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A rope hanging down to earth

One of the crucial facets in the study of breath with Floris van Pallandt was Hazrat Inayat Khan’s division of breath into dense and fine. The dense and audible breath exercises strained the nerves and lungs and helped to develop them and the health of the physical body. But in spiritual development unless the breath be made fine it cannot penetrate through the important centres in the body and cannot reach far enough into the innermost parts of one’s life.

He often referred to breath as a bridge between God and man, a rope hanging down to Earth, attached to the Heavens. A rope with the help of which one can climb. In his opinion there was no mystical cult in which breath is not given the greatest importance in spiritual progress. Once a man has touched the depths of his own being with the help of the breath then it becomes easy for him to become one with all that exists on Earth and in Heaven. Breath is the mystery; in it is hidden the secret of life. Breath proves the existence of the life unseen. Breath is audible and at the same time inaudible. Breath is visible and at the same time invisible. It is a certain degree of the activity of the breath and the capacity through which it is acting which makes the breath audible. This shows that there exists something of which we are conscious, the source of which no one knows, which is active every moment of the day, on the model of which the mechanism of nature and art is made. No one can explain whence it came into this mortal body, and no one can say whither it goes when it leaves this body of clay. One can only say that something living came and kept this mortal body alive and left it, proving that the same body which once was thought to be alive, was not really alive, but was itself the life. This proves to the intellect, even those devoid of faith, that there is some source from whence life comes and that it returns to again.

One of the bits of advice George Gurdjieff gave to his students was that if they came across a teaching or even a phrase that resonated with them, to repeat it three times, sometimes aloud. The following is a statement of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s that I believe is worthy of just that: ‘Man’s true self is the part of his being which knows itself to exist, which is conscious of itself. When that self takes breath as its vehicle instead of the body, then it soars upward toward the utmost heights, toward that goal which is the source and origin of all beings.’