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GUIDELINES FOR AROUSING ENERGY
105
their association with our natural tendencies will open new horizons of knowledge.
I once happened to read a book written in a mixture of the Gujarāti and Rajasthani languages. It discusses some interesting facts. It may be a compilation of facts borrowed from other works. The author observes that the navel symbolized by the lotus has several petals. When the soul undergoes transformations in association with a particular petal, it produces the tendency to anger. Association with another petal excites the tendency to deceit. Association with yet another petal excites sexual tendencies and so on.
When the transformations of the soul pass from the navel to the heart, also symbolized by a lotus, they produce the feeling of equality or equanimity, develop knowledge and activate good tendencies. If these transformations influence the perception centre, they develop the capacity to grasp the entire literature of the fourteen Purvas (original Jaina Scriptures). When they touch the knowledge centre, they develop the capacity for pure knowledge. Their contact with another centre develops the capacity for avadhi-jñāna (clairvoyance.) The basis on which these observations have been made cannot be ascertained. But it is clear from the information collected in the book that there are various transmission centres in the human body. It is possible for us to make consciousness manifest itself by concentrating the mind on these centres and to reconstruct our personalities.
We have already stated that breath is connected with prāņa which in its turn is connected with paryāpti or subtle prāna. Breath comes into being in the very first moment in which the life of the human organism begins. Prāņa needs subtle prāņa which in its turn needs subtler prāna. This last prāna is obtained from the sky. Prāņa keeps circulating in the organism as well as in the whole of the sky. It sustains the life of the organism. The organism gets this sustenance by means of breath. It draws its sustenance like oxygen, nitrogen etc. by breathing. In the language of karma śāsrta we obtain prāņa or vital energy through breath.
Two Jaina scriptures, Bhagavati and Prajñāpanā, raise the question: "When does the jīva obtain its sustenance and from
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