The Serpent in the Marketplace: Global Gurus and the Competition for Authentic Kuṇḍalinī (Co-presenting with Anya Foxen)

This paper examines the teachings of three global gurus—Yogi Bhajan, Swami Muktananda, and Osho—who made the concept of Kuṇḍalinī central to their teachings. By the mid-20th century, the “standard model” of Kuṇḍalinī had generally coalesced. And so, far more than their predecessors, the gurus of the 1960s and onwards became actors in a marketplace where they were competing to differentiate their teachings from that standard, but also from each other. Though it is not the beginning of Kuṇḍalinī's “popularization,” this period also marks a juncture where, in the popular imagination, Kuṇḍalinī becomes inextricably bound to the idea of yoga. As Kuṇḍalinī becomes a commonly understood currency of spiritual experience, each teacher strives to present his particular approach to it as superior. On the one hand, the “Kundalini Yoga” of Yogi Bhajan became an easily reproducible branded method that presented itself as placing the control in the hands of the practitioner while preserving the authority of the guru. On the other hand, the spontaneous śaktipāt of teachers like Swami Muktananda, which asks the practitioner to surrender to the guru, to the energy (śakti), and ultimately to the divine positioned the guru as the ultimate source of not only authority but authentic experience. Meanwhile, eschewing both standards of authority, Osho branded himself as the guru of radical authenticity by insisting that neither the method nor grace of a teacher could override the individual path of each experiencer.