Part I: Chapter II / II – (iv)
e) Pranic Discipline
This discipline, in brief, consists in setting up:
- Some centre within the body, say at the plexus of the heart or the region of the vital airs, where the mano-mai-atman dwells.
- Some centre outside the body.
- One has to work at both the centers within and without and to do pranayam in between the two centres.
- The practice of tratak or the discipline of the vision (sight), by gradually bringing the attention from without to within, and keeping it fixed on one of these for some time.
In setting up centres outside the body one has to sit in solitude and make a yellow spot on a white paper, which is to be placed on the table or hung on the wall on a level with the eyes. and to do tratak or fix the gaze on that spot while the right nadi, pingla, is in action and to fix one's attention on and be gradually absorbed within the Anahat Sound. After this practice for a few days, this outer spot is to be changed into blue and thenn into red and again, into bluish white, and lastly into a brilliantly white colour, after some days of practice at each coloured spot.
The object of the tratak practice (spot-gazing) is to have a clear vision of the elemental colours which are representative of the colours of earth, water, fire, air and ether, respectively. For quicker results, this is to be done for at least two or three hours every day. It improves eyesight and serves as a great aid in influencing others.
Again, one has to take care of the distance between the spot and the organ of sight. To begin with, the spot is to be located at a distance of about two feet; after practicing for a few days, the distance is to be reduced to one and three-fourths feet, to one foot and then to half a foot. When this tratak develops into a kind of exhilarating absorption, it may be brought still nearer to the tip of the nose. Then begins the real sadhna and gradually the attention is to be brought to the root of the nose between the two eyebrows. The importance of this practice is that the scattered vritis are to be controlled from wandering without, collected at the still- point in the body or the seat of the mind, and inverted within to bring them in contact with the Anahat Sound. This also brings about, of itself, rhythm in the pranas, and both the viritis and the pranas simultaneously get adjusted of themselves.
By the process of tratak, the mind and the pranas become harmonized, and the soul escapes through the mano-mai and pran-mai koshas, or the covering sheaths.