Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 13th November 1909 — No.19
Facts and Opinions
The Deoghar Sadhu
Recently some of the Bengali papers have contained detailed information of the feat of a Sadhu who buried himself for some days not, as in the well-known Punjab case, giving up his outward consciousness and entering into the Jada Samadhi or inert inner existence, but in full possession of his outer senses and conversing at times from his living tomb with visitors outside.
The correspondent of the Bengalee tells us that the local people were dissatisfied with the Sadhu because the peculiar power he evinced was unattended by any moral elevation or true ascetic qualities.
It is a general delusion that the power thus shown is a very great and almost supernatural Siddhi and ought to be in the possession 
only of very highly developed souls.
A false Indian tradition is partly responsible for the error; partly, it is due to the supreme ignorance of the deeper secrets of our being which belongs to the limited and self-satisfied materialistic Science of Europe now dominant in our midst.
There is nothing wonderful in the feat of the Deoghar Sadhu, which was the result of the conquest of the breath, Pranayam, achieved by certain physical and mental processes and not necessarily dependent on moral or spiritual progress.
The Kumbhak or retention of the Prana, dispensing with the process of inbreathing and outbreathing, is the final achievement of the process and the Kumbhak can, when thoroughly conquered, be continued for an indefinite period.
Given the power of Kumbhak, it is obvious that one can stay under water or earth or in a room hermetically sealed for as long as the state continues.
The power of stopping the heartbeats, dispensing with the process of breathing, and other of the outworks of Yogic knowledge and achievement are being slowly established in order to break down the exclusive pride of European Science and prepare for a new order of knowledge and a greater science to which its dogmatic narrowness is bitterly and scornfully opposed.