Worcester morning daily spy., 1898-01-16
WORDS BYA HINDU SAGE.
How to Set Up rhythmic Flow Of Ner-
vous Currents,
0rom the New York SUM-

F'rom the New York SUM
Man can now do certain things with
matter which his ancestors could not 60,
and as he grows wiser and better he
can learn to do things beside which the
miracles of our time will pale into in
Significance"
This statement is made by Hindu
sage, Swami Abhedananda, who is de-
liVering a series Of lectures on the an
Client Vedanta philosophy This young
Hindu is a co-worker OF Swami N1Ve-
kenanda, who by his lectures proved to
be the chief attraction at the celebrarsd
congress of religion at Chicago in lS93.
Swami Abhedananda is seeking to teach
the western mind the interesting secret
of Hindu psychology and philosophy.
Many of the exercises and means where
by mental concentration and state or
profound meditation are reached have
never beer so much as published in In
dia but have been handed down from
teacher to student. Many of these Sec
rets have teen acquired and kept by
Iersons for purely selfish purposes, but
the real Hindu sage has been aVerSe 20
the revealing of his means or power
from the fear of their abuse and debase-
ment by less well-disposed and philo~
which these Hindu yogis have acquired
such marvellous psychic powers cannot
fail to be of profound interest to any
reader. Tie Swamis account is as tcl-
lows
I'm India, more than 1000 years ago,
n onks sat in their caves and made COM
plete and accurate astronomical calcu-
lations without an instrument of any
kind In their silent nleditatious hey
nj whole
ment of the stellar world, which re-
quired years of observation from sueh
men as Calico, Sir Isaac Newton, ana
Sir William Herschel to work out with
their telescopes and mathematical IN
struments. The difference between their
calculations of the solar eclipses ana
those of the western astronomers was
but a few seconds in time. Without lab
oratories, they discovered many of the
laws of chemistry. Some of these dls-
coveries are on record in India.
"FIow did they do these things2 by
psychic control, the result of long men
tai concentration whereby the mind
may attain to complete domination over
matter. You see, our minds in the or
binary condition are very closely aSso-
ciated with our bodies. But we know
that our mind and our body are two
very different things. Now, the more
the mind, or, rather, the soul, IS sepa-
rated from the body, the more powerful
and Independent does it become, be-
cause this mind-soul is immortal BY
concentration, it is able, as it were, to
detach itself from the body and the
more complete this detachment, the
greater will be it's knowledge of mat
ter Now conceive If you can, of a
person who has learned by concentra-
tion to take his mind out of his body
so to speak, and to look at the body and
all other bodies as outside objects. II
the separation of the mind is complete
enough, that person will discover the
secrets of nature without so much as
going out of the room. Anything that
the mind happens to address itself to in
this state, il will grasp and understand.
amy person with healthy body and
mind can attain a considerable degree
Of mental concentration by hard prac-
tice of the physical and mental eXer-
cises adopted by our yogis All your
hypnotists, clairvoyants, mind readers,
and the like, are Illustrations of what
comparatively limited degree of con-
centration will do for the mind. Such
persons use their minds for selfish ends
as a rule. No Hindu yogi ever does that.
Any mind to become supramely power
full must have no material attachments
| or desires. 1t is therefore possible for
comparatively few mortals at one time
to rise TO a very high psychic state, for
| the conditions involve not only the vows
of chastity and poverty, a strictly veg
etable diet. absolute honesty and uni
versal love, but days and months of
| continuous meditation. Some persons
are born predisposed to this psychic
| state. as persons ale born geniuses and
| others seem to blunder upon it without
knowing just how they got their pow
ers Every great genius, great refor-
mer and in fact, great character. of any
sort. must have more or less of 1t.
The state Of the mind at all times is
dependent, physiologically, upon three
things-the brain, the spinal cord and
the breath. These three must work in
absolute harmony before the mind can
fully concentrate itself upon itself or
any object without. Concentration is the
goal. Now, it has been found that the
brain. the spinal cord and the breath
ing can be trained to work in such uni
son that powerful rhythmic flow of ner-
vous energy can be created. This ire
mendous current of nervous energy, up
on reaching the brain, produces entirely
new reactions. Every thought or idea
produced by nenas of the brain is the
result of some sort of reaction taking
place. The Vividness of such ideas de-
Ponds upon the intensity of the reaction
and the intensity of the reaction depends
upon the strength of the nerve current
producing it. These nerve currents are
rushing to the brain and resulting in
reactions every moment of our lives, al
though we are not conscious of a great
many OF them. Now, If one can man
age to send new and greatly increased
nerve currents to ones brain they are
sure to produce new and greater re-
actions That is just what occurs when
the brain, the spinal cord and the
/,
then the motion of the current is rhyth-
mic, circulating from foot to head
THE manner of breathing has much
to do with the result. When the breath
passes into the lungs, just opposite the
thoraX, it sets in, or rather keeps up
the two nerve currents that pass up and
down the spinal column to the brain and
other parts of the body. Every inhal-
alton and exhalation completely controls
the motion of these currents. If the
inhalation and exhalation are irregular
| the currents are of necessity irregular
Irregular currents are without rhythm
and it is the rhythmic motion of the
currents that produces the wonderful
| thrilling reaction 70 the brain.
But what is rhythm in this case? All
electric currents are by nature rhyth-
| mic; that is, the motion is all in the
same direction. In an ordinarily quiet
room, there is good deal of motion, all
most enough to knock US down if it
were all in the same direction but be-
| ing in all directions. we do not feel it,
Let it move in the same direction, and
you would see what wihrlwind would
take possession of the room. Just such
motion-uninterrupt electric motion,
as 1t were-is wanted for the nerve cur
rents. But there is scarcely a person
4 in a million who breathes in a rhyth-
mic manner, or who has any sort Of
I control over the breath. This must be