toe, prana will carry it there. When you have a sufficient flow of prana,
you can spread your consciousness everywhere within. To do this you
need to generate a lot of prana. To generate prana you must cultivate
the extension, expansion, control, and restraint of your normal breath.
Just as in the last chapter we were using these same terms about our
practice on the physical and outermost sheath of being, the annamaya
kosa, now we are using them about the second sheath, the physiolog
ical or organic body, the pranamaya kosa. Having strengthened our
known selves through asana, we are now adding a second string to our
bow through the culture of breath. By so doing, we generate more en
ergy. With more energy we can explore and penetrate further and
deeper within.
Whether we are talking about the outermost sheath or this more
interior one, we are always bringing the light of awareness. Prana is al
ways involved in carrying that light of awareness, only now we are
consciously generating and directing it. In yoga philosophy both en
ergy (prana) and consciousness (citta) are considered to evolve directly
out of cosmic intelligence (mahat). Mahat is the universal intelligence
of Nature. The rocks have universal intelligence. Every leaf has it.
Every cell of every creature has it. It is all pervasive and infinite. The
genius of nature's intelligence is self-expression. That is why nature is
infinitely varied, infinitely inventive. Prana is our link to this infinite
intelligence. What a shame it is that we have such access and ignore its
use and development. We are like someone with a vast fortune locked
in a numbered bank account who forgets the number and so must
scrape by in poverty. We live within our individual consciousness with
its limited intelligence, often feeling lonely and puny, when there is a
conduit available directly to cosmic consciousness and intelligence.
Through this conduit flows prana, joining each individual among us to
the highest original principle of Nature. Pranayama is about restoring
this conduit so that the intelligence bearing the energy of the macro
cosm can illuminate our microcosm.
II 1.: ' I\' 1·. N 1; 1\ II