made flesh, on this earth. It brings the discovery of the individual soul.
It brings awareness of every cell in one's being. From the core of being,
the individual soul (jivatman), one has fulfilled the implication of being
chosen to be born. It is the experience of all of oneself, from innermost
to outermost, from subtlest to grossest. If we are a mansion with hun
dreds of rooms and corridors, we might say that normally we are al
ways in one room or another. We are in our minds, in our memories,
in our senses, in the future, eating so that we are in our stomachs, and
thinking so that we are in our heads. We are always in one bit or an
other, but we never occupy all our inheritance. To experience the to
tality of being is to be in every room of the mansion at once with light
streaming out of every window.
What happens when we retain the breath after exhalation? There
is no thought of duration. One does not say, I'll hold it for thirty sec
onds, or forty. There is no thought. Thought has ceased. Therefore re
tention is spontaneous.
Yet there remains one issue. From where does the impulse come to
retain the breath in the first place? An act of will or a decision is im
plicit in the fact that one holds the breath at all. This impulse (prerana)
can only come from nature, which is, after all, at the intelligent origin
of self-self not Soul. So ego must still be, in however shadowy a form,
present. We say that dhyana erases the impurities of ego, if not its ac
tual existence. It happens in this way. Just as the cessation of the move
ment of thought brings purity to intelligence, so a motiveless retention
effaces ego. What the practitioner eventually experiences is not that, at
some point, he suspends the breath. He is no longer the subject, the
agent. The breath breathes him. What this means is that, at the highest
level of meditation, the cosmos breathes you. You are passive. No in
dividual or personal will is present, therefore, no ego, no self. In Hindu
terminology, it is as though Brahman, the Creator, is expressing him
self through you. You are the expression of His will and design, just as
the completed canvas is that of the creative artist. The unpn·nll'dit a ted
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