Well that's not exactly what I said -- what I said was that insisting on the 'truth' of something and ignoring all evidence to the contrary leads in the direction of fundamentalism. I think that's a valid observation. And if one believes that one's own way is the only correct one, it can go in that direction. Even more important than that though, there is a loss of opportunity to see how truly different things interact. One can certainly see 'spiritual greats' from all cultures according to chakra psychology, but equally, one has to be interested in the way they see themselves, especially if they have achieved something.

Even saying that all people have their own particular favored chakra is a statement that you need to think about carefully. A teacher of mine, Glenn Morris, did major research on just that question. It's a complex one -- people tend to favour a certain chakra, but equally, spiritual experience tends to even out their activation and needs to in fact. The Hesychasm approach certainly would bear out the heart thing... but spanish swordsmen use the heart chakra as their basis. To get real usable cross-cultural stuff here is quite a big job.

Everyone does have a way, but the ways often don't resemble each other... to separate one's own personal way from what we can generally say is key. To use one of your examples, we can say that Teresa of Avila had kundalini of some kind -- but can't say for sure that what she perceived as an angel was 'not really an angel', simply because angels don't happen to be part of our personal belief system. People do encounter them, and aver that they are more than metaphors. People often experience beings as part of the kundalini process, and they often help with energetic openings. If you're going to make a general statement of truth, that's important to bear in mind.

Kundalini is going to require a lot of research before we "know" some of the things that are definitely true about it in all cases, not just individual ones. And as I was trying to say, it's quite amazing enough without making unsubstantiable claims, or reducing the whole thing to only one way of seeing. It's a very big phenomenon we're dealing with here.

Well I look forward to your thoughts.