Thus, even in the universe of thought we find this unity, and at last, when we get to the Self, we know that that Self can only be One. Beyond motion there is but One. Even in manifest motion there is only a unity. These facts can no more be denied, as modern science has demonstrated them. Modern physics also has demonstrated that the sum-total of the energies is the same throughout. It has also been proved that this sum-total of energy exists in two forms. It becomes potential, toned down, and calmed, and next it comes out manifested as all these various forces; again it goes back to the quiet state, and again it manifests. Thus it goes on evolving and involving through eternity. The control of this Prana, as before stated, is what is called Pranayama.
32 RAJA YOGA This Pranayama has very little to do with breathing, except as exercise. The most obvious manifestation of this Prana in the human body is the motion of the lungs. If that stops, the body will stop; all the other manifestations of force in the body will immediately stop, if this is stopped. There are persons who can trained themselves in such a manner that the body will live on, even when this motion has stopped. There are some persons who can bury themselves for months and yet live, without breathing. But, for all ordinary persons, this is the principal gross motion in the body. To reach the more subtle we must take the help of the grosser, and so, slowly travel towards the most subtle, until we gain our point. The most obvious of all motions in the body is the motion of the lungs, the flywheel which is setting all the other forces in motion. Pranayama really means controlling this motion of the lungs, and this motion is associated with the breath. Not that breath is producing it; on the contrary it is producing breath. This motion draws the air by pump action. The Prana is moving the lungs, and that motion of the lungs draws in the air. So Pranayama is not breathing, but controlling that muscular power which moves the lungs, and that muscular power which is going out through the nerves to the muscles, from them to the lungs, making them move in a certain manner, in the Prana, which we have to control in the practice of Pranayama. When this Prana has become controlled, then we shall immediately find that all the other actions of the Prana in the body will slowly come under control. I myself have seen men who have controlled almost every muscle of the body; and why not? If I have control over certain muscles, why not over every muscle and nerve of the body? What impossibility is there? What impossibility is there? At present the control is lost, and the motion has become automatic. We cannot PRANA 33 move the ears at will, but we know that animals can. We have not that power because we do not exercise it. This what is called atavism.
Again, we know that motion which has become latest can be brought back to manifestation. By hard work and practice certain motions of the body which are most dormant can be brought back under perfect control. Reasoning in that way we find there is no impossibility, but, on the other hand, every probability that each part of the body can be brought under perfect control. This the Yogi does through Prdndydma. Perhaps some of you have read in these books that in Prdndydma, when drawing in the breath, you must fill your whole body with Prana. In the English translation Prana is given as breath, and you are inclined to ask how that is to be done. The fault is with the translator. Every part of the body can be filled with Prana, this vital force, and when you are able to do that, you can control the whole body. All the sickness and misery felt in the body will be perfectly controlled, and, not only so, you will be able to control another’s body. Everything is infectious in this world, good or bad. If your body be in a certain state of tension, it will have a tendency to produce the same tension in others. If you are strong and healthy, those that live near you will also have the tendency to become strong and healthy, but, if you are sick and weak, those around you will have the tendency to become the same. This vibration will be, as it were, conveyed to another body. In the case of one man trying to heal another, the first idea is simply transferring his own health to the other. This is the primitive sort of healing. Consciously, or unconsciously health can be transmitted. The very strong man, living with the weak man, will make him a little stronger, whether he knows it or not. When consciously done it becomes quicker and better in its 34 RAJA YOGA action. Next come those cases in which a man may not be very healthy himself, yet we know that he can bring health to another. The first man, in such a case, has a little more control over the Prana, and can rouse, for the time being, his Prana, as it were, to a certain state of vibration, and transmit it to another person.
