INVESTIGATION OF THE LIVING PRINCIPLE.
Argument.--Disquisition of the Arteries and organs of the body. The
seat of life and its actions.
Bhusunda continued:--All things being thus unstable, unprofitable and
unpleasant to man, there is one reality only in the view of the wise,
which is beyond all error and imperishable, and which though present in
all things and all places, transcends the knowledge of all.
2. This essence is the soul or self, and its meditation is the remover
of all sorrow and affliction. It is also the destroyer of the erroneous
vision of the world, which has passed every man, and biased his
understanding by his long habit of thinking this phantom of his dream
as a sober reality.
3. Spiritual contemplation dawns in the clear atmosphere of the
unpolluted mind, and traverses amidst its whole area like the solar
light, and it destroys the darkness of all sorrows and erroneous
thought which over spreads it.
4. Divine meditation being unaccompanied by any desire or selfish view,
penetrates like the moon-beams through the darkness of the night of
ignorance.
5. This spiritual light is easily obtainable by Sages like you, and too
difficult to be retained (dháraná) by brutes like ourselves. Because
it is beyond all imaginable resemblance, and is known by the ravished
Sages as the transcendent light.
6. How can a man of common understanding come to the knowledge of
that thing, which is an associate to the clear understanding of the
meditative Sage only.
7. There is a little resemblance of this spiritual light, with the
intellectual light of philosophers, whose minds are enlightened by the
cooling moon-beams of philosophy, as those of the inspired saints are
illumed with spiritual light.
8. Among the associates of spiritual knowledge, there is one
particularly friendly to me, which alleviates all my sorrows, and
advances my prosperity, and this relates to the investigation of the
vital breath which is the cause of life.
9. Vasishtha said: After speaking in this manner the Sagely bird
Bhusunda held his silence, when I calmly joined my rejoinder, and
adduced my question to him by way of amusement, though I was full well
acquainted with the subject.
10. I addressed him saying, O thou long living bird, and remover of all
my doubts, tell me truly, my good friend, what you mean by meditation
of the vital breath (which you say to be the cause of vitality).
11. Bhusunda replied: You sir, who are learned in the knowledge of
Vedánta, and sure remover of all doubts in spiritual science, are now
by way of joke only, putting this question to me who am but a brute
bird and an ignorant crow.
12. Or it may be to sound my shallow knowledge of the subject, and to
instruct me the rest in which I am imperfect, that you like to have my
answer to the question, wherein I can lay no objection (as no body is
unprepared to know more and better of a subject).
13. Hear me, tell you some thing relating to cogitation of vital
breath, which has the cause of Bhusunda's longevity and the giver of
Bhusunda's spiritual knowledge.
14. You see sir, this beautiful fabric of the body, supported upon the
three strong pillars or posts of the three humours; and having nine
doorways about it. (The three humours are the bile, phlegm and wind,
and the nine openings are the earholes, nostrils, the sockets of the
eyes, the mouth).
15. This abode is occupied by its owner or the haughty house
holder--Ahankára or egoism, who dwells in it with his favourite consort
_Puryashtaká_, and his dependants of the Tanmátras at all times. (These
terms have been explained before).
16. You well know the inside of this house which I need not describe,
its two ears are as its two upper storied rooms, the two eyes are as
its two windows, and the hairs on the head are as its thatched covering
on the top of the house.
17. The opening of the mouth is the great door way to the house, the
two arms are as its two wings; and the two sets of teeth answer the
strings of flowers, which are hung on the gate way for its decoration.
18. The organs of sense are the porters to this house, and convey the
sights and sounds, flavours and feelings of things in to it. These are
enclosed by the great wall of the body, and the two pupils keep watch
on tower of this edifice.
19. The blood, fat and flesh form the plaster of this wall, and the
veins and arteries answer the strings to bind the bamboos of the bones
together, and the thick bones are the big posts that uphold this fabric.
20. There are two tender nerves called _Idá_ and _Pingalá_, which lie
and stretch along the two sides of this building.
21. There are three pairs of lotus like organs formed of soft flesh and
bones, and these stretch up and down perpendicularly in the body, and
are attached to one stalk like artery connecting them with one another.
22. Then the etherial air which is inhaled through the nostrils,
supplies these lotiform organs with moisture, as if it poured water
at their roots, and makes them shoot out in soft leaflets, shaking
gently at the breath of air, passing incessantly through the lungs and
nostrils.
23. The shaking leaves agitate the vital air, as the moving leaves of
the trees in the forest, increase the force of the current air in the
firmament.
24. The inflated vital air then passes in many ways, through the holes
of the entrails inside the body, and extends to and fills all the pores
and canals of the frame from top to bottom.
25. These then receive different appellations, according to their
course through the several, and are denominated as the five fold vital
airs of _prána_, _apána_, _samána_, _udána_, and _vyána_; by them that
are skilled in science of pneumatic. (The _prána-váyu_ is the breathing
of the nostrils, the _apána_ is the wind in _ano_, _samána_ is the air
circulating through the whole body, _udána_ is the air of speech, and
the _vyána_ is the air let out through the pores of the whole body).
26. All the vital powers reside in the triple lotiform organ of the
heart, and thence extend up and down and on all sides like beams from
the lunar disk.
27. These vital powers are employed in passing in and out, in taking in
and letting out, in rising and falling, and also in moving throughout
the body.
28. The prána or air of life is said by the learned to be situated
in the lotus formed organ of the heart, which has also the power of
moving the eyelids in their twinklings. (Hence one's life time is
measured both by the numbers of his breathings, as also by that of the
twinklings of his eye).
29. This power some times assumes the form of touch or the feeling
of perception, and at others it takes the shape of breath by blowing
through the nostrils. Some times it is seated in the stomach for
culinary action, and oft-times it gives utterance to speech.
30. What more shall I say, than that it is our lord--the air, that
moves the whole machine of the body, as a mechanic models everything by
means of his machinery.
31. Among these there are two principal airs, by name of _prána_ and
_apána_, which take their two different courses upward and downward,
the one is the breath of life and the other is the vitiated which is
let out.
32. It is by watching the course of these airs that I remain quiet at
this place, and undergo the vicissitudes of heat and cold, as it is
destined to the lot of the feathered tribe.
33. The body is a great machine, and the two airs are its indefatigable
mover. It has the sun and moon or the fire and moonlight, shining in
the midst of its heart.
34. The body is a city and the mind is its ruler, the two airs are as
the car and wheel of the body; while Egoism is the monarch of this
city, and the eight members are as so many horses attached to the car
of the body.
35. Thus by watching the motion of those airs (_i.e._ of the _prána_
and _apána_--inspiration and expiration for the whole of my lifetime);
I find the course of my life to be as interminable, as that of the
continuity of my breathings. (The thought of continuity prolongs the
course of life).
36. The airs serve the body alike in all its states of waking,
dreaming, and sound sleep, and his days glide on imperceptibly who
remains in his state of profound sleep. (so the yogi remaining in his
trance is utterly insensible of the course of time).
37. These breaths being divided into a thousand threads, according as
they pass through the many canals of the body, are as imperceptible as
the white fibres passing inside the stalks of lotus plants.
38. By watching the incessant course of vital airs, as also by
attending to the continued course of time, and thinking in one self of
the interminable course of his respirations, and the moments of time
and train of his thoughts, as also by attempting to restrain their
course by the habit and practice of _pránáyáma_, that he is sure to
lengthen the duration of his life in this world; and attain to his
eternal life in the next.