Raja Yoga (the Yoga Sūtras with commentary) — trans. Swami Vivekananda (1896)
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The translator’s English as printed (Swami Vivekananda). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
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 fly-wheel which is setting 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 il is producing breath. This motion draws in 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, is the Prana, which we have to control in the practice of Pranayama. When this Prana has become controlled, then we shall inunediately fmd 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 ? At present the control is lost, and the motion has become automatic. We cannot move the ears at will, but we know that animals can. We have not that power because we do not exercise it. This is what is called atavism.
Again. Nvc k5M\>. t'l -l iiiniio'.i wliiih Ii.is l)i((>iiu- Irilcnl
PRAXA.
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 impossibihty, but, on the other hand, every probabihty that each part of the body can be brought under perfect control. This the Yogi does through Pranayama. Perhaps some of you have read in these books that in Pranayama, when drawing in the breath, you must fill your whole body with Prana. In the Enghsh translations 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 Avith 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 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.