Role of Breath
Breath is not just
the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. For different levels of thought and
emotion that you go through, your breath takes on different types of patterns.
When you are angry, peaceful, happy or sad, your breathe goes through subtle changes.
Whichever way you breathe, that is the way you think. Whichever way you think,
that is the way you breathe.
The
breath can be used as a tool to do many things with the body and the mind.
Pranayam is the science where, by consciously breathing in a particular way,
the very way you think, feel, understand and experience life can be changed.
If I ask you to
watch your breath, which is the most common practice people do these days, you
think you are watching the breath, but you are only able to notice the
sensations caused by the movement of air. It is like, if someone touches your
hand, you think you know the touch of the other person, but actually you only
know the sensations generated within your body; you do not know how the other
person feels.
Breath
is like the hand of the Divine. You don’t feel it.
It is not the sensations caused by the air. This breath that you do not
experience is referred to as Koorma Nadi. It
is a string which ties you with this body – an unbroken string that goes on and
on. If I take away your breath, you and your body will fall apart because the
being and the body are bound by the Koorma Nadi. This is a big deception. There
are two, but they are pretending to be one. It is like marriage – they are two,
but when they come out they pretend to be one. There are two people here, the
body and being, two diametrically opposite ones, but they pretend that they are
one.
If you travel
through the breath, deep into yourself, to the deepest core of the breath, it
will take you to that point where you are actually tied to the body. Once you
know where and how you are tied, you can untie it at will. Consciously, you can
shed the body as effortlessly as you would shed your clothes. When you know
where your clothes are tied, it is easy to drop them. When you don’t know where
it is tied, whichever way you pull, it does not come off. You have to tear them
apart. Similarly, if you do not know where your body is tied to you, if you
want to drop it, you have to damage or break it in some way. But if you know
where it is tied, you can very clearly hold it at a distance. When you want to
drop it, you can just drop it consciously. Life becomes very different.
When
somebody willfully sheds the body completely, we say this is Mahasamadhi. This is what is generally
referred to as mukti, or ultimate liberation. It is a great sense of equanimity
where there is no difference between what is inside the body and what is
outside the body. The game is up.
This is
something that every yogi is longing for. Consciously or not, every human being
is working towards this – they want to expand and this is the ultimate
expansion. It is just that they are going towards the infinite in installments,
which is a very long and impossible process. If you count – 1, 2, 3, 4 – you
will only become endless counting. You will never reach the infinite. When one
realizes the futility of this, he naturally turns inwards to do this – by
untying the life process from the body.
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