The Chapter "Pranayama" from Swami Vivekananda's "Raja Yoga"

<h2> Prana - from Swami Vivekananda's book RAJA YOGA</h2>Pranayama is not concerned, as many suppose, with breathing; breathing in fact has very little to do with it, not to say nothing at all. Breathing is only one of the many exercises by which we arrive at real Pranayama. Pranayama means the control of Prana. According to the Indian philosophers, the whole universe consists of two elements, one of which they call Akasha. It is a something that is everywhere and penetrates everything. All that has form, all that is the result of combination, has developed out of this Akasha. Akasha is that which has become air, liquids, solid bodies. It is Akasha that becomes the Sun, the Earth, the Moon, the stars and the comets; Akasha is that which has become the body in general, the body of an animal, a plant, which takes on every shape we see, the forms of everything that can be sensed, everything that exists. It cannot itself be perceived, for it is so subtle that it lies beyond all ordinary perception, and it can be seen only when it becomes gross, when it takes on form. At the beginning of creation only this Akasha exists; at the end of the cycle solids, liquids and gases will all dissolve back into Akasha, and the next creation will develop out of Akasha in the same way.By what power did Akasha turn into this universe? By the power of Prana. As Akasha is the infinite, omnipresent matter of this universe, so exactly is Prana the infinite, omnipresent, manifesting force of this universe. At the beginning and at the end of every cycle everything becomes Akasha, and all the forces that exist in this universe are transformed back into Prana; in the next cycle everything we call energy, everything that is called force, develops out of Prana.Prana is that which manifests as motion of every kind, as attraction, as magnetism and so on. It is Prana that manifests in the form of the processes of the body, in the form of nerve currents, in the form of the power of thought. From thought down to the grossest physical force, everything is only a manifestation of Prana. The sum of all the forces of nature, spiritual and physical, restored to their original state, is called Prana. "When there was neither aught nor naught, when darkness covered darkness, what existed then?" - "There existed Akasha without motion". The physical action of Prana had been stopped, but Prana itself existed. We know from the latest science that all the energy now manifesting in the universe is a constant quantity. The sum of energy in the universe remains exactly the same; only, at the end of a cycle this energy comes to rest and becomes potential, and at the beginning of the next cycle it begins to act, gives an impulse to Akasha, and out of Akasha all the various forms develop; and as soon as Akasha changes, Prana changes too, turning into every possible manifestation of energy. The knowledge of Prana and the control of it is in fact what is meant by Pranayama.It opens for us the door to an almost limitless power. Suppose, for instance, that someone has fully grasped Prana and gained the power to control it - what force on earth could there be that would not belong to him? He would be able to move the sun and the stars from their places, to govern everything in the universe, from atoms to the vastest suns, because he can govern Prana. In this lies the task and the aim of Pranayama.When the yogi becomes perfect, there is nothing left in nature that is not in his power. If he commands the gods to come to him, they will come at his bidding; if he asks the departed to come, they will come at his request. All the forces of nature will obey him like his servants, and when the uninitiated see the manifestations of the yogi's power, they will call them miracles.It is a peculiarity of the Hindu mind that it always seeks the furthest possible generalisation, leaving the details to be worked out later. In the Vedas the question is put: "What is that, knowing which, we shall know everything?" And all the books and all the philosophies that have ever been written have sought only to make clear that through the knowledge of which everything becomes known.If someone wished to become acquainted with the universe part by part, he would have to become acquainted with every separate grain of sand; that would take infinite time, and he would never know it all. What knowledge, then, is possible? What possibility is there for a man to become all-knowing by way of particulars? The yogis say that behind the particular manifestations there is a generalisation; behind all particular ideas stands a generalised idea, an abstract principle. Master that, and you master everything.In the Vedas the whole of nature is generalised into One Absolute Being. He who has understood this Being has understood the whole universe. In the same way all forces are generalised in Prana, and he who has mastered Prana has mastered all the forces of nature, spiritual and physical. He who has subdued Prana has subdued his own consciousness and every consciousness that exists. He who has subdued Prana has subdued his body and every body that exists, because Prana is the generalised manifestation of force. The single task of Pranayama is how to subdue Prana. All the training and all the exercises have this one aim, and each must begin from where he has stopped, must learn to control the things that are nearest to him. The Prana that acts in our consciousness and our body is the nearest to us of all Prana; it is our own energy, spiritual and physical; it is the wave nearest to us in the whole infinite ocean of Prana; and