Inspiration, Aspiration, Expiration, Respiration

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Happy New Year, everyone! I wish you many blessings to the beginning of this year, especially as we think back to what we have accomplished, also things that we look forward to in our own personal journeys. 
 
Part of what I wanted to start the New Year with today is a discussion about resolution, and how we think of the common parlance of finding a new beginning to things. I think it does apply very well to how we approach life, but more importantly, how do we approach ourselves. I think that we all have the ambitions and the longings to find some deeper purpose in our communities, in our experience, in our spiritual lives, and we seek a type of practice to make it happen.
 
One of the challenges we all face is obviously the resistance. So, we may have an endeavor that we want to solve, a problem, a challenge, and we seek to enact certain conditions to make it happen. But unfortunately (we all know this), we promise to go to the gym—we do not. We think about things we want to do, and yet we do not fulfill them, despite our intimate impulse to seek the new. 
 
The reason why we often get stuck in resistance for ourselves is a lack of energy. We have the inclination to start something, but then we face the friction, whether it is in our families, our communities, our marriage, our relationships. That friction requires a type of energy and a type of understanding. 
 
So, by understanding who we are and what it is in us that is creating the problems we face, we can change the situation. Our level of being determines our life. That has to do with, as a term in this tradition, to psychologically where we are at:
 
Are we defined by problems or anger and resentment? Or are we defined by a more luminous character, embodied by the best teachers of humanity, messengers, prophets, founders of religion, whatever they may be?

​Our Purpose

​In this lecture we are going to talk about an exercise called pranayama, because it is an exercise in yoga that helps to augment, conserve, and develop energy, and learn how to direct it at will. Because we may face these oppositions in life, but not to have the energy or zeal to continue. 
 
We often feel depleted or drained in our endeavors. This exercise is very well known in Hinduism, but it is something that we also practice in this tradition, the Gnostic tradition especially.
 
We will talk about the purpose of the practice, its role, its efficacy, how it practically demonstrated in our life, and the importance of pranayama for mastering more of ourselves, our potential, because it makes sense, logically. If you have energy, enthusiasm, there is more you can do. Not merely just in a material sense with our jobs, but in developing our spiritual character. 
 
We are also going to tie pranayama into a less known aspect of Hindu yoga. Pranayama is deeply related, in terms of its expression and utilization, with creative energy, the power of sexuality. The power of life is the power of creation. That energy, when it is used spiritually, and with understanding, and with purity of heart, that force can awaken the ability to perceive the spiritual, but also to develop our best qualities, the power of life.
 
We will also tie in how pranayama can develop spiritual inspiration, conscious awakening, and inner development.
 
It is interesting that this term inspiration especially relates to breath, to inspire, “to take in.” The breath physically has a correlation to how the energies of the bodies work, and how it flows. We will talk about that.
 
We will also emphasize the need for pranayama, especially for people who are single. Obviously, we place great emphasis in this tradition on the use of the sexual force, in terms of harnessing the power to awaken the soul. That can be developed in any relationship, in terms of whether single or married, especially. But obviously, single people can use this practice to prepare for marriage, especially. We will talk about that.
 
Lastly, we are going to elucidate how pranayama strengthens and is amplified by ethics. This is something that many people skip over, especially in meditation. 
 
The first steps of meditation and yoga have to do with character. Without a strong foundation and the proper use of our mind, emotions, and body, we cannot achieve insight or stillness, because we are engaging in actions that agitate mind, body, soul. What happens is when people sit to meditate or practice spiritually, they cannot sit still. Irritated. Mind is all over the place. Cannot concentrate.  One is easily affected by problems.
 
Pranayama is a tool for learning meditation, primarily, and meditation proper is the ability to get insight into problems, into issues, into crises, so that we can resolve them. 
 
These ethics are, these actions of our character become magnified when we save energy and learn how to direct it. This is why character and ethics are the foundation of any religion, because with power comes responsibility. 

​Our Potential Situation

​So, we could talk about perhaps what might be our potential situation. 
 
Personally, this was definitely me 20 years ago, as I was trying to find my way in the world when I was growing up. I felt that there was something missing in education, in life, in my relationships, in my relationship to myself. I felt that I was deeply in yearning for some stability, some kind of purpose. 
 
Also, as we know from youth, or if we work with youth, or have been in education, people know that especially in the modern era, people are constantly depleted. People lack force. People are tired. They do not have the energy to sit, to concentrate, to listen, to participate, to pay attention, to be a part of something meaningful. By recognizing that, I think a lot of people recognize that, but do not want to make the changes necessary to fix that. This is because we tend to be addicted to these ways of being in life, constantly distracted, identified with fear or problems and suffering, as much as we say we want to avoid it. We still do the things that make us suffer, as we know from the New Year's example. We may feel that we want to do something meaningful, and yet we deviate. 
 
We have a purpose, a goal, an object, and as we strive towards that aim, resistance comes up, and we get diverted. We deviate. We do not follow a linear trajectory from point A to goal. 
 
Now, there is a lot of reasons why we do that, and we might find that we try to initiate a project, a purpose, a goal, and yet we seem to lack the will to do it. A lot of the time, it is because we are depleted. We are wasting energy all the time. 
 
We are not, to use the medieval alchemical tradition, hermetically sealed, like a chalice or like a crucible, in which nothing from the external world can come in and affect one's serenity. The challenge is, when we face the hardships of life, where, to use a medieval symbol, the athanor is boiling, the temperature is rising, we often become so caught up in the emotion that we boil over, we explode. We do not recognize that when the temperature is hottest is when the impurities can be burned, but there is a threshold that has to be mastered there to see how much we can handle. what is the tension in life, what is the emotional crisis we are facing, and also what is our reactions to it. 
 
By facing it, one can be still and to understand what psychological elements in us are producing the problem.
 
So, we may recognize intuitively this is the reality, but we lack the method how. One of them will be pranayama, to gain energy, so that we have enough force to do, to be able to push forward, to gain momentum. 
 
