Chapter 8 - A Dynamic Conception of Life
The current conception of life as adopted by occidental science (a conception which, incidentally, is about to undergo a change) is static. The conception of Yoga is dynamic. As perceived by our senses, a living being cannot be distinguished from an inanimate object except, perhaps, through the former's capacity for movement. But machines also are capable of movement and still they are not living beings. The difference is somewhere else. An inanimate object, a chair for instance, is more or less permanent in form, colour, weight etc. through the permanence of the matter of which it is made. The molecules which compose it, molecules of wood, metal etc. have not changed since it was made. In a month, in a year, excepting accident, they will still be the same.
The case of a living being is quite different. Its material components change continually. The millions of cells of which it is formed are maintained stable only by a means of a constant balancing of birth and death; every instant some of the cells die and some others are born. During their short existence, these cells are at work assimilating and transmuting, ceaselessly shedding their material elements, molecules and atoms and replacing them by new ones. While outwardly the living being will seem the same in six months or a year, in reality it will be composed of an entirely new set of molecules and atoms. It is therefore not the matter we perceive which goes to form a living being, it is something which the senses cannot perceive, some sort of perpetually active force which, according to an invariable plan, groups and organises an enormous number of constantly changing material elements.
This is what we understand by a dynamic conception of life such as that adopted by Yoga. The practice of Yoga can only be conceived from this angle and should, under no circumstances, be adjusted to a static conception of life.
A living body can be compared to a machine. Such a comparision is faulty at best, since a machine does not reconstruct and renew itself as does a living body. The best comparison seems to be that with an electric motor. Electricity resembles the vital force called Prana by Yoga, especially as concerns its double polarisation, positive and negative.
The perfect functioning of an electric motor depends upon two factors: (1) the state of its mechanical parts and (2) the current it receives. Likewise, the health of a living body depends (1) on the good condition of its organs and (2) on a current of vital force or energy adapted to the structure and capacity of its organs. Western medicine, so far, has busied itself mainly with the first one of these conditions while the ancient oriental tradition was concerned principally with the second factor. The two factors should in no way be opposed to each other. On the contrary, they complete each other and the fusion of the two elements, the static and the dynamic, will go a long way towards the creation of a complete medical science, like two halves that make a whole.
In any event, theory and practice of Hatha Yoga are only interested in the dynamic concept of health. There again we are in the presence of a vital difference between the conceptions of Hatha Yoga and that of modern western science. The latter studies only the physical world, matter and the forces which set it in motion. In other words, its only object is the study of phenomena that can be perceived normally through the senses. If there is anything beyond what the sense organs can perceive, science neither denies nor affirms it, but considers it a question for philosophers and not for scientists.
The masters of Yoga, on the other hand, were of the opinion that the physical world which we perceive through our sense organs is doubled by a semi-material, fluid world which, at least under normal conditions, cannot be perceived by the senses. It is the world of Prana.
Briefly, Prana has two aspects. The first is that of a substance which, without being matter, is its equivalent. The second aspect is that of an energy of vital force. It is in this narrower sense that the expression, Prana, is generally understood. Since Yoga considers the Universe as being alive in its totality as well as in all its parts, Prana is the cosmic, vital force which animates all living beings. Our individual live is only a particularized case of universal life.
Fig. 2 - "The Chakras"
(Click image for larger version)
The pranic force is persistent in two forms, one positive, the other negative, a distinction which electricity has made familiar, but which was known to Asiatic civilization from time immemorial.
Living beings obtain their pranic force through the organs of their pranic or ethereal body, which, like the physical body, assimilates and disassimilates. The pranic organs which enable us to assimilate Prana are called Nadis, or conductors, of which, one, Pingala, is the positive conductor and Ida, the negative one. Pingala communicates with the positive exterior pranic milieu at a point of the ethereal body corresponding to the right nostril, Ida, to the left nostril.
In Yoga literature, you will frequently encounter the word Chakra (wheel). These Chakras are organs of the ethereal body of which there are six principal ones, namely Ajna, corresponding in the physical body to the pineal gland and the brain, Vishuda, corresponding to the thyroid gland, Anahata, the heart, Manipura, the solar plexus, Svadishtana, above the sex organs, and Muladara, the sacral plexus.
It is the two Nadis, Pingala and Ida, above mentioned, which provide the Chakras with pranic energy. The Chakras have the function of accumulators, transformers and distributors of pranic force. On the physical side, this pranic organism is represented by the nervous system, in which the Nadis correspond to the nerves and the Chakras to the plexus. The two main Nadis, Pingala and Ida follow the spinal cord. There are a great many Nadis and Chakras.
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