III PSYCHOLOGY OF YOGA - XVII XVII. PRIMACY OF PRANA OVER SENSES AND MIND This idea has been brought home by the Upanishads through several stories concerning the primacy of importance amongst senses, mind and prana. The particular point on which all these stories have been concluded is that one can live as a blind man, deaf and dumb, insensate and even unconscious throughout one’s life but not even for a moment if made bereft of one’s prana. In one of such stories with rivalry amongst senses, mind and prana as its motif what happened is that when senses and mind left the body one by one, nothing crucial did happen with the individual concerned except for getting impaired in regard to the sense or mind involved in the experiment. But, when the prana left it, all the senses and mind were forced to get rooted out and accompany it like pegs and ropes accompanying a mighty horse after he happens to pull them out and run away along with them. The conclusion drawn from the contest with common concurrence of senses and mind was that it is prana which is not only primary amongst all these but is also the common source of them all. (Chhandogya Upanishad, V.1.15) The same is the message of the famous story of Janashruti and Raikva as narrated in the same Chhandogya Upanishad. Janashruti, the king, became envious of Raikva, a simple cart-puller, when a swan flying in the sky told its companion that Raikva was much more glorious than the king. The otherwise unknown and insignificant Raikva was searched out somehow in the king’s territory scratching his back below his cart. The king approached him with an offer of six hundred cows, a necklace and a chariot and requested him to instruct him in what he had mastered and by virtue of which he had become so glorious. On Raikva’s refusal to accept the offer, the king came back with a still richer present comprising a herd of one thousand cows, a necklace, a chariot and the proposal to marry his daughter to him. It was in exchange for such a rich present offered from the side of the king that Raikvwa conceded to his request and taught him what had made him so glorious. What Raikva imparted to the king at the cost of such a rich present was simply the prana vidya consisting in the realisation of a twofold significance of air in the process of being universal and individual. On the universal scale, Raikva told him that it was air which was the point of merger of water, fire, sun and moon. On the individual scale, on the other hand, it was prana which was indicated by him as the point of merger of the power of speech, sight, hearing and making and unmaking of determinations, as is evident from what happens in the state of sleep. (Chhandogya Upanishad, IV.3.1-4) Prana, as the basic principle of life, as also of universal existence, operates in the organic body, particularly in the human, in various ways. The two of its primarily differentiated forms are prana and apana. Vedic seers were fully aware of the significance and respective roles of these two from the very beginning. The Yajurveda mentions all the five forms of prana is supposed to take in the human body for the sake of maintenance and continuance of life in it. These are prana, apana, vyana, udana and samana. In the mantra concerned, the seer prays to gods to make life a success by means of sacrifice. This prayer is followed by an identical statement made with reference to the five pranas in place of life. After the pranas, he comes to eye, ear, speech, mind, Atman, Brahman and Light (Yajurveda, XXII.33). Obviously, the mantra takes care of all the basic components of personality. Prana is what operates in the upper part of the body while the field of operation of apana is the lower part of it beginning from the navel. Vyana is that form of prana which moves throughout the body discharging various functions including circulation of blood, perspiration, digestion and reflex actions. Samana also, on the other hand, has the whole body as its field of operation, though not by way of discharging specific functions but by way of maintaining equilibrium of the psycho-physical organism. Lastly, udana is the prana operating from the saggital suture at the top of the human head down to heart and to some extent even up to the navel. In yet another mantra of the Samhita, there is some variation in the denomination of the factors of the personality. Here samana and udana are replaced by asu and atman, Brahman and jyoti by adhita, daksha and bala (Yajurveda, XXVIII.2). The variation is fairly adjustable within the range of the factors mentioned in the mantra referred to earlier. This is just to show how the philosophy of five pranas had become fully established by the time of the Samhita against the states of consciousness as represented by manas, atman, and adhita. Further, if adhita and jyoti are mentioned here to characterise consciousness, daksha and bala may be taken to do the same in regard to prana. To be continued… Source of synopses: Yoga From Confusion to Clarity, Psychology of Yoga, Vol. 2 (published in 2010) written by Professor Satya Prakash Singh and Yogi Mukesh (© Authors)
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 18:11:35 +0000
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