Gita 04.29 – Infuse pranayama with the imagery of yajna

Bhagavad Gita 4.29 apane juhvati pranam prane panam tatha pare prana panagati rudhva pranayam parayanah apare niyatahara pranam praneshu juhvati so apane juhvati pranam apane so now in the, within the concept of prana there are different kinds of airs so normally we can't arbitrarily or artificially transport or extrapolate or transplant one concept from one system of thought to another system of thought so for example the prana is a concept within the analysis of the body that is given within the yogic school of thought within the modern scientific way of looking at the body there is the concept of oxygen which is vital for breathing and living now the idea that oxygen is taken in by the air by the, through the nose way, through the respiratory tract and then through the process of passing through the lungs and the heart the oxygenated blood is sent throughout the body so here the, this is a particular vision of how the body operates there is another vision which is given where it is understood that the air is not just something which is drilled in and out from the respiratory tract that is definitely there but beyond that there are different kinds of airs, subtle airs which, subtle means not necessarily in terms of they are made of subtle matter but rather they are not just something which we can perceive so easily with our gross senses so apane juhvati pranam prane panam dathapare so apane juhvati pranam the idea is that apana is generally considered to be the outward going air prana, sorry apana is the air that goes downward and prana is the air that goes outwards so basically we breathe through the nose so the air that goes downwards is the air that goes into the body the air that goes upwards is the air that goes outwards through the nose so now pranayam is one of the foundational limbs of the path of yoga so prane panam dathapare prana panagati rudhva so here there are basically three stages and we will not go much into the technicalities of things over here because the focus here is on the exposition of yoga itself there is an assumption that there is knowledge of yoga and Krishna is simply talking about how the vision of yajna can be made to pervade the conception of yoga so we will focus on that principle rather than the specifics of the processes so actually there are terms, technical terms like puraka, rechaka and kumbhaka and they all have their specific meanings, Shila Prabhupada talks about it Patanjali Yoga Sutra also talks about this essentially they involve regulating the bodily air in different ways Krishna, we can follow Krishna's example over here and keep things simple Krishna does not introduce that terminology over here because his focus is something very clear his focus is not to give a elaborate or even a systematic analysis of the process of yoga his process is to show how the vision of yoga vision of yajna can pervade even the process of yoga so the essential point which he is talking about here is now in any sacrifice there has to be some something where the some yajna kunda or some object where the sacrifice is offered and there has to be something to be offered and of course beyond that there is someone who has to offer so somewhere to offer, something to offer and someone to offer now in all these activities the someone to offer is the seeker it may be Arjuna or whoever it is but seeker is the person to offer and how is the offering made it is made through the process of yoga, the process of yoga means that normally the yogic shastras will not talk about this in this particular way that means they will not talk about the process of yoga in the mode of analysis in terms of jihuvarthi as it is used over here they will talk about regulate the breath this way so the kumbhaka, rechaka and puraka are terms which are used not in the sense of yagic terminology or yagic imagery but Krishna is using that imagery over here because there is a particular context and there is a particular purpose in which this discussion is happening that's why what he says over here rather than simply saying that okay slow down the breathing regulate the breathing, stop the breathing he says apane jihuvarthi pranam so offer the outgoing air inwards, offer the ingoing air outwards and in this way stop the breathing, now this may seem to be very difficult to imagine first of all what exactly do we mean by outgoing and ingoing air we know that air goes in and air goes out definitely, we take in oxygen give out carbon dioxide but the idea that there is some discrete outgoing air and there is some discrete incoming air and both of them can be checked and then offered inwards that is something which is a little difficult to understand that conception of that conception of how the air is offered so we should understand that the focus here is on the yajic imagery that Krishna is utilizing the yajic imagery for his purposes of expounding the glory of yoga, of yajna for expounding the explaining the pervasiveness of yajna, pervasiveness of the principle of yajna, so essentially it is regulating the breath this is a six line verse as contrasted with the normal four lines of the Gita, so we will see that later on there will be a verse 31st verse which will actually be two lines itself, now Prabhupada brings these six lines together because they are one unit of thought and rather than sticking to strict poetic divisions Prabhupada is focusing more on keeping thematic divisions of the verses so poetic divisions are based on length or number of lines where thematic divisions are based on the content of what is spoken so the six lines stand together as one unit of thought and we will see the 31st verse it also stands as one unit of thought so actually the 29th verse itself if we consider four lines then it is talking about the process of pranayama and re-envisioning the process of pranayama as a sacrifice and then in the next two lines there is another sacrifice just talked about some other people they become regulated in their food and by being regulated in their food they offer prana they offer the life air into the life air so now here Krishna is using the word prana can mean two different things prana can refer generically to the principle of life air and within that there are five different kinds of life airs there is prana apanyaan, samaan and udaan so when Krishna uses the word prana in the first four lines then he is using the word prana as a sub-category among these five types of airs and that's why he says offer the outgoing air into the incoming air there prana refers to one sub-category within the five different kinds of life airs whereas the last two lines prana refers to the specific generic rather generic concept of life air and at a very advanced stage of yoga the person who is practicing pranayama can even stop the breathing almost nearly completely and there have been some cases of yogis who have you know all body symptoms have been stopped but still they remained they remained steady they remained alive and they came out of samadhi later so of course the point of this verse is not to try to prove any miracles authenticate the concept of miracles from empirical perspective is entirely different ballgame here the point is that the principle of regulation of breath can also be re-envisioned as a form of sacrifice others they take a regular diet a regulated diet and they offer the life air into itself so the idea is fasting was talked about earlier not in a specific but in a generic sense is tapo yajna so tapo yajna is not necessarily just fasting there can be different kinds of austerities surrounding oneself with fire or sitting under the blazing sun or standing in water or raising one hand and standing like that for a long long time one specific kind of tapo is fasting so some other people so they regulate their diet now there are different kinds of and different levels of fasting we at our level usually think that avoiding grains anikadashi is itself fasting but in the varamayant described in vishwamitra in his earlier life as a king went to meet valmiki rishi so there were some sages who used to live only on breath and there were some others who less austere would live on water and some others would live on fallen leaves so those who live only on air they basically take in air give out air and take in air that's how they sustain themselves now we may feel that is impossible but there have been documented cases of some saintly people who have lived for 60-70 years without taking any food no longer exceptional but the exception also demonstrates the rule to some extent and rather the exception demonstrates not the rule but the principle underlying principle so normally we need a bodily sustenance but if a person is getting a higher sustenance that person doesn't need bodily sustenance so much the important point here is not again to prove something miraculous but the important point is to recognize that the body can be seen as a as a receptacle and the life air is offered into itself the receptacle through which air comes in that is the nose the outgoing air is offered into the ingoing air and in this way the person lives in a form of austerity so the most extreme austere people may just take only air but others they take some regulated food and whenever otherwise they feel hungry they satisfy themselves by offering the outgoing air into the ingoing air essentially the principle of sacrifice can be applied or yajna to the act of fasting also thank you.