Breath The Cord that Ties Soul to the Body
From the opposite pulls of the prana and apana currents in the spine, the inhalations and exhalations of breath are born. When the prana current goes upward, it pulls the vital breath laden with oxygen into the lungs. There prana quickly distills a quantity of necessary life force from the electronic and life tronic composition of the oxygen atoms. It takes a longer time for prana to distill life force from the grosser liquid and solid foods present in the stomach. That refined energy is sent by the prana current to all bodily cells. Without such replenishment of pure life force, the cells would be powerless to carry on their many physiological functions; they would die. The life energy distilled from the oxygen also helps to reinforce the life-force centers in the spine and at the point between the eyebrows, and the main reservoir of life energy in the cerebrum. The surplus oxygen from the inhaled breath is carried by the blood throughout the body, where it is utilized by the five vital pranas in various physiological processes.
As noted, bodily activity produces decay and the consequent waste product of carbon dioxide. This waste is excreted from the cells by the apana, or eliminating, current, and is carried by the blood to the lungs. Then the downwardly flowing apana current in the spine causes exhalation and pushes out the impurities of the lungs through the exhaling breath.
Respiration, activated by the dual currents of prana and apana, is accomplished physiologically through a series of complex nervous reflexes chemical and mechanical involving primarily the medulla oblongata and the sympathetic, or involuntary, nervous system. The intricate sympathetic system, in turn, is empowered by the prana and apana currents working through the vital branches of astral life currents that correspond to the physical sympathetic nervous system the main branches of which are called ida and pingala. To study the physiology of breath without an appreciable understanding of the subtle life principles behind it is like studying Shakespeare's Hamlet while leaving out the parts portrayed by the character Hamlet.
Inspiration and expiration go on largely involuntarily throughout one's life. So long as the life current prana pulls the inhaling breath into the lungs, man lives; whenever the downwardly flowing current apana in the exhalation becomes more powerful, man dies. The apana current then pulls the astral body out of the physical body. When the final breath leaves the body through the action of the outgoing current, apana, the astral body follows it to an astral world.
It is thus said that the human breath knots the soul to the body. It is the process of exhalation and inhalation resulting from the two opposite spinal currents that gives man perception of the external world. The dual breath is the storm that creates form-waves sensations in the lake of the mind. These sensations also produce body consciousness and duality and thus obliterate the unified soul consciousness.
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