I was twenty-five years old. My early practice consisted of getting up at three a.m. every morning, practicing asanas for about half an hour, and sitting for three or four hours. The first part of the meditation was devoted to pranayama, the latter to concentration on a specific chakra.

Here is this the initial method of pranayama I practiced.

Inhale breath (prana) through the left nostril to the lower abdomen for four seconds. Hold the prana in the inflated lower abdomen for eight seconds. Then raise the kundalini from the coccyx to the lower abdomen (the svadhishthana chakra) and contract the abdominal muscles. Visualize mixing and unifying the prana and the kundalini for eight seconds. Exhale through the right nostril for four seconds. One breath cycle, therefore, takes twenty-four seconds. Repeat the entire process, inhaling through the right nostril and exhaling through the left, and so on, alternately.

I performed this from fourteen to twenty-one times. After one or two months, I was able to prolong the period of kumbhaka (breath retention) to one or one and a half minutes. When I then concentrated on the svadhishthana or ajna chakra, worldly thoughts gradually ceased to enter my mind. I began to feel my body and mind fill with an extraordinary amount of energy.

As a result of the practice, my physical and psychological states began to show changes. I had often suffered from a stomach disorder and from an ear discharge. Also, I had been quite nervous and adversely affected both physically and mentally by bad weather. Within six months after I began yoga, these problems disappeared.

During continued practice, I began to notice some new sensations. I had an itchy feeling at the coccyx, a tingling feeling on the forehead and at the top of the head, and a feverish sensation in the lower abdomen. I could hear a sound something like the buzzing of bees around the coccyx. In ordinary daily life my sense of smell became so sensitive that I could not endure offensive odors.

These conditions continued for two or three months. One day, when I was meditating before the altar as usual, I felt particularly feverish in the lower abdomen and saw there a round blackish-red light like a ball of fire about to explode in the midst of a white vapor. Suddenly, an incredible power rushed through my spine to the top of the head and, though it lasted only a second or two, my body levitated off the floor a few centimeters. I was terrified. My whole body was burning, and a severe headache prevented me from doing anything all day. The feverish state continued for two or three days. I felt as if my head would explode with energy. Hitting myself around the "Brahman Gate" at the top of the head was the only thing that brought relief.

This, then, was the first time I had experienced the rising of the kundalini shakti to the top of my head through the sushumne. I did not experience as much physical or mental difficulty as is so often associated with this experience, probably because of the fortunate fact that my Brahman Gate was already open and the shakti was able to flow out into the astral dimension.