When kundalini rises, consciousness is felt in the heart. Satori happens when kundalini reaches the sahasrara and third eye. So, what is the connection between kundalini, the heart, and sahasrara chakras?
—Akanksha Bhardwaj, India
Dear Akanksha,
Such questions are answered differently by various great teachers and, in truth, are best answered by our own inner experience.
It might be that in your own experience of rising kundalini energy, you feel your consciousness as if in a surge of bliss in the spine, taking your consciousness powerfully upward to the spiritual eye.
I don’t know much about satori, as it is a Buddhist concept which Yogananda didn’t use in his teachings. If satori as you say, is a state which happens when the kundalini power reaches the 3rd eye, he would have called it “Christ Consciousness.”
To answer your question from Yogananda’s standpoint: when kundalini rises, the third eye opens and your consciousness is brought there. In this stage, you perceive as he explains in the Autobiography of a Yogi, “the center of the empyrean [cosmos] as a point of intuitive perception in my heart.” In deeper stages, one’s consciousness becomes settled in the sahasrara (crown chakra), which takes you to the dimensionless and timeless Absolute.
Here is a special teaching of Yogananda which you may meditate on if it inspires you. Again, try not to understand it only with your mind but with your own intuitive experience:
“The heart is the love center of God, and the Christ Consciousness [third eye] is the wisdom center of God. These are the two poles of the spiritual magnet. Both these centers – heart and wisdom – draw God. That is why some teachers tell you to concentrate on the heart, and others to concentrate at the Christ Consciousness [third eye]. The Christ Consciousness is the most powerful center. It is the positive center. But the heart center is automatically working with it. When those two poles develop, God comes toward you.”
All the best with your joyful inner understanding,
Jayadev
