Equinox I (04).pdf

98
THE EQUINOX
called Prânâyâma. And thus it is that we find the Yogi saying
that he who can control the Prâna can control the Universe.
To the perfect man there can be nothing in nature that is not
under his control.
If he orders the gods to come, they will come at his bidding. . . . All the forces
of nature will obey him as his slaves, and when the ignorant see these powers of
the Yogi, they call them miracles.*
PRÂNÂYÂMA
The two nerve currents Pingala and Ida correspond to the
sensory and motor nerves, one is afferent and the other
efferent. The one carries the sensations to the brain, whilst
the other carries them back from the brain to the tissues of the
body. The Yogi well knows that this is the ordinary process of
consciousness, and from it he argues that, if only he can
succeed in making the two currents, which are moving in
opposite directions, move in one and the same direction, by
means of guiding them through the Sushumnâ, he will thus be
able to attain a state of consciousness as different from the
normal state as a fourth dimensional world would be from a
third. Swami Vivekânanda explains this as follows:
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. . . . 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.†
And the conquest of the will is the beginning and end of
Prânâyâma.
* Vivekânanda, “Raja-Yoga,” p. 23. See Eliphas Levi's “The Dogma and
Ritual of Magic,” pp. 121, 158, 192, and Huxley's “Essay on Hume,” p. 155.
† Vivekânanda, “Raja-Yoga,” pp. 36, 37.