“The Discipline of the Breath” From The Scale of the Very Small
Adi Da Samraj
THE SCALE OF THE VERY SMALL
Appendix D
The Discipline of the Breath
Beloved Adi Da Instructs us to
1. Consciously breathe, or participate in, the energy of life and in our relationship with Him as the Divine Source of life with each inhalation and exhalation.
He invites us:
Surrender To Me.
Breathe Me and
Feel Me
In all Your parts.
[The Dawn Horse Testament Of The Ruchira Buddha, chapter one]
That is to say,
while participating in the natural cycle of the breath,
allow your inhalation to be reception of life-energy and
your exhalation to be release of all negative conditions:
Simply breathe, and
feel it.
Feel that you are receiving conscious,
revitalizing, and
transforming life-energy when you inhale, and that
you are releasing accumulated tensions,
toxins, and
negative psychological and
emotional conditions
when you exhale.
[Conscious Exercise and the Transcendental Sun]
This manner of breathing is
the first “conductivity” exercise that an individual is called to practice as he or she takes up the Way of the Heart.
As you mature in your practice of the Way of the Heart, your “conductivity” practice will grow to address more of the Yogic processes in your own body-mind.
In addition,
your conscious participation in the breath cycle itself will continue to deepen and develop into a more and more meaningful devotional art.
Breathing as Devotion to Avatar Adi Da Samraj
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: My Admonition that you Commune with Me with every breath, or Remember Me with every breath, or Invoke Me with every breath, does not mean that you technically engage every inhalation and exhalation.
It is an Admonition you must fulfill artfully, in such a way that even though you are not engaging every breath as a technical practice, nevertheless every breath effectively is Communion with Me. The practice is done artfully, and, therefore, rather randomly. The general practice I have Given you is not about observing breaths, counting breaths, noticing breaths in any technical fashion.
It is about entering into relationship with Me via the breath, Communing with Me via the breath. The breath is not the subject of your practice. I Am!
All the faculties of the body-mind must be devoted to Me, and, since breath is a primary faculty, you must exercise yourself in relation to Me via the breath. The practice is not to get very curious about the breaths themselves, or finicky about breathing. It is to devote yourself to Me completely and to use the leading faculties of the body-mind as a principal mechanism for it. It is a devotional practice, then, not merely a functional one.
Fundamentally, the practice of Ruchira Buddha Bhakti I have Given you is a moment to moment practice. Its use is not limited to meditation. It is simply, in effect, to Invoke Me. In terms of the breath, it is to practice reception and release directly in relation to Mereceiving Me, releasing yourself, releasing all content. It is a random noticing and engaging of the breath. If the practice is done rightly, artfully, at random, then effectively every breath becomes feeling-Communion with Me, the process of receiving Me, releasing yourself into Communion with Me, giving Me your attention, giving Me all feeling, directing the body toward Me, and thereby Invoking Me. By observing these mechanisms, bring them to Me.
There is a process of adaptation to doing this, not only in meditation but in daily life, under all circumstances. As you adapt to this artful practice of real and concrete devotion to Me, in due course it becomes rather simple, even automaticbut not mechanical. It just begins to flow, it just begins to happen, and all of its aspects fall into place very simply.
Components of the practice of “conductivity” are also associated with the breath, and I have described these in The Dawn Horse Testament. Yes, you must adapt to the practice of “conductivity” technically. You must remember to do so. You must intentionally introduce its various parts artfully. As your adaptation develops, however, “conductivity” becomes more and more simple and straightforwardall the parts come together. It does not require so much mental noticing anymore. It is very simple and spontaneous, yet it accounts for everything.
BREATH, BODY, FEELING, EMOTION, ATTENTION and MIND
The breath is the link between all of the primary faculties of the body-mind. It is a physical act. Therefore, it is associated with the body. It is a feeling matter. Therefore, it is associated with emotion. It requires attention. Therefore, it requires the leading faculty of mind. The practice is not to direct body, emotion, and attention to the breath, however. It is to direct all those, and the breath, toward Me. It is a matter of participating in Me, entering fully into relationship to Me, concretely, with all the faculties yielded.
First there is your response to Me, but then you must learn this artful, and in some ways technical, practice, by progressive adaptation. Just that adaptation is part of the beginners practice of the Way of the Heart. You must consistently apply yourself, and you must study My Instruction. [Ishta]
In the Way of the Heart, the breath is simply a way to participate in your devotional relationship to Beloved Adi Da. Simply breathe, and feel Him. Surrender to Him, and feel that you are receiving conscious, revitalizing, and transforming life-energy when you inhale, and that you are releasing accumulated tensions, toxins, and negative psychological and emotional conditions when you exhale.
