Part 3

Somehow two brothers in India learned this technique and started a business. One posed like a dead man, while the other told people his brother had died. The doctor came and confirmed he was dead. Then he would collect money because he would say he had no money to cremate his poor brother. The next day they would go to a different place. Once I was in the town where they were enacting their scheme. The people in the town told me that the doctor had pronounced this man dead. I asked them to bring a thermometer so I could insert it in the rectum. Immediately that “dead” brother came to life. They were using a simple technique of suspension of breath to fool everyone.

Prana, apana, vyana, udana and samana are the vehicles that prana uses. There are many vehicles and they do their work separately. For example, the sevenfold pranas that reside in the cave of the heart, provide the impetus for the growth of a human being. They are called sevenfold for the seven stages you pass through in your lifetime: first, you are born; second, you become a child; third, you become an adult; fourth, you grow more to a stage of manhood or womanhood; fifth, you become a semi-old person; sixth, you become an old person and seventh, you go to death. Death is actually a part of growth. Have you seen a blue child? A blue child is one that has a hole in one of the chambers in the heart. As a result, arteries and veins communicate as one. This means the blood is not purified, so the growth of the child will be stunted. If you understand the channels of energy that reside in the cavity of the heart, then you will know those same channels exist in the universe, because the body is a miniature universe.

These sevenfold pranas are responsible to manifest themselves in multitudinous ways. That’s why there are mountains, rivers, forests and everything else in the universe. Innumerable illusory manifestations, (maya), bring forth the universe. After eons of time when the universe will be dissolved, it will be drawn back into Shakti, the same source that is the basis of its manifestation. There is actually no difference between the universe of forms and names and the universe without forms and names. The manifested one and the unmanifested are one reality.

Reprinted from Samyama the Power of Self-Transformation, by Swami Rama, an HIHT publication