102 - Elemental Breaths:  Fire and Air

Fire

The next baptism is the transmutation of fire into light. Breathe in through the mouth and out through the nose. Identify yourself with the flame that is sucking in air from the environment. There is a tremendous demand of the flame in you, combustion that is going to draw the energy from the environment, or at least enhance the convergence of the air energy of the environment. We are in a continual state of combustion. Otherwise we wouldn't have temperature. This is the effect of phosphorescence rather than fluorescence that takes place when we draw in light and transmit light from the environment. (Both are called bioluminescence.)

As you breathe in, think of a flame that starts burning at the bottom of your spine. You may think of the different colors of the aura in a sequence corresponding to the spectrum: red at the bottom of the spine, terracotta in the second chakra, orange in the solar plexus, and then gold in the heart, green in the throat center, blue in the eyes (actually there is a chakra in the eyes between the two eyebrows) violet in the pituitary gland, and then colorless light in the fontanel above the head. So traditionally one says that fire is transmuted into light. In fact scientifically you can say that one is transmuting infrared light into ultraviolet. Passing by the whole range of colors. If you look into a flame, you'll see that indeed you'll discern red at the bottom of the flame. Then you'll see some orange color, then yellowish, and then gold. You find green and blue at the top. You'll find all these colors in the flame in that sequence. So by imagining those different colors, which are just the way we perceive different frequencies, you will be enhancing what is called transmutation of fire into light, phosphorescence into fluorescence. Fluorescence is a different process than phosphorescence. Phosphorescence is combustion of matter. Fluorescence you are drawing light from the environment and you are transforming it (not merely boomeranging it back again) in the cells of your body and you're re-emitting it again.

Now in advanced practice, you continue with the movement upwards above your head. In the practice of cacina, where you're getting into the reflex of physical light, and the reflex of the reflex and so forth, upwards. These are different levels of light which Hildegard de Bingen refers to in her testimonies of her experiences in meditation. These levels of light will help you reach samadhi because they correspond to planes beyond the existential ones, as Buddha says, beyond existence, beyond consciousness, and beyond existence and non-existence, and beyond consciousness and non-consciousness. Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan does give the practice of imagining a rainbow above the head. But the colors are not what we understand by colors that are visible to our eyes.

Now if you pursue this further, you would be holding your breath after inhaling and discovering the luminous intelligence at the apex of your being. We do that in the more advanced breathing practices but not in this one. There is no holding of the breath at all. However when you exhale through the nose, you'll notice the effect of what we might call higher qualities of light over the lower qualities of light. I don't like those words, higher and lower, but it's to be found in the Quran, light upon the light. This is the way the light of those higher planes which Hildegard speaks about does permeate, does infiltrate into the light of your aura, and has the effect of transforming it, in fact transfiguring it.

Now the description Murshid gives of the fiery person is like a cracker. So it just takes a match to make that person really explode with a lot of anger, and of course it can be very destructive. On the other hand people with this quality are very truthful and cannot stand dishonesty and are ready to sacrifice themselves for what they believe. Therefore I think of Shams-i-Tabriz who said, "Enough of metaphor. I want burning, burning, burning." It bypasses the mind and all of its justification.

Of course it brings about a radical change in you. Perhaps the baptism of the earth didn't get rid of a lot of things that need to be put aside before you can reach your goal of perfection. Neither was water able to wash it away, but the fire will certainly be able to do it. The fire is destructive because it is indiscriminate, and there is no way of controlling it, so it's very difficult to control. You'll find that a fire person is always looking for an air person, a vital need, and the air person gets vamped by the fire person. The fire person will of course bring confusion in the mind of the air person, will bring doubt in their thinking because the fire person always questions the thinking, the assumptions of people.

You may see that you also have that element in yourself. The earth or the water may balance it. One can't say it's really balanced by the earth because that combination is volcanic, with eruptions and instability. The earth is very stable, but under the effect of the fire, it can be very badly disturbed. Fire is afraid of water, but will transform water into steam so it doesn't have any action upon it any more. So it's a very traumatic combination. Fire is looking for but when fire is transformed into light, then there is no need of this influx of air any more. In fact then the fuel is ether instead of air which is a very mysterious element. Pir-o-Murshid talks about that cryptically.

