Kundalini Profile Survey Analysis

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The Kundalini Profile Survey is part of the Emerging Sciences Foundation's Kundalini Experimental Project hosted on the Brilliano collaboration tool. The survey contains 268 five-point likert scale questions, open text fields, and questions about the impact of a person's spiritual experiences. The analysis documented on this page is being conducted by the Emerging Sciences Foundation's Kundalini Data Insights team. The complete source code for all analysis presented here can be found on the Kundalini Discover project in GitHub.

To participate in the Kundalini Experimental Project and contribute important research data, please visit the Kundalini Experimental Project page on the ESF website.

Analysis Goals

The Kundalini Profile Survey was created to document the types of spiritual experiences people are having, and associated physical and psychological experiences.

Analysis on the Kundalini Profile Survey has a few basic goals:

  • Discover groupings of Kundalini experiences that occur together.
  • Explore the relationship between different experience types and other physical and psychological experiences.
  • Create an empirical, data-driven way of classifying a person's spiritual experiences.
  • Lay the groundwork for future experimentation on Kundalini by providing important measures that can be used to track progress. Future research will focus on potential ways to enhance or accelerate the Kundalini process. Kundalini is seen as the biological basis of all spiritual experiences.

Summary Information

To date, 338 people from all walks of life and from across the globe have participated in the Kundalini Profile Survey.

Age and Sex

There has been broadly an equal participation from men and women, although there were slightly more women who took part. People of all ages have taken part in the survey with the majority of respondants being around the age of 30.


Sex of Survey Participants
Age of Survey Participants

Core Experience Summary

The survey contains a list of 66 "core experience" questions describing classical Kundalini awakening indicators. The list was derived from previous surveys and existing literature, and respondents reported the strength of their experiences along a 5-point likert scale.

The survey contains three categories of experiences:

  1. Mystical indicators are those that typically transcend the normal bounds of human experience.
  2. Spiritual indicators are those that, although they may have sublime characteristics, might not be as radical as mystical experiences.
  3. Psychophysiological indicators are those that affect the body and mind through some not yet understood connecting medium.

In the data, these are represented as the mystical, spiritual, and psyphys (psychophysiolocical) question categories. In general, the data shows a very common occurrence of powerful, transformative experiences among respondents. Prevalent experiences in each category include:

  • Mystical experiencies associated with the perception of unity and consciousness.
  • Spiritual indicators associated with wisdom and intuition.
  • Psychophysiolocal experiences associated with energy vibrating or moving in the body.


Mystical likert questions summary. Available in PDF: File:Mystical-likert.pdf
Spiritual likert questions summary. Available in PDF: File:Spiritual-likert.pdf
Psychophysiological likert questions summary. Available in PDF: File:Psychophysiological-likert.pdf

Primary Experience Categories Factor Analysis

Factor analysis was conducted on the 66 primary experience questions. Factor analysis is a technique of identifying groups of correlated variables that correspond to latent categories of experiences. The mystical, spiritual, and psychophysiological question categories were analyzed. The number of factors to be determined per category was determined using an empirical technique known as parallel analysis. Principal Axis Factoring with Promax rotation was performed, a technique commonly used for this type of psychological data.

One key observation during this process was the prominence of a single factor, labeled "Higher Consciousness," which accounted for a very large portion of explained variance in the data. To illustrate this point, all 66 questions were used in the following scree plot, in which Higher Consciousness is shown as the first factor:

Scree plot showing an extremely eigenvalue for high Higher Consciousness

According to the Kundalini Hypothesis, Higher Consciousness is the goal of the Kundalini biological mechanism, and all other manifestations of Kundalini are secondary effects. In our analysis, Higher Consciousness was characterized by:

  1. The direct perception of consciousness.
  2. Unity and the personal identification with all of creation

Factor analysis yielded the resulting factors in each major experience category. The questions listed below have a factor loading > ~0.6. This threshold was selected for interpretability of the data:


Mystical Question Factors

Higher Consciousness Ecstacy Grace Experiences
Experience of Higher consciousness/cosmic consciousness Intense feeling of peace Tasting sacred nectar dripping from the roof of mouth or back of throat (amrita or soma)
Expansion of consciousness Overwhelming sense of love Experiences or visions of deities, gurus, icons, saints or mystics or other religious prophets, religious icons or universal archetypes
Revelation: Knowledge that comes from a divine source where the individual becomes aware of the source of that knowledge Overwhelming sense of bliss, joy and or contentment Receiving instructions from the divine
New knowledge / awareness of the unbounded intelligence behind universe Overwhelming sense of wonder and awe Feeling sacred touch (wind, presence, touch)
Personal identification with all of creation Visions of glowing geometric shapes
Expanded comprehension of reality
Experience of deep unity and expansive consciousness
Union with Life Energy
All sense of separateness disappears
An experience of union with the Divine-God or universal consciousness