There have been cases where this process has been carried on at a distance, but in reality there is no distance, in the sense of a break. Where is the distance that has a break? Is there any break between you and the sun? It is a continuous mass of matter, the sun the one part, and you the other. Is there a break between one part of a river and another? Then why cannot any force travel? There is no reason against it. These cases are perfectly true, and this Prana can be transmitted to a very great distance; but to one genuine case, there are hundreds of frauds. It is not as easy as it is thought to be. In the most ordinary cases of this healing you will find that these healers are simply taking advantage of the naturally healthy state of the human body. There is no disease in this world which kills the majority of persons attacked. Even in cholera epidemics, if for a few days sixty per cent, die, after that the rate comes down to thirty and twenty per cent., and the rest recover. An allopath comes and treats cholera patients, and gives them his medicines; the homeopath comes and gives his medicine, and cures perhaps more, simply because the homeopath did not disturb the patients, but allowed nature to deal with them; and the faith-healer will cure more still, because he will bring the strength of his mind to bear, and rouses, through faith, the dormant Prana of the patient.
But there is a mistake constantly made by faith-healers; they think that it is faith itself that directly heals a man. It alone will not cover all the ground. There are diseases PRANA 35 where the worst symptoms are that the patient never thinks that he has the disease. That tremendous faith of the patient is itself one symptom of the disease, and usually indicates that he will die quickly. In such cases the principal that faith cures does not apply. If it were faith that cured in all these cases, these patients would be cured. It is by this Prana that real curing comes. The pure man, who has controlled this Prana, has the power of bringing it into a certain state of vibration, which can be conveyed to others, arousing in them a similar vibration. You see that in every-day actions. I am talking to you. What am I trying to do? 1 am, so to say, bringing my mind to a certain state of vibration, and the more I succeed in bringing it to that state, the more you will be affected by what I say. All of you know that the day I am more enthusiastic the more you enjoy the lecture, and when I am less enthusiastic you feel lack of interest.
The gigantic will powers of the world, the world-movers, can bring their Prana into a high state of vibration, and it is so great and powerful that it catches others in a moment, and thousands are drawn towards them, and half the world thinks as they do. Great prophets of the world had the most wonderful control of this Prana, which gave them tremendous will power; they had brought their Prana to the highest state of motion, and this is what gave them power to sway the world. All manifestations of power arise from this control. Men may not know the secret, but this is the one explanation. Sometimes in your own body the supply of Prana gravitates more or less to one part; the balance is disturbed, and when the balance of the Prana is disturbed, what we call disease is produced. To take away the superfluous Prana, or to sapply the Prana that is wanting, will be curing the disease. That again is Pranayama, to learn when there is more or less Prana in one part of the body than 36 RAJA YOGA 36 RAJA YOGA there should be. The feelings will become so subtle that the mind will feel that there is less Prana in the toe or the finger than there should be, and possess the power to supply it. These are among the various functions of Pranayama. They have to be learned slowly and gradually, and, as you see, the whole scope of Raja Yoga is really to teach the control and direction in different planes of the Prana. When a man has concentrated his energies he masters the Prana that is in his body. When a man is meditating, he is also concentrating the Prana.
In an ocean there are huge waves, like mountains, then smaller waves, and still smaller, down to little bubbles, but the background of all these is the infinite ocean. The bubble is connected with the infinite ocean at one end, and the huge wave at the other end. So, one may be a gigantic man, and another a little bubble, but each is connected with the infinite ocean of energy, and this is the common birthright of every animal that exists. Wherever there is life, the storehouse of infinite energy is behind it. Starting from some fungus, some very minute, microscopic bubble, and all the time drawing from that infinite storehouse of energy, the form is changed slowly and slowly, until in course of time it becomes a plant, then an animal, then man, ultimately God. This is attained through millions of asms, but what is time? An increase of speed, an increase of struggle, is able to bridge the distance of time. That which naturally takes a long time to accomplish can be shortened by the intensity of action, says the Yogi. A man may go on slowly drawing in this energy from the infinite mass that exists in the universe, and perhaps he will require a hundred thousand years to become a Dev a, and then, perhaps, five hundred thousand years to become still higher, and perhaps five millions of years to become perfect. Given rapid growth the time will PRANA 37 PRANA 37 be lessened. Why is it not possible, with sufficient effort, to reach this very perfection in six months or six years? There is no limit. Reason shows that. If an engine, with a certain amount of coal, runs at two miles an hour, add more coal, and it will run in quicker time. Similarly why shall not the soul, by intensifying its action, attain to that goal in this very life? All being will at last attain to that perfection we know. But who cares to wait all those millions of a»ns? Why not reach it immediately, in this body even, in this human form? Why shall I not get that infinite knowledge, infinite power, now?
