The Breath of Brahman

The Breath of Brahman is the rhythmic flow that sustains all life, before we lose our appetite for living, and life withdraws its interest and allows its forms to rest in recuperative peace. There is a time in the affairs of men that allows us to grow and develop and assimilate all that we have learned; time to digest and discharge all that we have not assimilated, with time to create a fresh body of interest, until ready to continue at whatever level God wills for us.

The Cosmic breath is the inbreathing and out breathing of God; divined by the ancients as the creator and destroyer of all possible worlds, an ever growing body of wisdom, borne out of the success and failings of its creatures.

The absolute forms and patterns that underlay creation are the ideals to be attained; it’s mans failings, or missing the mark that distorts his life, and is the cause of the many afflictions that shorten his life.

The healing breath of Brahman is a yoga technique of letting go and letting God. It is the absolving breath that washes away the impurities that distort our true nature. It can be practised prior to sleep or when relaxing in ‘savasana’, ‘the pose of complete relaxation’, when with clear mind; we release all tension and attune our breath to the creative breath of life. This spontaneous form of breathing requires an act of faith when we ‘let go’, and breathe at one with the breath of God. ‘From out of the Breath of God, arises the light or consciousness of the breath, the catalyst for change throughout the entire body’.

Doubt and disbelief, that we exist within a field of intelligent life force, are obstacles to opening to the healing power of the breath. Study and the practice of yoga will gradually open heart and mind to the living reality of the world in which we live. Help and guidance can be given to others, from the practice of healing hands; by placing one hand of the front of the abdomen and the other at the back and guiding your partner in meditative abdominal breathing, as you continually refine your perceptions, and become aware of the healing power of the breath.

Similar benefits can be obtained with mid chest or lateral breathing, when the hands placed at each side of the rib cage. For upper chest healing, with breath; the hands are placed high up, front and back of the rib cage.

Only the light of the breath that is consciousness in its purest form can promote healing within the organism. This becomes possible through the work of the yogi and the attainment of the highest possible development of our consciousness.

To define oneself as a Yogi

To define oneself as a Yogi is to be committed to the spiritual life. It is possible to read many books and without understanding, to remain, much like a donkey loaded down with many books, yet still a donkey. Yoga is greater than the sum of its parts, with each part is linked to every other part, not unlike a cosmic jigsaw with each piece a stepping stone to the infinite that lies beyond.

Yoga is union in every sense of the word, not only between the parts but also the infinite which has precipitated the parts. The study and practice of yoga is discovering the link factors which constitute the whole, not only intellectually, but with feeling and a consciousness of the whole process. There is no part of this life study that is not divine in its nature; because to say that something is not of God, is to detract from his absoluteness.

We all live moment by moment in the presence of God, some of us struggling and jockeying for position within the illusion of time. The enlightened seeing the whole pattern and individual karma expressing itself and tempering each according to their ability to evolve and develop. Purity of action is the keynote in the life of the yogi, which sets them apart in the life of the community, as their evolving nature and physical body becomes more and more refined. This becomes evident by the company they keep as low vibrations can be disturbing to the more refined organism. Likewise foods of an animal nature become less evident in the yoga diet as there will be a preference for foods formed as close to natural sunlight as possible.

The yogi has above all to learn to be true to themselves and to learn to respond to the creative within themselves. By being true to ourselves we are more likely to bring something new and interesting into the life process, rather than simply to be absorbed and fashioned by much of what has gone before. Self-realisation is a process of ‘letting go’ and letting God and responding to the free and boundless of which we are but manifestations.

None of us are separate from the whole process and have been woven from the same cloth which is the power of God; hence the first of the restraints which is ahimsa, non-injury.