So see if you can do this as you breathe in through your mouth. Think of your spine as a chimney and inside there is a flame. At the beginning, you feel the heat of your body, infrared. Then as you move upwards, you sense light, the radiance of your heart. It becomes very subtle light at the level of the throat center, then even the eyes. At the level of the third eye it becomes violet. Just think of violet light. Like an x-ray it has the ability of passing through walls and through your skull. It gives you a kind of penetrating glance. You are able to see into the souls of people. That light above the head would not be called light at all. It's not existential light. It gives you a clue to what we call the celestial spheres.

So that's above the crown center, or beyond it. I must say there's a kind of geographical sense of one's lifting oneself. It's true because one is shifting one's attention from one chakra to the next. But when you get beyond the head do not think it's above somewhere, that the angelic spheres are somewhere up there. The best you could do is to think it is interspersed with we call the physical reality or reality at the physical level. Of course as you exhale, the descent of the Holy Spirit makes quickening easier, but this is illumination rather than quickening. Probably the secret of illumination is the light upon the light of the Quran, because the impact of the light of intelligence, that is a sudden realization, is going to transfigure your whole aura.

Air

Breathe in through the mouth and out through the mouth. Just do it and see how you feel. Perhaps you've noticed that breathing through the mouth and exhaling through the mouth will enhance your need, your yearning for freedom. One's mind jumps to the conclusion that one wants to be free from circumstances. That's why people leave the world to become sannyasins. But that does not necessarily bring freedom. In fact the great science of finding freedom is as Buddha says, "Find freedom in your opinion, in your way of understanding things, in your attachment and your emotions and in your self image." So it's really freedom from being caught in a trap of your personal vantagepoint, and also freedom from the condition that ensues from being trapped in your personal vantagepoint. It's a longing for a whole other dimension, bursting from frustration of being caught in a trap in one's mind, in one's realization, in one's ignorance.

So the trouble is that, if misunderstood, the air element in one is going to make one unreliable, unpredictable, moody. Therefore one's energy is not directed in a congruous, consistent way. On the other hand it certainly encourages creativity and communicating a lot of energy unpredictably, impromptu. The trouble is that a person of the air element is not so much influenced by other people, but by the impulse rising from within. A readiness to experiment with anything might go just too far, so on one hand it could manifest as the greatest virtue and celestial quest, and then on the other hand it could even skirt evil, purely experimentally, out of a kind of curiosity. So it's a paradoxical kind of state that one finds amongst people. Perhaps you can also find it in yourself.

On the other hand, of course, those are the qualities that make for awakening and ultimate freedom from the limitations of earthly conditions. I would say that can happen if the air is directed upwards in what is called an upwind, the kind that allows the eagles and falcons to soar, rather than in the horizontal wind that can be turbulent.

So in the previous practice with light, the winds were converged inwards and born upwards. Incidentally the wazifa for that is of course Ya Nur. Here the best way to direct the air energy is not to converge it and then turn it upwards, but simply to turn it upwards. That's what Buddha does by shifting his attunement to levels beyond the existential level. Then air acts like a Pegasus that carries Bellerophon to the Olympus, although Pegasus cannot fly high enough to reach the Olympus, he imprints upon Bellerophon the momentum that allows Bellerophon to proceed on his own.

That is what you're doing as you breathing in through the mouth, Feel that kind of buoyancy of your need for freedom, drawing you upwards. (Of course "upwards" is metaphoric. You have a sense of freeing yourself from the gravity pull of the earth. But remember that we are briefed now in Sufism to transmute the bodiness, and therefore the earth quality in us, and even the water and fire qualities in us, as we proceed upwards, instead of leaving the body behind. That is the practice of resurrecting the body before dying. You feel that buoyancy. It's what Pir-o-Murshid calls a kind of longing that becomes stronger as you evolve for the unattainable. As Pir-o-Murshid says, "It's like the horizon. It's always beyond whatever you could ever foresee."

At the end of your inhaling, you find you've discovered that level beyond conditioning. Therefore you can see there is ultimately freedom from destiny. You can see that. You see you are not really totally bound by destiny because you are gifted with the greatest of gifts, the gift of divine freedom. That's an incredible discovery because we often ascribe what happens to us to our bad fate. You are discovering free, I think it was Fariduddin Attar who says, "Oh man if you realize that you're free. It is your ignorance of your freedom that is your captivity." So that's what you do as you exhale. You suddenly discover you are free and you didn't know it. It doesn't mean you are free from circumstances. It's a kind of inner freedom, knowing that nothing can affect you and change you and influence you because you are free. Then your relationship with people is going to be as Kahlil Gibran says, "A fresh wind blowing between big trees that do not grow in each other's shade." Now you can dance with joy. You have overcome pain, overcome pain by the power of joy. So God bless you now.
