To Riccardo

 

A friend of this website in Italy asked me why I put so much emphasis on the "breath." He asked if there isn't something beyond the breath. A beautiful question. Certainly there is. Breath is the bridge leading over to the breathless Source. Breath is the vibration of love that wings us back to God's stillness.

In the New Testament, the word for breath is Pneuma, which also means "Spirit." In the Old Testament, the words for breath are Nephesh, which also means "soul," and Ruach, which also means "Spirit." Breath is the Qi in Chinese, the healing energy flowing through this body. In Sanskrit, breath is Prana-Shakti, the very Goddess of creation.

Our breath is not just air. Breath is the form or body of a deeper energy. Just as our body contains breath, so our breath is the body containing the Goddess. Without consciousness, our breath is merely an autonomic biological process. But when we bring the magic of awareness to breathing, we discover that this inhalation enfolds the very energy that created the galaxies. She humbly enters this temple, clothed in our breath. She reclines on the altar of our heart. Quite literally, our heart. For this body is a sacrament, and everything in our physiology is the outward sign of an inward grace. This organic blood-drenched muscle of the beating heart is not just a pump, nor merely a physical organ. It is the bread-luscious host of the Holy Spirit. 

 

What is the sacrament that we attend in this Holy of Holies, the Heart? When our inhalation and exhalation become very subtle here, breath transcends motion and merges in the stillness from which the universe is breathed, and born.

God is Shiva, the unmoved silence of pure consciousness. For the sake of love's play, this stillness vibrates in waves of itself. This energy is love, and this vibrant love is Shakti. In the Biblical tradition, She is known as Sophia, the Wisdom who danced with God at the creation of the world, just as she recounts in the Biblical book of Proverbs, chapter 8.

So our breath is the Holy Spirit dancing with God the Father, Shakti dancing with Shiva. And in the Holy Trinity, who is God the Son? You are, friend. You are the divine child born from the union of God's ever Self-witnessing stillness and the breath of the Spirit. Thus the Trinity is Father-Mother-Child, Silence-Breath-You.

In the fathomless depth of contemplative prayer, we can let go of the breath, and transcend the breath. We surrender to stillness. We let go of the Mantra, and surrender to silence. The science of meditation is the science of creation in reverse.

As energy and matter vibrate from stillness to create the cosmos, so in meditation our body reverses this process, sinking back into stillness through vibrations of breath and mantra. This is how meditation literally re-creates the body and taps into creation's Source.

Reposing in the hridaya-chakra, you intimately participate in the music of the stars. You imbibe the light of distant galaxies. Immersed in the Source, distance is an illusion, time and space dissolve, the Eye of your heart is opened. Here, swirling sun-clustered nebulae bubble up and dance in the silent depths of your awareness.

It happens like this: by the grace of the mantra, the most sacred name of God, your breath dissolves into a never-ending stream of sound, the continuum of the cosmic Word, or Logos. This is the Hum through which creation is sung, and the vibration of which matter itself is composed. Now, you sink even deeper into that vibration and it resolves into pure Light: the glow in every star, the spark in each electron. The whole universe is no-thing but this Light.

And finally, transcending even the finest sparkling threads of Light, you enter the Divine Darkness. A boundless unmanifest ocean of tranquility, the radiant darkness that was here before God said, "let there be light," this is who you Are. You are the Source, the wellspring of creation, the fountain of love. You are the Mother, eternal silence of pure Being. For darkness is not the absence of light, darkness is the womb of light.

Beyond this, I have no words. Thank you, Riccardo, for asking the question. Big huge hug to You.

Photo by Bahman Farzad