Notice File For Till The Last Breath & User's Guide Manuals

When it starts, you start to live.
When it stops, you die.

So Watch Your Breath!
I

t is said that God created Adam but Adam was
dead. Then God breathed in him and he became
alive. The same story is told in many creation
myths all over the world: Christian, Hindu, Jewish and
several others.
The story seems to be very significant. The meaning
is that when you breathe, you don't breathe, God
breathes in you. The whole breathes in you. This has to
be understood very deeply because the whole
method of Tao, the whole science of Yoga, depends
on breath.
Because this is going to be the last lecture on Lao
Tzu, I would like to tell you everything about the system
so that if you want you can move into it; not only think
about it but become one with it. The breath is the most

important thing. With it life starts and with it life ends. It is
the most mysterious thing; without it there is no
possibility of life.
Life seems just a shadow of breath. When breath

disappears, life disappears. So this phenomenon of
breathing has to be understood.
Every child born is not really alive until he breathes.
He has very few moments left. If he breathes after the
birth, in those few moments life enters. If he does not
breathe, he will remain dead.
Those first few moments of life are the most
important. The doctors, the parents, all become
concerned when a child is born: Will he breathe? Will
he cry? And will the breathing start? Or will he remain
dead? Again, as in all the myths created, in every man
Adam is born again.
The child cannot breathe on his own. To expect that
is impossible because the child does not know how to
breathe, nobody has taught him. This is going to be his

first act, so this cannot be his act.
Let me repeat it: This is going to be his first and the
most significant act - that's why it cannot be his act. If
God does it - fine; if God is not willing - finished. The
whole has to breathe in him, that's why those few
moments are full of suspense, doubt, apprehension,
fear - because both possibilities are still open. The child
can remain dead. Then nothing can be done. The
child cannot do anything, the parents cannot do
anything, the doctors cannot do anything; humanity is
helpless. It is up to the whole. Only prayer can be
done. We can only wait in deep prayer. If the whole
moves into the child, the child becomes alive,
otherwise not. This first breath is taken by the whole.
And if the first breath is taken by the whole, then
everything else which depends on breathing cannot
be your act. If you think you are breathing, then you
have taken a very wrong step. And because of this
wrong step ego will be created. Ego is accumulated
ignorance.

You missed. You have not been breathing, the
whole has breathed into you, but you have taken it as
if you are breathing.
The first act of breath bridges you with the whole,
makes you one with the whole, and all that follows will ll

not be your activity; all that is going to happen after
this first breath till you die, till the last breath, is going to
be the activity of the whole. The whole will live within
you. You can think that you are doing all those things -then you live in ignorance. If you become aware that
the whole is doing everything, you are being possessed
by the whole, breathed by it, you are just a hollow
bamboo flute, the sound comes from the whole, the
whole life comes from it -- then you live a life of
enlightenment.
This is the only difference between ignorance and
enlightenment. One step in error, that: I have done it -and the whole journey goes wrong. One step right, that:
the whole has been doing it in me, I am not the doer, I
am just the field of his play, a flute of his songs, a reed,
nothing more, an emptiness in which he flows, moves,

lives -- then you live a totally different life, a life of light
and bliss.
This is the first act, this breath. Many more things
have to be understood about it. If life starts with breath,
and death also, and everything is between these two,
then yoga, Tao, tantra, and all sciences of inner
alchemy, cannot neglect breathing.
Yoga calls it Prana. That word is beautiful..Yoga calls
breathing Prana. Prana means the Elan Vital, the very
vitality of your being.
It is not just air coming and going through your lungs.
Yoga says the air is just the outer layer of it. Hidden
deep in that layer is vitality.
So breathing has two parts. One: the body of
breathing, made up of oxygen, nitrogen and so on,
and, two, the spirit of breathing, made up of vitality,
God himself.
It is just like - your body is there, and you, your
consciousness, is hidden deep down in your body. The
body is a protection, a vehicle. The body is the visible

vehicle for the non-visible you. And the same is the
case with every breath. The breath itself is just the outer
layer; hidden deep in it is life itself. Once you discover
that in breath there is hidden God himself you have

come to know yourself. That's why there is
so much insistence and so much search in
yoga, Tao and tantra about breathing.
If you simply go on breathing and
thinking that this is just air coming
in and going out, you will
never be able to
penetrate the mystery
of it. And you will
remain
completely
oblivious of
yourself. Then
you will
remain rooted

One step in error.
in the body.
The whole journey goes wrong.
You will never
be able to know
that which goes beyond the body, that which is within
but yet beyond, that which is hidden in the body but
not obstructed by the body, not limited by the body. A
beyond within.
In each breath that life has to be discovered.
Yoga calls those methods Pranayama. The word
Pranayama means expansion of life. One has to
expand life to infinity in each breath. Buddha has
called his own methods of discovering the innermost
core of breath Anapana-Sati yoga: the yoga, the
science, of incoming and outgoing breath; and
Buddha has said no other yoga is needed. If you can
deeply watch your own breathing, and watch so
meditatively that anything that is hidden in the breath
does not remain hidden but becomes revealed, you

will come to know all. Looks simple, but is difficult.
Buddha said to his monks: Sitting, walking, standing,
whatever you are doing, continue doing these things,
but let your consciousness be aware of the breath
coming in, going out. Go on looking at your own
breath -- one day with the very continuous
hammering on the breath, the temple opens.
God is hidden in the temple of the breath.
Suddenly one day you become aware that it is not just
air. If for you it is just air, you have a scientific mind but

you don't have the
awareness which can reveal
the innermost core of it. Then
you can analyse and come
to know how much oxygen
is needed, how much
hydrogen, how much
nitrogen, how much
carbon dioxide, and you

can go on playing with the
body of the breath - but you
missed the innermost real
phenomenon.
That's why, if a man is dead,
you can give him, pump into
him, the right proportion of
oxygen, but he will not be alive.
Unless God breathes in it, unless
it contains the innermost
consciousness of the whole, it is
a dead breath. Oxygen will
pass through the lungs -nothing will happen.
Breath is the first action and it is not your action.
- Osho: Tao The Three Treasures Vol. 4
#9

OW