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.
cases, when these Samskaras are very strong, they bear fruit quickly ; exceptional acts of wickedness, or of goodness, bring their fruits in this life. The Yogis even hold that men who are able to acquire a tremendous power of good Samskaras do not have to die, but, even in this life, can change their bodies into god-bodies. There are several cases mentioned by the Yogis in their books. These men change the very material of their bodies; they re-arrange the molecules in such fashion that they have no more sickness, and what we call death does not come to them. Why should not this be? The physiological meaning of food is assimilation of energy from the sun. This energy has reached the plant, the plant is eaten by an animal, and the animal by us. The science of it is that we take so much energy from the sun, and make it part of ourselves. That being the case, why should there be only one way of assimilating energy ? The plant's way is not the same as ours ; the earth's process of assimilating energy differs from our own. But all assimilate energy in some form or other. The Yogis say that they are able to assimilate energy by the power of the mind alone, that they can draw in as much as they desire without recourse to the ordinary methods. As a spider makes his net out of his own substance, and becomes bound in his net, and cannot go anywhere except along the lines of that net, so we have projected out of our own substance this net-work called the nerves, and we cannot work except through the channels of those nerves. The Yogi says we need not be bound by that. Similarly, we can send electricity to any part of the world, but we have to send it by means of wires. Nature can send a vast mass of electricity without any wires at all. Why cannot we do the same ? We can send mental electricity. What we call mind is very much the same as electricity. It is clear that this nerve fluid has some amount of electricity, because it is polarised, and it answers all electrical directions. We can only send our electricity through these nerve channels. Why not send the mental electricity without this aid ? The Yogi says it is perfectly possible and practicable, and that when you can do that you will work all over the universe. You will be able to work with any body anywhere, without the help of any nervous system. When the soul is acting through these channels we say a man is living and when those channels die the man is said to be dead. But when a man is able to act either with or without these channels, birth and death will have no meaning for him. All the bodies in the universe are made up of Tanmatras, and it is only in the arrangement of them that there comes a difference. If you are the arranger you can arrange that body in one way or another. Who makes up this body but you ? Who eats the food ? If another ate the food for you you would not live long. Who makes the blood out of it ? You, certainly. Who assimilates the blood, and sends it through the veins ? You. Who creates the nerves, and makes all the muscles ? You are the manufacturer, out of your ov.n
1^8 J^^M'*^ YOGA.
substance. You are the manufacturer of the body, and you live in it. Only we have lost the knowledge of how to make it. We have become automatic, degenerate. We have forgotten the process of manufacture. So» what we do automatically has again to be regulated. We are the creators and we have to regulate that creation, and as soon as we can do that we shall be able to manufacture just as we like, and then we shall have neither l)irth nor death, disease, or anything.
13. The root being there, the fruition comes fin the form ofj species, life, and experience of pleasure and pain.
The roots, the causes, the Samskaras being there, they again manifest, and form the effects. The cause dying down becomes the effect, and the effect becomes more subtle, and becomes the cause of the next effect. The tree bears a seed, and becomes the cause of the next tree, and so on. All our works now, are the effects of past Samskaras. Again, these Samskaras become the causes of future actions, and thus we go on. So this aphorism says that the cause being there, the fruit must come, in the form of species ; one will be a man, another an angel, another an animal, another a demon. Then there are different effects in life ; one man lives fifty years, another a hundred, and another dies in two years, and never attains maturity ; all these differences in life are regulated by these past actions. One man is born, as it were, for pleasure ; if he buries himself in a