We also see that people today, despite our advancements, are suffering a lot. We have a lot of pain in our communities, a lot of confusion. We often tend to not discriminate between desires, especially in us. We tend not to see what psychological way of being we enact or identify with creates the situations of life.
 
What do we produce? We tend to just react to problems, situations. Does this not mean in life we need not to learn how to respond? But I think a response is much more intelligent and meaningful and profound rather than just reaction, mechanical, like a machine. 
 
We want to be able to stop being mechanical, repeating the same habits day by day, same patterns of life. But if we are searching in spirituality for something to change that wheel or to get off that wheel of Samsara, to use Buddhist terminology, to cut through it, we need force. We need zeal, not religious zeal, but enthusiasm towards a directed purpose, a spiritual goal. 
 
We often tend to get identified with the whims of any thought, feeling, or impulse. We have tried meditation, or especially beginners realize the mind is all over the place. Body cannot sit still, like we are talking about, and emotions can really suck a person down into a pit. 
 
So, pranayama can deal with that and help that. It is also, we may have a deep yearning for internal peace, but the ignorance for not only how to find it, but also, more importantly, how to experience it, and lastly, how to make it intentional, how to cultivate it. 

​Inspiration

​So, we will talk about, in the theme of this lecture, the nature of breath, breathwork. Pranayama is the technical term. We will break it down. 
 
Inspiration is interesting from the Latin inspiritus, “to breathe into.” It also means “to excite or encourage or inflame,” and from the 13th century, meaning “the immediate influence of God or a god.”

​This image is by William Blake (the Creation of Adam), when divinity created the human being to the breath of life. A beautiful symbol about how not only physical breath gives life and animation to ourselves physically, but spiritually. By harnessing the breath and saving energy, we can create life in ourselves, which is spiritual experience.
 
We know the term inspiration to feel like a sudden “aha!”  We got it. Something comes to us. It is a revelation. Inspiration is that actual realization of when we resolve a problem. Things come to us not from thinking about them, but by putting the mind aside and letting that revelation appear. Inspiration is that faculty. 
 
It is the influence of divinity. It does not matter the religious terms we give. To divinity, obviously, people come from many walks of life, but divinity is specifically a state of being, a quality of consciousness that is very transcendent and very elusive to the intellect. But it is something that can be cultivated personally through breathwork.
 
14th century theology refers to inspiration as literally “scripture inspired by God,” and, also, to corroborate mid-16th century, “the drawing of air into the lungs.”
 
People have referred to scriptures as inspiration, meaning there were people who were once like us, who through that particular spiritual work, were able to develop themselves spiritually. Therefore, they were directly in connection with divinity, their divinity inside, and were able to document that type of insight to people. That is where you get religion from. 
 
Different communities have different scriptures because divinity is eternal. People are temporal. Therefore, divinity expresses in many places, in many times, to many people, and not just one at the exclusion of the others. 
 
So, there is a universal theme prevalent through these inspirations that these scriptures teach, and so, in this school, we study all of them so that we can get to practice, to understand how the practice of inspiration, literally in our bodies, can cultivate that type of realization and experience. 
 
We find the scriptural reference in the Book of Genesis in Chapter 2, Verse 7, where we see in William Blake's illustration (the Creation of Adam), which we can say is a symbol of creating a real human being. A real human being is a person like Jesus, like Buddha, like Moses, like Krishna, the prophets, people who really developed themselves, because they worked with the power of life in themselves:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathe into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. --Genesis 2:7

​The Power of Prana Within and Without 

​So, in pranayama, prana has to do with nature, and prana is a force. Prana means “life.” It is the vital force in nature, in the air, in the rocks, in the trees, in the stars. It is the vital force that we also carry in our body.
 
Our body is like a tower. We find different centers in which we operate. Psychologically, we are made up of different elements, and we study this diagram called the human machine, because we understand that the body is a mechanism. 
 
There are certain tendencies in the ways we think, feel, and act. We sometimes call these the three brains, because they are modes of operation. Physiologically, with our chemistry, or metabolism, catabolism, vital vitality, breathing, digestion, but also our physical brain, but also our emotional brain. 
 
A brain, in spiritual terms, is not merely just the cranium. It is a center of operation. There are different intelligences informed in each center that we need to understand. By understanding the mechanism or machine of thought, feeling, and will, we can learn to drive our car with intelligence, and get to our destination.
 
Prana (vital force) is found in all these centers, except this force or energy is modified in different levels of density.
 
So, the intellect, we can say, is one of the most dense. It is also very slow apparatus. We know this when we are cooking. We put our hand on a hot stove, and we retract our fingers. We suddenly feel emotional anger or frustration, and then we think how much it hurt. You see that there are different speeds operating here. Our movement and our instincts were quicker, and our thought came later. 
 
Likewise, emotion is really quick. This is why it is also hard to control, especially when we get overcome by emotion.
 
But more importantly, the most difficult force to control is the sexual force, the power of life, and that power is the most volatile. It is also the most powerful. We know it is the power of divinity. Divinity creates through love and through that force to create a physical child. 
 
But to use the injunction of Jesus of Nazareth in the book of John, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). The same energy, but controlled and directed with the intelligence of divinity, is what creates spiritual life, to be born again. It is a sexual problem, and pranayama teaches us, especially for single people who are learning to work with this energy in a spiritual way for the first time, it applies to them.
 
Pranayama, you may be familiar, is breath work. We will do a sample practice after the lecture if you are interested, but it involves breathing through the nostrils interchangeably and directing the force up the spine, to the mind, and then to the heart. In that way, you create like a circuit, a flow, coming from outside to inward. In that process, we are developing and controlling, we are yoking the force of prana in our breath, but also in our bodies, because we find prana in ourselves, but also in nature.
 
It could be good to practice pranayama even in the woods, especially if you have the opportunity, because nature is beautiful, and we are vibrating at a different level of density, much less than Chicago, especially also New York too (I think New York takes the cake above Chicago. Sorry for people who may be New York fans)—but literally prana is “to yoke the wind” (Sanskrit): प्राणायाम prana-yama.
 