That is the ideal of the Yogi; the whole science of Yoga is directed to that one end, to teach men how to shorten the time by adding power, how to intensify the power of assimilation, and thereby shorten the time for reaching perfection, instead of slowly advancing from point to point, and waiting until the whole human race has come out, and become perfect. All the great prophets, saints, and seers, of the world, what are they? In that one span of life they lived the whole life of humanity, bridged the whole length of time that it will take ordinary humanity to come to the state of perfection. In this life they perfect themselves; they have no thought for anything else, breathe for nothing else, never live a moment for any other idea, and thus the way is shortened for them. This is what is meant by concentration, intensifying the action or assimilation, and thus shortening the time; and Raja Yoga is the science which teaches us how to gain the power of concentration?
What has this Pranayama got to do with spiritualism? That is also a manifestation of Pranayama. If it be true that the departed spirits exist, only that we cannot see them, it is quite probable that there may be hundreds and millions living here that we can neither see, feel, nor touch. We may 38 RAJA YOGA 38 RAJA YOGA be continually passing and repassing through their bodies, and it is also probable that they do not see or feel us. It is a circle within a circle, universe within universe. Those only that are on the same plane see each other. We have five senses, and we represent Prana in a certain state of vibration. All beings in the same state of vibration will see each other, but if there are beings who represent Prana in a higher state of vibration they will not be seen. We may increase the intensity of light until we cannot see the light at all, but there may be beings with eyes so powerful that they can see such light. Again, if the vibrations are very low, we do not see light, but there are animals that see it, as cats and owls. Our range of vision is only one plane of the vibrations of this Prana. Take this atmosphere, for instance; it is piled up layer on layer, but the layers nearer to the earth are denser than those above and as you go higher the atmosphere becomes finer and finer. Or take the case of the ocean; as you go deeper and deeper the density of the water increases, and those animals that live at the bottom of the sea can never come up, or they will broken into pieces.
Think of this whole universe as an ocean of ether, in vibration under the action of Prana, and that it consists of layer after layer of varying degrees of vibration; in the more external the vibrations are less, and nearer to the centre the vibrations become quicker and quicker, and each range of vibrations makes one plane. Think of the whole thing as one circle, the centre of which is perfection; the further you get from the centre the slower the vibrations. Matter is the outermost crust, next comes mind, and spirit is the centre. Then suppose these ranges of vision are cut into planes, so many millions of miles one set of vibrations, and then so many millions of miles still higher, and so on. It is perfectly certain, then, that those who live on the plane of a certain PRANA 39 PRANA 39 state of vibration will have the power of recognising each other, but will not recognise those above or below them. Yet, just as by the telescope and the microscope we can increase the scope of our vision, and make higher or lower vibrations cognisable to us, similarly, every man can bring himself to the state of vibration belonging to the next plane, thus enabling himself to see what is going on there. Suppose this room were full of beings whom we do not see. They represent certain vibrations in the Prana, and we represent other vibrations. Suppose they represent the quicker, and we the slower. Prana is the material of which they are composed; all are parts of the same ocean of Prana, only the rate of vibration differs. If I can bring myself to the quicker vibration this plane will immediately change for me; 1 shall not see you any more; you vanish, and they appear. Some of you, perhaps, know this to true. All this bringing of the mind into a higher state of vibration is included in one word in Yoga — Samadhi. All these states of higher vibration, superconscious vibrations of the mind, are grouped in that one word, Samadhi, and the lower states of Samadhi give us visions of these beings. The highest grade of Samadhi is when we see the real thing, when we see the material out of which the whole of these grades of beings are composed, and that lump of clay being known, we know all the clay in the universe.
Thus we see that this Pranayama includes all that is true of spiritualism even. Similarly, you will find that wherever any sect or body of people is trying to search out anything occult and mystical, or hidden, it is really this Yoga, this attempt to control the Prana. You will find that wherever there is any extraordinary display of power it is the manifestation of this Prana. Even the physical sciences can be included also in Pranayama. What move the steam 40 RAJA YOGA engine? Prana, acting through the steam. What are all these phenomena of electricity and so forth but Pranal What is physical science? Pranayama, by external means. Prana, manifesting itself as mental power, can only be controlled by mental means. That part of the Pranayama which attempts to control the physical manifestations of the Prana by physical means is called physical science, and that part which tries to control the manifestations of the Prana as mental force, by mental means, is called Raja Yoga.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PSYCHIC PRANA.