only when we are able to control this little wave can we hope to subdue the whole of Prana. The yogi who has done this attains perfection, and no force has power over him any longer. He becomes almost omnipotent, almost omniscient. We see in every country sects which have tried to attain this subjugation of Prana. In this country (America) there are spiritual healers, faith healers, spiritualists, "adepts of Christian Science", hypnotists and others; and if we examine all these groups in detail, we shall find that at the base of every one of them lies the control of Prana - whether they have any notion of it or not. If you strip away all their theories, the remainder will be one and the same for all: they all work by means of one and the same force, only unconsciously. They have stumbled by chance upon the discovery of a force and, though they do not know its nature, they unconsciously set to work the very faculties the yogis use and which arise from Prana.Prana is the vital force of every being, and the subtlest and highest action of Prana is thought. But thought, as we see, is not yet everything. There is a kind of thought called instinct, or unconscious thought, the lowest level of the action of Prana. If a mosquito stings us, our hand strikes it without any thought on our part - automatically, instinctively. But this too is one of the expressions of thought. All the reflex actions of the body belong to this level of thought. Then there is a higher level of thought - consciousness; I reason, I judge, I think, I see the near and the far side of various things. But this too is not everything. We know that reason is limited. It extends only over a certain area, beyond which it cannot go. The circle inside which it works is in reality very, very narrow. And yet at the same time we see facts that seem to break into this circle from somewhere. Like a comet, something appears within this circle, and there is no doubt that it has come from beyond its bounds, although our reason cannot pass beyond them. The causes of the phenomena that penetrate into this little area lie outside its border; neither reason nor the intellect can grasp them. But, says the yogi, reason and the intellect are not everything: consciousness can act on a still higher level, the level of super-consciousness. When consciousness has reached the state called Samadhi - complete concentration, super-consciousness - it passes beyond the bounds of reason and stands face to face with facts inaccessible to instinct and to reason alike.All the actions of the subtle forces in the body, that is, the various manifestations of Prana, when they have been properly worked out, act upon consciousness as a stimulus, and consciousness then rises higher, becomes super-conscious and acts from that higher plane.The universe is one continuous mass containing every possible level of existence. Physically the universe is one; there is no difference at all between the sun and ourselves. A scientist will tell you that it is an error to say otherwise. In essence there is no difference between this table and me; the table is one centre of the accumulation of matter, and I am another. Every form is, as it were, a single whirlpool in an infinite ocean of matter, and such whirlpools are not permanent. As in a rushing stream there may be millions of eddies, and the water in each of them is new at every moment - it spins for a few seconds and then goes on, and new particles come in its place - so too the whole universe is one constantly changing mass of matter, in which we are little eddies. A certain quantity of matter enters them, circles round, over a few years forming a human body, changes and is carried away to form, perhaps, the body of an animal; out of that it is carried away again, so that after a few years it may fall into a new whirlpool called a lump of mineral.Everything changes constantly. There is not one permanent body. There is no such thing as my body or your body, except in words. There is one enormous mass of matter. One little accumulation of it is called the moon, another the sun, the next a man, the next the earth, the next a plant, the next a mineral.Nothing is permanent, but everything is changeable: everything is matter, eternally joining into separate masses and breaking up into its component parts. It is the same with consciousness. Let us picture matter in the form of ether. When the action of Prana is subtle in the highest degree, this ether, in a finer state of vibration, will constitute consciousness, while still remaining one indivisible mass. If you are able to stir up these finest vibrations in yourself, you will see and feel that the whole universe consists of just such fine vibrations. Certain substances have the power at times to bring us into the right conditions and, so to speak, to take us out from under the influence of our ordinary senses. Many of you probably remember the well-known case of Sir Humphry Davy: how once, under the effect of laughing gas, he suddenly stopped in the middle of a lecture, stunned and motionless, and afterwards related that the whole universe had appeared to him to consist of ideas. At that moment the gross vibrations had, as it were, ceased, and only the fine ones appeared to him, which he called ideas. He could see around him only the fine vibrations; everything became thought for him, the whole universe one ocean of thought, and he himself and all others became little whirlpools of thought. Thus even in the world of thought we find unity, and when at last we come to Being, we shall learn that this Being too can only be One.Above motion there is only the One. Every motion that