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Date Posted: 13:21:17 03/20/06 Mon
Author: H - 17 Feb 2006
Subject: Sri Aurobindo's early Pranayama experience (I)


Someone asked about the experiences Sri Aurobindo gained from his early pranayama practice. I did a rather thorough research this time, and below I reproduce what I could find -- in fact I don't know any further accounts of substance.

Sri Aurobindo took up sadhana in 1904 i.e. at the age of either 31 or 32. He did so at first in order to gain spiritual power for his political work, but this got quickly replaced by a quest for the Divine. In this period he made several experiments (including fasting, taking ganja and other drugs) the most important of which was a steady practice of pranayama which apparently took place during the years 1905/06. After he had stopped the practice in 1906 he contracted malaria at the end of the same year and was confined to bed for quite some time. He was cared for by his wife and eventually recovered.

His first fundamental spiritual realization and yogic breakthrough occurred in January 1908, so the pranayama episode was preceding that.

Perhaps I should mention that by the mid-1910's he was a married man but had already taken to strict celibacy. He was by nature a self-effacing, calm, emotionally balanced character with ascetic tendencies who did not care for sense-experience like food, sex etc. or the outer life as such except what interested him.

He was instructed in pranayama – as the excerpts show – by one Devdhar or Deodhar, an engineer who was a disciple of Swami Brahmananda of Chandod.

Apart from the following accounts Sri Aurobindo rarely touched the pranayama issue, but remarked that it is a very powerful practice and not without its risks if not done properly and under the right conditions.

The last four passages are excerpts from Sri Aurobindo's letters. All the rest consists of verbal conversations with disciples. It is to be noted that these talks were jotted down by attending disciples and afterwards reconstructed by memory. Hyphenated phrases following Sanskrit terms apparently were added by them as a help in understanding.

H

-----------------------------


13-4-1923

Sri Aurobindo: I did not begin with Lele. I first began on my own with pranayama, drawing the breath into my head. This gave me good health, lightness and an increased power of thinking. Side by side certain experiences also came. But not many nor important ones. I began to see things in the subtle.

Then I had to give it up when I took to politics. I wanted to resume my yoga but did not know how to begin again. I wanted spiritual experience and political action together. I would not take up a method that required me to give up action and life. […]



5-11-1925

Sri Aurobindo: In Hatha yoga you are all right so long as you continue the practice. As soon as you leave it off you are liable to attacks.

In Raja yoga also you have to continue Pranayama once you begin it. My own experience is that when I was practising Pranayama at Baroda I had excellent health. But when I went to Bengal and left Pranayama, I was attacked by all sorts of illness which nearly carried me off.



12-3-1926

Disciple: There are very cheap yogis – some who used to give brahma darshana, – vision of Brahman, for five rupees. Some press the eyeballs and make people see the "light"!

Sri Aurobindo: The Gaekwad [Maharaja; Sri Aurobindo's employer] of Baroda also used to say the same thing. He used to say: "People say that Brahman is Light but that I see when I press my eyes. What is the difference between that and the Brahman?"

I did not know anything about yoga at that time and so I used to say: "It is not quite the same light."

Disciple: There is a physiological explanation.

Sri Aurobindo: Whatever the physiological explanation may be, it is certain that when the eyes are pressed or even without being pressed, if the mind is concentrated on the centre of the psychic vision you see a light, a round globe of light which goes on increasing. That is not due to anything physical. It is the light from one of the inner centres, especially the ajna cakra – the centre of will – and you can make it very bright and big by connecting it with the brahma-randhra, – the centre on the top of the head.

[…] I had myself a remarkable experience of the psychic sight. I was at Baroda and my psychic sight was not fully developed and I was trying to develop it by dwelling upon the after-image and also by attending to the interval between wakefulness and sleep. Then I saw this round circle of light and when I began pranayama it became very much intensified.



