Question – Beloved Osho, Yesterday you explained that pranayam is the method which expands the bio-energy and pratyahar is to return to the original source. First it is expansion, then it is return to the source. Why is it so?
Osho : Because life is made of contradiction and there is no other way for life to exist. Breath goes out, then goes in – did you ever ask why it is so? When the breath has to go in then why is it taken out? But if the breath remains in and does not come out then the result will be death and not life. If the breath remains out and does not go in, even then it will be death and not life.
Life is movement, movement between two opposites. It is like the flowing of a river between two banks. Breath goes out, goes in; comes in then goes out. Every moment it is pranayam and every moment it is pratyahar. When breath goes out it is pranayam; when the breath goes in, it is pratyahar.
If your consciousness gets used to this type of rhythm, if this type of movement goes on in your consciousness, if like this you expand outwards unlimited, if like this you reach the emptiness inside you – if there is emptiness within and unlimited expanse outside – if you flow constantly between these two banks, only then you will become godly, because the divine is like this: empty within, whole outside.
This whole existence is the divine’s pranayam. Creation is pranayam and destruction of the world is pratyahar. When the breath goes out, creation takes place; the breath goes in, the destruction of the world takes place.
If you can understand it properly then you will see this everywhere in life. Birth is pranayam, death is pratyahar. In birth you expand, in death you shrink, you return, and life is in between the two banks of birth and death. Birth is not life, death is also not life; that which is flowing between birth and death, the unknown which is dancing in the beat, which is engrossed in the rhythm, that is life.
Mind tends to be logical and life is contradictory. Life is illogical. Those who wanted to know it through logic lost their way and never attained. Logic will say that pranayam and pratyahar are contradictory, tell us only one; knowledge and devotion are contradictory, tell us only one; emptiness and wholeness are contradictory, tell us only one.
But remember that life is always contradictory because life is greater than the contradictions; life is able to absorb the contradictions. Logic is very small, it is the method of the small mind so it can absorb only one and not the contrary. The opposite therefore is left outside.
That is why when Buddha said shunya, emptiness, it does not mean that the whole was not included in it. Buddha’s emptiness included the whole. But followers of Buddha said that if it is emptiness then it cannot be the whole. When Shankara said whole, the emptiness was included in it. But Shankara’s followers said if it is the whole how can it be empty?
This is how the follower misses the point, because the follower lives by logic and by mind, and those who know have known the contradictions together. But they also feel difficulty in expressing the contradiction because they have to explain it to you. If the contradictions are said at the same time then you think that these are inconsistent things. Your mind goes on trying to make life logical and calculative. But life is not a calculation. Life is a flood which flows with such a force that it breaks all boundaries and limits of arithmetic. Life is a flood.