ANANDAMAYI MA'S TEACHING IN HER OWN WORDS

    Through breath energy Consciousness pervades Matter. Everything that is alive breathes. When breath stops, you die. Physical life depends on breath. Through prana matter becomes alive. Desires and wandering mind make the breath impure. Therefore, I advise the practice of concentration on breathing combined with taking any one of God’s Names. If the breath and the mind become one-pointed and steady then the mind expands to infinity, and all phenomena are included in that one all-inclusive point. If you think of God with the breath it will purify the prana, the physical sheath and the mind. If you breathe while thinking of God’s Name, you will feel the call of His grace.

    The Self, or God, is unknowable to the ordinary intelligence, but He is not unknown to us as the life-breath. If one uses the rhythm of one’s breathing as a support in meditation, this increases one’s power. Therefore, one should daily sit in a meditative pose in a solitary place and turn the mind inward, and repeat the mantra in rhythm with one’s breathing, without straining, in a natural way. When through prolonged practice, the Name becomes inextricably linked with the breath, and the body is quite still, one will come to realize that the individual is part of the One Great Life that pervades the Universe.

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     From:  SELF - ENQUIRY  (VICHARASANGRAHAM)

                                                                OF

               BHAGAVAN SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI

D: Of the means for mind-control, which is the most important?

M: Breath-control is the means for mind-control. (verse 21)

D: How is breath-control the means for mind-control?

M: There is no doubt that breath-control is the means for mind-control, because the mind, like breath, is a part of air, because the nature of mobility is common to both, because the place of origin is the same for both, and because when one of them is controlled the other gets controlled. (verse 25)

D: Why should the path to release be differently taught? Will it not create confusion in the minds of aspirants?

M: Several paths are taught in the Vedas to suit the different grades of qualified aspirants. Yet, since release is but the destruction of mind, all efforts have for their aim the control of mind. Although the modes of meditation may appear to be different from one another, in the end all of them become one. There is no need to doubt this. One may adopt that path which suits the maturity of one’s mind. (verse 36)