Book excerpt: 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. Chit is cosmic intelligence or knowledge that fills everything, a consciousness without personalidentity. 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. This book is to help you recognize and support a unique, universal and ageless process related to spiritual experience and psychological wholeness and identified in ancient times as Kundalini awakening.