manifests represents the same unity. This fact can no longer be denied, for the latest science has fully proved it. Modern physics has proved that the sum of energy in the universe is an entirely constant quantity. It has also been proved that energy exists in two forms: it becomes potential, grows weak and comes to rest; then it begins to show itself again, manifesting in the form of every kind of force, returns again to the state of rest and again manifests. Thus through the whole of eternity it unfolds, so to speak, and folds up again. The control of this energy, or Prana, as has been said before, is what is called Pranayama.Pranayama is very little concerned with breathing, and then only as an exercise. The most noticeable manifestation of Prana in the human body is the movement of the lungs. If that stops, all the functions of the body come to a halt; all the other manifestations of the vital force in the body will cease at once if it ceases. There are people who can train themselves in such a way that their body will go on living even if this movement stops. There are certain individuals who can bury themselves for a month and live all that time without breathing; but for ordinary people the movement of the lungs is the chief gross movement in the body. To reach the subtler, we must call the gross to our aid and move slowly towards the subtlest, until we reach our goal. The most noticeable of all the movements in the body is the movement of the lungs, the flywheel that sets the other forces in motion. Pranayama in fact means the control of the movement of the lungs, and this movement is connected with breathing. It is not breathing that produces it; on the contrary, it produces breathing. This movement draws in the air, acting like a pump. Prana moves the lungs, and this movement of the lungs draws in the air. Pranayama, then, is not breathing, but the control of that muscular force which moves the lungs; and this same muscular force, passing through the nerves to the muscles and from them to the lungs and making the lungs move in a particular way, is the Prana we must control in the exercises of Pranayama.Once we have subdued this Prana, we shall at once see that all the other actions of Prana in the body will little by little submit to us as well. I have myself seen people who had the power to control almost every muscle and nerve of their body; and why not? If I control certain muscles, why not all the muscles and nerves of the body? What is impossible about it? At present the control has been lost and the movement has become automatic. We cannot move our ears at will, but we know that animals can. We do not have this faculty because we do not exercise it.We know that a movement which has become latent can be made to manifest again. By persistent work and exercise, some of the most completely lost movements of the body can be brought back into full dependence on us. From this reasoning we see that not only is nothing impossible, but on the contrary it appears quite probable that every part of the body can be brought into complete subjection. The yogis achieve this by means of Pranayama.Some of you may have read in books that treat of this subject that in Pranayama, as you inhale, you must fill your whole body with Prana, and you will ask how that is to be done. Here there is simply a mistake by the translators, who in rendering it into English used the word "Prana" in place of the word "breath".Every part of the body can be filled with Prana, that is, with the vital force, and if you are able to do this, you can control the whole body. All the diseases and sufferings of your body will be completely in your power, and not only your own: you will also be able to control the body of another. Everything in this world is catching, both the good and the bad. If your body is at a certain pitch of tension, it will tend to produce the same tension in others. If you are strong and healthy, those who live beside you will likewise tend to become strong and healthy; but if you are ill and weak, those around you will tend to become the same. The vibrations are, as it were, communicated to the other body. In cases where one person tries to cure another, the first thing he can do is simply to pass on his own health to the other. This is the simplest method of healing. Consciously or unconsciously, health can be passed on. A very healthy man living with a weak one will make him somewhat stronger, whether he wishes it or not. Conscious action will in this case be quicker and more successful. Then come the cases in which a man is not very strong, and yet we know that he can bring health to another. In such a case the first man has a somewhat greater power of controlling Prana and can, at the given moment, rouse his Prana to a certain state of vibration and pass that state on to the other person.There have been cases in which this was done at a certain distance, but in reality there was no distance here in the sense of a break. Where is such a distance in which there would be a break? Is there any break between you and the sun? There exists one unbroken mass of matter; the sun is one part of it, you are another. Is there a gap between one part of a river and another? Why then should there not be a transfer of forces? There is no ground against it. These cases are perfectly true, and Prana can be carried over very great distances; but of the cases of this kind that are reported, there are usually a hundred false ones for every genuine one. It is not so easy as people think. In the more ordinary cases of such healings, the healers simply make use of the natural tendency of the human body to be