Breath and Thought

Relation between Breath and Thought

The breath, or Prana, is intimately connected with thought and mental activity.¹ Sri Aurobindo notes that Pranayama, the practice of breath regulation, sets the Pranic currents free and removes dullness from the brain, allowing higher consciousness to descend.² His personal experience at Baroda demonstrated that practising Pranayama for several hours daily led to an illumined and powerful mind, significantly increasing poetic output and enhancing memory.³ This indicates that the Pranic currents sustain mental activity, and changes induced by Pranayama alter the brain, removing obstructions that hinder higher thought communication.⁴

Furthermore, the cessation of thought is observed to lead to the cessation of breath; the entire kumbhak (breath retention) effortlessly establishes itself when thought ceases.⁵ Conversely, when thought resumes, breathing also becomes active again.⁵ However, a more advanced state is described where thought can flow without the resumption of in-breathing and out-breathing, signifying a true conquest of Prana.⁵ The Mother also mentions that the body’s dependence on breathing, which had a prominent role, is expected to change significantly, implying a future where beings might directly absorb energies without relying on the physical act of respiration.⁶ This advanced state is akin to a “true breathing“ that involves drawing universal energy into every cell of the body, transcending mere lung respiration.⁷

Relation between Breath and Sentence or Clause (Speech)

Speech is primarily a mental faculty, with its center located at the root of the throat, serving as an expression of thought, emotions, and the vital being.⁸ The vital breath propels speech, while Agni, the secret will-force, shapes it.⁹

The sources suggest that powerful actions, including the utterance of speech, can occur when one is in a state of suspended breath. For instance, the Upanishads indicate that it is “when one neither breatheth out nor breatheth in that one giveth utterance to Speech,” and similarly for chanting Rik, Sama, and Udgitha, or performing forceful actions like smiting fire from tinder or bending a strong bow.¹⁰ This implies that a concentrated state of vital energy, free from the ordinary demands of respiration, can facilitate potent and direct expression.

However, the act of putting experience into words inherently involves mental intervention, which often diminishes the original truth or reality of the experience.¹¹ The Mother states that words, when rigid, miss the mark and lose the fluidity of the truth, leading to a “mentalized” Inconscient that is rigid, hard, and narrow.¹² She laments that expressing deep experiences requires a minimum of mentalization, which is difficult because the body’s direct learning resists such formulation, perceiving it as “drawing geometrical designs with life”.¹³ While poetry and artistic expression can be “much truer, much nearer to the truth” than rigid mental expressions,¹⁴ words inherently “reduce, limit, harden, take away the suppleness and true strength—the life” of direct thought.¹⁵

Despite these limitations, words are seen as vehicles for something beyond words, especially for those with a sufficiently developed and precise instrument.¹⁶ The “Word” (Vak) itself is considered to have a creative and expressive power.¹⁷ A powerfully thought-out idea creates a strong vibration that can be sensed, with the word acting as an intermediary.¹⁸ The ideal state involves transmitting the essential idea, or even a higher state of consciousness, directly through vibration, making words secondary, serving only to draw attention to the vibration.¹⁹ This is akin to the “gift of tongues” where the precise vibration of vision can be transmitted directly to others’ brains, translating into their own language automatically, even if the speaker uses a different language.²⁰

Relation between Knowledge and the Gaps between Breath (Silence)

The attainment of true knowledge is intimately linked with the silencing of the mind and the cessation of thought, often manifesting as “gaps between breath“ or stillness. Sri Aurobindo’s own experience highlights that his major spiritual experience came “by the exclusion and silencing of all thought,” where things were known directly through “pure consciousness“ without concepts or words.²¹

Silence, defined as freedom from thoughts and vital movements, where the whole consciousness is still, is crucial for higher faculties to function optimally.²² In a mind that is “vacant but not inert,” intuitions have a chance to enter “alive and whole”.²³ It is in this profound calm and voiceless stillness that “right knowledge comes“.²⁴ The ordinary human mind, particularly the “physical mind,” is often described as “stupid” or “imbecile”,²⁵ and its continuous activity hinders true knowledge.²⁶ The transformation process specifically doesn’t call for the mind’s intervention because the mind tends to “befuddle everything”.²⁷

