Raja-Yoga

158 RAjA YOGA.
these Samskdras are very strong, they bear fruit
quickly; exceptional acts of wickedness, or of good
ness, bring their fruits in this life. The Yogis even
hold that men who are able to acquire a tremendous
power of good Samskdras do not have to die, but, even
in this can life, change their bodies into god-bodies.
There are several cases mentioned by the Yogis in their
books. These men change the very material of their
bodies; they re-arrange the molecules in such fashion
that they have no more sickness, and what we call
death does not come to them. Why should not this be ?
The physiological meaning of food is assimilation of
energy from the sun. This energy has reached the
plant, the plant is eaten by an animal, and the animal
by us. The science of it is that we take so much
energy from the sun, and make it
part of ourselves.
That being the case, why should there be only one way
of assimilating energy
? The plant s way
is not the
same as ours; the earth s process of assimilating
energy differs from our own. But all assimilate energy
in some form or other. The Yogis say that they are
able to assimilate energy by the power of the mind
alone, that they can draw in as much as they desire
without recourse to the ordinary methods. As a spider
makes his net out of his own substance, and becomes
bound in his net, and cannot go anywhere except along
the lines of that net, so we have projected out of our
own substance this net-work called the nerves, and we
cannot work except through the channels of those
nerves. The Yogi says we need not be bound by that