यम Yama means “to yoke or restrain.” प्राण Prana is “breath,” but also vital force within and without. 

​Aspiration

​Now this ties into the theme of aspiration, because pranayama is used to develop our spiritual longings, our yearning. 
 
To aspire comes from the late 14th century aspiration, “a spirant,” which means “uttered with a continuous expulsion of breath.”
 
Now every religion has its practices. Some traditions have mantra recitation, like they call japa in Hinduism. They repeat prayers, rosaries, using the breath to recite or pray, or to evoke a state of yearning for divinity.
 
How we use breath determines a lot of things, not merely just in our physical speech with people, but also through exercise. So, every religion taught how to use the breath, because it is the expression of divinity, and the quality of our words determines the quality of our relationships on one basic level. 
 
Likewise with aspiration, by combining longing and prayer with a mantra, a sacred sound, with pranayama, we have a type of amplification of force. Something happens psychologically when we are focusing on a prayer, asking for assistance, and developing a relationship in our heart to divinity in whatever form. The forms are representations of one abstract reality, which has no form. But when we pray to the divine, something happens when using that force in order to direct it. A channel opens up, the heart opens up, we aspire, we feel longing, and there are many even emotions that can come with that—not hallmark card sentimentality, but real deep in-depthness of the soul, real depth of the soul. 

​You find that range of spiritual emotion reflected in a symphony of Beethoven or a nocturne of Chopin, and these were initiates who taught and knew divinity and expressed it through music. Because we gave a course on this before, The Secret Teachings of Opera especially. But aspiration is deeply connected with how we breathe, but also even if you listen to music like great choral symphonies or choral music, you feel the elevation of the heart, like a yearning up to heaven. 
 
It can be inspiring, but also it is aspiring. Not only do we inspire and breathe in different influences, but how we use that breath determines if we aspire or expire. We will talk about that term more specifically.
 
But to aspire from the 1530s comes from “action of breathing into,” from the Latin aspirationem, a “breathing on, a blowing upon, rough breathing influence, to direct breath to a purpose,” and tying into what we were talking about too, aspirare: “strive for, seek to reach, literally breathe, blow upon”; and the 1600s term, “steadfast longing for a higher goal, earnest desire for something above oneself.”

​Cultivating Conscious Faith: Direct Experience of the Divine

​It is a seeking and a striving, and pranayama is very good for developing that connection in the heart. I think a lot of people may have realized and have seen in their life, personally for me this has been the case, where life was so much suffering that many people's heart become dead of feeling, like just calloused from all the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” to quote Hamlet. But there are exercises like this with breath work that can learn to open up and break the shell. They can develop the real subtlety and sentimentality of the spirit, superior emotion, which is not a state of suffering or affliction, but is that yearning and depth of the soul and the consciousness that seeks to experience for oneself what divinity is. 
 
All religions and their foundation teach how to experience divinity, and the most basic method is meditation. But to clarify, meditation is not merely sitting still and not thinking. It is also not spacing out.
 
Meditation proper comes from the Sanskrit term धी Dhi or ध्यान Dhyana, which means “to see, to perceive.” It means to perceive internal images and experiences, like when we dream.
 
Unfortunately, in our case, we tend to be very cluttered in our dream states. We see things, but they are incoherent, fragmentary. There may be a narrative, but it does not make any sense when you wake up. “Why was I talking to Barack Obama? Why did I assume that he was coming to my job to congratulate me?” I mean, honestly, this is like a random example, but you got to think there is a narrative to dreams, and there is a story to dreams that can teach us something about ourselves. 
 
But a dream is something of fantasy. It is an illusion. It is not objective. It is a state or reflection of our psychological reality, but it is not objective.
 
It is not reflecting like a revelation of Moses on Mount Sinai, or Buddha under the Bodhi tree. Many of those stories are revelations from dream experience, but not of a subjective mechanical type of dreaming, but a state of real perception.
 
Meditation, the ability to first calm the body, still the mind, do not think, concentrate on one thing, and to visualize. Visualization is the faculty of the consciousness to perceive divinity, and when the mind is perfectly still, suddenly new images will come. 
 
We may experience something very out of the ordinary, where one has an experience symbolized by all these great stories. Some people take them as literal physical fact, but these are meditation stories. Being on a mountain is the symbol of going up in spiritual elevation to proximity with divinity. It is not a physical story of climbing a mountain. It is a symbol of spiritual work, and then meditation is seeing that for oneself. 
 
But unfortunately, we tend not to have enough energy to perceive. If we do not dream much, it is because we tend to waste emotional energy. This is an energy that fuels our dream experiences, and, also, meditation. 
 
Because meditation, it is not merely just about a silent intellect, but it is also a calm heart. It is fueled by modalities of force, and that emotional energy, when it is conserved, can guide us. 
 
There are levels of energy, and by having energy in the soul, like you put fuel in a car to drive, you have the means to get to your destination. So, meditation is the ability, again, to perceive imagery of an internal type.

How Creative Energy Empowers Pranayama and Integrates the Psyche

​That is fueled by different gradations of force. You might have seen this image before, especially we have here on the wall. This is the Jewish Tree of Life. 
 
It is called the kabbalah. It is a Hebrew term for the map of reality—not merely just physical, like this bottom sphere (Malkuth). It is also a map of our internal spiritual dimension, levels of dimensions in nature, where we go when we dream, but also how do we react and act psychologically.
 
There are states in nature that we gravitate to when we dream, depending on our quality of life, our level of being. If we are dense and filled with negative emotion and anger and resentment or fear, our dreams tend to be not above, but below, metaphorically. That is mapped by the inversion of the Tree of Life at the very bottom. We call that Klippoth.

It is basically the word for Hell, “world of shells.” Going back to the shell analogy, if our negative internal states like anger and pride encage us, we are trapped in hell. We are suffering.


