Consciousness and creative expression

Jan 27, 2010, 11.00am IST
ANAGHA HUNNURKAR.


Pranayam means taking control of ‘life’ and it includes all facets of the body, not just physiological but also the internal aspects, the intellect and beyond.
Pranayam, as the name suggests, is food for all our five physiological systems. Prana is responsible for the beating of the heart and breathing. Prana enters the body through breath and is sent to every cell through the circulatory system. Attributed to the function of breathing, it is also responsible for the system that controls all sense perceptions of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling of the stimuli received from the outer world.

Apana literally means ‘eject’. It is responsible for the elimination of waste products from the body through the lungs and excretory systems. It is the prana that is responsible for all things thrown out of the body.


Vyana is the power by which nourishment received through digestive forces is circulated to all parts of the body through the blood stream.

Samana is for the expansion and contraction processes of the body, the voluntary muscular system. It regulates digestion. It is responsible for digestion and the repair and manufacture of new cells and growth. Samana also includes the heat regulating processes of the body. Auras are projections of this current. With meditation one can see auras of light around every being. Yogis who do special practice on samana can produce a blazing aura at will.

Udana stimulates the internal functions of the body including the escape of prana (death). It is also responsible for producing sounds through the vocal apparatus, as in speaking, singing, laughing and crying. Also, it represents the conscious energy required to produce vocal sounds corresponding to the intent of the being. Hence control on udana gives the higher centres total control over the body. This is the prana that helps one progress to higher realms.


The panch prana are responsible for the manifest form of ‘life’ in a being. The panch prana nourishes the body with food and air. The mind-intellect-bliss sheaths of the body are known as the panch kosha. Through pranayam one is able to calm the mind. When the mind is being elevated through meditation pranas play a leading role, like that of an engine. When the mind is at rest, one’s concentration improves manifold resulting in a focused mind and through intellect one can connect to the soul. This connection is with the cosmic Divine and this helps creativity bloom. We have come across examples where the person who created a piece of literature was himself amazed to read it as his own. Creative people admit that they were in a trance, sort of possessed when they created the piece. Be it artists like Leonardo da Vinci, musicians like Beethoven, scientists like Thomas Edison or social thinkers like Mahatma Gandhi, they have all related such an experience.
After the Mahabharata war, when Krishna was about to return to Dwarka, Arjuna requested him to repeat the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna had narrated the Gita, in the midst of a battlefield and Arjuna conceded that in his state of remorse, he could not fathom the full import of the Gita. So he wanted to hear the Gita once again in peacetime. Krishna expressed his inability to do that. He said that at that time, he was ‘yogyukta’ and it was in that state that the Gita flowed. Krishna was an avatar of Vishnu and so was no ordinary mortal. Yet he expressed the need of being a ‘yogyukta’ to be connected to the consciousness to be able to express himself creatively.