INTO RESPIRATORY ACT IS THE SECRET OF LIFE
“Ordinary” life has its rules. I define as
“Ordinary” the life that is “manifest” and characterized by a
physical-material “insentient” (Prakrti) expression, a non
physical-material “sentient” (Purusa) expression and a force
that joins the both of them together that I call “Ahankara”.
In fact, when a human being leaves this life (honestly, I cannot
exclude other kinds of existence) the proof of what I said
appears clearly.
Every time I am present at a death, it seems to me even too
evident that the departure of the “sentient” part can be the
cause of the deactivation of the physical-material component,
but, in that occasion, as a scholar, I always and immediately
ask to myself: what is the possible reason of the ended
cooperation of the “sentient” and “non-sentient” two parts? And
why, in this case, the two parts untie themselves?
This last question always represented to me the implicit
admission of the existence of a third force that I called “Ahamkara”,
universal force that is into the whole manifest universe. On a
physical-material level, for example on the Earth, it is called
force of gravity whereas, on a non-material level, it causes the
ego.
I don’t want to talk at length about these ancient thrilling
intuitions of the indian Masters, even because the main purpose
of my work is to talk about the specific forces that are active
in the human body, and about the respiratory act that is an
evident manifestation of it.
These observations are mainly for explaining what I mean when I
talk about “ordinary life”, when I talk about the breathing,
instead, it shows itself, as everybody knows, into its three
forms: breathing in, abstention from breathing and breathing
out.
When we are born, or when we start to manage our existence by
ourselves, after the cut of the umbilical cord, the first one of
these three functions that appears is the breathing in.
Naturally, it’s not coincidence: I never believed in chance even
before that indian wisdom took every doubt away from me. In
nature everything seems to answer to the laws of existence and
the manifestation is a well-ordered action (karma).
So, I can say, and it’s not coincidence, that life begins with a
breathing in and ends with a breathing out and it can also be
considered as a collection of breathings: every day, as lot of
people knows, we breath, depending on our state and on outside
conditions, from 15.000 to 20.000 times.
The disciples of some interesting oriental disciplines even
believe that, at birth, a certain number of breathings is given
to us. They also practice promoting and using a more conscious
breathing, deeper and slower (that is supposed to lengthen
life). The consciousness, then, allows to grasp the living and
spiritual meaning of this act and of every single phase of it.
The meditation on breathing brought me to understand, for
example, that the breathing in is tightly connected to the force
of survival, the same one that supports life by feeding it: to
breathe in, in fact, is expression of assimilating in physical
and psychological way. This energy, in our being, takes on the
responsibility for its structure, for the protection (related
not only to the immune defences but also to the mucus and the
lubricating substances).
Called “kapha” by the ones that practice the indian ayurvedic
medicine, it is strongly connected with the sense of taste, of
smell and of pleasure “in general”. The important functions of
existence are tightly connected to the sense of pleasure: to
breathe in, to drink, to eat, to make love, all of these actions
give pleasure. Through sexuality, in fact, life holds itself up,
reproduces and extends.
Of course a healthy life follows from the consciousness that,
transforming itself into knowledge, it lets pursue the right
things and not only the things that we like. The attachment to
pleasure, for example to the pleasure of drinking, as everyone
knows, brings to dependency and to alcoholism. And it’s like
this for any other aspect of pleasure.
The breathing in represents the force that, for sustenance,
brings the external “life” to us, for giving it to the
“transformation” that has the aim of adapting it to our needs of
survival.
The result of the breathing in, through the blood, reaches the
cells, where, through oxidation, it becomes useful and
adaptable. With the word “transformation” I want to refer not
only to this process, but to every process that has the aim of
digesting something that, coming from outside (for example food,
emotions), after it’s been transformed, goes to take part of the
personal existence and constitution.
In the discipline that I practise, this process is called “Pitta”,
and it has, in the abstention from breathing, its main
expression. The work of “transforming” is given to the element
Fire, main component of this agent (Dosa), in fact, if we could
indicate the percentage of presence, we would say that it is the
70% out of the total, while the water is only the 30%.
Therefore, to understand the way we work, it is enough to think
about when we see a good apple: Kapha gives the desire of eating
it, we take it and start to chew it with pleasure, it is still
apple in the mouth, in the oesophagus, but, when it reaches the
stomach, it suffers that process of transformation that we
usually call digestion, and, in three or four hours, a part of
this apple flows into our body as plasma, becoming an integral
part of ourselves.
From a scientific (and not only scientific) point of view, this
is very interesting, especially in relation with the emotional
level: the reader do not forget in any case that, as it is in
the tradition of this medical discipline, the psychosomatic
constitution of the human being.
For a deeper and easier understanding of this aspect, I say,
when I have lessons with my scholars, they listen to my words
through the sense of hearing, but they can understand and learn
the things I say, until they become integral part of their
knowledge, through a kind of Pitta in the head called “Sadaka
Pitta”.
Going back to the process of assimilating the apple, I state
that only a part of it, the one that is useful, goes to take a
part of the individual constitution, beginning to flow into the
plasma, the useless or harmful part take the way of elimination.
This is one of the jobs (the main one is the movement in
general) of the third force that we go to discover and that, in
our discipline, is called “Vata”. The elimination, as everybody
knows, happens through the breathing out, the perspiration, the
urine, the excrements, etc.
In conclusion, I wish that, through this few lines, I make my
readers able to understand that the health depends on the
democratic management of these three forces. The presence of
“fanatics” in the “Dosa” (Kapha, Pitta, Vata) causes the arise
of the illness.
The “Dosa”, if proposed using the terms of the modern physics,
can nearly correspond to the inertia (Kapha), the energy (Pitta)
and the movement (Vata).
Into respiratory act they can also meet the breathing in, the
abstention from the breathing and the breathing out.
by Amadio Bianchi