This process of reception-release is the effective means by which you can realign and reintegrate your physical body with the etheric dimension in which your body arises, thus enlivening and balancing the physical body in the most effective manner possible. The practice of the breath, or of such reception-release, is to consciously release all negative, tense, contracted, obstructed, and sluggish conditions of body, emotion, and mind, and receive the enlivening, healing, transforming, fluid, and intensifying force of life itself.
It is natural to align the process of reception-release to the cycle of the breath. Even involuntarily, you allow the force of life to enter and fill the body with the inhalation, and you release at least the physical wastes with exhalation. In the process of reception-release that Beloved Adi Da Instructs His devotees to engage, this purifying process is amplified through feeling-Contemplation of Him, reception of His Heart-Blessing, and release or surrender of self.
The Six Parts of Conscious Breathing
In The Dawn Horse Testament Of The Ruchira Buddha, Avatar Adi Da describes what He Calls the “lung-breathing exercises of feeling and breath”:
. . . The “Conscious Exercise” Of inhalation-Reception, In Descent, Via The Frontal Line Of the body, To The bodily “Battery” Assisted By Easy Upward Tensing Of the bodily base, Followed By exhalation-Release, Likewise Assisted By Easy Upward Tensing Of the bodily base, and, As A General Rule, With the Feeling-breath-exhalation Released From The bodily “Battery” and Radiated Diffusely (In all directions) Within the entire body . . . [chapter thirty-three]
Here, Adi Da’s Instructions about how to breathe are elaborated:
1. Breathe through the nose with the mouth closed and the tongue lightly resting against the upper palate behind the upper teeth.
2. Initiate the breath from the heart (the conscious, feeling, psychic core of the body-beingthat is, initiate the breath with the power of emotion, or whole body feelingthrough and with the throat, to the navel.
3. When you inhale, draw in, relax into, and conduct the life-energy of the universe with the whole being, even through the entire skin surface of the whole physical body, head to toe, down or into the vital center, the great life region, whose felt point of concentration is below the umbilical scar. Feel the life-energy at and from this life-center, radiating through the whole being as fullness.
4. Inhale fully, with deep feeling of heart and body, completely filling the lungs with air and the whole body with life-force. As the life-force moves through the body with the inhalation, it is first sensed in the soft, life region of the solar plexus. As it is drawn downward, it fills and expands the lower body, even the genitals and then the legs and feet. You may also feel a slight tingling sensation at the perineum, which is the lowest or terminal point in the etheric “pathway” of the body-being. Then the chest and upper regions of the body open, including the neck and head, and the entire body from the crown to the perineum, even to the toes, is tangibly permeated with vibrant energy.
5. The form of breathing described here is supported by the descent of the diaphragm and the infilling of the abdomen on inhalation. Typically people unconsciously raise the diaphragm and draw in the abdomen on inhalation. This restricts full filling of the lower portions of the lungs and even the upper portions, making breathing require more energy while being less effective. Natural breathing is an easeful flow of the descent of the diaphragm, infilling of the abdomen, followed by expansion and infilling of the lower chest, followed by the upper chest.
6. When you exhale, do not discard the energy itself or allow it to dissipate, but release and relax all hold on it, allowing it to radiate, from the vital center and the whole body. Allow and feel the pleasurable force of life to be pumped by the heart through the entire body (the limbs, the belly, the sex organs, the head, the teeth and hair and nails, etc.) and the universe. Exhale fully, and with deep feeling of heart and body. Let the energy pervade the whole body and the universe to infinity, and release, via that radiating and expansive energy, all accumulated conditions, positive or negative, so that inhalation may bring what is new and thus become an instrument of change and refreshment.
The bodily “battery” is the focal point of the abdomen, known by various names in traditional cultures, including the Japanese name “hara”. It is about an inch and a half below the umbilical scar.
There are two alternative practices to the exhalation-release phase of the lung-breathing exercises. These are:
1. . . . With the Feeling-breath-exhalation Released From The bodily “Battery” and Radiated Into The General Pattern, or Line, Of Ascent, Via The Spinal Line Of the body . . .
Beloved Adi Da Says that this first alternate form of “conductivity” is, in general, to be done only occasionally, as appropriate. In other words, it is, in general, done less frequently than the basic lung-breathing practice of exhalation-release radiated diffusely (in all directions) within the entire body.
. . . With the Feeling-breath-exhalation Released From The bodily “Battery” and Radiated, Via the legs, Into the soles of the feet. . . .
This second alternate form of the lung-breathing exercises (exhalation-release into the soles of the feet) is also to be done occasionally, to emphasize frontal, descending “conductivity”. It revitalizes the body and serves the general health of the body. It also can be used to balance a too upward (or ascending) tendency in the body. It can be used as a first aid measure when illness is impending.
All three forms of the lung-breathing “conductivity” practice will allow you, over time, to become responsible for the loss of energy through the bodily base that occurs as a result of reversing “conductivity” in the frontal line (via reactive emotions, for example) or the spinal line (via degenerative orgasm).