The “Consciousness above” is described as a witness that sees but is not influenced by anything, and does not “receive” in the way the body does.²⁸ Answers can descend in words, but the “consciousness of the answer” itself is always present, higher up, and “doesn’t budge”.²⁸ This “pure experience” holds a content of truth and reality that “disappears as soon as the mind intervenes” or is put into words, suggesting that knowledge without mental constructs is of a much higher quality.²⁹

The Mother’s ongoing experience emphasizes that the body is learning a new way of knowing: by consciousness, not by thought.³⁰ She observes that “consciousness is replacing thought,” and that while thought “moves,” consciousness is “open” and “offered”.³¹ This shift from mental governance to spiritual governance by consciousness is described as making a “tremendous difference,” multiplying the body’s possibilities significantly, and freeing it from rigid laws of nature, time, and necessities.³² This learning process involves “microscopic studies of the phenomena of consciousness independent of mental intervention,” revealing a “flavor of true reality” that words cannot capture.³³

Ultimately, the goal is to replace the “mental government of intelligence by the government of a spiritualized consciousness“.³⁴ This involves a “change of government“ within the being, where the supreme Consciousness directly impels all movements and activities, continuous and detailed, without the intermediary of thought.³⁵ This allows for a direct, lived understanding of creation and reality that the mind cannot grasp.³⁶