A Sacred Mantra

A Sacred Mantra is a secret mantra that acts as a key to your spiritual home with every letter vibrating in harmony with your spiritual nature. As you would be cautious about entrusting your house key to strangers, so would you be cautious when opening your heart and handing over the key to your inner temple. A mantra is a word of special significance to the user, which when repeated focuses, liberates, and frees the mind from serial day today thought processes. Mantras usually evolve from the ground up expressing that which it is thought could bring the greatest happiness, an example of a secular mantra is likely to be money, money, money!!! Money is not always the panacea for all ills, as when desperate we often look to divine intervention, an example of a religious or spiritual mantra is the Jesus Prayer “Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Sound vibrations give rise to pattern, not unlike the sand particles on a tray that form into patterns when the tray is vibrated. Each of us is patterned uniquely and if we could discover our underlying sound pattern, we could‘re-fresh’ and reconstitute our being. The totality of all sound patterns shabda Brahman, is represented by the mantra ‘OM’ and a divine humming, when manifest and un-manifest sound, coalesce in mutual harmony. The mantra ‘OM’ has many levels of application, such as a harmonising and unifying tone during meditation, and more specifically, when attuned for healing purposes to a particular condition.

Mantras have an emotional and spiritual bias that transcend the limits of word definition and reach into the timeless reality which transcends the distortions of time. How many of us know who we truly are? Having adopted characteristics like actors in a play as we try to cope with the pressures of day to day life. Mantra can help us discover the unique nature gifted to us from the beginning of time.

Sacred mantra helps us to transcend the limits of time, as for example the mantra hamsa, usually translated as ‘swan’, more accurately refers to the wild goose whose migratory track takes it high over the Himalaya mountains into the rarefied upper air. The closely related mantra so’ham, “I am He” is linked to the natural vibration of the Self and the natural rhythm of the inflowing and out-flowing breath. Sacred mantras are divine utterances which arise out of the infinite and give form to the surrounding energy field. We are all unique and have a particular part to play within the field of life. Our spiritual name or emanation provides an important link between time and eternity, hence the important aim of yoga, which is self-realisation.

Each Self has a unique contribution to make in the life of the universe and its highest attributes establish an important link between time and eternity. The sacred mantra does not lock you into narrow frame of reference, but frees the spirit within to become true to itself. The mantra so’ham has been linked with the breath and the spirit of the body, the first part ‘so’ has been linked with the Sanskrit sah which means HE or That, and ham with aham, I AM; meaning That I Am; or conversely I Am That; that is of the nature of the Divine or transcendent.

As a meditation become aware of the inflowing and out-flowing breath, the inflowing breath is so or sah, in which the in-breath represents consciousness reaching beyond the limits of the breath into the transcendent stillness of the absolute. The out-breath ah (aham), breathes out into the time process establishing a unique being and essence. Words are self-limiting and cannot define your true essence, so sit in silence and feel for those intrinsic qualities at the centre of your being, which is God’s gift and what makes you who you truly are.

Breath and stress

Breath and stress go hand in hand, rising and falling like emotional tides, as we grapple with and try to make sense of the problems of life. Stress distorts the natural rhythms of the body and in particular, the natural flow of the breath. A stressful episode can result in an extra surge of adrenaline, or fixate attention, not unlike a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car. The side effects of stress are rapid shallow breathing or the other extreme of breath retention, when we can become fixated and experience a form of emotional seizure.

Not all stress can be linked to an obvious source as it is more deep seated and ancestral. These forms of stress often haunt us in our dreams and have been passed down through the generations. It is during deep sleep that these hidden ancestral tensions surface, replay and give form to hidden protoplasmic fears. Not all dreaming has negative implications and most provide a healthy way of releasing, breaking down and re-forming day today stress.

Indicators of long term and established stress patterns are disturbed sleep, grinding of teeth, holding of the breath, restless sleep disorders and a combination of bodily tension and shallow breathing. The breath and the emotions are closely related and most are familiar with the yoga maxim “calm the breathing to calm the emotions”. It can help to release long term and repetitive stress by shedding and releasing accumulative tension to mother earth, by taking a deep breath and with explosive out-breath, releasing and relaxing body and mind to enjoy a few moments of peace and tranquillity. This simple technique of grounding and centring helps with the return to a position where we can re-take control and break the inertia of debilitating tension.