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Written by Swami Vivekananda |
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ACCORDING to the Yogis there are two nerve currents in the
spinal column, called Pingala and Ida, and there is a hollow
canal called Susumna running through the spinal cord. At
the lower end of the hollow canal is what the Yogis call the
“Lotus of the Kundalini.” They describe it as triangular in
form, in which, in the symbolical language of the Yogis,
there is a power called the Kundalini coiled up. When that
Kundalini awakes it tries to force a passage through this
hollow canal, and, as it rises step by step, as it were, layer
after layer of the mind becomes open, all these different
visions and wonderful powers come to the Yogi. When it
reaches the brain the Yogi is perfectly detached from the
body and mind; the soul finds itself free. We know that the
spinal cord is composed in a peculiar manner. If we take the
figure eight horizontally („) there are two parts, and these
two parts are connected in the middle. Suppose you add
eight after eight, piled one on top of the other, that will
represent the spinal cord. The left is the Ida, and the right
the Pingala, and that hollow canal which runs through the
centre of the spinal cord is the Susumna. When the spinal
cord ends in some of the lumbar vertabrę, a fine fibre comes
down, and the canal is even in that fibre, only much finer.
The canal is closed at the lower end, which is situated near
what is called the sacral plexus, which, according to modern
physiology, is triangular in form. The different plexuses that
have their centres in the spinal cord can very well stand for
the different “lotuses” of the Yogi.
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The Yogi conceives of several centres, beginning with the
Muladhara, the basic, and ending fvwith the Sahacrara, the
thousand-petalled lotus in the brain. So, if we take these
different plexuses as representing these circles, the idea of
the Yogi can be understood very easily in the language of
modern physiology. We know there are two sorts of actions
in these nerve currents, one afferent, the other efferent, one
sensory and the other motor; one centripetal, and the other
centrifugal. One carries the sensations to the brain, and the
other from the brain to the outer body. These vibrations are
all connected with the brain in the long run. Several other
facts we have to remember, in order to clear the way for the
explanation which is to come. This spinal cord, at the brain,
ends in a sort of bulb, in the medulla, which is not attached
to the bone, but floats in a fluid in the brain, so that if there
be a blow on the head the force of that blow will be
dissipated in the fluid, and will not hurt the bulb. This will
be an important fact as we go on. Seconly, we have also to
know that, of all the centres, we have particularly to
remember three, the Muladhara (the basis), the Sahacrara
(the thousand-petalled lotus of the brain) and the
Svadhisthana (next above the Muladhara). 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 gigantic battery of electricity of the
THE PSYCHIC PRANA
43
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 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 coiledup
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
Mahakaca, or great space. When a Yogi reads the thoughts
of other men, or perceives super-sensuous objects, he sees
them in another sort of space called the Chittakaca, the
mental space. When perception has become objectless, and
the soul shines in its own nature, it is called the Chidakaca,
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
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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 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
efferent 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 the
Susumna. 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.
This Susumna is, in ordinary persons, closed up at the
lower extremity; no action comes through it. The Yogi
proposes a practice by which it can be opened, and the nerve
currents made to travel through. When a sensation is carried
to a centre, the centre reacts. This reaction, in the case of
automatic centres, is followed by motion; in the case of
conscious centres it is followed first by perception, and
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45
secondly by motion. All perception is the reaction to action
from outside. How, then, do perceptions in dreams arise?
There is then no action from outside. The sensory motions,
therefore, are coiled up somewhere, just as the motor
motions are known to be in different centres. For instance, I
see a city; the perception of that city was from the reaction to
the sensations brought from outside objects comprising that
city. That is to say, a certainmotion in the brain molecules
has been set up by the motion in the incarrying nerves,
which again were set in motion by external objects in the
city. Now, even after a long time I can remember the city.
This memory is exactly the same phenomenon, only it is in a
milder form. But whence is the action that set up even the
milder form of similar vibrations in the brain? Not certainly
from the primary sensations. Therefore it must be that the
sensations are coiled up somewhere, and they, by their
acting, bring out the mild reaction which we call dream
perception. Now the centre where all these residual
sensations are, as it were, stored up, is called the Muladhara,
the root receptacle, and the coiled up energy of action is
Kundalini, the “coiled up.” It is very probable that the
residual motor energy is also stroed up in the same centre as,
after deep study or meditation on external objects, the part of
the body where the Muladhara centre is situated (probably
the sacral plexus) gets heated. Now, if this coiled-up energy
be roused and made active, and then consciously made to
travel up the Susumna canal, a tremendous reaction will set
in. When a minute portion of the energy of action travels
along a nerve fibre and causes reaction from centres, the
perception is either dream or imagination. But when the vast
mass of this energy stored up by the power of long internal
meditation travels along the Susumna, and strikes the
centres, the reaction is tremendous, immensely superior to
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46
the reaction of dream or imagination, immensely more
intense than the reaction of sense perception. It is supersensuous
perception, and the mind in that state is called
super-conscious. And when it reaches the metropolis of all
senstations, the brain, the whole brain, as it were, reacts, and
every perceiving molecule in the body, as it were, reacts, and
the result is the full blaze of illumination, the perception of
the Self. As this Kundalini force travels from centre to
centre, layer after layer of the mind, as it were, will be
opened up, and this universe will be perceived by the Yogi in
its fine, or course, form. Then alone the causes of this
universe, both as sensation and reaction, will be known as
they are, and hence will come all knowledge. The causes
being known, the knowledge of the effects is sure to follow.
Thus the rousing of the Kundalini is the one and only
way to attaining Divine Wisdom, and super-consious
perception, the realisation of the spirit. It may come in
various ways, through love for God, through the mercy of
perfected sages, or through the power of the analytic will of
the philosopher. Wherever there is any manifestation of
what is ordinarily called supernatural power or wisdom,
there must have been a little current of Kundalini which
found its way into the Susumna. Only, in the vast majority
of such cases of supernaturalism, they had ignorantly
stumbled on to some practice which set free a minute portion
of the coiled-up Kundalini. All worship, consciously or
unconsciously, leads to this end. The man who thinks that
he is receiving responses to his prayers does not know that
the fulfilment came only from his own nature, that he has
succeeded by the mental attitude of prayer in waking up a bit
of the infinite power which is coiled up within himself.
Whom, thus, men ignorantly worship under various names,
through fear and tribulation, the Yogi declares to the world to
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be the real power coiled up in every being, the mother of
eternal happiness, if we know how to approach her. And
Raja Yoga is the science of religion, the rationale of all
worship, all prayers, forms, ceremonies and miracles. |
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