Pranayama

I’ll get to just what it is momentarily, but you need the background to much better understand why I knew how to get there which is very important.
     After we moved from the farm to town in the same county (where we lived just a few miles from the Gulf of Mexico) from age three to nine, once or twice a week when it was time to cook supper and there was no one else to watch this active young boy, mom would have me sit down across the dining room from the kitchen. - She would very calmly tell me, “Sit down, be quiet, be still, put your hands in your lap, no fidgeting, no looking around and sit straight.” - And she’d be off into the kitchen which would take an hour or two. - Well, by the time I was eight years old I had learned how to think and to order my thinking. - Within a year of that I found that quiet place inside that absolutely nothing can disturb.
     Mom never actually taught me meditation otherwise, but she sure put me right in the center of its crucible! - I had no access to any otherwise teaching of meditation (and I'm glad I didn’t). - She knew I would figure it out.
     Between nine and eleven, as she had always done even from the womb, she taught me another scripture (among many others), but this one scared me absolutely to death. - Mom knew this and she knew she had to light a fire under me or I wouldn’t advance beyond what I had accomplished by then.
     “Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life and few there be that find it,” she taught me. - Well, I didn’t know whether I was one of those few! - This is the day I became a seeker, a seeker of truth and nothing less, because she knew that’s where it all starts. - I knew then just how vitally important it was to begin by receiving the love for the truth and nothing less. - And by the time I was eleven…
     I began serious meditation in the fall of 1964. - I knew I had to learn the breath, but the first thing I knew I had to do was hogtie and gag my imagination and throw it in the back seat to be ignored and I put true perception in the front seat with me (to avoid any otherwise confusion). - And even at that I knew to put whatever perceptions I came across (however powerful) on a shelf to be considered after meditation.
     I started out with forty-five minutes to an hour listening very, very closely with all my senses to what was going on electro-chemically at the top and bottom only of my breath. - (It never crossed my mind even once that there was any real control at all in any kind of overt, muscular control of the breath to any extent, degree or manner as every other “teacher of meditation” uses I have ever come across.) - I just listened more and more closely to the top and bottom of my breath and what was going on there electro-chemically, very briefly twice per breath.
     By the time I was fifteen my meditations had lengthened to five or six hours. - Early on during those four years I learned the electro-chemical language of the breath and began consciously controlling it. - From meditation to meditation I was slowly drawing those two points of the breath closer and closer together, while paradoxically the length of my outer, frontal breath got longer and longer. - You know how you lose track of time in meditation? - Well, I knew my middle breath during meditation had become very long, but I couldn’t tell just how long.
     So, I set up a clock where I could open one eye at the beginning of two successive breaths to check the time and subtract the difference. - To my surprise that middle breath, at age fifteen, took forty-five minutes. - Well, I knew then that my outer, completely controlled, frontal breath couldn’t possibly be doing the breathing anymore. - I knew I had discovered something very, very important because…
     I was completely hyperventilated. - My blood was completely saturated with oxygen to the point that my body was tingling throughout from head to toe. - If I had not learned to remain alert two years before I might have passed out, but there was no danger of the frontal autonomic breath not taking over again if needed. - (I had also learned by age thirteen how to meditate lying down on my back without falling asleep, remaining completely focused and alert.)
     There was only one thing that could have happened, that I had innately awakened what I called then the sub-autonomic breath. - (It wasn’t until two or three years later that I learned it was called pranayama.) - I realized then how it had happened. - When I had finally brought the two points of the breath completely together it had transformed into a concurrent breath, in and out at the same time. - And whether the, now completely controlled, frontal breath was on inhale or exhale made no difference, because it was taking way too long to be doing the breathing then.
     I was constantly drawing in only oxygen at the same time as I was constantly releasing carbon dioxide and moisture. - It was no wonder that I was so completely hyperventilated because I was constantly drawing in only oxygen whether my chest was rising or falling.
     And then it dawned on me that I had learned, unconsciously and nonverbally, all there was to know about the etheric and prana. - I went from epiphany to epiphany, each one more powerful than the last one. - And I learned some very specific things that opened up to my consciousness in full revelation of what I had innately achieved.
     I learned that prana had certain powerful, though limited, properties. - First I realized that prana (qi or chi) is the etheric counterpart of oxygen. - I also learned that it could be mentally directed, concentrated, made to flow, etc., as any martial artist will tell you. - And I learned that where prana is directed, oxygen automatically follows. - Then it also dawned on me that I wasn’t just drawing in oxygen constantly, but instead I was constantly drawing in only prana, which was automatically being followed by oxygen. - Thus it is called pranayama, pranic breath.
     Now about the etheric, what is it? - The etheric is a pseudo-dimension (not perpendicular) which completely encompasses and suffuses throughout the first five dimensions (space/time and where black holes exist). - The etheric is not part of space/time or the fifth dimension, rather it is entirely superimposed on them and accessible in meditation from anywhere in the first five dimensions through learning to direct prana, which is its main and only constituent, except for consciousness (beyond awareness and otherwise perception through the senses). - See my other posting here about Point-consciousness Meditation - Also, if needed, click here to see my vital, starter-posting about Structure & Dimensions.
     During my first four years of meditation from eleven to fifteen I exclusively concentrated and focused on the electro-chemical language of my frontal autonomic breath. - And the focus and concentration I learned helped me take the next few steps in meditation. - From fifteen to seventeen is when I originated Point-consciousness Meditation which became the core of all meditation. - It was never intended to be any peripheral type by any means, and became its very core.

[Caution: If you commit yourself (your life) to meditation as I have, remember you will need just as much time to get to the middle of your meditation as it will take to slowly hand your conscious control of the frontal breath back to the frontal autonomic system. - So pace yourself during your meditations.]

--RK, 3:59pmEST, 2/14/2015