But there is a way to break those shells and free the energies inside them so that we can reintegrate with divinity. That is the purpose of any religious path, what it should be: religion, religare, “to reunite,” or yoga from the Sanskrit yug, “to reunite.” So creative energy can empower all of this.

So this Tree of Life has been mapped in many ways. You can map it out to the body with its different trinities, mapping out the three brains—one trinity superimposed in the head, the heart, and towards sexuality.

You find that the three pillars represent left and right: positive/negative, solar/lunar, man/woman, and the spine, the tree that upholds our body.
 
This map has many correlations and they are very intricate. But I want to emphasize this tree not in terms necessarily of dimensionality, spaces where we go when we dream necessarily, but also energy.
 
What energies exist in us and how do use them?
 
Obviously, our physical body is operated by mechanical energy. Above that, and when you go vertically up in this diagram, you enter less dense states or gradations of force.
 
So, the physical body is the most dense, and the physical energies that operate it are also the most coarse. So the further up you go—not in vertical space physically, but psychological space—you enter a hierarchy of being, more elevated states of spiritual perception. Those forces become much more subtle and refined and pure.

We have vital energy, which is really the sexual force, the power of life. That energy animates our body and our life every day. When we physically get up in the morning—after maybe sleeping eight hours, or you have been lucky on a nice long winter break, maybe from job, vacation, 10 hours if you need it—you are refreshed.
 
You find that you have a certain currency or depository of force by which to be in the day, meaning, you have enough energy to get you through certain obligations. Maybe you have more, maybe you have less. That is deeply integrated with the vital force.
 
This vital force is not merely just in the sexual glands, but it circulates all throughout the body. You know, Qigong or Chinese medicine especially, they study what are called the meridians or currents of vital force, which flow throughout the physical body. They are not physical, but they integrate with the physical body and interpenetrate. You could say that without vital force active, the physical body dies. It degrades.

So, we are deeply interested, when we study and practice pranayama, to conserve this force, to save it, to have a battery housed in the body, so that when you do pranayama, you have enough energy to jumpstart your car.
 
A dead battery cannot operate anything spiritually. If we are wasting our energies all the time, then there is no force by which to develop a circuitry in our physical body, but also to have that spark or connection with divinity, because unfortunately, us, our meridians in our body and our vital energies tend to be out of whack. That creates a lot of problems.
 
We not only have to save vital energy, but also emotional energy, as I was saying. How do we use our emotions to the day? Are we characterized by maybe fear or anger? Do we have certain problems we repeat? Maybe certain relationships, social connections in our life create friction. It is not to say that we avoid these situations, but it means that when we face problems of an emotional type, there is a bit of a separation, not in a sense of dysphoria or unreality, but watchfulness—watching the person, watching their emotional reactions, and understanding what is making us tick, so to speak. By watching and observing all this, we try to see what is our quality of being, what emotions tend to waste energy.
 
We can also learn what emotions save energy, too, because it is not about just avoiding problems or avoiding what's in ourselves, but cultivating the superior, the virtues. When we save emotional energy, we have more energy by which to dream consciously.
 
But also we need to save mental energy, too. Mental energy applies to the intellect. If we overuse the intellect by reading too much, what could happen is that we lose our train of thought. Our energy gets depleted. We feel tired. We lack a type of focus. One thing I will mention, too, is that when we exhaust all the forces available to us, whether through our intellect or emotions or our body, we get sick. So physically we get sick, because internally these forces in our dimensional state of constitution are depleted.

People who lose their mental force and waste it on too many intellectual activities eventually develop illnesses like schizophrenia or mental illness or delusional disorder. They have used their intellectual machine so much or have abused it so much that their physical brain becomes sick and therefore they have an imbalance.
 
Likewise with emotions, we know from even seeing some certain actors and actresses, people who abuse the emotional energy through too much passionate display of reaction become very sick—bipolar, depression, manic depression, whatever it may be.
 
Physically people who abuse the body can lose their ability to walk. For example, you see football players like Ohio State and Texas playing. You see these guys do amazing stunts and maneuvers and you are amazed. But how many of them end up physically destroyed by what they do? Because they abuse the body.
 
Pranayama will teach us how to integrate all that, how to save energy and how to make all the levels of our psyche balanced, because you are redirecting force, you are conserving intellectual, emotional, physical, vital force and you are creating an interconnection with your own divinity, your spirit, your intuition, your conscience, so that you have emotional, mental, psychological stability whenever crisis of the external world enter us.
 
Above that, there are more subtle forces like volitional energy, which is willpower related to concentration, and obviously concentration is necessary to meditate.


But above that, when we learn to concentrate and save our ability to act with intentional  will, not merely desire or whim, but focus, we can become more conscious, which is the ability to perceive and to understand.
 
Beyond that is the spirit, divinity, the spiritual force, and that spiritual potential is what guides the whole process, because the inclinations of the heart are guided by our inner divinity. 

​Elevating the Creative Energies

So how to elevate the creative energies? There is a symbol that some of you may have seen in medicine and health. It is the Caduceus of Mercury.

That is a beautiful symbol of how there are energetic currents in the spine that are symbolized by two serpents. So, there are two serpents that rise from the base of the spine and then intertwine around the spine in the form of energy up to the brain. Then there are currents that then go down to the midbrow, throat, and then the heart.

There are wings here because when we save energy and with pranayama elevate those energies to those currents and the vital depth, they go up to the brain. When rising up, they create the wings of angels. Now, it is a symbol of spiritual elevation, like our emotional level of being, our mental quality of being becomes more refined and relaxed, more patient, more compassionate, more serene.
 
When those forces rise, they help to solidify and integrate our spiritual practice. When you do pranayama, the pranayama that we will explain today, you do not necessarily need to visualize. Although with more advanced practitioners, you can learn to visualize these energies, these two currents.

One of them tends to be called masculine, the other feminine in relationship to images of the sun and the moon, meaning there is like a positive charge, negative charge. This does not mean negative in terms of morality, like to look down upon. It means electricity. When you have two conduits (positive/negative), and a reconciliation through the spine, it is like you have a current and now the energies can flow. It is the same thing with the spinal column.
 
