Dr. Greenwell is the author of Energies of Transformation: A Guide to the Kundalini Process, published in four countries, and essays in several spiritual anthologies, God in All Worlds and Voices on the Threshold of Tomorrow. She is currently completing her second book entitled Freedom Now: Secrets of Psychological and Spiritual Evolution. 

Kundalini awakening produces many varieties of change in the consciousness of the experiencer. The reason for using spiritual practices that induce an awakening is to promote these changes. Recent brain research suggests that specific reactions occur in the brain during spiritual practices which may be the cause of mystical experiences. The yogis have been describing this for hundreds of years. Dr. Greenwell will explore ancient and modern methods of producing these changes, and describe the kinds of short-term and long-term shifts in consciousness that she has seen in clients over the last ten years of work with people who are in a Kundalini process. She will discuss the activating of Kundalini and its consequences in ritual, spiritual practice and spontaneously, and the possible evolutionary advantages of stimulating these changes. Excerpts will be included from Sri Aurobindo's writings related to Kundalini, which she used extensively in her doctoral dissertation. 

Energies of Transformation is available from Amazon.com 

From Energies of Transformation: 

This book is about the subtle energy of the life force, the pure consciousness beyond mind and the ecstatic experience of spiritual awakening. It also tells of physical collapse, psychic chaos, and personality upheaval, those elements of human transformation that uproot individuals to the core. It tells the stories of people, both ancient and modern, who have discovered and integrated an experience that pushes the edges of their sanity and their divinity. And it is a guide for survival and transformation. 

It appears that when people pray, meditate, or turn inward with great intensity to find "God", what they may ultimately experience is the sat-chit-ananda of the ancient Indian scriptures. Sat is existence or beingness, the substance or essence that is all things. Eastern scriptures state that prior to creation there was only sat, one without a second, undivided. It exists always and everywhere. Chit is cosmic intelligence or knowledge that fills everything, a consciousness without personal identity. Ananda is ecstatic bliss.  Indian pandits identify these three qualities as the essential nature of existence. Direct intuition of them becomes possible following the eruption of Kundalini energy, which is latent in each of us. When this primal, intense energy awakens it seems to move with intentionality through the body and psyche and is believed by eastern mystics to have the power to transform a person at the cellular level. 

Aurobindo also called light a transformative element of consciousness, indicating that one who has quieted the mind and heart, life and body, can become open to an inwardly visible downward flow of light that stimulates the luminous inner force of transformation.