FOUR BREATHS

by Hasan Askari

(Alone to Alone: From Awareness to Vision)

One may concentrate on an idea that connects oneself to the whole of the cosmos and which heightens and deepens one’s self, and at the same time start gently and wholeheartedly breathing within. Which is so important and effective, idea or breathing in, depends upon one’s crucial choice in attention. By accompanying the act of inhaling with attention one touches the fringe of the life of the idea, its universal power and joy.

First however is the breath of purification, of burning away all that is dense and hard, all that is alien.

Second is the breath of returning from the outer limits, from the six directions of front and behind, right and left, above and below, it is a breath of returning to the seventh point, the centre within.

The centre is also the sphere; as a centre it is eternity, and as a sphere it is infinity.

Third is the breath of ascent to one’s archetype remembering that one’s form here below is an image.

The archetype is both the Self and the Cosmos, after the analogy of centre and sphere.

Fourth is the breath of adoration at the appearance of vision before the innerly directed eye, before the thought in rest, stable and gentle.

This discourse has nothing to do with one’s physical and psychological well-being. If one feels physically and psychologically healthy, that is a very minor reward. The relation of the exercise to the life of this world consists in ingathering the positive and helpful forces. The rest, its greater part, lies above consciousness, above the imaging faculty.

However, valuable, whatever be the authority on which they rest, all techniques of self-development in their elaborate rules and details, without the simplicity and willingness to surrender before the Great Work that goes on above our knowledge, are a burden keeping the novice under one illusion after another.

Pay attention to the idea, and hold it invisibly, its wonder and beauty hidden from one’s ordinary sight. Remember how one sows the seed, and hides it, and waits in trust.