Raja Yoga - Swami Vivekananda

158 RAjA YOGA.these Samskdras are very strong, they bear fruitquickly; exceptional acts of wickedness, or of goodness, bring their fruits in this life. The Yogis evenhold that men who are able to acquire a tremendouspower of good Samskdras do not have to die, but, evenin this can life, change their bodies into god-bodies.There are several cases mentioned by the Yogis in theirbooks. These men change the very material of theirbodies; they re-arrange the molecules in such fashionthat they have no more sickness, and what we calldeath does not come to them. Why should not this be ?The physiological meaning of food is assimilation ofenergy from the sun. This energy has reached theplant, the plant is eaten by an animal, and the animalby us. The science of it is that we take so muchenergy from the sun, and make itpart of ourselves.That being the case, why should there be only one wayof assimilating energy? The plant s wayis not thesame as ours; the earth s process of assimilatingenergy differs from our own. But all assimilate energyin some form or other. The Yogis say that they areable to assimilate energy by the power of the mindalone, that they can draw in as much as they desirewithout recourse to the ordinary methods. As a spidermakes his net out of his own substance, and becomesbound in his net, and cannot go anywhere except alongthe lines of that net, so we have projected out of ourown substance this net-work called the nerves, and wecannot work except through the channels of thosenerves. The Yogi says we need not be bound by that