(14) When is this food exhausted?” “Seven days will pass before the energy of this food will be exhausted; again Ananda, if a Sravaka who has not yet entered into the ranks of steadfastness partake of this food, he can attain to the ranks of steadfastness before it is exhausted; if [a Sravaka who] has entered into the ranks of steadfastness partake of this food, he can obtain liberation of mind before it is exhausted; if one who has not yet cherished the thought towards the Mahayana partake of this food he can cherish the thought before it is exhausted; if one who has cherished the thought [towards the Mahayana] partake of this food, he can attain to the acquiescence in the eternal law before it is exhausted; if one who has attained to the acquiescence partake of this food, he can attain to the state in which he is bound by one birth only before it is exhausted; just as a medicine called ‘the excellent flavour’ which has such a peculiarity that one who has taken it can exterminate all poison of passions before it is exhausted, even so this food exterminates all poison of passions before it is exhausted.”

(78) Timaeus: And to this kind of process the Giver of Titles gave, as we say, the names of “inspiration” and “expiration.” And the whole of this mechanism and its effects have been created in order to secure nourishment and life for our body, by means of moistening and cooling. For as the respiration goes in and out the inward fire attached thereto follows it; and whenever in its constant oscillations this fire enters in through the belly

(50) The life-current is either outward, or inward, or balanced; it is regulated according to place, time, number; it is prolonged and subtle.

(80) Timaeus: Moreover, the process of respiration—with which our account commenced—came about, as we previously stated, in this manner and by these means. The fire divides the foods, and rises through the body following after the breath; and as it rises, with the breath it fills the veins from the belly by drawing into them from thence the divided particles. And it is owing to this that in all living creatures the streams of nutriment course in this way through the whole body. And inasmuch as these nutritive particles are freshly divided

(2) So, likewise, in the millennium of Hûshêdar-mâh, the strength of appetite (âz) will thus diminish, when men will remain three days and nights in superabundance (sîrîh) through one taste of consecrated food.

(23) The Motion which acts upon Sensible objects enters from without, and so shakes, drives, rouses and thrusts its participants that they may neither rest nor preserve their identity- and all to the end that they may be caught into that restlessness, that flustering excitability which is but an image of Life.

We must avoid identifying Motion with the objects moved: by walking we do not mean the feet but the activity springing from a potentiality in the feet. Since the potentiality is invisible, we see of necessity only the active feet- that is to say, not feet simply, as would be the case if they were at rest, but something besides feet, something invisible but indirectly seen as an accompaniment by the fact that we observe the feet to be in ever-changing positions and no longer at rest. We infer alteration, on the other hand, from the qualitative change in the thing altered.

Where, then, does Motion reside, when there is one thing that moves and another that passes from an inherent potentiality to actuality? In the mover? How then will the moved, the patient, participate in the motion? In the moved? Then why does not Motion remain in it, once having come? It would seem that Motion must neither be separated from the active principle nor allowed to reside in it; it must proceed from agent to patient without so inhering in the latter as to be severed from the former, passing from one to the other like a breath of wind.

Now, when the potentiality of Motion consists in an ability to walk, it may be imagined as thrusting a man forward and causing him to be continually adopting a different position; when it lies in the capacity to heat, it heats; when the potentiality takes hold of Matter and builds up the organism, we have growth; and when another potentiality demolishes the structure, the result is decay, that which has the potentiality of demolition experiencing the decay. Where the birth-giving principle is active, we find birth; where it is impotent and the power to destroy prevails, destruction takes place- not the destruction of what already exists, but that which intervenes upon the road to existence.

Health comes about in the same way- when the power which produces health is active and predominant; sickness is the result of the opposite power working in the opposite direction.

Thus, Motion is conditioned, not only by the objects in which it occurs, but also by its origins and its course, and it is a distinctive mark of Motion to be always qualified and to take its quality from the moved.

(13) Ananda asked Vimalakirti: “How long does this perfume last?” Vimalakirti replied: “It will last until the food is exhausted.” “

(79) Timaeus: the other by way of the mouth and the nose, whenever the fire rushes in one direction it propels the air round to the other, and the air which is thus propelled round becomes heated by streaming into the fire, whereas the air which passes out becomes cooled. And as the heat changes its situation and the particles about the other outlet become hotter, the hotter body in its turn tends in that direction, and moving towards its own substance propels round the air which is at the former outlet; and thus the air, by continually undergoing and transmitting the same affections, causes inspiration and expiration to come about as a result of this double process, as it were a wheel that oscillates backwards and forwards. Moreover, we must trace out in this way the causes of the phenomena connected with medical cupping-glasses,

(39) I mean thereby the Power, which in the Body of the Angel enters in from without, and comes forth again; as in a Similitude, when a Man fetches Breath and breaths it forth again; for therein stands the Life both of the Body and of the Spirit.

(31) Grieving, despondency, bodily restlessness, the drawing in and sending forth of the life-breath also contribute to drive the psychic nature to and fro.

(79) Timaeus: Wherefore the region of the chest and that of the lungs when they let out the breath become filled again by the air surrounding the body, which filters in through the porous flesh and circulates round. And again, when the air is repelled and passes out through the body it pushes the inspired air round and in by way of the passages of the mouth and of the nostrils. The originating cause

(1) 'The earth (food) when eaten becomes threefold; its grossest portion becomes feces, its middle portion flesh, its subtilest portion mind.

(2) 'In the same manner, my child, the subtile portion of earth (food), when eaten, rises upwards, and becomes mind.

(78) Timaeus: its streams as well should be plenished from this. The rest of the enveloping mesh-work He made to grow round all the hollow part of our body; and He caused all this at one time to flow gently into the inner-weels, seeing they were of air, and at another time the weels to flow back into it. And inasmuch as the body was porous, He caused the veil to pass in through it and out again; and the inner rays of fire that were enclosed within it He made to follow the air as it moved in either direction; whence it comes that, so long as the mortal living creature preserves its structure, this process goes on unceasingly.

(49) When this is gained, there follows the right guidance of the life-currents, the control of the incoming and outgoing breath.

(12) There is one vital substance in Nature upon which all things subsist. It is called archæus, or vital life force, and is synonymous with the astral light or spiritual air of the ancients. In regard to this substance, Eliphas Levi has written: "Light, that creative agent, the vibrations of which are the movement and life of all things; light, latent in the universal ether, radiating about absorbing centres, which, being saturated thereby, project movement and life in their turn, so forming creative currents; light, astralized in the stars, animalized in animals, humanized in human beings; light, which vegetates all plants, glistens in metals, produces all forms of Nature and equilibrates all by the laws of universal sympathy--this is the light which exhibits the phenomena of magnetism, divined by Paracelsus, which tinctures the blood, being released from the air as it is inhaled and discharged by the hermetic bellows of the lungs." (The History of Magic.)

(88) Timaeus: is inflamed or chilled within by the particles that enter it, and again is dried or moistened by those without, and suffers the affections consequent on both these motions, whenever a man delivers his body, in a state of rest, to these motions, it is overpowered and utterly perishes; whereas if a man imitates that which we have called the nurturer and nurse of the Universe, and never, if possible, allows the body to be at rest but keeps it moving, and by continually producing internal vibrations defends it in nature's way against the inward and outward motions, and by means of moderate vibrations