CHENNAI: My dear friend, you must take a look at your life and make sure that you are respecting time and space by implementing discipline. For the next five days, make this resolve when you meditate — I will respect and value the time and space that has been given to me. I will value time and cherish every single minute as a wonderful gift. I will structure my life on the foundation of discipline by regulating all my activities punctually and systematically.In five days, when your ife has been streamlined on the basis of discipline, you will learn and practise a wonderful breathing technique that will link you to your soul. Discipline is the doorway to success and you have just entered it by streamlining your life beautifully. Instead of racing against time, you have now befriended time and blended your life to flow along with it. As you moulded your life and attempted to discipline your body and mind, you have experienced how unruly your thoughts and feelings are and how difficult it is to control them. So today, let us understand a vital link that will connect us with our soul and help us to focus our thoughts and feelings easily. Where is this crucial link? It is always with us, filling us with life and energy. In fact, it is the very elixir of our life. Though we know that we can never live without it, very few of us cherish it as it should be cherished. This most vital link that connects us with our soul is our breath. Unfortunately, most of us have taken this most valuable gift from god for granted. That is why our breathing has become very shallow and mechanical. Though our breath is the most wonderful connecter with our soul, this kind of mechanical breathing will lead us nowhere. Only when we breathe with complete awareness does it become a powerful tool to bridge the gap between the mind and the soul. When we cultivate this kind of heightened awareness of our breathing, we will directly experience this connectivity for ourselves. As we use it effectively to deepen our meditation, it transcends all barriers of time and space, name and form, and catapults us to freedom and joy.When we breathe scientifically, it has a direct impact on the mind and its relationship with the external world. All of us normally understand the world through our senses, mind and intellect. However, these can often give us conflicting inputs which are difficult for us to assimilate and integrate. We are then pulled in different directions by them and get sidetracked from our goal. For example, our senses may entice us to indulge by eating more of our favourite dish, while the mind and intellect warn us that this will be harmful to our health. So we are tempted to succumb to this craving and break our resolution to cut down on calories. This will never happen when we breathe with awareness.Far from distracting us, our breath actually propels us to meditate more powerfully towards our goal. It acts like a rope and pulley to access the vibrant energy around the soul. Integrating our senses, mind and intellect, it draws them into the well of the soul for a revitalising dip in the nectar of bliss within us. Until we learn to breathe properly, we can never control the mind and intellect effectively. If our breathing is rapid and shallow, the mind is racing around like a caged squirrel. The faster we breathe, the more difficult it is for us to stabilise and focus our minds. In general, when our breathing is uneven or mechanical, our mind is restless and our attention span is very short. So our mental stamina is low and we find prolonged concentration extremely stressful. When this happens, we depend on stimulants like coffee and tea to trigger our faculties. Instead if we simply activate our breath to bring out the hidden power in us, the galloping mind can focus effortlessly. We will go deeper into the aspect of breathing a little later in our journey. Today, I want to share with you a breathing technique called ‘The cosmic breath’ which I have found most effective in my own journey to truth. Let me make you understand this technique thoroughly. Before you begin practising, I would like you to close your eyes and start listening to soft, slow, devotional and rhythmic music of your choice for about 10 to 15 minutes. As the music comes to an end, you will observe that your breathing has become slow and deep. This means that your mind has slowed down. When the mind is relaxed, breathing also relaxes and vice versa. As you stay focused and aware of your breathing, you will observe a feeling of lightness in your chest. You feel very calm and quiet. This calmness has nothing to do with the mind. It is a feeling of the heart which becomes a bridge to connect us with the soul. Now take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds without any strain. As you breathe out slowly, chant ‘Om’ which is the special seed syllable of your soul.
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