When you are practicing pranayama, and you know, obviously these exercises, you can even imagine this imagery of the two energies or the two serpents rising up the spine. Then you can see that, because if you are imagining it and also practicing it, and when you learn to see internally, you can feel and sense the flow of those energies, although that is not necessarily mandatory.
 
So, I think some people do get caught up when they practice pranayama in any tradition, that they get hyper fixated on trying to see the images, but also feel the sensations in the body.
 
The physical body is not a deep predicator or indicator of success. You may have types of perceptions. You may feel like a lightness, kind of electricity in the body. You may feel or even see images, sounds, lights, like you're about to dream, where you get really relaxed, especially. But none of those necessarily indicate that you are, you know, doing anything wrong. It just means that now that the energies are beginning to flow, you are opening up your senses, and so you start to see things.

The important thing is not to get caught up, like, “I need to have this sensation or this experience to know that I am doing it right,” because those sensations and experiences are temporary. They are of the past. They do not last, and so, what you want to do is just return to the visualization if that is necessary and just keep practicing.

The real indicator of success with pranayama is that you have more focus and concentration. You are more serene. You are not irritated as much when you face crisis or crises. You have more patience. You are more intuitive and understanding of people. You comprehend problems and how to solve them. You have greater flexibility in your emotional range. Maybe you feel like, or you have the sense of how to navigate social circumstances with people. Maybe there is a conflict with a person. You learn how to face that without fear and to transform it for what it needs to be.
 
Psychological indicators of success are precisely that. Do not get caught up on sensations. I mean, those things are temporary. They are not necessarily reliable, too. But they happen. They happen to a lot of people. 

​Ethics and Chastity: The Basis of Pranayama

One thing to emphasize, too, that we have been talking about is the nature of ethics.
 
So, really the basis of pranayama, especially in the yoga tradition, is the necessity of conserving the sexual force. That is the foundation of any religious practice. It does not mean one abstains from a relationship. What it means is that in the relationship, if one is married, one enacts that protocol.

That has to do with the practice of what is known as the perfect matrimony. There are people who even practice pranayama while married, and it might seem confusing or maybe contradictory.
 
How can a person practice the conservation of the creative force in a marriage? Because those couples, if people are familiar with Karezza, I mean, that is a kind of a kindergarten introduction to this, but they are married couples who can be with their partner, connected, but with purity and with love, not desire.
 
Desire wants to satisfy sensation and wants to use the person to get a sensation. But love is conscious and is spiritual.
 
The couple who practices this can connect sexually, but they never lose the physical sexual force or any force. They learn to train the body to make it flow through breath work in the marriage, through prayer, through devotion, especially to what is known as the Divine Mother in Hinduism.

The Divine Mother is represented, or the sacred feminine in all religions is represented in many ways. She is been known as Athena among the Greeks, Kali, Durga, Mary. Or to use the Hebrew term, מרים Miriam, which in Hebrew means “to raise.”

So couples can learn to use that force, conserve it, still raise it up the spine to the mind and then to the heart. They never lose that force because they train their bodies. It is something that can be learned if one has the inclination or the dedication or the interest. It is very sincere. But not everyone is married and can practice what we call sexual alchemy, the perfect matrimony.

Therefore, single people learn pranayama to learn how to direct that force individually so that when they do get married, they have some stability and learn how to develop that.
 
But it is not always necessary. You know, we are all in our situation in life because that is what we need to be. It is a learning process. So be patient.
 
But obviously in yoga, pranayama is based on what is known as Brahmacharya, and Brahmacharya means the conscious conservation, but not only the saving of sexual force or the physical entity of our life force, the prana, it also means it is sublimation, “to make sublime.”

You have heard the term subliminal, like between two worlds, right? Subliminal messages like people joke about going to McDonald's and hearing those messages on the microphone that say, “eat, order, get out,” and then repeat.
 
So, people just go mechanically. I have heard of stories like that, but no. But sublimation, what I really mean is sublimation has to do with that force which is in a static state usually, or it is, you know, being used with passion and lust. It is in a liminal state. It is beneath.

It is even in physically, you know, in terms of our Tree of Life, located in the sexual glands. It is beneath the heart and the head. It is the foundation.

How we use that force determines how we equilibrate our heart and our mind. Sublimation means to sublimate, is to take that force which is below and raise it, conserve it, make it go inward, upward to the mind, then the heart. In that way, when we transmute that force. The word transmutation means “to mutate” that physical substance into energy through prayer, breath, pranayama, sacred sounds, mantras.
 
We learn to create a circuitry and we save an abundance of force that is our battery for doing spiritual work, because we need a good battery in the body to be able to apply force and get things done, especially spiritually.
 
Pranayama, Brahmacharya, is based on the Hindu tradition. The term Brahma is the Sanskrit name for the creative force, God, and Charya “to be followed in observance.” It has to do with restraint, to restrain an energy that is normally expelled and to redirect that force.
 
The word, even in the term Jordan, like the River Jordan where Jesus was baptized, is a symbol of this, “to be born again” [since ירדן Jordan means “descender,” and pranayama reverses the typical river-like flow of sexual energy, to make it flow instead from outward to inside, spiritually, and not the other way around].

The force which can give life is instead conserved, raised to the head and then to the heart. Baptism, purification of the mind. The force can cleanse the intellect and develop the heart. It is an observance because it is a virtue. It is a practice that these religions taught as the basis by entering into meditation.
 
Now by this I am not saying one needs to be married to meditate, but single people can practice with pranayama and learn that how to use that force so that the mind is not crazy.

The emotions are not like a wild elephant as you see in this image of the nine stages of meditative concentration, which in the beginning is running around crazy. Instead, you want to be like that monk who calms the elephant and purifies it, makes it white. He does that by controlling the fire of his passion and using the rope of mindfulness and the hook of self-observation. I mean, that is one way to look at those tools that he uses.
 
