Gopi Krishna's autobiography appears to be an honest representation of his experiences but it is only one extreme datapoint in the panorama of experience on kundalini yoga. It represents dangers in forceful unguided practice but it is not representative of a typical practicioner's experience. These approaches typically do not try to awaken the kundalini directly - at least not for some time. One sign of such approaches is that no breath retention is used. First of all it may be useful to observe that there is no technique currently known on earth that appears to be rapidly catapulting large number of individuals toward enlightenment.
Many people begin kundalini yogas, have strong initial experiences and then become frightened.
Many who perservere through this initial phase become distracted by the energy and focus on temporal and phenomenal applications of the energy. There have been many scandals among kundalini yoga teachers - particularly sexual scandals. An advanced kundalini yogin is typically a powerful charismatic individual who has the ability to directly influence the minds of others. Westerners often mistake this power as a sign of enlightenment and allow such teachers liberties as a result. In addition it is quite common for kundalini yoga to temporarily accentuate the sex drive.