I Speedran Kundalini Psychosis (any%)
Cuckfucius here—welcome back to the Cyber Ascetics Collective.
A 19-year-old woman arrived at the emergency room unable to speak, refusing food, and frozen in rigid, sustained postures for nearly a week.
She had no prior psychiatric history. Family reported that for the past three months, she had been practicing Yoga and Pranayam intensively—self-taught from books and the internet, without guidance. Two months into her regimen, she began describing an “energy” rising from the base of her spine, sequentially “activating” each of her chakras.
Over time, she became convinced that people were talking about her and began hearing clear voices giving her commands. Her sleep deteriorated. Eventually, she declared that basic needs like hunger and thirst were “immaterial,” leading to severe food and fluid restriction.
When her family found her in a mute, immobile state, they brought her to the hospital. On examination, she had pallor, blunt affect, delusions of reference, somatic passivity, and auditory command hallucinations. Catatonia was confirmed with a Bush Francis Catatonia Rating Scale score of 13. She was stabilized with lorazepam and initiated on risperidone, leading to full resolution of catatonic symptoms and psychosis over the following weeks.
This presentation was diagnosed as schizophrenia, catatonic subtype, with features suggestive of Kundalini psychosis syndrome—a rare but documented state where unsupervised and intense yogic practices may precipitate psychotic episodes. Similar cases in literature describe patients experiencing visions, hallucinations, and somatic sensations attributed to “energy awakening,” often resolving with antipsychotic treatment.
While Kundalini practices are traditionally considered safe under experienced supervision, abrupt, unguided awakening attempts can trigger profound neuropsychiatric disturbances in vulnerable individuals.
(adapted from this case report)
My reaction to that information:
This essay is about my attempt to self-induce Kundalini Psychosis. It is ultimately a cautionary tale, and an investigation of a mind edging closer to delusion. It is only for educational and entertainment purposes—please proceed with caution.
300 days ago, I finally began to meditate every day.
I’d found a technique I could really jive with: Om Chanting.
For the longest time, I was under the impression that to do anything more “serious” than Om Chanting I needed to find a teacher or a guru. But just one problem—I don’t live in the middle of the freaking Himalayas.
At some point I came across a youtube video, where this dude Rajarshi Nandy said you don’t actually need a guru or an elaborate initiation to begin worshipping a deity. My interest was piqued. I’d attended a lot of Hindu temple as a child but never knew wtf was going on.
I gobbled Nandy’s content up like a suckling calf. Hours upon hours of the stuff. He seemed to me a little autistic for the Lord, but also very sincere. I liked his manner—just straight knowledge, not too much weird theatrical bullshit that “spiritual” people online often exhibit. He comes off as a normal but knowledgeable guy with nothing to prove or hide.
A combination of his insight and a conversation with my uncle led me to be drawn to a Hindu deity called “Bhairava”. It turned out my goat Dr. K had also done some Bhairava worship. Things were comin’ together…
So, it became time to transition from Om chanting to the “next level” of chanting a mantra for Bhairava.
This was in June, and the solstice was rapidly approaching.
I decided to set up a pseudo Sankalpa / Anushtana. These are sanskrit terms for a specific intention and a period of execution, respectively. For example, Lent can be thought of as a Christian Anushtana, a period of religious effort. And the Sankalpa would be the intention/resolve to give up XYZ during lent.
These periods of religious effort are very much “a thing” on the yogic/hindu/tantric path. Short bursts of intense practice also work really well for me as a burst-oriented person.
note: an actual Sankalpa/Anushtanam is customarily recommended by a teacher or guru (in my understanding). There are certain proper rituals for starting one that idk frick all about. Out of respect for that, I will refer to my experience as a “challenge”.
Here’s the setup I had for the challenge:
If I was gonna activate the forbidden Kundalussy to receive a little psychosis as a treat, I needed to take this thing seriously.