When we conserve and elevate that force, we learn to empower our consciousness. Like I said earlier, with power comes responsibility. With more energy, we have more ability to do. What we do depends greatly on our ethics.
 
What is our quality of character?
 
Are we just saving energy and still acting and reacting the same way as before? Because that is harmful.

Unfortunately, there are many people who abstain from the sexual energy and relations. They save that energy, but they do not transform it. There are many priests in certain traditions who practice abstinence. But unfortunately, what happens is that when fuel is conserved in a car for like three months, it degrades. If it is not circulating or being used, it pollutes. Same thing with the sexual force. This explains why there are people who, they may be putting on the garb of spirituality, but they do things which are contrary to the penal code. People who do not respect physical laws do not respect spiritual laws. So, with sexual power comes responsibility.

​Expiration, Spiritual Death, and Loss of Inspiration

When wasting that force, we can see that we expire. So, I know we are tying in the breath work to inspiration to breathe in, aspiration to elevate that force. Expiration obviously has to do with “to breathe out,” expirare.

It is also a reference to the ending point of a formal termination or death. We know that someone has their last words, their last breath, they die physically.
 
But also, since we have wasted energy many times or tend to waste energy, we tend to be very dead inside. I mean, I have already explained that. So, a lot of us may feel like, especially when seeking a lecture of this name and title for inspiration, we may be finding some kind of goal and purpose to do, find some interest in spirituality. Really, inspiration is also really that kind of insight in the mind and the heart of seeing something new and realizing something original or profound, especially deep.

But unfortunately in us, because we waste energy so much, we tend to be psychologically, maybe very dead inside. Spiritually, pranayama can change that. Conserving the life force, circulating it, can help to give inspiration.

But it depends, you know, it depends on if it is our inclination or study, something that even today we can, if you stay after Q&A, get some coffee, tea, take a break, you are welcome to stay for a sample practice of how to do pranayama, especially. We will do that.

​When Pranayama Does Not Work

​It is important to remember that there are cases when it does not work. It works when we are relaxed, we are calm, we are at peace, we are not agitated. Some people, and I have seen this in certain traditions and certain groups where they will do pranayama like, like really, like they are [super fast breathing like one is hyperventilating]… no, it does not work that way.

You do not want to be agitated. You want to be so still when you are breathing that you seem dead.
According to one instructor, one instructor's wife, would be alarmed because he would be doing pranayama and, you know, even just perfectly still in meditation and breathing so silently and still that his wife thought he was dead, could not hear a sound.
 
We do not want to be exasperated or exaggerated or agitated. We want to be calm because the purpose of harnessing energy is to be still. If we are breathing deeply, we are passionate, that is when the energies go out because we are too excited. We need control, relaxation, serenity.
 
Pranayama does not work if, you know, we are trying to do these exercises but we are wasting energy in life, intellectually, emotionally, mentally, sexually, especially. That is the foundation.
 
That energy is often misused in many ways too. I mean, that is the most obvious, but one way people misuse energy is that we also, well, we do not realize that typically that how we think, feel, and act modifies energy.

Intellectually, if our mind is impure or we are indulging in fantasy, passion, that will taint or color that energy, will corrupt it. Now, I would not say be paranoid, but in the beginning, we learned that we have a lot of defects, a lot of psychological errors that kind of cloud the mind or maybe are dense. But with time, those energies flow and with deep yearning and aspiration, relaxation especially, the mind calms.

When the waters are no longer stirring, you can see what is in the cup or in the glass and whatever layers or stratification of soil and dirt and mud just becomes still in layers. You can see what is in the contents of the cup. But if we are in life just constantly shaking the contents of our inner psychology, whether it is through fear or anything that is super intense, you know, defects we talked about, emotional reactions, we are agitated. We cannot see clearly.

We already talked about excessive loud and fast breathing, performed with agitation, excitement, lust, passion, or fear. But also, a lot of religions talk about avoiding intoxicants too as a baseline because in yoga practice, for people, the goal is to not add more conditions to the mind.
 
If you let the mind settle, you direct energy, you do not add anything in—no garbage, no unnecessary fuel and elements, nothing that does not belong there, then the waters will become clear of their own accord.

They will just rest and everything will become still… baseline. I mean, we have a lecture or we have an article on our website too about this topic especially.

I will not go into too much detail right now. But if you are interested in knowing more about how those certain elements or substances can affect our spirituality, it is on our website under the articles section [How Do Drugs Affect Our Spiritual Development]. 

​Respiration

Lastly, respiration, from the Latin root, respire, respirare, re- “to meaning again” and spirare “to breathe.”

This term comes from Milton, “the act of returning to life,” “to breathe again.” So, obviously in our body, we inspire. We direct that force. We breathe out, and then we do it again—respire, return.

To breathe again is to make this practice consistent and stable, to do it every day. It comes from the Anglo-French spirit, old French esprit, “spirit, soul,” 12th century modern French esprit, the Latin spiritus, “a breathing of respiration,” also of the “wind, breath.” Again, going back to inspiration, breath of a God, hence inspiration, breath of life.

So we included this image of, I guess you could say, an angel of death with the flowers of life, because by eliminating the impurities of the psyche by working with pranayama, we give birth to virtue when those forces are flowing in us, and then we make it a consistent practice.

​The Importance of Continuous Practice

​Now pranayama does not work if you practice 10 minutes once a week, five minutes once a month, or inconsistently.

It builds stability and momentum and ground when we do it every day. So, if you practice every day, even beginning with 10 minutes as a simple practice, that develops consistency and stability. Depending on your needs or inclinations, you can also deepen the practice and continue with it.

So I do not recommend people go on a spiritual binge where it is like they get inspired by tradition or practice, and then they say, “I am going to meditate for eight hours now. I am just going to jump right in.” People burn out.

Do I try it for a day or two? Then they do not have the energy or the ability to. So that is why monks and many traditions, like in Buddhism especially, would basically practice meditation in short spurts, and then would develop that. We will do it frequently.

