The breathing lecture rests on a piece of physics that was not the physics of 1896. If the molecules of a table were all "made to move in the same direction it will be electricity." By that definition a draught through a room would be a battery, which is what the next sentence in fact claims. The argument then carries the image into the body: rhythmic breathing lines up the body's molecules and makes it a battery of will. The analogy is vivid, and it is how the lecture persuades, but it is analogy. Read as explanation, it borrows the authority of science for a claim no laboratory of the day supported.
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.
know that, of all the centres, we have particularly to remember three, the Miiladhara (the basic), the Sahasrara (the thousand-petalled lotus of the brain) and the Svadhisthana (the navel). 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 jEjigantic battery of electricity of the 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
THE PSYCHIC PRANA.
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 Pranayama 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 supersensuous objects, he sees them in another sort of space called the Chittakasa, 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 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
^2 RAJA YOGA.
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 efierent 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 Susumna, 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 that Susumni. 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.