According to the Yogis there are two nerve currents in the spinal column, called Pingald and Ida, and there is a hollow canal called Susumna running through the spinal cord. At the lower end of the hollow canal is what the Yogis call the “Lotus of the Kundalini.” They describe it as triangular in form, in which, in the symbolical language of the Yogis, there is a power called the Kundalini coiled up. When that Kundalini awakes it tries to force a passage through this hollow canal, and, as it rises step by step, as it were, layer after layer of the mind becomes open, all these different visions and wonderful powers come to the Yogi. When it reaches the brain the Yogi is perfectly detached from the body and mind; the soul finds itself free. We know that the spinal cord is composed in a peculiar manner. If we take the figure eight horizontally (°°) there are two parts, and these two parts are connected in the middle. Suppose you add eight after eight, piled one on top of the other, that will represent the spinal cord. The left is the Ida, and the right the Pingald, and that hollow canal which runs through the centre of the spinal cord is the Susumna. When the spinal cord ends in some of the lumbar vertabra; a fine fibre comes down, and the canal is even in that fibre, only much finer. The canal is closed at the lower end, which is situated near what is called the sacral plexus, which, according to modern physiology, is triangular in form. The different plexuses that have their centres in the spinal cord can very well stand for the different “lotuses” of the Yogi.
41 42 RAJA YOGA The Yogi conceives of several centres, beginning with the Muladhara, the basic, and ending fvwith the Sahasrdra, the thousand-petalled lotus in the brain. So, if we take these different plexuses as representing these circles, the idea of the Yogi can be understood very easily in the language of modern physiology. We know there are two sorts of actions in these nerve currents, one afferent, the other efferent, one sensory and the other motor; one centripetal, and the other centrifugal. One carries the sensations to the brain, and the other from the brain to the outer body. These vibrations are all connected with the brain in the long run. Several other facts we have to remember, in order to clear the way for the explanation which is to come. This spinal cord, at the brain, ends in a sort of bulb, in the medulla, which is not attached to the bone, but floats in a fluid in the brain, so that if there be a blow on the head the force of that blow will be dissipated in the fluid, and will not hurt the bulb. This will be an important fact as we go on. Seconly, we have also to know that, of all the centres, we have particularly to remember three, the Muladhara (the basis), the Sahasrdra (the thousand-petalled lotus of the brain) and the Svadhisthana (next above the Muladhara). Next we will take one fact from physics. We all hear of electricity, and various other forces connected with it. What electricity is no one knows, but, so far as it is known, it is a sort of motion.
There are various other motions in the universe; what is the difference between them and electricity? Suppose this table moves, that the molecules which compose this table are moving in different directions; if they are all made to move in the same direction it will be electricity. Electric motion is when the molecules all move in the same direction. If all the air molecules in a room are made to move in the same direction it will make a gigantic battery of electricity of the THE PSYCHIC PRANA 43 room. Another point from physiology we must remember, that the centre which regulates the respiratory system, the breathing system, has a sort of controlling action over the system of nerve currents, and the controlling centre of the respiratory system is opposite the thorax, in the spinal column. This centre regulates the respiratory organs, and also exercises some control over the secondary centres.
Now we shall see why breathing is practised. In the first place, from rhythmical breathing will come a tendency of all the molecules in the body to have the same direction. When mind changes into will, the currents change into a motion similar to electricity, because the nerves have been proved to show polarity under action of electric currents. This shows that when the will evolves into the nerve currents it is changed into something like electricity. When all the motions of the body have become perfectly rhythmical the body has, as it were, become a gigantic battery of will. This tremendous will is exactly what the Yogi wants. This is, therefore, a physiological explanation of the breathing exercise. It tends to bring a rhythmic action in the body, and helps us, through the respiratory centre, to control the other centres. The aim of Prdndydma here is to rouse the coiled- up power in the Muladhara, called the Kundalini.