healthy. No disease in this world kills the majority of those it strikes. Even in an epidemic of cholera, if during the first days 60 out of every 100 who fall ill die, the number then falls to 30 and to 20 out of 100, and the rest recover. An allopath comes, tends the cholera patients and gives them his medicines; a homeopath comes, gives his medicine and cures, perhaps, a greater number simply because he did not trouble the sick and did not hinder nature from working on them herself. A faith healer will cure more still, because he will assist with the force of his spirit and will rouse, by means of faith, the sleeping Prana of the patient.But faith healers labour under a constant error: they think that faith itself directly cures a person. Faith alone cannot explain every case. There are diseases in which the worst symptom is that the sick person never admits that he has the disease. This terrible conviction of the patient is itself a symptom of the illness and usually indicates that death is near. In such cases the proposition that faith cures does not apply. If faith cured in every case, these patients too would be cured. In reality the cure is brought about by Prana. A pure man who controls Prana can bring it into a certain state of vibration which is then communicated to others, rousing a like vibration in them. You see this every day. I am speaking to you. What am I trying to do? I am, so to speak, bringing my consciousness into a certain state of vibration; and the better I succeed in bringing it into that state, the more what I say acts upon you. Every one of you knows that on the day when I am especially roused, the reading gives you more pleasure, and when I am less roused, you feel your interest falling off.The mighty forces of will in the world - the movers of the world - are able to bring their Prana into a high state of vibration, and it is so great and so powerful that in a single moment it seizes others: thousands are drawn to them, and half the world thinks as they do. The great prophets of the world had an astonishing power over Prana, and this power gave them a formidable strength of will; they brought their Prana into the very highest state of motion, and this gave them the power to rule over the world. All manifestations of power arise from this control of Prana. Men themselves may not know this secret; but in it lies the only explanation. Sometimes in our own body Prana is drawn in greater or lesser measure to one part; the balance is disturbed; and when the balance of Prana is disturbed, what we call disease occurs. To remove the excess of Prana, or to add the Prana that is lacking, will be the cure of the disease. To know when there is more or less Prana in one part of the body than there ought to be will likewise be Pranayama. Through practice in Pranayama the senses will become so refined that you will be aware that there is less Prana than there should be in a toe or a finger, and you will be able to direct it there. This faculty belongs to those acquired by means of Pranayama, and it must be developed slowly and by degrees. As you see, the whole task of Raja Yoga consists, in essence, in teaching us to master Prana and to direct it on the various levels of its manifestation. When a man has concentrated his energy, he is controlling the Prana that is in his body. When a man meditates, he is likewise concentrating Prana.In the ocean there are enormous waves like mountains, then smaller ones and smaller still, down to the tiniest ripple, but the foundation of them all is the boundless ocean. The insignificant ripple is joined to the boundless ocean at one end, and the enormous wave at the other. In the same way, one man may be a giant and another the smallest of men, but each is joined to the infinite ocean of energy, and this is the common inborn property of all that lives. Wherever there is life, behind it lies an infinite store of energy. Starting from some fungus, from the most insignificant microscopic vesicle, and drawing all the while on this infinite store of energy, the form changes little by little, until in the course of time it becomes a plant, then an animal, then a man and, in the end, God. This is attained through millions of "aeons"; but what is time? An increase of speed, or of intensity, is able to shorten the distance of time. The yogi says that what ordinarily requires a long time to accomplish can be attained sooner by intensifying the action. A man may move forward slowly, drawing energy from the infinite mass of it that exists in the universe, and he may need a hundred thousand years to become a Deva, and then perhaps five hundred thousand years to become higher still, and perhaps five million years to become perfect. By hastening the growth, the time can be shortened. Why should it not be possible, with sufficient effort, to attain complete perfection in six months or in six years? There are no limits. Reason shows this. If a locomotive with a certain expenditure of coal covers two miles an hour, add coal and it will cover them faster. In the same way, why should the soul, having intensified its activity, not reach its goal in this very life? We know that all beings will attain perfection in the end; but who will want to wait through all these millions of "aeons"? Why not attain it at once, even in this body, in this human form? Why should I not attain this infinite knowledge, this infinite power, now? This is the ideal of the yogi.The whole science of Yoga is directed to one aim: to teach people how to shorten time by adding force, how to increase the power of assimilation and thereby shorten the time needed to attain perfection, instead