Hiroshi Motoyama’s Kundalini and Chakra Archive
Hiroshi Motoyama (1925–2015) was a Japanese parapsychologist and philosopher who played a notable role in modern scientistic and religious circles in Japan, Europe, and North America. As a Shinto priest, yogic practitioner, and founder of several parapsychological and scientistic institutions, he was held in esteem by leaders in disparate fields, including the parapsychologist Joseph B. Rhine and the yoga and meditation teacher Swami Satyananda Saraswati. At Motoyama’s Tokyo Institute for Religious Psychology (IRP), he attempted to find empirical evidence for the existence and effectiveness of various components of the subtle body, or subtle anatomies and physiologies. Karl Baier, a German historian of religion, has described Motoyama as a key protagonist of New Age Science, who attempted to “connect chakra theories with physics and physiology, Psi-research, perennial mysticism and the evolution of mankind.”[1] No comprehensive study in English has hitherto discussed his experimental approach or analyzed his influence on international endeavours to unravel the physiology of consciousness; the only book addressing Motoyama’s scholarship and practice—Do Humans Have a Soul? Hiroshi Motoyama’s Research and Practice—is written in Japanese.[2] However, there is no doubt that Motoyama has played a central and enduring role in twentieth-century parapsychological and new-religious circles.
During the 1950s, Motoyama started practicing yoga (asanas and pranayama) and claimed a gradual development of psychic abilities.[3] He described his practice as a daily rigorous morning routine, starting at 3 a.m. and lasting three to five hours. The practice comprised two main components: a breathing exercise (what he called pranayama) at the outset, followed by a concentration technique centred on a specific chakra.[4] After several months of practice, Motoyama claimed to have experienced the rise of kundalini. While the initial phase of his “spiritual awakening” lasted no longer than six months to a year of regular practice, Motoyama claims that it took approximately 30 years to achieve a fully awakened state.
Motoyama’s experience report is significant for two reasons: First, it is a unique blend of a Japanese new-religious movement––Motoyama’s Shinto-based Tamamitsu Jinja––and a modern interpretation of kundalini, underscoring kundalini’s transcultural expansion during the twentieth century. Second, Motoyama was not simply a practitioner of a new Japanese religion; he was also a key representative of New Age science, always aiming to find empirical proof for his experience. This excerpt must therefore be considered in the context of modern kundalini research, which Motoyama helped propel into the “laboratories” of Japanese, European, and North American researchers.
Source
In his book Theories of the Chakras (1981), Motoyama details his initial yoga meditation practice, explaining how it led to a kundalini experience followed by successive chakra openings. Although he discussed these religious ideas in other publications (1978, 1990), Theories of the Chakras represents Motoyama’s key publication concerning his kundalini and chakra archive. The book’s impact extended well beyond Motoyama’s immediate sphere of influence, and in this work, he contextualizes his experience with the perspectives of Sir John Woodroffe (1865–1936), Charles W. Leadbeater (1854–1934), and Swami Satyananda Saraswati.
Hiroshi Motoyama, Theories of the Chakras: Bridge to Higher Consciousness[5]
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 kundalinī shakti to the top of my head through the sushumnā. 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.
Notes
[1] Karl Baier, “Theosophical Orientalism and the Structures of Intercultural Transfer: Annotations on the Appropriation of the Cakras in Early Theosophy,” in Theosophical Appropriations: Esotericism, Kabbalah, and the Transformation of Traditions, ed. Julie Chajes and Huss Boaz (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2016), 345.
[2] Naoki Kashio and Kazuhiro Motoyama, eds., Do Humans Have a Soul? Hiroshi Motoyama’s Research and Practices 人間に魂はあるか？ 本山博の学問と実践 (Kokusho Kankokai, 2023).
[3] Hiroshi Motoyama, Science and the Evolution of Consciousness: Chakras, Ki, and Psi (Autumn Press, 1978), 27, and Theories of the Chakras: Bridge to Higher Consciousness (Quest, 1981), 243.
[4] Motoyama, Theories, 256.
[5] Ibid., 241. While Motoyama does not credit a specific translator on this book, he cites two staff members of the translation department at the Institute for Religious Psychology: Toshiaki Harada and Kiyomi Kuratani.
Bibliography
Baier, Karl. “Theosophical Orientalism and the Structures of Intercultural Transfer: Annotations on the Appropriation of the Cakras in Early Theosophy.” In Theosophical Appropriations: Esotericism, Kabbalah, and the Transformation of Traditions, edited by Julie Chajes and Boaz Huss, 309–54. Sheva, Israel: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2016.
Brophy, Thomas. “The Foundations of Hiroshi Motoyama’s Integral Education”. Beijing International Review of Education 3, no. 4 (2022): 548–63.
Jackson, Adrian. “Energetic Medicine: New Science of Healing.” Spiritual. July 26, 2011. https://spiritual.com.au/2011/07/energetic-medicine-new-science-of-healing/ (accessed June 20, 2025).
Kashio, Naoki, and Kazuhiro Motoyama, eds. Do Humans Have a Soul? Hiroshi Motoyama’s Research and Practices. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankokai, 2013.
Motoyama, Hiroshi. Science and the Evolution of Consciousness: Chakras, Ki, and Psi. Kent: Autumn Press, 1978.
———. Theories of the Chakras: Bridge to Higher Consciousness. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1981.
———. Toward a Superconsciousness: Meditational Theory & Practice. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1990.
———. “Humans and Nature.” In New Frontiers of Human Science: A Festschrift for K. Ramakrishna Rao, edited by V. Gowri Rammohan, 65–78. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002.
Sannella, Lee. On Genius: An Evolutionary Force Inherent in Every Being. Haverford, PA: Infinity Publishing, 2006.
Thaler, Marleen. “Hiroshi Motoyama and the Institute for Religious Psychology.” The History of Modern Kundalini Research. Gopi Krishna and the Transformation of a South Asian Goddess in the Late Twentieth Century. PhD diss., Vienna: University of Vienna, 2024, 469–86.
Marleen Thaler
Marleen Thaler holds a PhD in Religious Studies (2024) and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Graz and a research fellow at the University of Vienna. In the past, she has been a research fellow at ETH Zurich (2022), UC Riverside (2022), and UC Santa Barbara (2023), and served as a scholar-in-residence at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur (2022–2023). Thaler co-edited a volume on Subtle Energies (2025), is finalizing her monograph on John Michell’s Sacred Place Theory (2026), and is preparing two books on the modern history of kundalini’s transformation (forthcoming). Her main areas of research include global religious history, the modern history of yoga, and alternative religious currents of modernity.
