A Series of Lessons in Raja YogaAtkinson, William Walker
Religion
A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga
Atkinson, William Walker
Yoga; Yoga, Raja
But after these atoms have been grouped by the law of attraction and have
formed molecules of matter, they are taken possession of by a higher
mental activity and built up into cells by the mental action of the
plant. The life impulse of the plant begins by drawing to it certain
particles of inorganic matter--chemical elements--and then building them
into a single cell. Oh, mystery of the cell! The intellect of man is
unable to duplicate this wonderful process. The Mind Principle on the
Vegetative Plane, however, knows exactly how to go to work to select and
draw to itself just the elements needed to build up the single cell. Then
taking up its abode in that cell--using it as a basis of operations, it
proceeds to duplicate its previous performance, and so cell after cell
is added, by the simple reproductive process of division and
subdivision--the primitive and elemental sex process--until the mighty
plant is built up. From the humblest vegetable organism up to the
greatest oak the process is the same.
And it does not stop there. The body of man is also built up in just this
way, and he has this vegetative mind also within him, below the plane of
consciousness, of course. To many this thought of a vegetative mind may
be somewhat startling. But let us remember that every part of our body
has been built up from the vegetable cell. The unborn child starts with
the coalition of two cells. These cells begin to build up the new body
for the occupancy of the child--that is, the mind principle in the cells
directs the work, of course--drawing upon the body of the mother for
nourishment and supplies. The nourishment in the mother's blood, which
supplies the material for the building up of the child's body, is
obtained by the mother eating and assimilating the vegetable cells of
plants, directly or indirectly. If she eats fruit, nuts, vegetables,
etc., she obtains the nourishment of the plant life directly--if she eats
meat she obtains it indirectly, for the animal from which the meat was
taken built up the meat from vegetables. There is no two ways about
this--all nourishment of the animal and human kingdom is obtained from
the vegetable kingdom, directly or indirectly.
And the cell action in the child is identical with the cell action in the
plant. Cells constantly reproducing themselves and building themselves up
into bodily organs, parts, etc., under the direction and guidance of the
mind principle. The child grows in this way until the hour of birth. It
is born, and then the process is but slightly changed. The child begins
to take nourishment either from the mother's milk or from the milk of the
cow, or other forms of food. And as it grows larger it partakes of many
different varieties of food. But always it obtains building material from
the cell life of the plants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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