Page 11 - All India Magazine May-2022

number of different kinds of Pranayam, and a man is not a perfect
Hathayogin till he has mastered them all. The conquest of the Prana

confirms the perfect health, vigour and vitality gained by the Asanas;
it confers the power of living as long as one pleases and it adds to

the four physical siddhis, the five psychical, — prakamya or absolute
keenness of the mind and senses including telepathy, clairvoyance
and other faculties commonly supposed to be supernormal; vyapti
or the power of receiving other men’s thoughts, powers and feelings
and projecting one’s own thoughts, feelings, powers or personality
into others; aiswaryam or control over events, lordship, wealth and
all objects of desire; vashita or the power of exacting implicit and
instantaneous obedience to the spoken or written word; ishita, the
perfect control over the powers of nature and over things inert or
unintelligent. Some of these powers have recently been discovered
in Europe as phenomena of hypnotism or will-force; but the European
experiences are feeble and unscientific if compared with the achieve-

ments of the ancient Hathayogins or even with those of some of
the modern. The will power developed by Pranayam is, it should be
noted, psychical and not spiritual. CWSA 1: 505-06

The movement of Prana
The Prana has according to Yogic science a fivefold movement

pervading all the nervous system and the whole material body and
determining all its functionings. The Hathayogin seizes on the out-
ward movement of respiration as a sort of key which opens to him
the control of all these five powers of the Prana. He becomes sensi-

bly aware of their inner operations, mentally conscious of his whole
physical life and action. He is able to direct the Prana through all the
n s or nerve-channels of his system. He becomes aware of its ac-
tion in the six cakras or ganglionic centres of the nervous system, and
is able to open it up in each beyond its present limited, habitual and
mechanical workings. He gets, in short, a perfect control of the life in
the body in its most subtle nervous as well as in its grossest physical
aspects, even over that in it which is at present involuntary and out
of the reach of our observing consciousness and will. CWSA 23: 535

All India Magazine, May 2022