catalepsy. If you study enough you might figure out how it all works. I haven’t quite figured it out myself. Just clues along the way so far. I bought your book “science of the soul” last year and it is certainly very detailed. I don’t know how you are going to fit all the info you need to into a book of around 300 pages – i am imagining that SOTB will run into 700 pages.
Swami Mantra is very expensive. The PDF was a lot cheaper but i never managed to get it. And by the way, don’t you inadvertently top yourself experimenting with any of that stuff before you write the book!
PS the pressing on the eyes slowing the heart thing, is this something that happens to everybody or only certain persons? If people died from pressing on the eyes i would be quite astounded.
Nice philosophical-kind of question about theft. With potentially practical implications! I wouldn’t try to buy it from that guy in Bangladesh myself. Just to be on the safe side. Unless you already did? Feel free to email me any time and do let me know how the catalepsy is accomplished.
Don’t you think it is interesting how these magicians figured out this stuff all those eons ago? You remember the ball under the armpit trick? Yogananda was using that too. That is, unless we can establish whether Kriya yoga can induce the cataleptic state. Until then, it is safe to assume Yogananda cheated.
Here’s the direct link for the PDF: Swami and Mantra
And just to be fair, here’s the link for my first book, The Science of the Soul (The New Age publisher of that book has been withholding my royalty cheques for that anyway since 2005. That is what happens with “seekers of Truth” when you turn all maya-influenced and skeptical.) “The Internet giveth, and the Internet taketh away.”
You’re right, it’s going to be a “challenge” to fit SOTB into 300 pages. But if it ends up being twice that long, maybe it’ll work to split it into two paperback volumes.
According to Wikipedia, the oculocardiac reflex “is especially sensitive in neonates and children, and must be monitored, usually by an anaesthesiologist, during paediatric ophthalmological surgery, particularly during strabismus correction surgery. However, this reflex may also occur with adults. Bradycardia, junctional rhythm, asystole, and very rarely death, can be induced through this reflex.” As far as I know, though, the risk of death is just in eye/facial surgery, or from the eye muscles getting pressured directly from fractured facial bones, not from simply indirectly pressing on the eyes. Also, as far as I know, that reflex is something everyone has. (Though I’ve also seen papers about pinch-induced catalepsy being heritable in lab mice.)