Main intention: complete 1 mala (108 repetitions of the mantra) at sunrise and sunset each day, from sunrise of June 21st to sunset of June 30th.
Additional Structure:
Fast from everything but water the day of the solstice, day 1
Keep to a “sattvic diet”. Vegetarian, local, fresh, whole foods. I ate kitchari (a rice and mung bean congee), fresh in-season local fruits, homemade vegetable soup, occasionally unsweetened yogurt.
Keep media consumption to a minimum; no social media or youtube/netflix etc.
Before chanting the mantra, do ~15 min Asana (yoga postures) and ~15min Pranayam (breathwork, mainly Kapalbhati and Nadi Shodhana)
With the groundwork laid out, let’s get into...
The Experience
There are five notable experiences I had during these few days. I’ll go through each in order of how strange or uncanny they were, from most normal to most mysterious.
Part 1: A Dream
The first night, I had a dream that included Bhairava’s imagery in it. At this point, even though I had decided to chant Bhairava’s mantra, I honestly did not know that much about him. I hadn’t done much targeted research, and hadn’t looked at many pictures. Nevertheless, I saw relatively clearly this image in my dream the first night:
This by itself is just a fun coinkydoinky. However it bears noting that all throughout the yogic & tantric canon, dreams can be considered to carry divine messages, instruction, or other spiritual content…
Part 2: Emotional Releases
On days 6 and 7 of the challenge I felt an uncharacteristic degree of anger and irritability. Perhaps this was due to the sleep lack building up, going to bed at 11pm and waking at 4:30am. Perhaps this was my friggin chakras friggin releasing some friggin energy. Perhaps this was suppressed emotional content coming up to breathe as the waters of my psyche stilled.
The final day of the challenge, I laughed so hard I cried at this video a friend had sent over:
As a dopamine-addicted citizen of online, I’m used to reacting to even the most gut-busting content with nary more than a polite nose exhale. As is the proper ettiquite.
This 53 second chicken video made me laugh til my eyes leaked. They leaked and leaked all over the table and cuck chair. I’m a freak man I was straight leaking my shit and it wouldn’t stop. I showed my partner the video; she had never seen me in such a state of such gleeful hysteria and did not find the content even slightly amusing.
On an emotional level it mostly went like this. Higher highs than normal and lower lows than normal. Hard to draw any conclusions from this alone as I was quite low on sleep, and thus naturally more emotional overall.
Part 3: Bana Bread
On day 4, I found myself in a somewhat dour mood and needing a nap. But when I went to lay down, I pulled out my phone. I was doing well at avoiding social media, so in lieu of that I trotted languidly from gmail to reuters to a go/baduk app. I felt like a tiger pacing the edges of its cage or a fat man checking the refrigerator or the tricycle kid from The Incredibles.
After 35 minutes, I became fed up with this malaise but not fed up enough to snap out of it. For one reason or another, I started chanting the mantra in my head. I asked Bhairava to help me either choose proper sleep or proper wakefulness. Enough of the liminality.
Upon the third recitation of the mantra, the door to the bedroom opened and my partner walked in. She had just baked a fresh Bana Bread, and cajoled me out of the bedroom and the backrooms of my mind to try a bite.
Here comes a theme:
Surely, this was nothing more than a sussy lil coinkydoinky. My partner happened to make Bana Bread and bring some at the exact moment I happened to ask the deity for help.
In the spirit of open-mindedness, I cannot fully say that the deity didn’t send her. A more devout person might’ve been fully convinced that the deity did in fact send the partner in armed with Bana Bread. But I am not fully convinced of this.
At the same time, I cannot say that it was fully a coincidence. I simply don’t know. I’m more sympathetic to the idea that these two things coincided completely randomly.
But then—does anything ever happen completely randomly?
The point here is not to be convinced one way or another. But rather to realize that this tension, this field of possibility opened up.
And with it, a degree of confusion, uncertainty. And what is delusion if not a high degree of confusion? And what is psychosis if not a high degree of delusion?
