3.  Asanam or posture is defined as a continuous and pleasant attitude.  It is difficult to see how the latter adjective applies to many of the postures recommended, for considerable training is necessary to make them even tolerable.  But the object clearly is to prescribe an attitude which can be maintained continuously without creating the distracting feeling of physical discomfort and in this matter European and oriental limbs feel differently.  All the postures contemplated are different ways of sitting cross-legged.  Later works revel in enumerations of them and also recognize others called Mudra.  This word is specially applied to a gesture of the hand but is sometimes used in a less restricted sense.  Thus there is a celebrated Mudra called Khechari, in which the tongue is reversed and pressed into the throat while the sight is directed to a point between the eyebrows.  This is said to induce the cataleptic trance in which Yogis can be buried alive.

4.  Pranayama or regulation of the breath.  When the Yogi has learnt to assume a permanent posture, he accustoms himself to regulate the acts of inspiration and expiration so as to prolong the period of quiescence between the two.  He will thus remove the veils which cover the light within him.  This practice probably depends on the idea which constantly crops up in the Upanishads that the breath is the life and the soul.  Consequently he who can control and hold his breath keeps his soul at home, and is better able to concentrate his mind.  Apart from such ideas, the fixing of the attention on the rhythmical succession of inspirations and expirations conduces to that peaceful and detached frame of mind on which most Indian sects set great store.  The practice was greatly esteemed by the Brahmans, and is also enjoined among the Taoists in China and among Buddhists in all countries, but I have found no mention of its use among European mystics.

5.  Pratyahara, the retraction or withdrawing of the senses.  They are naturally directed outwards towards their objects.  The Yogi endeavours to bring them into quiescence by diverting them from those objects and directing them inwards.  From this, say the Sutras, comes complete subjugation of the senses[665].

6-8.  The five kinds of discipline hitherto mentioned constitute the physical preparation for meditation comprising in succession (a) a morality of renunciation, (b) mortification and purification, (c) suitable postures, (d) regulation of the breathing, (e) diversion of the senses from their external objects.  Now comes the intellectual part of the process, consisting of three stages called Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi.  Dharana means fixing the mind on a particular object, either a part of the body such as the crown of the head or something external such as the sky.  Dhyana[666] is the continuous intellectual state arising out of this concentration.  It is defined as an even current