True Spiritual Living

by Swami Krishnananda

So, there are ideals, or future possibilities, achievements, which need not necessarily create a state of tension in our minds, on account of a confidence that we can entertain in our minds that the future is going to be ours, but it should not be coupled with anxiety. This is an art by itself.

So much, in general, is by way of an introductory analysis of the nature of tension, of which we have to be free. If we are in a state of tension, we can neither think healthily, nor speak healthily, nor do anything in a healthy manner. We will be in a state of tremor in nerves, muscles and body. So, the point that I was driving at was that when we sit for yoga – it may be japa, it may be meditation, or even a concentrated form of sacred study called svadhyaya – we should not have any kind of engagement which will press us in another direction. For example, if we have to catch a train in half-an-hour, we cannot sit for japa. Because in half-an-hour the train will whistle, a consistent and whole-hearted sitting for meditation would not be advisable at that time. There should be a sufficient gap between the commitment or the engagement that is to follow and the practice for which we are sitting.

Now, various types of pranayama are prescribed in systems of yoga, about which we need not bother much – just as there is no use bestowing too much thought on the multiple and complex yoga asana postures in the practice of the yoga of the spirit, because all these physical exercises – called yoga asanas, bandhas, mudras etc. – are expected to be preparations for training the body to be seated in a particular posture. They have a necessity in this sense, that they will train our muscles and nerves so that we may be settled in a particular chosen posture. So is the case with pranayama. The pranayama by itself is not yoga, but it is a prescription for bringing a sort of harmony in breathing. We either breathe very short or very long, due to the condition of the mind and the exertions that we put forth through the body. It is very difficult to draw a compartmentalised line of distinction between thought process and breathing process. One is the brother of the other; they go together. Breath, or the process of breathing, and the process of thinking go together always. So, some yogins or teachers of yoga have emphasised the aspect of pranayama as an advisable precedent to the higher step of thought adjustment in yoga. Others have thought otherwise: they felt that it will be proper to regularise thought processes first, and then allow the pranas or the breathing process to take care of itself or themselves of their own accord. These are two schools of thought, which emphasise this side or that side. There is lot of truth in either side , and we cannot say that ‘this is wrong’ or ‘that is wrong’. The proper thing for us would be to strike a middle course, take a via media, and give due respect to the art of thinking systematically as well as the art of breathing harmoniously. Alternate breathing, as they call sukha purvaka pranayama, is generally prescribed.

But, especially in the system of Patanjali, though he too prescribes alternate breathing, the intention is something different. The aim is not alternate breathing; it is a preparation for something else. That something else, which is the aim of pranayama, is what is called kumbhaka – that is, the retention of the breath. Now, the moment we think of retention of breath we are likely to imagine a suffocated condition, but that is not the intention. We are not to be suffocated. The retention of the breath should be spontaneous on account of a concentrated attention of the mind, into which we get drawn occasionally. A person walking on a wire in a circus will hold the breath; or when we cross a precipice by walking on a narrow passage above a dangerous depth, we will hold our breath. An archer, when he shoots an arrow, he holds his breath. He does not do alternate breathing at that time; there is a spontaneous stopping of the breath. Even when we see a cobra suddenly dropping in front of us, we hold our breath. Hhh! “A cobra has come!” We do not know from where it has come.

Anything that requires attention of the mind also calls for retention of the breath. That means to say, an undistracted mind is harmonious with retention of breath. We are breathing because we are distracted; it comes to that, finally. It is because we are distracted in mind that we are breathing. Otherwise, we will not breathe. And Patanjali specifically mentions in one sutra that breathing is a great obstacle in yoga. We will be surprised because we live by breathing, and he calls it an obstacle. It is an obstacle because it is an unnatural condition that has arisen in us, because our whole personality is an unnatural thing. We are not natural beings. The more we understand our predicament today – physically, socially, biologically – we will be surprised, and in a state of consternation as to our smallness and the humble position that we occupy in the realm of Truth.

There is a sort of agitation in our body, that is to say, in the whole personality. This agitation has to be subdued – not suppressed, of course. The intention of pranayama is not to suppress the breath. Yoga is not a suppression or repression of anything – neither a repression of the desires, nor repression of breathing, nor repression of thoughts. The words ‘repression’ and ‘suppression’ should not be used, and the connotations thereof also have no relevance to yoga. Yoga is ‘sublimation’, which again is a difficult thing for ordinary minds to understand. Even the process of pranayama should be a sublimation of the processes of breathing, and not a suppression of the processes of breathing. We are not asked to hold our throat or our nose, so that we may not breathe.

Sublimation means a healthy transformation. It is a growth, and not a decomposition, destruction, or a fall of any kind. An adult grows from childhood or adolescence, and an adult does not lose anything by being an adult. The adult will not think: ‘I have lost my childhood, I have lost my adolescence, so I am a loser.’ The adult is not a loser by not being a child or an adolescent, because that lower condition has been absorbed into the higher condition of the adult. Growth is, therefore, a good example of sublimation of the lower conditions, and both pranyama and the other stages of yoga which come later on are processes of sublimation. In fact, every stage of yoga – not merely pranayama or pratyahara etc. – is one of sublimation. Right from yama, niyama etc., it is a process of sublimation, boiling, purifying, and making it shine like gold from the condition of ore – by which nothing is lost, but something wonderful is gained. A sense of elevation, buoyancy of spirit, health, lightness etc., will be the symptoms of success in the art of sublimation. We will feel like running, rather than slowly crouching and moving. Lightness, buoyancy are the symptoms of health – and a freedom that we feel in the entire system, and not a suffocation in any part of the body, the pranas or the mind.

Thus, the prescriptions by way of pranayama etc. are intended to make us grow into a condition of health, where there is a gradual removal of all that is toxic in our system. That which is toxic is not a part of our essential nature. What we are necessarily, and in our essence, is the determining factor of true health; and that which is extraneous to our true nature is what we call toxic. Any element that has entered into us as a foreign factor, not belonging to our nature, will be the cause of distraction. In the previous discourse I gave an indication of what this extraneous matter is: the element of diversity interfering with the principle of unity. Essentially, there is an indivisible something in us, whose expansion into infinitude we are seeking through yoga; but the factor of diversity interferes with it constantly and pulls us externally through the organs of sense, making us either attracted to certain things or repulsed by certain things. These factors it is that cause distraction, both in breathing and in thinking. These have to be obviated carefully.