How to control Prana and go beyond

March 30, 2004

The Pranamaya level of being is fine but we need to go beyond to subtler levels. Let us do this simple exercise. Sit still peacefully; not rigid but with ease and suppleness. Close your eyes and observe breathing. Observe in-breath and out-breath at the tip of the nostril. Continue to observe, don�t interfere with it. Let it be more and more gentle and soft and you continue to notice! Do not worry about any ratios, and don�t worry about which lobe (part) of lung you are working for your breathing and all that. Don�t even think of uniformity in breathing. No other consideration at all except watching the breath at the tip of the nostril for some time, say three to four minutes.Then slowly along with the inhaling breath, go from the tip of the nostril up to the throat. Now watch the sensations at the throat. Don�t interfere with any of the sensations. Continue to notice the feeling of the breath at the throat for another three to four minutes. Continue with closed eyes and continue with total absorption. From the throat proceed to the depth of lungs along with the in-breath. The whole passage of breathing is relaxed and wide open naturally. You can notice hardly any friction and sensation in the whole passage of breathing right from the nostril up to the death of your lungs. It is the friction in the wind pipe which is responsible for the feeling of exhaustion. So this provides an opportunity to withdraw from the nasal passage as you breathe and you can feel the movement of lung muscles for your breathing. You can also observe that there is no obstruction between the air inside and the air outside. The inside air is called as breath and the air outside is called as air. You are in between! Do not take note of any wanderings of the mind, just ignore. Let the whole body continue to be relaxed. You become nothing but breathing. Once you have the experience of becoming yourself breathing, slowly and peacefully notice that you are not the breathing but the lung movement, which enables the breathing to manifest. You will be surprised with direct experience of being the Prana (kind of force) which is responsible for breathing and breathing is only consequential. Breathing is the result but actually, you are that which is behind the lung muscles. Make that Prana force goes on by itself without your interference. Prana the life force is going on its own. You are a witness of it.In the next step, after recognizing the movement of lungs going on spontaneously, notice the gap between exhalation and inhalation. Lung muscles come to a temporary halt. This is a very pleasant state where you are not doing any thing including moving the lung muscles. That you notice as the most restful state. As you go on identifying with that state, you start experiencing that the movement of lung muscles is going on out side of you and you are the stillness, non-active state in between the movement.You are one without any physical movement of lungs at all. That is when you can slowly transcend the Pranamaya Kộsa. (Once you are able to transcend the Prana or movement at respiratory level you can have the experience of transcending at other parts of the body in other activities. You are not breathing yet breathing is going on. You can same way transcend the limbs and walking is going on. You are not talking but talking is going on and so on).After transcending the Pranamaya kosa we come to identify with the manomaya kosa. Pranamaya kosa is left behind. The disturbances now in the form of thoughts belong to manomaya kosa. Ignore the thoughts and merge the mind in Aum chanting, by chanting Aum three times leisurely while you exhale; three fourth of exhalation say Aum and last fourth silence. Observe that all the thoughts of the mind merge into Aum and finally Aum merges into silence. Stay in that silence and thus transcend the manomaya kosa and further on to merge in silence.Stay for a period of ten to fifteen minutes and finally come out of meditation with the chanting of AUM. Percolate the peace through out the being and before opening the eyes, after rubbing the palms against each other, palm the eyes with warm palms and massage the eyes and face gently.Do this repeatedly for a few days so that you start experiencing the effect of the meditation.
Aum Shantih Shantih, shanthihi.
Love
N.V.Raghuram