34. The body is a city and the mind is its ruler, the two airs are as the car and wheel of the body; while Egoism is the monarch of this city, and the eight members are as so many horses attached to the car of the body.
35. Thus by watching the motion of those airs (i.e. of the prána and apána—inspiration and expiration for the whole of my lifetime); I find the course of my life to be as interminable, as that of the continuity of my breathings. (The thought of continuity prolongs the course of life).
36. The airs serve the body alike in all its states of waking, dreaming, and sound sleep, and his days glide on imperceptibly who remains in his state of profound sleep. (so the yogi remaining in his trance is utterly insensible of the course of time).
37. These breaths being divided into a thousand threads, according as they pass through the many canals of the body, are as imperceptible as the white fibres passing inside the stalks of lotus plants.
38. By watching the incessant course of vital airs, as also by attending to the continued course of time, and thinking in one self of the interminable course of his respirations, and the moments of time and train of his thoughts, as also by attempting to restrain their course by the habit and practice of pránáyáma, that he is sure to lengthen the duration of his life in this world; and attain to his eternal life in the next.
[CHAPTER XXV.]
On Samádhi.