Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/57

 THE ANAL-EROTIC FACTOR IN HINDU RELIGION 311

Note. Having described the fourth accessory of Yoga, it is proposed to des- cribe here the nature of the fifth which is paranayama or control of the breath. It consists of suspending the natural course of the breath, viz., expiration and inspiration.

L. It is external, internal or steady; regulated by place, time and number; and is long and short.

Note. Paranayama is of four kinds. Three of these are described here and the fourth is described in the following aphorism. When the breath is expired, or held out as it is technically called, it is rechaka, the first pra- nayama. When it is drawn in, it is the second, called puraka. And when it is suspended, all at once, it is the third, called kumbhaka. Each of these is regulati-rd by place, time, etc. By place is meant the inside or. outside of the body, and the particular length of the breath in the act. The length of the breath is said to vary in accordance with the prevailing tattva.

It is calculated that the breath is respectively 12, 16, 4, 8, and 0, finger- breadths long, according as the tattva is prthvi, apas, tejas, vayu or akasa. This, again, externally as well as internally. Time is time of the duration of each of these... Works on Yoga say that the number should slowly be carried to so far as eighty, every time one sits for the practice. . . Udgkata appears to mean the rising of the breath from the navel, and its striking at the roof of the palate. Pranayama has as its chief object the mixing of prana, the upper breath, and apana the lower breath, and raising them upwards, by degrees and stages, till they subside in the head.

LI. The fourth is that which has reference to the external and internal object.

Note. The steady kind of pranayama called kumbhaka is a stopping of the inspiration and expiration of the breath without reference to its external or internal position ... It considers the position of the breath in the vaiious padmas. The padmas are supposed to be plexuses formed by nerves and ganglia of different places in the body. They are generally believed to be seven in number, and are called adhara (at the anus), adhisthana (between the navel and the penis), manipura (at the navel), anahata (at the heart), visuddki (in the throat), ajna (between the eyebrows), and sakasrara (in the pineal gland).

In the foregoing examples, which are typical of thousands of others, we have an exquisite manifestation of the process of 'sublimation', in this case the conversion of the impulse to control the sphincter am, especially in its relation to the passage of flatus into a most elaborate quasi-philosophical system.

We must now return to what Monier Williams^ calls the 'second phase' of Indian religious thought, namely Philosophical Brahmanism. Here we once more find the flatus-complex

■ Monier Williams: Brahmanism and Hinduism, p. 25.