are doing nothing of the sort. But at least we are deluding ourselves into 
thinking that we are doing it, and the point is that, according to tradition, 
if you can hold the mind still for as much as twelve seconds you will get 
one of the highest results of Yoga. It is certainly a fact that when you are 
doing a cycle of 20 seconds out, 10 in, and 30 holding, there is quite a 
long period during the holding period when the mind does tend to stop its 
malignant operations. By the time this cycle has become customary, you 
are able to recognise instinctively the arrival of the moment when you can 
throw yourself suddenly into the mental act of concentration. In other 
words, by Asana and Pranayama you have worked yourself into a position 
where you are free, if only for a few seconds, to attempt actual Yoga 
processes, which you have previously been prevented from attempting by 
the distracting activities of the respiratory and muscular systems. 
     24. And so? Yes. Pranayama may be described as nice clean fun. 
Before you have been doing it very long, things are pretty certain to begin 
to happen, though this, I regret to remark, is fun to you, but death to 
Yoga. 
     The classical physical results of Pranayama are usually divided into 
four stages: 
     1. Perspiration. This is not the ordinary perspiration which comes from 
violent exercise; it has peculiar properties, and I am not going to tell you 
what these are, because it is much better for you to perform the 
practices, obtain the experience, and come to me yourself with the 
information. In this way you will know that you have got the right thing, 
whereas if I were to tell you now, you would very likely imagine it. 
     2. Automatic rigidity: the body becomes still, as the result of a spasm. 
This is perfectly normal and predictable. It is customary to do it with a 
dog. You stick him in a bell-jar, pump in oxygen or carbonic acid or 
something, and the dog goes stiff. You can take him out and wave him 
around by a leg as if he were frozen. This is not quite the same thing, but 
near it. 
     25. Men of science are terribly handicapped in every investigation by 
having been trained to ignore the immeasurable. All phenomena have 
subtle qualities which are at present insusceptible to any properly 
scientific methods of investigation. We can imitate the processes of nature 
in the laboratory, but the imitation is not always exactly identical with the 
original. For instance, Professor J. B. S. Haldane attempted some of the 
experiments suggested in 'The Equinox' in this matter of Pranayama, and 
very nearly killed himself in the process. He did not see the difference 
between the experiment with the dog and the phenomena which 
supervene as the climax of a course of gentle operation. It is the 
difference between the exhilaration produced by sipping Clos Vougeot '26 
and the madness of swilling corn whiskey. It is the same foolishness as to 
think that sniffing cocaine is a more wholesome process than chewing 
coca leaves. Why, they exclaim, cocaine is chemically pure! Cocaine is the 
active principle! We certainly do not want these nasty leaves, where our 
sacred drug is mixed up with a lot of vegetable stuff which rather defies