Karate, Kung Fu and Prana

[Jahnava Nitai Das]

Here is one of Hanumatpresaka Maharaja's articles:

 

"Karate, Kung Fu and Prana"

[ - by Sri Hanumatpresaka Swami ]

 

 

There's a "Wind God" in Berkeley near our ISKCON Temple. Peter Ralston's his name - one of the top Karate guys in the world. I asked one of his students, "What's your philosophy of nature? What is the world made up of?". He responded, "Earth, water, fire ...". I began to get excited. This is the same as the Bhagavad-gita. Maybe we can have a great conversation here. He continued, "Earth, water, fire ... wood and paper". "Wood and paper?!", I exclaimed, trying to control my disappointment, "What about air?". He said, "Oh! Air in Chinese philosophy is considered all pervasive, almost like God". Humph! I considered. What can you expect. Karate guys will always look at "air", prana, chi as God.

 

 

Peter could do so many miraculous things. So could the ranking Black belts in my school: Uechi Ryu. Sometimes they were Island champions in Okinawa - walking on styrofoam cups without crushing them, punching their fingers through 3/4 in. plywood.

 

 

This is all manipulation of "prana". Whatever you can feel is prana. In the body it is circulating in seven major currents, cakras, but there are 10,000 major and minor "nadis" or tactile channels. You cannot see pure prana. It is the source of "fire", visual element. A portion of the prana slows down to become visual. Just to come up from visually biased perception of the world to tactile is a big jump. Even if you close your eyes and try to "feel" a candle in your intelligence you will still be hangng on to a visualization to orient yourself. This is why all the activities of karate guys appear like magic to Western science. But really (in theory) its quite easy. Yogi guys focus more on sound and so the prana follows. When you chant Hare Krsna are you trying to get "good feelings" out of it? Probably. Try to go beyond that to meditating on the sound. Then comes meaning. Many of the things that you'll read in the Krishna book and the Bhagavatam can be understood now. For example, Narada Muni travels on the airways. The planets are held together by wind-ropes. The universe , obviously, is composed of tactile forces. Some you can see, some you can't. You can feel the moving tactile force in a river and see it also. But you can't see the wind. You can't see "gravity". What would a visual representation of the tactile force created by the "gravity" of the Moon, Sun and Earth look like. Would the two primary "Le Grange" points correspond to the invisible Vedic planets Rahu and Ketu? During an eclipse would the tactile field of these points "eat" the tactile field of the earth as the Vedas describe Rahu tries to eat the earth. There is a book "Vedic Cosmography" by Richard Thompson. He gives wonderful description of many of these things.

 

Always chant Hare Krsna and then you'll dance.

Don't be so influenced by what you see.

By this potency you'll draw His glance

 

And then what's the use of colour Tv.

 

Are we finished yet? Can we play?

 

 

O.K. Maybe. Maybe I should cite one more science thing and quit. You have to walk that lonesome valley. You gotta walk it by yourself. Nobody else can walk it for you. You gotta go through this mystical world by yourself if you want to reach God.

 

Max Ernst and Sequential Events and Theater

 

 

There is a book I cite a lot: "Mind Works" by Max Ernst. He has some interesting studies related to heiracrchy of the sense modalities. The first one is Sequential Event Discrimination. You are confronted with two flashes of a strobe light, two tickles from an electrode or two clicks of sound. Of course, at a certain minimal separation the two events will cease to sound like two different events and seem like one. In cinema this is Critical Flicker Frequency. [Continued next week in Chapter 4.7]