The Chakra Book

Once you start thinking about the future and ambition and desire, you are missing this moment. And this moment missed will create perversion because you will always lack something; there will be a gap.

You can observe it: if you are an angry person you can force your anger, you can repress it deep down in the unconscious, but it is not going to disappear. Maybe you become completely unaware of it, but it is there – and you know that it is there. It is running underneath you, it is in the dark basement of your being, but it is there. You can sit smiling on top of it, but you know it can erupt any moment. And your smile cannot be very deep, and your smile cannot be true, and your smile will be just an effort you are making against yourself. A man who forces order from the outside remains in disorder.

A man who forces order from the outside remains in disorder.

That is the right way to breathe; remember not to use your chest too much. Sometimes it can be used, in emergency periods – you are running to save your life – then the chest can be used. It is an emergency device; then you can use shallow, fast breathing, and run. But ordinarily the chest should not be used. And one thing to be remembered: because the chest is meant only for emergency situations, because it is difficult in an emergency situation to breathe naturally – if you breathe naturally you remain so calm and quiet you cannot run, you cannot fight, you are so calm and collected you are buddhalike

In America they have done an experiment: one very powerful man – an athletic body with tremendous energy – was told to follow a small child and imitate. Whatsoever the child does, this athlete has to do; just imitate for eight hours. Within four hours the athlete was gone, flat on the floor, because the child enjoyed it very much and he started doing many things – jumping, jogging, shouting, yelling. And the athlete has just to repeat… The child was perfectly full of energy after four hours; the athlete was gone. He said, “He will kill me. Eight hours! Finished! I cannot do anything more.” He was a great boxer, but boxing is one thing. You cannot compete with a child.
From where does the energy come? It comes from pranamay kosh. A child breathes naturally, and of course breathes more prana in, more chi in and accumulates it in his belly. The belly is the accumulating place, the reservoir. Watch a child; that is the right way to breathe. When a child breathes, his chest is completely unaffected. His belly goes up and down. He breathes as if from the belly. All children have a little belly; that belly is there because of their breathing and the reservoir of energy.

This is what yoga calls tanmatra. Ordinarily you use the energy through the hand, when you pick something up: a stone, a rock. You carry it; you use the same energy through the hand. But if you know the energy directly, you can drop the use of the hand

If you can see tanmatras, the subtle energies of your senses, you will become capable of using your cognition without the grosser instruments.

Then know that you are not the tanmatras, the energy pools behind the senses. Let that grow and crystallize. And then you will be able to see that intelligence is also a pool of energy.

First you have to become aware that you are not the eye, not the energy that is hidden behind the eye, then you will be able to see that every sense is pouring into the mind. You are not this mind, also. You are the one who is seeing it being poured. You are just standing on the bank, all the rivers pouring into the ocean – you are the watcher, the witness.

This is purusha, awareness. This is the final understanding that arises out of yoga. Meditate over it.