^{- Narendra Gehlaut (India)}

1. "It is the Pranic currents which sustain mental activity... The Prana is not only a force for the action of physical and vital energy, but supports also the mental and spiritual action... It is in the Vedic image the steed and conveyance of the embodied mind and will, vāhana." Sri Aurobindo 
2. Pranayama "sets the Pranic currents free and removes dullness of the brain so that the Higher Consciousness can come down... My own experience, on the contrary, is that the brain becomes illumined." Sri Aurobindo 
3. "When I was practising Pranayama at Baroda, I used to do it for about five hours in the day... I found that the mind began to work with great illumination and power. I used to write poetry in those days. Before the Pranayama practice, usually I wrote five to eight lines per day... After the practice I could write 200 lines within half an hour... Formerly my memory was dull. But after this practice I found that when the inspiration came I could remember all the lines in their order and write them down correctly at any time." Sri Aurobindo 
4. "The cause of dullness of the brain is some obstruction in it which does not allow the higher thought to be communicated to it. When this obstruction is removed the higher mental being is able to communicate its action easily to the brain." As soon as the activity of Prana in the body becomes even partially quiescent, "the gross physical obstruction... is rarefied and mind becomes more self-luminous". Sri Aurobindo
5. "It is a common experience of the Yogin that when thought ceases, breathing ceases,—the entire kumbhak effected by the Hathayogin with infinite trouble and gigantic effort, establishes itself easily and happily,—but when thought begins again, the breath resumes its activity. But when the thought flows without the resumption of the inbreathing and outbreathing, then the Prana is truly conquered." Sri Aurobindo, The Upanishads and Other Vedic Texts 
6. "Evidently, what will change very much, which had become very important, was breathing. It is upon this that this being greatly depended. Yes, probably it absorbs the energies directly. Yes. But probably there will be intermediary beings that will not last very long, like the intermediary beings that were between the chimpanzee and man. But I do not know, something must happen that has not happened till now." The Mother, Mother's Agenda & Collected Works of the Mother 
7. "The true breathing is not merely the inspiration and expiration from the lungs which is merely the mechanism of it, but a drawing in of the universal energy of Prana into every cell of the body." Sri Aurobindo 
8. "The centre of speech is at the root of the throat and speech is, really speaking, a mental faculty. It tries to communicate the result of thinking and reasoning through the medium of speech. It serves as an expression of thought, and it is also used by the emotions and the vital being for their expression." Sri Aurobindo 
9. "The force of the vital breath enables us to bring up and speed outward from the body this speech that we use... It is propelled by Vayu, the life-breath; it is formed by Agni, the secret will-force and fiery shaping energy in the mind and body." Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads 
10. "Therefore 'tis when one neither breatheth forth nor breatheth down that one giveth utterance to Speech... 'tis when one neither breatheth out nor breatheth in that one uttereth the Rik... 'tis when one neither breatheth out nor breatheth in that one chanteth the Sama... Hence whatsoever actions there be that are of might & forcefulness as smiting out fire from the tinder or leaping a great barrier or bending a stark & mighty bow, it is when one neither breatheth out nor breatheth in that one doeth these." Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads 
11. The act of putting experience into words diminishes its truth. "The pure experience holds a content of truth, of reality, which disappears as soon as the mind intervenes. There is a flavor of true reality which totally eludes expression." All mental expression can seem artificial, like "a lifeless film." The Mother, Mother's Agenda & Collected Works of the Mother 
12. "All words ... miss the mark, that’s never quite it... A rather vague, poetic or artistic expression is much truer, much nearer to the truth—something hazy, nebulous, undefined. Something not concretized like a rigid mental expression—this rigidity that the mind has introduced right down into the Inconscient... A 'mentalized' Inconscient, as it were. All this rigidity, this hardness, this narrowness, this fixity—a FIXITY—comes from the presence of the mind in creation." The Mother 
13. "To express, there must be a minimum of mentalisation, and that is very difficult because it is the body that is busy having all kinds of experiences and is learning, but as soon as it tries to express itself, it says, 'No, it is not true, it is not so.'... It is like drawing geometrical designs with life. That is its impression." The Mother, Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 11 
14. "A rather vague, poetic or artistic expression is much truer, much nearer to the truth—something hazy, nebulous, undefined. Something not concretized like a rigid mental expression". The Mother, Mother's Agenda 
15. "Thought which is projected directly is much more powerful than that expressed through words. Words reduce, limit, harden, take away the suppleness and true strength—the life." The Mother, Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 6 
16. "Words serve only as a vehicle for something that is beyond words and can be expressed without words for those who have a sufficiently developed and precise instrument... The ideal condition... is to transmit the essential idea and even something that is higher than the idea: the state... directly through the vibration." The Mother, Collected Works of the Mother 
17. In Vedic times, the "Word" (Vak) was considered creative. "For all sound has a creative & expressive power; each activity of sound in existence creates its corresponding physical & mental forms... But human speech informed with mind is the highest creative & expressive power of sound. It tends to bring about in life & being that which it expresses in thought." Sri Aurobindo & The Mother 
18. "When the thought is strongly thought out, there is a powerful vibration and it is that which is sensed; the word is only an intermediary means. You can develop this sense to the point of having a direct mental contact with a minimum of words or even without any words at all; but then you must have a very great force of thought-concentration." The Mother, Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 5 
