What is the difference and similarities between these two?
Here’s what I know: Agni (fire) is one of the five basic elements which in permutations and combinations construct the world of matter. Prana is the underlying energy that drives and facilitates these permutations so that any given objecr at any given point in time stands on a life cycle curve. The force of movement comes from prana, the moola-prakriti (basic elements) and various forms they take is the manifestation of the change. Thus, objects are born and they grow/ degenerate to die. One object converts in another.
Yoga’s model of subtle to gross is akash (space) to air, both together to fire, three together to water and all together to earth. Earth represents inertia, water is movement (of actions/ emotions/ thoughts), fire is the change-engine (metabolisms of food, breath, thoughts and prana), air brings about exchanges with external entities (respiration, expultion, out-of-body experiences) and space (omnipresent, omniscient).
Simplistically, if prana is like electrical energy, agni will be a part of the cable that carries it, being responsible for sustaining the cable’s properties while coping with degeneration.
fire is the change-engine (metabolisms of food, breath, thoughts and prana)…so prana is a fire as well?
i lost the track…but i’ve seen some confusing definition of agni…i think in the Agni Yoga of Roerich…
Prana is not fire. Like electricity is not light.
Metabolism is a process, of churning and transformation. “Agni” like many other words can never have English counterpart equally able to convey the meaning. To make it worse many Sanskrt terms are used as symbols and commentators are compelled to use a literal translation. Agni, for example is used as a symbol of transformative processes.
I don’t know about Agni Yoga, as there are too many brands, each a fraction of true yoga, pretending to be the whole. This is freedom of enterprize at its worst. I know Sanskrit and have spent 25+ years in India as well as the same in USA.
prana is pure and unrefined.
during advanced meditation, we might practice creating heat in the solar plexus with it. or we might manipulate our energy body/pranic body into having an astral projection. or we might transform it into bliss, during higher mental states such as samadhi. in the legs the prana is felt as flowing water, at times esp. in the calves.
“Prana is pure and unrefined.” But prana resident in human body is not. That’s why Yoga’s main focus is on purification.
But one needs to be careful in using yoga terms. For example, the pranic body is controlled by its subtle-superior, the causal body and one needs to be an extremely advanced yogi to have realized that state to manipuate.
Similarly, prana is a substance and bliss is a state, so transforming prana into bliss is not correct to say. In the same way, samadhi is not a mental state, in fact, it is a “no-mind” state and prana has several less pure derivatives and it is not prana, but udana vayu that instigates physical sensations like flowing water.
Vendors of Yoga styles may be creating their own marketing gloss and “magic wand” practices, but once on the path, the practitioners have to pierce through the gloss and search beyond.
[QUOTE=Suhas Tambe;71110]…one needs to be careful in using yoga terms. … one needs to be an extremely advanced yogi to have realized that state to manipuate. [/QUOTE]
agreed.
check out my youtube page if you doubt my credentials.
Prana is o2.
Combustion is Agni.
“Oxidization is the name of fire”
"A literal flame oxidizes o2 just like our body does"
Thus all oxidization is fire,when oxidization reaches a certain oxidization rate “consumption rate” fire can be had. Fire is sublimination. Solid to gas instantly.
Fire then turns into light.
Thus pranayama,oxygen is the great sustainer.
Combustion,Agni, is the fire of transformation.
In man this is called cellular respiration.
Cellular respiration is controlled via rhythem of gross respiration.
through control of cellular respiration one can stimulate Ida.
The body cools down. Blood vessals constrict. Cellular respiration slows.
Through stimulating “pingala” blood vessals dialate. Cellular respiration increases. Heat is then generated.
Alchemically water is then dried up. Ie sexual fluid is transformed via histamine,histamine is stimulated via increased respiration. This is the spirit of the body. “Agni”.
Thus the Buddhists taught opening and closing. As did yogis. “Ida and pingala”
Histamine increases blood flow,this
Furthers the dialation of blood vessals. and can allow extreme permeability of vessals.
The red gods associated with sex are so for a reason. Histamine,that which turns the body red. Is stored in mast cells that are stored in testies/overies.
Respectively manipulation of cellular respiration is hyper and hypo ventilation.
Rhythem of respiration is all that seperates these two,Ida and pingala.
Fire is more akin to the warmth element, the fire of the ancient greek worldview. Remember, they also used the 4 basic elements view. These are earth, water, air, fire.
Do not think they treated these terms narrowly as a materialist mind would do.
Earth meant everything that is physical.
Water there represents the life ether, or prana. This is already more subtle that anything physical.
Air is again subtler, and corresponds to the astral or mind realm. (Manas)
Fire is even mor subtler, and it is actually spiritual in nature. Fire is what the ego is made of.
There are still higher elements but for humans these four are the main constituents, regarding the world and our bodies.
This fourfold division is present in the realms of our world. Minerals belong to earth, plants to water (as they have a vital body, but no mind - not in the limits of their bodies), animals to air (as they have souls and minds, but lack an ego, at least in the limits of their body) and us humans.
The warmth elemt was what created the firts germs of our physical bodies, 3 earth incarnations ago.
The warmth element is present in human blood, and it is the bearer of the ego.
About the water, air, and fire elements as presented here, materialist science does not know anything of.
PS. This system of the greek originates in India, too. They tried to rationalize the system, having a consciusness closer to ours, but different from that of the ancient indian, for whom all this was more closer to a dreamlike Experience. Greek philosopher up to Plato still had supersesnible vision to a degree. Aristotle was the first thinker as we are today.