Note 64 — Chapter III · DISSOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS MORALITY.

The fact has been verified by the English authorities and has been commented on by the physiologist W. Preyer (Über die Erforschung des Lebens, Jena, and Sammlung physiologischer Abhandlungen). Yoghis who have attained the highest degree of perfection, and are insensible to cold and to heat and have contracted, by a series of experiments, the habit of breathing almost not at all, have been buried alive and resuscitated at the end of some weeks. When they were reawakened a heightening of the temperature was noticed as in the case of the reawaking of hibernating mammals, and it is indeed to the phenomena of hibernation that this strange voluntary suspension of animation most closely approaches—this mystical return to a life merely vegetative, this absorption in the bosom of the unconscious, where the Yoghis hopes to find God. As a preliminary discipline the Yoghis diminishes little by little the quantity of air and light necessary to his life; he lives in a cell which is lit and ventilated by no more than a single chink; he minimizes all movement in order to minimize the necessity of respiration; he does not speak except to repeat to himself twelve thousand times a day the mystic name of Om; he remains for hours together motionless as a statue. He practises breathing over again and again the same body of air, and the longer the period between inspiration and expiration, the greater his sanctity! Finally he carefully seals all the openings of his body with wax and cotton and closes the opening of the throat with the tongue, which certain incisions permit him to fold over backward, and finally falls into a lethargy in which the movements of respiration may be suspended without the thread of life positively being severed.