13. PAUSES

Pure thought cuts more than a razor blade.
(Swami Sivanada)

The brain and the skin are made of the same stuff. They both originate from the surface of the embryo, from a layer of cells known as the ectoderm -- from the Greek ectòs (external) and derma (skin) -- and both participate in the function of perceiving environmental stimuli and reacting to them.

The heart, the lungs, the stomach, the bowel, the kidneys - that is the vegetative system (which enables us to do what even the plants can do: nourish themselves in order to grow and reproduce) originate from the median and internal parts of the embryo: the mesoderm and the endoderm.

The brain, the most neglected organ of the body, should receive at least that same attention that we pay to our skin and to the space around us: it should be cleaned every day, an operation that, furthermore, can be done at no expense.

A very old way to make the brain's impurities sediment out is that of remaining seated, at least for 30 minutes daily, and looking at one's navel, a planet in the sky, or the tip of one's nose.

Contemplation of a fixed point, repetition of a phoneme, listening to our own breathing in absolute immobility, have been practised by saints and ascetics in order to avoid an excessive production of thoughts.

Mental activity is, indeed, a continuous flow, for the most part uncontrolled, of thoughts that follow one another like waves in a stream, and just as the current stirs up the sediment on the bottom and muddies the stream, the swarm of thoughts obscures our intellect.

The Taoist sage Chuang-tzu, in the 8th century BC, said "I leave my body inert and I banish my intellect: this is what I mean by sitting down and forgetting".

The bikku, the Buddhist ascetic, avoids thinking for fear of giving rise to coarse ideas: "It may happen that my thoughts disappear, but it may also happen that vulgar thoughts arise. That is why I will stop thinking".
This last thought of the bikku is reported by Mircea Eliade in her book on yoga.

Giving up thinking (the empty mind) was also practised by Western saints. But, whereas the Orientals call the ascetic sannyasi (he who renounces), Westerners define him as a saint, from the Latin sanctus (inviolable), revealing the part of victory inherent in renunciation.

Our body continually exchanges material particles, and waves with no mass, with the outside environment. Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen enter into us in the form of food, liquids, and air; they leave our body as sweat, urine, excrement, and breath.

Continually, sound waves and electromagnetic waves penetrate within us and are emitted by us. Thus Plasticity, the principle that enables matter to change shape, dominates over the Body-Mind and over Space-Time, and that is over all vital processes. Survival, adaptation and mutation are permitted thanks to the Plastic Principle.

When new ideas enter our mind, the brain cells multiply the filaments that conduct information. When more food than necessary enters our body, the fat cells dilate. A variation in external temperature, or an emotion, mean that our skin changes colour because the arteries that feed it increase in diameter. And Space-Time is modified lengthwise and widthwise like the human body: both animated cartoons and the restricted theory of relativity teach us this.

The way indicated by the mystics is that of staying immobile and silent, exercising the will to overcome the to and fro of immaterial waves, material molecules, thoughts and excrement, ideas and food, for the purpose of dominating Plasticity and becoming inviolable. The Ego, in a word, can mould Plasticity.

Blaise Pascal wrote that all the troubles of the world derives from the incapability of remaining seated in a room, and invented the Pascaline, the first calculating machine.

The yogis are probably the greatest experts of control over exchanges between Body-Mind and Space-Time. They know all the techniques to obtain both mental and intestinal emptiness. These are subtractive techniques, methods to slow the activity of the nervous system (control system) and of the vegetative system (which includes the circulatory system and the digestive and excretory systems).

The Body-Mind thus learns to burn more slowly, making itself consume less Space-Time. This is one of the goals of Oriental doctrines: to defeat oxides, rust.
Mental concentration and immobility stop the emission of signals from the Body-Mind toward the outer world, and stop environmental stimuli from disturbing its homeostasis.
Thus Plasticity is slowed down.

When nothing more enters and leaves a body, what the physicists call an "event horizon" is created around it: that is, a boundary line within which there is no more past nor future, but an eternal present. This happens to stars of large mass when they enter into gravitational contraction to form a black hole.

For those who cannot succeed in subtracting themselves to the point of becoming saints (since we have seen that he who subtract from others dominates others, whereas he who subtracts from himself dominates himself) the daily practice of meditation remains an effective therapy for palpitations, high blood pressure, digestive disorders and perhaps for many other diseases.