Satsang with Jesus

One of the Kansas City prophets

“Kundalini Warning” is a book by Andrew Strom, a Charismatic Christian critical of many strands of the current Charismatic movement. Strom believes that the prosperity gospel, the movement around the “Kansas City Prophets”, the Toronto Blessing and the more recent Lakeland Revival have been invaded by demonic spirits and turned into spiritual counterfeits. He also attacks the Bethel ministry in California around Bill and Beni Johnson.

Interestingly, Strom makes a direct connection between the forms of revivalism he rejects and the concept of “kundalini”. In certain forms of Hinduism, kundalini is a spiritual force or energy which is said to be dormant in the human body, but can be activated by certain forms of meditation. In a more general sense, kundalini is connected to shakti, the creative cosmic force, sometimes personified as a goddess and identified with the Divine itself. In this sense, too, kundalini can affect humans by dramatically descending upon them. Some Hindu gurus are said to have the ability to transmit shakti simply by touching the forehead of a devotee. Various Hindu-inspired groups active in the West promote kundalini, and the concept has also surfaced within the New Age milieu. To Strom, kundalini is Satanic and demonic. The author believes that the Charismatic movement has begin to manifest “pagan” and “New Age” tendencies, and that this is due to the pervasive influence of kundalini.

You may disagree with this theological interpretation if you wish, but it's surely interesting to note that Strom's purely empirical descriptions of the “manifestations” accompanying certain revivals are similar to those apparently associated with kundalini. The manifestations are often physical, and include falling, bodily spasms, uncontrolled laughter and strange noises. Some Christian revival groups are into things which do sound “New Age” (in the broad sense): trance states, attempts to connect with “angels”, astral travel, orbs of light, deceased people appearing in visionary dreams, the creation of “portals” to the supernatural realm or golden dust being created out of thin air. The Bethel ministry is very explicit on this point, saying that Christians have to take back spiritual truths which the New Age has counterfeited! There is an unmistakably erotic undertone in some forms of Charismatic revival, with the believer being the “lover” of Jesus (Strom never makes the comparison, but this is similar to certain forms of Hindu devotion, as when devotees of Krishna identify with his female consort Radha).

Strom's approach is more traditional, saying that preaching of repentance is central to a real revival, not the obsessive seeking of “experiences”. For some reason, his book contains very few Biblical quotations, but it's obvious that he has Paul's rebukes to the Corinthians in mind. Paul, like Strom, wasn't against “manifestations” per se, but attempted to discipline the outpourings at Corinth, for instance by demanding that people didn't “speak in tongue” all at once, or that the glossolalia be translated to human speech by prophetic interpreters.

“Kundalini Warning” raises a number of questions. For instance, why do so many charismatic revivals end in chaos? Why is it so easy for the demons to “get through” and possess the believers? A cessationist would surely draw certain conclusions from this! Conversely, what about Paul's journey to the Third Heaven? Wasn't that an “out of body experience”? Didn't the Old Testament prophets do some pretty strange things? If the solution is to “test the spirits”, why can't some “angels” or “orbs of light” be from God? Does the author know, empirically, that people trained at Bethel are spiritually worse off than people trained at, say, average Southern Baptist seminaries?

But yes, Andrew Strong is probably right that it *is* the same phenomenon at work both at Toronto Vineyards meetings and certain satsangs...