7. If after all your efforts, you are unable to repress the passing off of the downward wind; then the person is sure to meet his death, by the forcible and irrepressible egress of the apána wind (this irrepressible egress is called abishtambhá). (The translator regrets for his inability to give the English terminology of these psychological words in the original).
8. And when one with all his attempts, is unable to suppress his rising breath of life; but it forces of his mouth or nostrils, it is sure to be followed by his expiration.
9. If one by his continual attention, can succeed to repress the outward and inward egress of his vital breath, and preserve calm quiet of his disposition, he is sure to have his longevity accompanied with his freedom from all diseases.
10. Know that the decomposure of the smaller arteries, is attended with distempers of the body, but the disturbance of the greater arteries is followed by serious consequences. (There are a hundred great arteries, attached to the main conduit of Kundaliní, besides hundreds of small veins and nerves diverging from them throughout the body. The yogi has the power of stopping the current of his breath and blood into these by his restraint of respiration—pránáyáma).
11. Ráma said:—Tell me, O holy sage! how our health and sickness connected with the organs and arteries of the body (rather than with the blood and humours circulating through them).
12. Vasishtha replied:—Know Ráma, that uneasiness and sickness, are both of them the causes of pain to the body; their healing by medicine is their remedy, which is attended with our pleasure; but the killing of them at once by our liberation (from the sensations of pain and pleasure), is what conduces to our true felicity. (Because both health and sickness are attended with but short lived pleasure and pain, and cannot give us the lasting felicity to our souls).
13. Some times the body is subject both to uneasiness and sickness also, as the causes of one another; sometimes they are both alleviated to give us pleasure, and at others they come upon us by turns to cause our pain only.
14. It is ailing of the body, that we call our sickness, and it is the trouble of the mind that we term our uneasiness. Both of them take their rise from our inordinate desires, and it is our ignorance only of the nature of things, that is the source of both. (Our intemperance and covetousness, which are dispelled by our right knowledge).
15. Without the knowledge of the natures and virtues of things, and the want of the government of our desires and appetites, that the heart string loses its tenuity and even course; and is swollen and hurried on by the impulse of passions and inordinate desires.
16. The exultation at having obtained something, and ardour for having more; equally boil the blood of the heart, and shroud the mind under a shadow of infatuation, as an impervious cloud in the rainy weather.