Everything that we see, or imagine, or dream, we have to perceive in space. This is the ordinary space, called the Mahakasa, or great space. When a Yogi reads the thoughts of other men, or perceives super- sensuous objects, he sees them in another sort of space called the Chittdkdsa, the mental space. When perception has become objectless, and the soul shines in its own nature, it is called the Chidakasa, or knowledge space. When the Kundalini is aroused, and enters the canal of the Susumna all the perceptions are in the mental space. When it has reached that end of the canal RAJA YOGA which opens out into the brain, the objectless perception is in the knowledge space. Taking the analogy of electricity, we find that man can send a current only along a wire, but nature requires no wires to send her tremendous currents. This proves that the wire is not really necessary, but that only our inability to dispense with it compels us to use it.
Similarly, all the sensations and motions of the body are being sent into the brain, and sent out of it, through these wires of nerve fibres. The columns of sensory and motor fibres in the spinal cord are the Ida and Pingala of the Yogis. They are the main channels through which the afferent and efferent currents are travelling. But why should not the mind send the news without any wire, or react without any wires? We see that this is being done in nature. The Yogi says if you can do that you have got rid of the bondage of matter. How to do it? If you can make the current pass through the Susumnd, the canal in the middle of the spinal column, you have solved the problem. The mind has made this net-work of the nervous system, and has to break it, so that no wires will be required to work through. Then alone will all knowledge come to us — no more bondage of body; that is why it is so important that you should get control of the Susumnd. If you can send the mental current through that hollow canal without any nerve fibres to act as wires, the Yogi says you have solved the problem, and he also says it can be done.
This Susumnd is, in ordinary persons, closed up at the lower extremity; no action comes through it. The Yogi proposes a practice by which it can be opened, and the nerve currents made to travel through. When a sensation is carried to a centre, the centre reacts. This reaction, in the case of automatic centres, is followed by motion; in the case of conscious centres it is followed first by perception, and THE PSYCHIC PRANA 45 secondly by motion. All perception is the reaction to action from outside. How, then, do perceptions in dreams arise? There is then no action from outside. The sensory motions, therefore, are coiled up somewhere, just as the motor motions are known to be in different centres. For instance, I see a city; the perception of that city was from the reaction to the sensations brought from outside objects comprising that city. That is to say, a certainmotion in the brain molecules has been set up by the motion in the incarrying nerves, which again were set in motion by external objects in the city. Now, even after a long time I can remember the city. This memory is exactly the same phenomenon, only it is in a milder form. But whence is the action that set up even the milder form of similar vibrations in the brain? Not certainly from the primary sensations. Therefore it must be that the sensations are coiled up somewhere, and they, by their acting, bring out the mild reaction which we call dream perception. Now the centre where all these residual sensations are, as it were, stored up, is called the Muladhara, the root receptacle, and the coiled up energy of action is Kundalini, the “coiled up.” It is very probable that the residual motor energy is also stroed up in the same centre as, after deep study or meditation on external objects, the part of the body where the Muladhara centre is situated (probably the sacral plexus) gets heated. Now, if this coiled-up energy be roused and made active, and then consciously made to travel up the Susumna canal, a tremendous reaction will set in. When a minute portion of the energy of action travels along a nerve fibre and causes reaction from centres, the perception is either dream or imagination. But when the vast mass of this energy stored up by the power of long internal meditation travels along the Susumna, and strikes the centres, the reaction is tremendous, immensely superior to 46 RAJA YOGA the reaction of dream or imagination, immensely more intense than the reaction of sense perception. It is super- sensuous perception, and the mind in that state is called super-conscious. And when it reaches the metropolis of all senstations, the brain, the whole brain, as it were, reacts, and every perceiving molecule in the body, as it were, reacts, and the result is the full blaze of illumination, the perception of the Self. As this Kundalini force travels from centre to centre, layer after layer of the mind, as it were, will be opened up, and this universe will be perceived by the Yogi in its fine, or course, form. Then alone the causes of this universe, both as sensation and reaction, will be known as they are, and hence will come all knowledge. The causes being known, the knowledge of the effects is sure to follow.