Before, if I was pacing liminal cyberspace and saved by my partner, it’s just an event. Normal shit.
But now, since I was in the midst of this spiritual challenge and happened to be chanting the mantra, the Normal Event shifted into a Potentially Normal Yet Potentially Supranormal Event. An uncollapsed superposition.
The slight change in backdrop of the situation, completely colored the situation for me. Not from blue to red, but from blue to bluish purple. Where someone else might see a reddish purple; a more supranatural event.
A less charitable way to say this is that in this moment I opened up more to “superstitious thinking”.
This “coloring” effect, turning a normal event into something a little bit more/different than normal, would continue during the challenge…
Part 4: Dude, Where’s My ASS?
This experience and the next were where things started to get weird.
During the middle of Day 4, I received a flurry of hysteric DMs from a number of people.
“Your ASS is gone, vanished without a trace—as if into thin air!” They shouted.
Of course, the onliners could know nothing of the state of my dummy thicc cheeks. They were referring to my facebook groups: Asian Spiritual Shitposting (ASS) and Western Spiritual Shitposting.
I opened up my laptop to check the situation, and lo and behold there they weren’t.
Both groups gone without a trace. Deleted from cyberspace entirely. I asked others if the groups were down for them, had my partner check out the situation from her account. No dice.
Completely gone!
Though it shames me to say it, these Facebook groups are the two largest marks I’ve left upon cyberspace. And the world at large, in one sense. They both have 100k+ members, thriving engagement, excellent memes, and jubilant, merry, and thoughtful atmospheres. The mods and I have poured hours of our life-energy into these spaces for many years now.
Upon hearing this (what should have been disastrous) news, I felt one thing:
Mild relief. Lightness.
I “should’ve” been beside myself. I “should’ve” been sad. Perhaps I was just stunned. All that effort down the drain! I told my partner, she freaked out a little on my behalf.
“B-but anon, you put so much work into those!”
But I just felt like “ah.. Finally”.
However:
I don’t think this reaction was necessarily what my “natural” one would’ve been.
Here again, the coloring of experience due to the challenge arose.
Here we must note: one of the things that drew me to Bhairava is the way in which he works.
Being a fierce, wrathful emanation of Shiva, it is said that he helps his devotees to liberation through a specific and intense process:
The blunt removal of obstacles on the path.
But there’s also a compassionate aspect—Bhairava will only give a devotee as much of a trial as they’re able to handle. There are some deities, like Kali, who will throw a devotee into the fire, burn away all their egoic BS in a swift, painful, and intense instance, allowing them to be reborn. Then other deities work in other ways entirely. Saraswati will guide a devotee to liberation through intellect and intuition, presenting The Way through music, art, literature, etc.
Each Hindu deity embodies a way, method, or path to liberation. People are different, and the beauty there is that there’s A Way for everyone, from the NEET manlet normie laypeople to the extreme Aghori cannibal chad renunciants.
This little piece of lore once again colored the way I saw the ASS situation entirely. I couldn’t help but have a little thought whispering in my ear: “this is exactly the way Bhairava does things”.
Because let’s face it: in the ultimate calculation, being attached to Facebook groups is absolutely keeping me trapped in CyberSamsara.
The entire point of this blog is to help or inspire others OUT of CyberSamsara.
If my facebook groups were deleted, that would be ultimately GOOD for me. It is out of attachment that I cannot bring myself to delete them.
This has never happened in the 4+ years the groups have been around.
So: why did it happen now, during this exact challenge?
Here came another coinkydoinky that suddenly didn’t feel like as much of a coinkydoinky as normal. It now felt somewhere between normal and supranormal.
…But here’s a crucial point:
No matter the frame, the idea that Bhairava was somehow intervening at these moments is absolutely ridiculous.
From a skeptical perspective, the fancifulness of this idea is clear. There’s no scientific evidence for the existence of any deity, much less this one hyperspecifc Hindu one. We’re all familiar with that frame.
