Have you ever observed a small child in deep sleep? You see a perfect picture of restfulness and bliss — like Buddha in deep samadhi. Another thing that you will notice is his belly moving up and down gently. This means he is breathing rhythmically. All this disappears when in a few years he goes to school. The journey of ambition begins — to compete with other children, to come first in the class and to outshine others. The first thing that gets destroyed is good sleep and deep restfulness. The feeling of ambition, which also gives rise to fear and jealousy, destroys the natural feeling of love. All these things damage the rhythm of breathing and consequently the child becomes violent and inhuman. This is the whole journey of humanity and all the mess that we witness in the world.
A man who suffers from fear and jealousy becomes possessive — a certain staleness envelops him. The rhythms of breathing are deeply connected to your feelings of love and hate, friendship and fear, joy and anguish. A person full of love will breathe differently than a person full of fear. A man who is always afraid will be violent and will have a shallow breath moving very fast. A loving and trusting person will naturally maintain harmonious movement of breath. Each moment, the movement of our breath can show our state of being.
Osho explains in his diary The Open Door: “Love is always new. It never becomes old because it is non-accumulative, non-hoarding. It knows no past; it is always fresh, as fresh as dewdrops. It lives moment to moment, it is atomic. It has no continuity, it knows no tradition. Each moment it dies and each moment it is born again. It is like breath: you breathe in, you breathe out; again you breathe in and you breathe out. You don’t hoard it inside. If you hoard the breath you will die because it will become stale. So is the case with love — it is breathing; each moment it renews itself. So whenever one gets stuck in love, life loses all significance. And that’s what is happening to people: the mind is so dominant that it even influences the heart and makes it possessive!
“So remember to be in love with existence! And let love be like breathing. Breathe in, breathe out, but let it be love coming in, going out. By and by with each breath you create that magic of love. Make it a meditation: when you breathe out, just feel that you are pouring your love into existence; when you breathe in, existence is pouring its love into you. Soon you will see that the quality of your breath is changing. That’s why in India we call it prana, life, it’ not just breathing, it is not just oxygen. It’s something else — the very life itself.”
