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| 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...
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