Every moment of our life, we are getting a little closer to death. Even we blessed with a long life, but death is getting closer by the day by the minute. The two most significant dimensions of our life are time and energy.
If we manage our energies well, because of the enhancement of energy, in our experience, time will also be enhanced. If our experience of life becomes sweet, the sweeter it becomes, the faster time seems to be rolling away. We wake up in the morning, and before we know, the day is over, that means we are doing well. If time sits heavy on us, if it does not go, that means we are doing very badly. It is important for us to get some understanding of how time plays within our body, or how our experience time, as a human being, at this time, on this planet.
if we are breathing approximately 15 times per minute, we will be exactly in sync with the revolution of the Earth. If our heartbeat is in the range of 70 to 72, then our heart is also in sync with the breath, and the breath is in sync with the revolutions of the Earth
Many dimensions of our body are in sync with the fundamental aspects of time-making on this planet. The most fundamental sense of time is of course, the planet is going around the Sun – that is a year. The Moon is going around the Earth – that is a month. But our most fundamental sense of time comes from the revolutions of the planet. It spins once and we call it a day.
The length of the equator is 21,600 nautical miles. These 21,600 nautical miles amount to the number of breath that we take in a day. If we divide this by 1440, which is the number of minutes we have per day, we will get 15. That means if we are breathing approximately 15 times per minute, we will be exactly in sync with the revolution of the Earth. If our heartbeat is in the range of 70 to 72, then our heart is also in sync with the breath, and the breath is in sync with the revolutions of the Earth. This is a simple way of bringing an absolute sense of harmony in the physical system. If we do this, the compulsiveness of the body will go away.
Compulsiveness or Consciousness?
A whole lot of people spend their entire life making arrangements for the compulsions of their body, what to eat, where to sleep, whom to sleep with.
This is just attending to the compulsions of the body. The compulsive nature of the body is there; we cannot deny it, but how much time and energy do we want to dedicate to this dimension of our life?
Life is a limited amount of time. For this reason, it is important to address this question, how much time and energy in our life is dedicated to satisfying our physical and psychological compulsions. If we try to reduce the compulsions of our body and mind without being in sync with the basic forces in nature, then it looks like we are sacrificing or renouncing everything. This is not Sanyas.
Living for Life, Not Only for Body and Mind
Sanyas means to consciously choose to keep the time we spend on the compulsions of the body to a minimum. This comes from a certain dimension of intelligence. This is not renunciation, sacrifice, or giving up life, this is absolutely pro-life. Because we are for the life that we are – not for the body that we have gathered, not for the mind that we have gathered. We are not going to become a sanyasin tomorrow, arranging our life a little better, syncing our life with the natural cycles of life around us, syncing our life with the planet itself, which has made this life the way it is, is important.
For us to come to a certain state of equanimity, for us to live in some sense of inner harmony, for us to be in absolute harmony with all the inputs with which we are living – like water, air, food, fire, warmth, and of course life energy, we have taught yogic practices. But with so-called education, people have gotten into this madness of “What will I get?” People think life is about getting something.
Competition vsCompetence
When we make life into a mere transaction, then being in harmony does not arise, because right from childhood, from kindergarten, we have been told to be competitive. To be in competition means we have no sense of our own competence. Maybe we could fly, but we are happy that we are walking one step ahead of someone else.
What a tragedy it is! Competition means we will lose all sense of harmony within us, because there is no sense of anything about us – it is always about how someone else is doing, compared to ourselves.
Enjoying other people’s failures is sickness. But right from kindergarten, we have been trained to believe we are must be number one. I do not know why everyone is aspiring to be the smallest number. At least we could upgrade our self to a zero. If we are always in a mode of transaction in life, if it is “What will we get?” all the time, this will not allow us to be in sync with the natural elements that make for us.
Greed vs Ease
If we are not in sync, our competence, our genius, our intelligence will never find full expression. It cannot, simply because we are never come to ease. If we do not come to ease, we will not find full expression of anything. To be in harmony with everything around is, psychologically, there is only one thing we have to do: we should remove just one thought in our mind – the rest of the nonsense can go on. Only one thought – “What will I get?” If we take away this one thought, then we will see we will naturally be in sync with everything around us.
Sometimes we have done this. There was no concern about what we will get; we were absolutely in sync with everything. The moment “What will I get?” comes up, transactions start. Once transactions happen, we are only trying to be better than someone else. We are no more trying to be ourselves.
Crippling Poison
We are spraying poison on the food that we eat, putting poison into the water that we drink, and we think we have found some great science. This is not science, this is silly nonsense. Unfortunately, we have made a science out of senselessness. On this planet, for all life from a single-celled organism to the most complex form, which is our fundamentally, the basic construction is the same. If something poisons a bacteria, it also poisons us. Maybe the dose is not strong enough to kill us – yet, but it is still poison. These poisons are crippling us. I am not just talking about physical health – we want this life to blossom to its fullest possibility.
We want this life to find freedom from everything. How is it possible when we are poisoned? If we lived in pristine natural conditions, the amount of practices, the amount of conscious effort that we have to make would be much less. But now we are living in these kinds of conditions. Because of this, being conscious and doing the necessary things to be in sync with everything around us, becomes all the more important.
Syncing Breath and Heartbeat
How to be in sync? Here is a simple thing we can do:
If we cannot do it all the time, maybe once an hour, or at least every two hours, no matter how busy we are, we can take a minute. Go sit somewhere, and make sure our breath is in sync approximately fifteen breaths per minute. Try to keep it that way all the time. We will see gradually, our heartbeat will also sync with everything else. This is very important for us to live as a normal human being.
If we want to be a yogi, we have to lower the number of breaths, but we cannot do that by force. We have to build up our lung capacity in such a way, we have to bring our body to such a level of relaxation that it will become slower by itself, naturally. In the yogic lore there is a colorful expression, which is not to be taken literally, but it is true in a general sense: If our breath becomes between 7 and 12, we will know the language of all the creatures on this planet, the birds and the animals. If our breath goes down to 9, we will know the very language of Mother Earth.
Becoming Sensitive Means Becoming Sensible
The meteorological department, for example, is trying to read what Mother Earth is saying in some way. In that sense, and in a deeper sense than that, we could know what Mother Earth is saying if our breath naturally becomes around 8 to 9 per minute. If our breath becomes 6 to 7 per minute, we will know everything that is worth knowing – simply because all the unnecessary static that we are creating in our body and our mind is gone. Everything is absolutely clear to us as it is. Because neurologically, we are the most evolved creature on this planet.
As a Homo sapiens, as a human being, we have the highest level of neurological development. That means a human being is the most sensitive life on this planet. Sensitive means we are able to sense everything that is around us. Sensitive does not mean for everything, we will get hurt. Sensitive means we are able to sense all that is there to be sensed. If we are sensitive, we will naturally behave sensibly. If we are sensitive to everyone around us, our naturally behave sensibly.
