“It is necessary to understand what this means. We all breathe the same air. Apart from the elements known to our science the air contains a great number of substances unknown to science, indefinable for it and inaccessible to its observation. But exact analysis is possible both of the air inhaled and of the air exhaled. This exact analysis shows that although the air inhaled by different people is exactly the same, the air exhaled is quite different. Let us suppose that the air we breathe is composed of twenty different elements unknown to our science. A certain number of these elements are absorbed by every man when he breathes. Let us suppose that five of these elements are always absorbed. Consequently the air exhaled by every man is composed of fifteen elements; five of them have gone to feeding the organism. But some people exhale not fifteen but only ten elements, that is to say, they absorb five elements more. These five elements are higher ‘hydrogens.’ These higher ‘hydrogens’ are present in every small particle of air we inhale. By inhaling air we introduce these higher ‘hydrogens’ into ourselves, but if our organism does not know how to extract them out of the particles of air, and retain them, they are exhaled back into the air. In this way we all breathe the same air but we extract different substances from it. Some extract more, others less.
“In order to extract more, it is necessary to have in our organism a certain quantity of corresponding fine substances. Then the fine substances contained in the organism act like a magnet on the fine substances contained in the inhaled air. We come again to the old alchemical law: ‘In order to make gold, it is first of all necessary to have a certain quantity of real gold.' If no gold whatever is possessed, there is no means whatever of making it."
Gurdjieff on Prana, as recounted to P.D. Ouspensky in “In Search of the Miraculous,” taken from the edition published by by Paul H. Crompton Ltd 2004, Pages 188-189.
This particular account is a transparent interpretation of the traditional yoga view of prana, reconfigured — as much of Gurdjieff's language was — to appeal to Western sensibilities, in the form of scientific language.
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