19-9-1926

(There was a discussion between two disciples – one of them was a doctor. The doctor's idea was that in Samadhi the physical mind is still, and if we look only to the physical body, then it seems that the venous blood collects in the brain and brings about a sort of anaesthesia of the brain. When the brain is thus completely quieted down then the mind – the mental consciousness – is released from the entanglement of body. It can then experience more freely the other levels of consciousness.)

Disciple: What is the venous blood?

Disciple: Blood having more carbon-dioxide in it than the red blood.

Disciple: So the brain becomes full of carbon-dioxide in Samadhi, does it?

(In between, a letter was read from a Sadhaka complaining about the bad condition of his Sadhana and asking permission to come to Pondicherry.)

Sri Aurobindo: […] (After a pause) I was thinking of the "carbon-dioxide" explanation of Samadhi. It may be perfectly true so far as a particular kind of concentration – Samadhi – is concerned. For example, there is a state in which a complete withdrawal into a certain aspect of the Infinite takes place. It is attained by stilling the mind – even the physical mind – altogether. But there are other kinds of concentration – Samadhis – where that explanation would not apply at all. In such concentrations the mind is quite clear, in fact, the mind can be very active and there is no carbon-dioxide in the brain.

Disciple: What part does breathing exercise – Pranayama – play in bringing about the higher consciousness?

Sri Aurobindo: It sets the Pranic – vital – currents free and removes dullness of the brain so that the higher consciousness can come down. Pranayama does not bring dullness in the brain. My own experience, on the contrary, is that the brain becomes illumined. When I was practising Pranayama at Baroda, I used to do it for about five hours in the day, – three hours in the morning and two in the evening. I found that the mind began to work with great illumination and power. I used to write poetry in those days. Before the Pranayama practice, usually I wrote five five to eight lines per day, and about two hundred lines in a month. After the practice I could write 200 lines within half an hour. That was not the only result. Formerly my memory was dull. But after this practice I found that when the inspiration came I could remember all the lines in their order and write them down correctly at any time. Along with these enhanced functionings I could see an electrical activity all round the brain, and I could feel that it was made up of a subtle substance. I could feel everything as the working of that substance. That was far from your carbon-dioxide!

Disciple: Did you find any change in mental activity when breathing completely stopped?

Sri Aurobindo: I do not know about complete stopping of the breath, but at the time of Pranayama the breath becomes something regular and rhythmic.

Disciple: How is it that Pranayama develops mental capacities? What part does it play in bringing about the higher consciousness?

Sri Aurobindo: It is the Pranic – vital – currents which sustain mental activity. When these currents are changed by Pranayama, they bring about a change in the brain. The cause of dullness of the brain is some obstruction in it which does not allow the higher thought to be communicated to it. When this obstruction is removed the higher mental being is able to communicate its action easily to the brain. When the higher consciousness is attained the brain does not become dull. My experience is that it becomes illumined.

All the exercises, like breathing-practices, are only devices which something that is behind them is using for manifesting itself.

On the physical plane also, it is nothing else but certain devices – a system of notation – that we employ. But we give too much importance to the form of the device, because we think the physical to be the most real. If we only knew that the entire physical world is made up of force and that it is nothing else but the working of a certain consciousness and power using certain devices then we would not be deceived.

Disciple: Is it true that when the Higher Consciousness comes the brain stops thinking?

Sri Aurobindo: What do you mean? The brain is not the seat of thinking! It is the mind that thinks, the brain only reacts to it. There is a parallelism between the movements of the brain and those of the higher mind. But the brain is only a communicating channel, it is only a support for the higher activity. If the mind is passive it receives things from above – from the Higher Mind – and passes them on to the brain.

Now, if the brain is dull, the mind cannot transmit its action correctly, it does it imperfectly. Sometimes – not always – the lapse in Sadhana also is due to the brain getting tired.

Disciple: Is it not always due to that?

Sri Aurobindo: No, in the bright period the Progress is maintained. But when the physical brain flags and refuses to support the effort of the will and mind, then you find a dull and Tamasic condition in Sadhana intervenes.

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