As I am ploughing through John Horgan’s Rational Mysticism: Spirituality Meets Science in the Search for Enlightenment,[1] which arrived by mail two days ago, I feel slightly annoyed. I am well into the second chapter, but I am finding little of what I am looking for. And then I bump into familiar words. “Why is a mushroom a more absurd route to God,” the author asks one of his interviewees, theologian Steven Katz of Boston University, “than kundalini yoga or flagellation or the study of Kabala?”[2] As I re-read the words “kundalini yoga,” I take a deep breath, which reminds me of my regular yoga practice. Without warning, my whole body is electrified by a strong current rushing up my spine. Staring in front of me, I freeze rigid. The current pulsates through my entire body for about a minute, and then it subsides. My eyes unlock. As my body relaxes, I look back on the page. Kundalini yoga for true, which suggests that Horgan’s book is not entirely in vain.

Footnotes

1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

2. Op. cit., p. 44.