19. "The ideal condition... is to transmit the essential idea and even something that is higher than the idea: the state—the state of consciousness, of knowledge, of perception—directly through the vibration... words serve only to draw the attention of the other consciousness... so that it may be attentive to the vibration and receive it". The Mother, Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 9 
20. The "gift of tongues" illustrates the power of thought independent of words. "You project the vibration of your vision... To attract the attention of the audience you pronounce some words—any language at all... but your vision and your emanation are precise enough to be transmitted directly to the brain of the others, and in their brain to be automatically translated into their own language. So, outwardly, you are speaking in French or in English, but each one understands in his own language." The Mother, Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 9 
21. "My first major experience—radical and overwhelming... came after and by the exclusion and silencing of all thought—there was, first, what might be called a spiritually substantial or concrete consciousness of stillness and silence, then the awareness of some sole and supreme Reality... this was all apparent to a spiritual perception and essential and impersonal sense and there was not the least concept or idea... for all concept or idea was hushed or rather entirely absent in the absolute stillness. These things were known directly through the pure consciousness and not through the mind, so there was no need of concepts or words or names." Sri Aurobindo 
22. "Silence means freedom from thoughts and vital movements—when the whole consciousness is quite still... The stillness of the mind is the first requisite for discovering, distinguishing and perfecting the action of this higher element in the psychology of man." Sri Aurobindo 
23. "In a vacant mind, vacant but not inert (that is important), intuitions have a chance of getting in alive and whole. But don’t run away with the idea that all that comes into an empty mind... will be intuitive. Anything, any blessed kind of idea, can come in. One has to be vigilant and examine the credentials of the visitor." Sri Aurobindo 
24. "The activity of the mind must cease, the chitta be purified, a silence fall upon the restlessness of Prakriti, then in that calm, in that voiceless stillness illumination comes upon the mind... Right knowledge comes." Sri Aurobindo, The Upanishads and Other Vedic Texts 
25. The Mother describes the physical mind as "truly completely stupid" and "absolutely imbecile." The Mother, Collected Works of the Mother 
26. "So long as it [the physical mind] is working you are always led to do what you should not do, to have particularly the bad reaction—the reaction that helps the forces of disorder and obscurity instead of counteracting them." The Mother, Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 11 
27. "The transformation is the only thing that doesn't call for the mind's intervention: the mind befuddles everything." The Mother 
28. "This is very interesting: the Consciousness (above) is influenced by nothing; it's a witness, it sees, but it doesn't receive... Now, when I am asked a question, nothing, nothing responds, and then all of a sudden the answer comes (gesture of descent) in words... The consciousness of the answer is there (gesture above), it doesn't budge, it's always there, this consciousness, but the materialization of it is very fleeting." The Mother, Mother's Agenda — 1970: July 11, 1970 
29. "The pure experience holds a content of truth, of reality, which disappears as soon as the mind intervenes... The phenomena of consciousness that aren't expressed in words are ALWAYS of a much higher quality, much higher." The Mother, Mother's Agenda, Vol. 7 
30. The body is learning a new way to know, not by thought, but by consciousness. "It began with a state of perfection, but an unconscious perfection, and that the creation must pass from that state of unconscious perfection to a state of conscious perfection... It's a LIVED understanding. And that the mind can't have—it can't." The Mother, Mother's Agenda & Collected Works of the Mother 
31. "Now I see very well, very clearly—very clearly: consciousness is replacing thought... thought is something which goes this way (gesture of whirling), it moves, it moves... consciousness is something that is like this (gesture of hands opened, offered upward). I cannot explain." The Mother, Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 11 
32. "At bottom, the problem almost boils down to this: to replace the mental government of intelligence by the government of a spiritualized consciousness... it makes a tremendous difference, to the point of multiplying the body's possibilities a hundredfold... When it's governed by the Spirit and the Consciousness that gives it an incomparable possibility and flexibility! And that's what will give it the capacity to prolong its life". The Mother, Mother's Agenda, Vol. 8 
33. "All this is like microscopic studies of the phenomena of consciousness independent of mental intervention. The need to use words to express ourselves brings in that mental intervention, but in the experience it doesn't exist. And it's very interesting because the pure experience holds a content of truth, of reality, which disappears as soon as the mind intervenes. There is a flavor of true reality which totally eludes expression for that reason." The Mother, Mother's Agenda, Vol. 7 
34. "At bottom, the problem almost boils down to this: to replace the mental government of intelligence by the government of a spiritualized consciousness." The Mother, Mother's Agenda, Vol. 8 
35. The transformation begins with a "change of government": "instead of a personal, inner being governing, it's directly the Consciousness, the supreme Consciousness... Instead of obeying a personal being, it's under the Influence of and directly IMPELLED by the Consciousness... All that is taking place without the intermediary of thought." The Mother, Mother's Agenda 
36. "The impression is that only the body—receptive, open, at any rate partially transformed—is capable of having the understanding; the understanding of the creation of what we call the creation: why and how, the two things. And it's not at all something thought, not something felt: it's something lived, and that's the only way to know... It's lived. It's a consciousness." The Mother, Mother's Agenda, Vol. 10