Learning to Breathe Consciously
To become adept at right breathing will require, in most cases, careful and constant practice. You may, for instance, have some difficulty inhaling through and with the fully open and relaxed throat. Until the process becomes natural to you, follow this procedure randomly to feel the difference between the right and wrong ways of breathing.
Try the wrong way first: Breathe in an exaggerated fashion with the nose, sniffing deeply, even audibly, through the nostrils.
Then breathe according to Beloved Adi Das Instructions. First:
Feel the breath itself as pervasive life-energy, a living food. Engage the living breath in a natural process of inhalation-reception and exhalation-release of the universal etheric (or pranic) energy-field that naturally pervades the body. Become filled with life-energy on inhalation, and radiate the feeling-energy diffusely, in all directions, within and via the entire body, on exhalation.
Then:
1. Relax the whole area of the nose and mouth.
2. Let the tongue curve forward and up, resting lightly against the hard palate.
3. Rest your attention at the rear and the base of the throat.
4. Now let the muscles of this area open and become the channel of inhalation. Allow the facial muscles around the nose and mouth to remain at rest as you breathe deeply, with feeling and from the heart, and make an audible “drawing” sound as the breath passes through the throat, passing down its backside.
5. With full feeling in every part of the body and mind, release all thought, all accumulated tensions and negative emotional-sexual conditions, and all toxic substances as you exhale. Exhale fully, but naturally and easily, with a feeling of elimination from every part and every cell.
6. When you inhale, do so consciously, with whole body feeling, and fully, and allow the universal energy to fill and permeate every function and every cell of your being. Allow the life-energy, which is cycled by this process of reception and release, to permeate and pervade not only the whole body but all arising phenomena, all space. Feel that the force of life spreads through and fills the universe, beyond all that you see and seem to know.
7. Breathe naturally, allowing the inhalation phase and the exhalation to be equal in length. Breathe easily, but fully and deeply, and coordinate the breath in a natural (not self-conscious) rhythm with alterations of posture and other bodily movements. Let the vital center, below the navel, receive, enjoy, release, and distribute every cycle of the life-breath.
You should notice a pronounced difference between these two forms of breathing. By tendency, you breathe in the unnatural way, from and with the nose or the mouth. As you engage the practice of appropriate breathing, you will observe randomly that the mechanisms by which the body opens to the breath and the life-force tend to remain obstructed or else to open only partially and awkwardly when you breathe unnaturally. But you will find that the entire gross bodily being, both elemental and etheric, opens spontaneously or effortlessly when the breath and life-force are conducted in the natural way, via the throat, with feeling, from the heart, to the vital center.
Clearly, it is not air that is being drawn into the navel and lower regions of the body, but life-force, etheric energy, or “prana”. Physical air and the process of biochemical respiration in the lungs constitute only secondary, grosser aspects of the dynamics of the breath. Breathing principally and directly involves the higher physics of the etheric or pranic body, and only secondarily involves the elemental or physical being. Thus, it is also natural, especially as practice matures, to feel the “inspiration” or reception of life-energy, not only through the valve of the throat, but through the entire skin surface of the physical body. When the breath is felt in this way, you begin to include direct perception and enjoyment of the subtlest of the gross elements, which is ether or life-energy, along with your perception and utilization of the denser elements associated with the gross body, or earth, water, fire, and air.
The process of reception-release, or the cycling of life, is not limited, properly, to the elemental physics of the breath. It is a psycho-physical event and action, and it should be engaged at random and often throughout the day, whether or not in alignment with physical inhalation and exhalation. That is why the lung-breathing exercise is the third most important aspect of the three-part “conductivity” exercise: it is possible (and necessary) to practice reception-release in feeling-Contemplation of Beloved Adi Da through even more primitive, or fundamental, aspects of the body-mind that the breath.
If you simply radiate from the heart to Infinity (engaging the first aspect of the three-part process of “conductivity”) you will notice that you are perpetually letting go every kind of obstruction, and that you are always opening to and receiving Beloved Adi Das Blessing, and that you are always being sustained by the universal, or etheric, life-force that pervades the gross body. Likewise, if you relax from toe to crown along the spinal line (engaging the second aspect of the three-part process of “conductivity”), you will notice that you are naturally releasing all the accumulated stresses, reactions, and negative conditions associated with conditional existence, and that you are even releasing your commitment to the self-contraction itself. By adding the lung-breathing exercises (thus engaging the third part of the three-part “conductivity” exercise), you enhance and magnify both aspects of the natural and necessary process of reception-release in the body-mind. That is why conscious participation in the cycle of the breath is an important part of your practice of sexual “conscious exercise” and in learning to control male ejaculatory orgasm (which is a critical part of the practice of birth control in the Way of the Heart).