So if you begin practicing, keep it short, and if you want to do more, make it more frequent. Then that is how you build stamina. Otherwise, people do burn out. 

A Basic Pranayama

​So, the basic pranayama, very simple. It comes from a book called Sacred Rites for Rejuvenation by Samael Aun Weor, the founder of this tradition.

With your right hand, you take your two fingers, your thumb, point / index finger. You close your left nostril (with your index finger), and then you obviously close your eyes, you relax.

You inhale the breath into your lungs, the right nostril. Close and retain for however is comfortable (with your thumb now closing your right nostril). Some people can do longer, 10 seconds, 15 seconds. Then release your index finger and exhale through your left nostril.

The point is not to strain the body. As you are retaining that vital breath, you are in a state of prayer. You are praying to your inner divinity, “help me to circulate this force.”

You can pray to the Divine Mother, because she is that energy itself, who circulates. She is the intelligence of God, to use a term of kabbalah. They refer to Her as this top sphere, בִּינָה Binah, which means Intelligence. She is that force.
 
She knows how to manage our energies with intelligence. So, she never harms Her child. So if you feel uncertain, like “am I doing this wrong?” Or “am I not visualizing correctly?” This meditation does not require visualization, but it does teach how to get the circuitry going.

You got to remember that divinity is intelligent and does not harm anybody. So just putting that faith in our inner divinity, our Being, to do this practice, we are fine.

So from the beginning: Inhale through the right nostril. You retain by closing both nostrils. Exhale to the other nostril, the left. And then repeat [breath through the left nostril, retain, exhale through the right nostril]. Slow, prolonged, relaxed. Do not strain.

However many seconds it takes to fill your lungs. You want to fill your lungs, but do not feel like you are straining, like you are trying to maybe fill too much above your reach, your diaphragm, right? You do not want it to be tight. You want your body to relax.
 
When you inhale through the right nostril, close your left nostril with your pointing finger, index finger. Retain the air and close both nostrils, with your thumb on the right. Then exhale through the left nostril. Repeat by breathing in through your left nostril, retain by closing both nostrils, then you exhale to the right nostril. That constitutes one Pranayama.
 
Inhale, close, retain, exhale. Inhale, close, retain, exhale. (One Pranayama).
 
Formula: Inhale, close, retain, exhale. Simple.
 
You do not necessarily have to learn visualization for this one. And 10 minutes, 15 minutes, it is good.
 
Learn to ride the bicycle, so to speak. So that, later on, when learning how to master this energy, one has the ability to ride a motorcycle, or ride a spaceship, which is kind of what a marriage can do, you know. Just do not crash, because, you know, with power comes responsibility.

​Resources

​There are two books from this tradition, written by Samael Aun Weor, available from Glorian Publishing, which talk about pranayama. One of them is called Kundalini: The Sacred Fire of All Religions. The last one is The Yellow Book: The Divine Mother, Kundalini, and Spiritual Powers.
 
They both give exercises about how to use pranayama. The one I recommended is from, or just demonstrated, is from the book Sacred Rites of Rejuvenation too, but these two books also have additional types of pranayama, which have their own rules and principles of how to do it. I suggest that if you try one pranayama, stick to whatever the directions are.
 
Do not mix it up. Some people think: “Well, this pranayama is a little different, should I do both?” No, just stick to one.
 
It is like, they are different techniques. Like you train in martial arts, it is not like you are mixing techniques, but you are learning different kinds to see which ones are developing your own strengths, rather than get caught up or confused by which ones apply.
 
Any questions? Sure…

​Questions and Answers

​Question: I remember the pranayama for women, it is the opposite, right? We start with the right finger and then we switch it, right?
 
Instructor: That is for the Christian-Egyptian or Christic-Egyptian Pranayama from The Yellow Book. So, there is a specific pranayama in that book where there is a very intricate visualization where those two currents in the spine, based on being masculine and feminine. There are currents that rise up the spine in men, differently from women, because women are the opposite polarity. So, for men, the right side is solar, left side is lunar, in terms of how those two serpents flow.
 
In women, it is reversed because women are the complement to men, physically, energetically, sexually. So, they are opposites because that way, when they meet, then the energies can circulate in a marriage.
 
So, that Egyptian-Christic Pranayama practice teaches different breathing for, different order of nostril breathing for men and women, because of the intricacy of those visualizations. So, women start with a different nostril than men, but same effect.
 
Question: Okay, can we do pranayama to wear as women on their period, too, or?
 
Instructor: No. So, women, especially, should not practice transmutation on their period, and here is why. During a cycle, the body is naturally releasing toxins, elements from the body, and that is the time for the feminine body to process and release build up of force from the body, so that it can stay clean, physically, I mean, spiritually more especially.
 
When one is transmuting, if they transmute on their cycle, those energies, when they are going out, are going to get recirculated. So, it is good to take a pause from pranayama [and alchemy] on one's menstruation cycle and dedicate more to prayer and meditation. I mean, there are other practices you can do, too, but pranayama should be left aside.
 
Question: Would that be the same, then, if you are, like, maybe fighting off some kind of illness?
 
Instructor: I mean, yeah, it could depend. I mean, you got to gauge your body, because if you are feeling too sick where, like, you cannot breathe, obviously take a break, you know. Do what you can. It is not fear-mongering, like: “Oh, I cannot do my practice! What am I going to do?” Give your body a rest, and you gauge yourself if you are able to do it, if you need to. Some people are too sick to. Especially in a marriage, some couples want to practice but get sick, and therefore they should abstain from alchemy, too, because the body has to heal. Let it recalibrate.
 
Question: On that list of when not to do pranayama, what is an example of an expelling creative force?
 
Instructor: Orgasm. Yeah. So that is the definition, strictly speaking.
 
The thing is, well, there is a lot of scripture, there is a lot of teachings about why that is the case, and it is a very deep topic. I recommend, if you want to understand why that is the case, I mean, there is stories such as the Garden of Eden, especially, and the first act that kicked Adam and Eve out of paradise. It is a sexual symbol because it is about literally a naked man and a naked woman in a garden, and there is temptation. So, there is a sexual trope to this story.
 