of moving slowly step by step and waiting until the whole human race reaches the end and becomes perfect. All the great prophets, saints and seers of the world - what are they? In the short span of their lives they lived through the whole life of humanity, they threw a bridge across the whole stretch of time that ordinary humanity must spend in order to reach the state of perfection. They devote their lives to perfecting themselves, they have not one thought for anything else, they breathe nothing else, they never live a single moment for any other idea, and in this way they shorten the road for themselves. By concentration is meant the intensifying of activity, or of assimilation, and thereby the shortening of time; and Raja Yoga is the science that teaches us how to acquire the power of concentration.What relation has Pranayama to spiritualism? Spiritualism too is a manifestation of Pranayama. If it is true that the spirits of the departed exist, and only that we cannot see them, then it is quite likely that hundreds and millions of beings may live here whom we can neither see nor feel nor touch. We may pass back and forth through their bodies constantly without noticing them, and it is very likely that they too neither see nor feel us. This is a circle within a circle, a universe within a universe. Only those who belong to one and the same level see one another. We have five senses and we are Prana in a certain state of vibration. All beings in one and the same state of vibration will see one another; but if there are beings who are Prana in a higher state of vibration, they will not be visible. We can increase the intensity of light to such a degree that we shall not see the light at all, but there may be beings with eyes so strong that they can see such light; and conversely, if the vibrations are very slow, we do not see light, but there are animals, such as cats and owls, which do. Our sphere of vision lies within only one level of the vibrations of this Prana. Take our atmosphere, for example; it is made up of layers, of which those nearer the earth are denser than those higher up, and the higher you rise, the thinner and thinner the atmosphere becomes. Or take the example of the ocean; the deeper and deeper you go, the greater the density of the water, and those animals that live at the bottom of the sea can never rise to the top, or they will be torn to pieces.Let us picture this whole universe as an ocean of ether, vibrating under the action of Prana and consisting of successive layers with different degrees of vibration - in the outer layers there are fewer vibrations, while nearer the centre the vibrations become faster and faster, and each order of vibration constitutes one level. Let us picture all this together as one sphere whose centre is perfection. The further you go from the centre, the slower the vibrations; matter forms the outer crust, then comes consciousness, and at the centre is spirit. Now let us suppose that these degrees of vibration are separate levels, or spheres of vision - so many millions of miles for one order of vibration, and then so many millions of miles for an order of higher vibrations, and so on. It is perfectly clear that those who live in a layer (level) of a certain state of vibration will be able to recognise one another, but will not recognise those who are above or below them. But just as by means of the telescope and the microscope we can enlarge the field of our vision and make higher or lower vibrations accessible to us, so every person can bring himself into the state of vibration belonging to the next layer, and so make himself able to see what goes on there. Suppose this room is full of beings whom we do not see. They are certain vibrations of Prana, and we are other vibrations. Let theirs be the faster and ours the slower. Akasha is the matter of which both they and we consist; all are parts of the same ocean of Akasha, only the speed of its vibration, that is, the Prana, is different. If I can bring myself to faster vibrations, my level will change for me at once; I shall no longer see you; you will disappear and they will appear. Some of you may know that this is true. Such a bringing of consciousness into a higher state of vibration is expressed in Yoga by one word, "Samadhi".All the states of higher vibration, the super-conscious vibrations, are denoted by this one word, "Samadhi", and even the lower states of Samadhi give us the vision of these beings. The highest degree of Samadhi is when we see the thing in itself, when we see the material of which all the different orders of beings are composed, that clay which, once known, will let us know the substance of the whole universe.So we see that Pranayama includes within itself all that is true in spiritualism. In the same way it will turn out that wherever some sect or some individual has tried to discover anything secret, mystical and hidden, it is in fact the same Yoga, the striving to subdue Prana. You will find that wherever some extraordinary display of force has occurred, it is a manifestation of Prana. Even the physical sciences can be included in Pranayama. What sets the steam engine in motion? Prana, acting by means of steam. What are all these phenomena of electricity and the like, if not Prana? What is physical science? Pranayama working by outward means. Prana manifesting as mental force can be governed only by mental means. That part of Pranayama which tries to govern the physical manifestations of Prana by physical means is called physical science, and that part which tries to govern the manifestations of Prana as mental force by mental means is called Raja Yoga.