Spiritual Question Factors

Rebirth Intuition Synchronicity Out of Body Aural
New understanding of spiritual truths/Insight into the inner meaning of spiritual teachings Feeling of connection with a spiritual guide or lineage Spontaneously going into a deep meditative experience Out of body experiences Sacred auditions (of teachings, mantras, music)
Spiritual rebirth - spontaneous religious conversion or dramatic spiritual awakening, including a major reorientation of spiritual beliefs. Receiving inner instruction Increased experience of unsual synchronistic events Astral/time travel experiences Glossalalia (spontaneously reciting phonemes, mantras, prayers, or poems, singing hymns, or speaking foreign languages unknown to the individual)
An unshakable conviction about the reality of the experience Inspired creativity Encounters with nonmaterial entities(the deceased, lower astral beings, aliens, spirit guides)
Transient, atypical, pivotal, or opening experiences


Psychophysiological Question Factors

Energy Sensations Light
Feelings of energy flowing or vibrating within Visions of light
Sensations of energy rushing up the spine Floating in the light
Sensations of energy along the seven major chakras (chakras are spinning vortices of energy) that run from the base of the spine to the crown of the head Sensations of white light or luminosity
Inner sensations of heat or cold
Transient or unusual symptoms or some features atypical for a standard diagnosis


Variable Cluster Analysis

  • Perform ICLUST analysis

Composite Variables

  • Create composite variables

The M-Class Model

A set of procedures to classifying survey participants into distinct groups was created, dubbed the M-Class (or mclass) or "mystical classification." M-Class is derived using Latent Class Analysis, a special type of mixture model. Other forms of cluster analysis such as K-means are based on arbitrary Euclidean distances, whereas latent class analysis is probabilistic and based on maximum likelihood estimates, and is thus a more empirical approach to clustering.

An initial M-Class model was developed using some of the top variables derived from factor analysis. The model uses the following indicators and covariates:


M-Class Model Covariates

Variable Name Likert Question Text Primary Experience Type
mystical13 All sense of separateness disappears Union
mystical22 Expansion of consciousness Consciousness
mystical24 Experience of Higher consciousness/cosmic consciousness Consciousness
mystical26 Personal identification with all of creation Union


M-Class Model Indicators

Variable Name Likert Question Text Primary Experience Type
mystical4 Intense feeling of peace Ecstacy
mystical5 Overwhelming sense of love Ecstacy
spiritual1 Spiritual rebirth - spontaneous religious conversion or dramatic spiritual awakening, including a major reorientation of spiritual beliefs. Rebirth
spiritual2 New understanding of spiritual truths/Insight into the inner meaning of spiritual teachings Rebirth
spiritual14 Out of body experiences OOB
spiritual15 Astral/time travel experiences OOB
spiritual17 Receiving inner instruction Intuition
spiritual20 Feeling of connection with a spiritual guide or lineage Intuition
psyphys3 Sensations of energy rushing up the spine Energy
psyphys5 Feelings of energy flowing or vibrating within Energy
psyphys11 Visions of light Light
psyphys12 Floating in the light Light


Based on this model specification, a two class M-Class model was selected using the lowest Bayesian information criterion (BIC) out of a trial of 2-10 classes. Analysis of scatter plot diagrams among major Kundalini experience indicators yielded a high degree of separation between class participants. The LCA model and scatter plot analysis revealed that Kundalini experiences were occurring in two distinct groups:

  • Class 1 (m1) - No experience or symptomatic. These individuals were either mildly symptomatic or had very few symptoms of a Kundalini awakening.
  • Class 2 (m2) - High experiencers. These individuals generally had strong Kundalini symptoms across all indicators with the exception of Out of Body experiences. High experiences were more likely to experience out of body type of experiences, but is considered a relatively weak indicator.

Below is a 3D profile chart of class probabilities per indicator variable of the 2 class M-Class model.

Mclass-model-3d.png

In Progress Work

  • Profile mclass segments

Open text cross-validation

  • Ensure consistency by analyzing open text responses.