The Science of Yoga

rightward shift would seem to reinforce the idea that the discipline can act as a sexual tonic. At a minimum, the finding adds to the existing evidence about yoga’s stimulating effects on human sexuality, as we saw in the case of hormones and brain waves. And it may ultimately shed light on human behavior. For the moment,the rightward shift suggests what might be considered a possible clue to how the discipline goes about heightening the artistic impulse.
    The connections between sex and creativity become most evident with the kundalites. Their declarations of inspired artistry, coupled with new candor about the role of sexuality, seem to offer, at least in theory, an intriguing augmentation to Freud’s ideas about the role of sexual energy. If Freud was right about creativity, and if the yogis are right about the inner fire surging into a sexual blaze, then perhaps kundalini does in fact provide a basis for artistic expression.
    One way to investigate the issue is to see if any creative parallels to the kundalini experience have arisen and found their way into the deliberations of science. As it turns out, serious investigators have studied whole classes of individuals whose personalities have undergone sudden transformations.
    An astonishing case involves Tony Cicoria, a former college football player who became an orthopedic surgeon. One fall afternoon in 1994, Cicoria was at a family gathering in upstate New York when he stepped outside a lake pavilion to call his mother. He was forty-two and in excellent health. The day was pleasant. But Cicoria, while approaching a pay phone, noticed dark clouds on the horizon. As he talked, it began to rain. He heard distant thunder. Cicoria had hung up and was about to head back to the pavilion when lightning flashed out of the phone and struck him in the face.
    He fell to the ground. Sure he was dead, he saw people running toward his body, saw his children and felt they would be okay, saw the high and low points of his life. Waves of bliss and bluish-white light washed over him as he felt his consciousness starting to race upward. “This is the most glorious feeling I have ever had,” he began to think. And at that instant— bam! He was back in his body.
    Cicoria survived. Indeed, he soon found himself fit enough to resume work as a surgeon and once again move ahead with his life. But he was a changed man—a deeply changed man.
    Within weeks, a longing for classical music replaced his love of rock. He acquired a piano and taught himself how to play. Soon, his head filled with music from nowhere. Within three months of the lightning strike, Cicoria had little sparetime for anything but playing and composing. Eventually, his marriage fell apart. But Cicoria pressed ahead. In 2007, he started giving recitals. In 2008, the Catskill Conservatory sponsored his debut at the Goodrich Theater in Oneonta, New York, where he lives. The sold-out audience was all smiles and applause. Also that year, Cicoria issued a CD of classical piano solos titled Notes from an Accidental Pianist and Composer. Prominent among the arrangements was “The Lightning Sonata.”
    Oliver Sacks, the distinguished author and neurologist at Columbia University, details the case of Cicoria in his fascinating book Musicophilia. He also discusses other examples of people who have experienced a sudden passion for art and music. Sacks cites a body of developing evidence that traces such transformations to traumatic rewirings of the brain, in particular its limbic system and its temporal lobes, home of the hippocampus and long-term memory as well as auditory processing.
    The surges appear similar to what happens to kundalites. If Cicoria experienced a blinding flash from outside his body, the kundalites seem to experience a similar shock from within. Indeed, some yogic authorities liken the mystic current to a bolt of lightning.
    So does kundalini stir creativity? No scientific studies have addressed the issue. But the anecdotal evidence is rich.
    Gopi Krishna (1903–1984), the Kashmiri who inspired Pond and his friends, reported that the stabilization of his own inner fire coincided with the commencement of an unending flow of poetry. The pandit composed verse in not only his native Kashmiri but Urdu, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, French, Italian, English, and German. It was an urge he was unable to extinguish.
    Krishna—who went to college for two years in Lahore but failed the examination that