messenger of the gods. According to the Upanishads, it is the principle
of life and consciousness. It is even equated with the soul. It is the
breath of life in all manifestations of the universe, whether they phys
ically breathe or not. The animate are born through it and live by it,
and when they die, their individual breath redissolves into the cosmic
breath. Read that sentence again; it is breathtaking. It is survival, not
the individual survival our ego craves, but survival and perpetuation
nonetheless. Our breath returns to the cosmic wind. The Hebrew of the
Bible conveys this same insight, as the individual ruach (breath, spirit)
is the same word as the cosmic ruach (wind, spirit) that in the creation
story "hovered over the deep."
Prana, because it evolves directly from cosmic intelligence, carries
an ongoing record that is never terminated and cannot be destroyed. I
used the simile of the salmon swimming back up the torrent toward its
source, as we are trying to do. I said that the current seems to obstruct
and oppose us. Prana furnishes us with the fins and flashing tail that
enable us to leap the torrent. It, above all in Nature, is attracted toward
source, in a parallel sense to the longing of the individual soul for rec
onciliation with its universal origin.
I was touched and interested to see very recently the humble ad
mission by Stephen Hawking, the great Cambridge astronomer, that he
has changed his mind on an important issue. Until now he has claimed
that whatever enters a black hole in space can never emerge again, not
even light, because the gravitational pull is too strong. Now he says
that he has discovered evidence that proves that what he calls "infor
mation" does escape from black holes. Prana is the vehicle of cosmic
intelligence, which others might call information, and to the yogic way
of thinking, Professor Hawking's new view can only seem right. Prana
is both being (sat) and nonbeing (asat). It is the source of knowlcd�c,
and in no part of the universe can it be absent or finally imprisonl'd.
Remember that knowledge has a beginning but no l' llll. A. hlo1ck holl'
is non being, hut even that will change a�ain into lwinJ.:. Prana prT�t·nt s
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