Good book about it is a book called The Secret Teachings of Moses, which is available not from Samael Aun Weor, but it is a book explaining why that is the case. So obviously, we do not expect people to take this at face value.
 
But to understand what are the narratives and stories that teach this in an implicit way. Now we are in a different time where we can explain what these stories mean and symbols mean so that people are not just like: “Why cannot I do that? Or why should not I do that?”
 
Question: Are they saying do not do it during sex, or do not do it after an orgasm, or do not do it while they are having sex?
 
Instructor: Ever. So, in strict guidelines for The Perfect Matrimony is another book, too, which talks about this. Couples who want to practice what is known as alchemy, sexual alchemy, never lose their energy physically, never orgasm, never expel it.
 
It is a very strict practice, but one that is very deeply rewarding if one is serious about it. That book is good, too. The Perfect Matrimony and The Secret Teachings of Moses talk about the stories that explain why that is the case.
 
We do not have the time to kind of go into too much detail here, because I want to respect people's time, but we have a lot of resources about why that is the case. But all religions taught chastity, and not meaning necessarily sexual abstention, but purity of sex.
 
Question: So, if you have sex in the morning, should you do the breathing act that day? You kind of get more into the practical part. If you are going to have sex later on that night, do you do the breathing in the morning?
 
Instructor: Well, it depends on what we mean by the sexual act, but that is what I recommend [do not orgasm and mix lust with spiritual practices ]. Study, also, The Perfect Matrimony because that really clarifies very deeply what do we even mean by this. Obviously, people who are practicing pranayama can practice that as much as they want, any time of day.
 
But the work of sexual alchemy is only performed at most once a day, primarily because the couple's bodies need to recharge, recalibrate, balance, because it is the power of life. It is the most powerful force we carry in ourselves. To do more than once a day is to infringe on the natural body's cycles, to recalibrate, relax, and become stable.
 
But yeah, The Perfect Matrimony is a great book. I believe we might have it available, but Secret Teachings of Moses is good, too, especially about pranayama.
 
Question: Like practicing alchemy and having an ideal partner for that. You know what I mean? Someone would say there: “Okay, I'll try it, but what makes...”
 
Instructor: It has to be based on love. There are people who want to get with a partner in this tradition because they are enticed by the idea, but then they have the ambition, and ambition does not create love. That is why in the book The Perfect Matrimony especially, the first chapter, I think one of the first chapters is called On Love, and literally it explains when you are getting married or before you get intimate with someone physically, that here are some advice to consider when you are choosing your partner. It is a very beautiful, poetic, deep... I do not have the memory or the eloquence to relate it all word for word, but it is very profound, and basically emphasizes that your partner should be someone who is in affinity with you in three ways:
 
There is thought, feeling, and will.
 
Obviously, chemistry is one thing. Couples need... There is a level of attraction with couples, and that is an important thing, but not the signifier of compatibility.
 
So, people obviously in our modern culture are very much indoctrinated by, if you have chemistry or desire for the person, then you should be with them. But unfortunately, the problem is that while one part of the psyche is aligned, three others are not, and that creates problems. If we want a long term, stable, monogamous, healthy relationship, one that's very integrated and profound, there must be affinity in these three spheres of thought, feeling, and will.
 
Emotions have to be in line, like couples share sentiments. Maybe their thoughts are aligned. They do think similar. Obviously, you do not want a partner who thinks just like what you think, but you want to be challenged and to be pushed to a level to be your best. That can only come about with someone who can see your flaws and who will help you show them to you. If they are really great, they will communicate it to you, but not everyone knows how to do that, unfortunately.
 
Mind has to be balanced or aligned, and then more importantly, willpower. The same will, at least in the same general direction that the couple wants to go, because people who may be emotionally or mentally aligned to a degree, maybe they have the same religion or have the same types of compatibilities, but their will is in different directions. Their marriage is, to quote Samael Aun Weor, that I do remember, “that marriage, instead of being a true paradise, would be a true hell.” So, if the will does not align, that is the worst.
 
You know, disagreements and conflicts. So, those three are basic, and because when the will especially is aligned, it aligns with the spirit.
 
You can even look at this in the Tree of Life.

​Chemistry with our vital energies, below, with the Yesod and Malkuth, emotional energy with Hod, mental energy with the Netzach, Tiphereth is will, which is the direction that people take. Then above that, when people's wills tend to be aligned in a marriage, it often happens because the spirit and the soul of both members of the couple are in agreement, and that there are cases where divinity has agreed to work with this person.
 
Often what happens is that happens in accordance with what we call karma. There is a form of destiny. But to understand it, and to experience it, and to know it, and to really align with it, obviously is our will, because we are down here, in this physical world, Malkuth, which means the Kingdom in Hebrew, and the spirit is above.
 
But yeah, ambition is not good. Love—love to the point that you are willing to sacrifice your life for that person. If it meant that you had to die so they could live, you would do it without flinching. He says in the book, “to shed even the last drop of your blood.”
 
That is kind of demonstrated by the Passion of Christ, the Christ story, as a metaphor of that.
 
But yeah, single people, practice pranayama. That is a good way to begin working.
 
Obviously, in terms of finding that partner, you also got to think: “what is my level of being? And what kind of person do I want to be married to?” So, think like: “do we want a person, or do we want to attract a person that is going to ennoble our best efforts, and is going to inspire us towards a higher level of being?”
 
Because if we do not change psychologically, then we will attract what we are inside. Unfortunately, a lot of people want to find that ideal based on desire and passion. When the person does not match up with that, the ideal slays the couple.
 
But if we change psychologically, and if we are humble, and we work on our poorest defects, then by improving our quality of mind, we attract a partner that is going to reflect that. There will be more stability and a greater Eden, or return to Eden, so to speak. But yeah, we have to be patient and to accept what is it divinity wants for us, because divinity is managing the circumstances that apply to our situation.