Nerve Control in East and West
BY F. YEATS-BROWN.
T HAVE a friend in India who can extract the square I root of a number of forty-five figures in his head, or multiply a number of sixty-five figures by another number of sixty-five figures, merely by abstracting his mind from all other thoughts. He is a mathematical prodigy, but my liking for him is not an account of his amazing brain. His soul is much more interesting.
This friend of mine nearly went mad twelve years ago, when he lost his young wife. He and she were studying Raja Yoga together, and being both clever, supple, whole- hearted, they had progressed far along that path. Sud- denly she died. The world lost form and colour for my friend : time stood still : lips moved in the faces of those he met, but he could not grasp any meaning from them. He heard afterwards that he had left his house and wandered all over India, living on alms.
At last, just after the end of the Great War, my friend arrived in Hardwar, where the Ganges flows out of the hills, and. here he found a guru who brought him back to the world of men by promising that he would enable him to meet his wife again. It was in an underground room near the sacred river that this Power was conferred on him. My. friend sat in " siddhasana," the especially favoured position of Raja Yoga,. with one foot tucked into his groin, and the heel of the other supporting the base of his body, listening to the spells of the hierophant. He was first commanded. to close his eyes and meditate on the mystic centres of the body, on the sacred syllables, and on the inner light which controls the vital forces. Pre- sently he was told to open his eyes and to concentrate his vision on the place between the eyebrows where the wheel of consciousness comes to a dead end. When he found this place (the preceding " power-conferring " ceremony had taken about half an hour) his five senses were ex- tinguished like a snuffed candle ; yet lie remained (he told me) entirely conscious both of himself, and of what was passing in his guru's mind. He does not know how long he remained like this. All he can say is that he seemed to be timelessly poised between earth and heaven, living in an untenable illumination. Filially he heard a voice bidding him to look to his left ; and looking, he found his wife beside him, more real than any name or form that he had perceived during his long months of lonely vagrancy. He had found again his heart and his centre.
For some weeks my friend could only see his wife with the guru's help. But now he can summon her at will from the perspectives of memory and bring her to him, near and real and living, whenever he chooses to close the door upon his outer senses. He exists in reality not in this world, where he ekes out a living with his peculiar mental gifts, but with his wife, in secret consummate rapture.
This is a true story in every particular. I know what. Western psychologists would say about it. But I do not think they would be right. My friend is outwardly sane and normal, and he is exceptionally healthy, although his sustenance is only a little milk and fruit. He never sleeps more than two hours on any night ; and on Mondays he does not sleep or speak or eat at all, spending twenty-four hours in communion with the spirit-image—fantasy—call it what you will—to which his life is dedicated. His mind has endowed a wraith with life : physical and spiritual are united : there is a real presence there, for love has materialized her Psyche. Have any of us a thumb and finger fine enough to gauge the substantiality of a para- psychological abstraction ?
I do not believe, however, that a Western man can safely bring back the dead. To me, European spiritu- alism wears an unhealthy and repellent aspect. Things may be done in the East (such as the temporary re- animation of corpses laid on the burning pyre) which would be merely revolting in the West. The East has studied the subtle and unseeable currents in the body of man by which lie breathes and has his being : the West, on the contrary, has mapped, measured and dissected man's visible nerves. Between the two methods there is a wide world : we live in different intellectual as well as physical climates. What was proper to save my friend's sanity would lead to delusion or delirium if practised in Chelsea or Maida Vale.
. I have had hundreds—nearly a thousand—letters in the course of the last eighteen months asking for parti- culars about certain breathings which I described in a book. Some of my correspondents belonged to that " lunatic fringe " which every journalist learns to recog- nize, but others—the majority, I think—were reasonable, solid people, who had come upon an idea which was also lying fallow in my own mind, and it has been a privilege to hear from them. To the wise letters as to the foolish my answer has necessarily been the same : Yoga exercises cannot be taught save by a guru, and there is no guru. in England.
But how far, I often ask myself, would it be possible to .make a synthesis of Eastern and Western • methods of nerve control ? Is there, could there be, a universal Yoga ?
There is as much latent mysticism by the Thames as there is by the Ganges. Amongst all kinds of people, even some of the most conventional, I find that there is an almost passionate desire to reach realities below appear- ances, and learn in stillness the rhythms of their own soul. And no wonder. Civilization is doomed unless we can find our psychic centre. I am sometimes oppressed by the number of poisoned, discontented, sapped, and jaded citizens that I see in London, Paris, Berlin, and New York. Look at the faces of the women you see shopping in Oxford Street, or High Street, Kensington, or the patrons of teashops and cinemas. Life gives them very little. If these people could walk into the glittering shops and buy better health, they would do so. Indeed fortunes are made in selling it to them. But since it is only to be acquired through self-denial they continue restless and unhappy. unlike my Indian friend who is prepared to sacrifice his personal comfort for his peace of mind.
Of course there is no royal road to health, or beauty, or happiness, but a better knowledge of the working of mind and body would save a great deal of suffering, and it is in this direction, I think, that there is an opportunity for a new kind of Yoga comprising Eastern wisdom and Western science. Five thousand years ago the Vedic sages were insisting on the purity of the shakii-nadi, or " power-tube," as the indispensable preliminary to a better life. As centuries passed their meaning was over- laid. Only five or six years ago an eminent scientist was asked not to use the word " constipation " in a public lecture given in London. But Sir William Arbuthnot Lane and the New Health Society have changed all that.
This brings me to my point, which is—bluntly—the first and chief step which most Western people should take if they wish for internal mental peace is to learn how to achieve internal bodily purity. Calm minds go with clean bowels. Many people—especially at this time of year—are engaged in digesting so many confused foods that they distil inside themselves stronger and stranger and more noxious alcohols than those they drink. No one has yet explored the connexion between mysticism and meals, but it does exist.
That, I think, is the lesson we can learn from the East. Nerve control must begin with the alimentary tract. After that, our own methods and our own faiths are per- haps best for us, though even then (as Dr. Urquhart says) a knowledge of Indian thought may help in the interpreta- tion of Christianity.
Previous page