But even from a Hindu perspective, from that internal logic, the idea of divine intervention in this case is ridiculous.
In the yogic/tantric systems, it is understood that to even begin to make direct contact with a deity requires literal years of preparation. My guy Rajarshi from earlier recommends doing 1000 malas before even beginning to expect any sort of divine-flavored experience. At my current pace of 1-2 malas per day that would take two years. And at this point, I was at like mala number 8.
It also requires a certain constitution—there are those who try for years and never receive a “genuine” experience of the deity (however that’s defined in the Tantric system).
No matter the frame, the idea that Bhairava was intervening in my life, I have to conclude, is fanciful and ridiculous.
But STILL, like 10% of my mind wanted to go there. This is exactly the danger of unsupervised intensive spiritual activity. The mind will play tricks on you—and in extreme cases, if you’re hungry enough for divine experiences, the mind will manufacture them entirely…
…When the only thing that’s actually happening is you’re losing your f*cking marbles.
Just to send this point home, consider: the deities are understood to be very transcendental, very detached from human affairs.
Pretend you’re an ant and the divine is a human. As an ant, how would you go about getting a human’s attention? One way would be to go and stand at the same spot every day and wave to the human. Humans are naturally thinking about a million things other than a single ant. But if YOU as a human, had an ant show up at the same time and place each day and wave to you, you might one day notice.
This is one way to understand pretty much any spiritual practice in any religion. Showing up to pray, or meditate, or chant, etc. every day is kind of like an ant showing up consistently to wave at a human. If you get lucky, the divine might finally notice and turn toward you. It might even help you. I know that if I noticed an ant or a bee trying to get my attention I’d be tickled, and might even wave back or set out some sugar water or a leaf for them~!
This is all to say: no matter the frame, believing that my groups got deleted by divine intervention is a complete hallucination...
...almost. The only problem is that the coinkydoinky remains, along with the irremovable coloring.
At this point, I was learning in an embodied way how people can become so deeply superstitious. If I kept this challenge up for long enough, as the colored coinkydoinkies piled up it would grow harder and harder to see them as simple confusions of the mind.
They would slowly morph into “Divine Truth”...
In the end, it turned out the groups (and many others) had been deleted due to a system-wide Facebook glitch.
They were fully reinstated the next day.
Part 5: Sleep Paralysis
On Day 8 of the challenge, I wake at 4:30am as normal. I go about my yoga, pranayam, and chanting. But shortly after the sun rises, I know I’m not going to make it.
A big honkin’ case of the eepies is coming, and it’s coming fast. I cook up my rice and mung beans for the day, and have a bowl. Remarkable how delicious a bowl of rice and mung beans can taste, and the salt and pepper on top give the whole bowl an absolutely divine panache.
Belly full of warm gooey sattvic goodness, I lay down on the couch. I’m only gonna sleep for a moment.
As I nap, I dream of nothing in particular. It’s one of those naps where you’re just out like someone whacked you over the head with a cuck chair made o’ cement.
After some time, I’m awoken.
“Good morning, anon!” My gf “Mikasa” is awake (not her real name fml). She’s wearing a grey shirt.
I say goodmorning, and in my eepiness, I close my eyes again as she starts to make breakfast in the kitchen.
~
A little later, the door to the living room opens again.
Mikasa walks in. She’s wearing a grey shirt.
“Good morning, anon!” She says, rubbing her eyes.
Didn’t you wake up already? I think for half a second, before realizing: I must’ve been dreaming the first time.
I open my left eye to look up at her and say “mornin~”. My right eye won’t open, but I also don’t want it to. I’m so sooo very comfy.
Mikasa goes into the kitchen and starts rummaging around for her coffee mug. I go back to sleep.
~
The door to the living room opens.
Mikasa walks in.
She stands at the corner of the couch, and I can half-see her through my left eye.
“Mornin’ babe” I say to her.
She just stares at me.
