Chapter 13 - The Technique of Long Life
In ancient texts on Yoga, the description of certain exercises is often followed by comments such as: "He who practises regularly shall not fear death and old age", or "The hair of those who practise this shall not turn white and their bodies will conserve perpetual youth," etc.
If you should consider such preoccupations as all to materialistic, you should also remember that Hatha Yoga ignores the distinction between body and mind, in virtue of which occidental civilization has held for so long that contempt of the body which was one of the conditions for the elevation of the mind. Although physical health is not necessarily always a condition of spiritual development, it can nevertheless not be denied that it will, at least, facilitate such development. And if we disposed of a longer period of time in which to follow the path which leads to spirituality, we would go farther. Theere can be no doubt that if the benefactors of humanity, the scientisits, whose inventions or discoveries have been the stepping-stones of progress, had had at their disposal a few more decades for their researches, that science would be several centuries ahead of what it is now.
As we have previously observed, the conscientious practice of Hatha Yoga has, as a normal result, the prolongation of youth and extension of the life span. In order to obtain these benefits, it is, however, indispensable to respect three essential conditions, two of which are of a physiological and the third of a moral nature. In order to fulfill the physiological conditions, we must liberate ourselves of two parasitisms - the digestive parasitism and the sexual parasitism.
The slogan: "We should eat to live and not live to eat" has been repeated so often that it has become somewhat threadbare, although it is as true as ever. Machines which generate energy should utilize only a small proportion of the energy produced if they are to function well. If that proportion is unduly increased, the productivity of the machine decreases and at a certain moment works at a loss. The more energy the digestive apparatus absorbs for its own use, the less there remains for the vital needs of the whole organism and the more rapidly the organism uses up its initial energy charge upon which depends the life span. It is therefore of utmost importance to follow a moderate diet.
Even more redoubtable is the sexual parasitism. According to the secret tradition of Hatha Yoga, the degeneration of the human species is mainly due to a perversion of the sexual instinct. The half divine race of the Great Ancestors is said to have sexually united with inferior, monkey-like races. The result of this commerce was the degenerated human race of today. No animal species, with the exception precisely of the monkeys, shows us the example of the unbridled repetition of the sexual act such as is the rule in our present humanity.
The sexual act involves an expenditure of vital force which does not come out of our income, so to speak, of energy produced by the process of metabolism, but which is derived from the initial capital. Every repetition of the sexual act means a corresponding shortening of the remaining life span.
If man were originally consitiuted to accomplish a certain number of X acts in Y years, the multiplication of sexual frequency would logically mean a corresponding reduction of the number of years of life. If in conformity with tradition we assume that the sexual activity of man was originally limited to two annual periods of one month each, one at the end of spring and the other at the end of autum, it can be easily understood that independently from any other cause, the extension of sexual activity to twelve months in a year must have had as a consequence a reduction of the life span to one sixth of what it was originally.
Although the human organism has adapted itself through the centuries to a sexual frequency contrary to its real nature, the voluntary control of sexual activity is considred by Hatha Yoga as one of the most important, if not the most important means of prolonging youth and life itself. What could one not accomplish in this world when one has learned to control sexuality! Every man, if not every woman knows that.
As regards the moral condition, it is so important, that were it not fulfilled, the practise of Yoga to achieve long life and maintain youth woul be in vain.
Hatha Yoga distinguishes between good and bad sentiments. Good sentiments are positive and expansive and determine in the organism the production of tonic and vitalizing hormones. Bad sentiments are those which are restrictive and negative and they determine the production of depressing and devitalizing toxic substances. This is by no means to be taken in a figurative but strictly literla sense.
Nature shows a strange unity of plan in all its creations. When it provides a creature with an organ or function useful in a particular case, she provides a great many other creatures with the same organ or function for which they are not only useless, but harmful. When certain animals are in danger, the secrete a hormone which immobilizes them in a sort of catalepsy, which gives them the aspect of a corpse and thus deceives the enemy. In other animals, however, the same hormone paralyses their means of defence and they become an easy prey. Skunks and some other animals have the faculty of secreting a smelling substance which puts their enemies to flight.
A certain number of creatures, insects, serpents etc. possess a particularly redoubtable weapon of defence and attack: poison. Thus the cobra, with man the only animal, it is said, kills without need or reason, for the pleasure of doing evil. But the cobra and the other poisonous animals dispose of natural instruments with which to innoculate their enemies with the poison. The otheres, including man, not possessing the same advantage, reabsorb the poison they distill under the influence of fear, anger, envy, jealousy and other negative feelings, and poison themselves.
These for the most part little known venoms and toxic hormones are very active even in minute quanitites, and since they have no normal outlet, they accumulate within the organism. It would therefore be useless to expect prolongation of youth, health and life even with the most constant and conscientious practice of Yoga if simultaneously one poisons oneself every day a little more by these toxins which undermine vitality.
One cannot be a real Yogi with all the benefits this includes, as long as one has not liberated oneself of devitalizing negative feelings, thoughts and ideas. We must free ourselves of fear and its chronic form, anxiety and worry, of morbid apprehension, especially the apprehension of death. Above all, we must liberate ourselves of all hostile feelings and emotions, anger in its chronic form, hatred, jealousy and envy.
Every time we more or less consciously wish evil for our fellow man, our organism, just like that of the cobra, secretes a poison which, according to nature's plan, is meant for our enemy. In fact, however, it is we who absorb it and who are its victims.
This is not a lesson in morals, but a simple statement of fact, by which everyone may profit for his own good.
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