Page 420 - Complete Works of Dr. KCV Volume 1

void of the biological accretions and habits to which it unduly surrendered itself at the beginning of the evolutionary career, the entire organism undergoes a metabolic change which not unduly and certainly profoundly alters its entire facility in action, intuition and enjoyment. The use of Prana according to the example described by Dr. Rele seems to be that the entire nervous system is made to focus itself on the primal centres therefrom the drainage of neural and psychonic power discharges itself and when it is commanded into the reginiste channels. The constant connection between the Vagus which controls the several plexuses as shown by the radio- photography of Dr. Rele and the spinal cord (the Sushumna in other words for it is myelinated by it) reveals the important manner in which the entire vital energy is drained into the spinal channel stimulating the entire series of plexuses of the psychonic level. In embryological development it is not the Vagus but the tube that becomes the spinal cord and develops into the brain and its parts and later differentiates itself into the cranial nerves etc.* Thus the theory of Dr.Rele reveals on the one hand acute correlation between itself and the theories of the Upanishads and on the other the dissimilarity between itself and the tantric theory. These dissimilarities Sir John Woodroffe himself notes down in his introduction of Dr.Vasant Rele's book.
II
Sri Aurobindo Ghose who holds a very high place so far as Yogic culture goes, in his book Yogic sadhan (His letters published in the Advent August 1948, give a fuller account of the chakras and their place in the Subtle body) wrote, "I must warn you against stumbling into the error of those who try to harmonize Yogic science with the physical science of the Europeans and search for the Yogic nadis and chakras in the physical body. You will not find them there. There are certain centres in the physical nervous system with which the chakras correspond, otherwise Hatha Yoga would be impossible. But the Chakras are not these centres." "The Sukshma prana moves in the nervous system of the subtle body as prescribed in the Yogic books, the sthula prana moves in the nervous system of the gross body. The two are closely connected and almost act upon each other." He says, being himself an advanced Yogi, that the identification of the physical and the