AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’ve read a lot of Aleister Crowley’s writing during my long involvement with esoteric studies, including his Brief Lectures on Yoga a couple of times, but I don’t recall encountering the forceful statement about pranayama (controlled breathing) that I just found quoted in Robert Anton Wilson’s Prometheus Rising. It made a powerful impression on me with its evocative repetition and alliteration. (It could be a mantra in its own right, which may have been Crowley’s intention since they are often repeated several times.)
“For mind and body alike there is no purgative like pranayama, no purgative like pranayama.
For mind and body alike, for mind and body alike – alike! – there is, there is, there is no purgative like pranayama – pranayama! – pranayama, yea, for mind and body alike there is no purgative, no purgative, no purgative (for mind and body alike) no purgative like pranayama!”
I’ve been plagued with minor insomnia for most of my adult life, waking up in the middle of the night with my brain cranking on some idea that will invariably be lost if I don’t immediately jot it down (which I sometimes get up and do). Back in the 1990s I learned the compassion mantra “Om Mani Padme Hum” that I decided to start intoning silently along with controlled breathing exercises whenever I experience a bout of insomnia. (After reading the Dalai Lama’s commentary about its significance, I may be swatting a gnat with a sledge-hammer but so be it, the practice has helped a lot over the last 30 years.)
I take a deep breath to around 80% of lung capacity, then slowly release it while reciting the mantra in my head throughout the full exhale, repeating it until I can no longer focus as I start to doze. Typically, I’m asleep again within two or three minutes. The deep sense of peace it instills banishes the mental howling that makes me think of “the Wind along the Waste” of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. The only issue I’ve encountered is that, almost every time I put myself back to sleep in this way, I’m afflicted with a moderate anxiety dream that continues until I awaken again, but I do get close to eight hours of rest even with that disturbance.
Crowley recommends practicing pranayama for at least one hour every day. I can’t say that I get the full measure of that exposure, but I do find a practical use for it on a regular basis. It is indeed a “purgative” for the psychosomatic distress that accompanies insomnia. If I remember to do so, I will even perform it three times before a tarot reading along with the sub-vocal mantra for the calming and centering effect. I like to undertake this while the sitter shuffles the cards because it’s unobtrusive (just as long as I don’t fall asleep in my chair and have to explain myself).
