When your body is healthy, breathing has a different quality. When your body is ill the breathing is ill. When you are perfectly in health you completely forget about breathing. When you are not in perfect health the breathing comes again and again to your notice; something is wrong.

The next step after the perfection of posture is breath control….” This word “breath control” is not good; it is not a right rendering of the word “pranayam.” Pranayam never means breath control. It simply means the expansion of the vital energy. Prana-ayam: prana means the vital energy hidden in breath, and ayam means infinite expansion. It is not “breath control.” The very word “control” is a little ugly, because the very word “control” gives you a feeling of the controller — the will enters. Pranayam is totally different: expansion of vitality breathing in such a way that you become one with the whole’s breathing; breathing in such a way that you are not breathing in your own individual way, you are breathing with the whole.

Pranayam means: to breathe with the whole, not “control of breath”: to breathe with the whole. It is absolutely uncontrolled! If you control how can you breathe with the whole? So to translate pranayam as “breath control” is a misnomer. It is not only incorrect, inadequate, it is certainly wrong. Just the opposite is the case.  To breathe with the whole, to become the breath of the eternal and the whole is pranayam. Then you expand. Then your life energy goes on expanding with trees and mountains and sky and stars. Then a moment comes, the day you become Buddha… you have completely disappeared. Now you no longer breathe, the whole breathes in you. Now your breathing and the whole’s breathing are never apart; they are always together. So much so that it is now useless to say that “this is my breath.”

Pranayam, what has been continuously and wrongly translated as “breath control,” is not control at all. Pranayam is a way of being spontaneous with the universe. It is not a control at all. All control belongs to the ego; otherwise who will control? Ego is the controller, the manipulator. If you understand this, ego will disappear — there is no need to drop it.

Patanjali says the three — stopping inside, stopping outside, stopping suddenly — and there is a fourth which is internal. That fourth has been emphasized by Buddha very much; he calls it “anapana sata yoga.” He says, “Don’t try to stop anywhere. Simply watch the whole process of breath.” The breath coming in — you watch, don’t miss a single point. The breath is coming in — you go on watching. Then there is a stop, automatic stop, when the breath has entered you — watch the stop. Don’t do anything; simply be a watcher. Then the breath starts for the outer journey — go on watching. When the breath is completely out, stops — watch that stop also. Then the breath goes on coming in, going out, coming in, going out — you simply watch. This is the fourth: just by watching you become separate from the breath.

When you are separate from the breath you are separate from the thoughts. In fact breath is the parallel process in the body to thoughts in the mind. Thoughts move in the mind; breath moves in the body. They are parallel forces, two aspects of the same coin. Patanjali also refers to it, although he has not emphasized the fourth. He simply refers to it, but Buddha has completely focused his whole attention on the fourth; he never talks about the three. The whole Buddhist meditation is the fourth.

“The fourth sphere of PRANAYAM” — the witnessing — “which is internal, and it goes beyond the other three.”  But Patanjali is really very scientific. He never uses the fourth, but he says that it is beyond the three. Must be Patanjali didn’t have as beautiful a group of disciples as Buddha had.  Patanjali must have been working with more body oriented people, and Buddha was working with more mind oriented people. He says that the fourth goes beyond the three, but he himself never uses it — he goes on saying all that can be said about yoga. That’s why he is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end: he has not left out a single point. Patanjali’s YOGA SUTRAS cannot be improved.

Pranayam is a way of getting in rhythm with the universe, but you remain outside. You start breathing in such a way, in such a rhythm, that you fall in tune with the whole. Then you are not fighting the whole; you have surrendered. You are no longer an enemy of the whole; you have become a lover. That’s what it means to be a religious man: now he is not in conflict; now he has no private goals to achieve; now he is flowing with existence; now he is in tune with the goal of the whole, if there is any; now he has no individual destiny, the whole’s destiny is his. He is floating with the river, not fighting up current.

When you really float you disappear, because the ego can exist only when it fights. The ego can exist only when there is resistance. The ego can exist only when you have some private goal against the whole. Try to understand this, how the ego exists. People say, “We would like to drop the ego,” and answer is, “If you like to drop the ego you cannot drop it, because who are you to drop? Who is this who is saying,’I would like to drop?’ This is the ego. Now you are fighting with your ego also.”

You may pretend to become humble, you may force humility on yourself, but the ego will exist. You may have been a king, now you may become a beggar, but the ego will exist. It existed as a king: now it will exist as a humble beggar. Your very way of walking — seeing will show it. The way you will move — you will announce it. The way you will talk — you will announce it. You may say, ” I am the most humble man in the world,” that makes no difference. Before, you were the greatest man in the world, now you are the humblest — but you are extraordinary. You are there.

If you start fighting with the ego you will create a subtler ego which is more dangerous, because that subtler ego will be a pious ego. It will pretend to be religious. In the beginning it was at least this-worldly, now it will be that-worldly — greater, powerful, subtle — and the grip will be more dangerous, and it will be difficult to come out of it. You have moved from a smaller danger to a greater one. You are more in the trap. The prison has closed upon you, even in a stronger way.

You cannot drop an illusion, you can only drop a reality — and ego is not real. You cannot drop maya. Illusions cannot be dropped because, in the first place, they are not. You have only to understand, and then they disappear. A dream cannot be dropped. You have just to become aware that this is a dream, and the dream disappears. The ego is the subtlest dream: the dream that I am separate from existence, the dream that I have to achieve some goals against the whole, the dream that I am an individual. The moment you become alert, the dream disappears.

You cannot be against the whole, because you are part of the whole. You cannot float against the whole, because how can you float? It is just as foolish as my own hand trying to go against me. There is no way to go against the whole. There is only one way: to be with the whole.

Even when you are fighting you cannot go against — that is just your imagination. Even when you think that you are moving against the whole or separate from the whole or you have a different dimension of your own, that is just a dream; you cannot do that. It is just like a ripple on the lake thinking to go against the lake: absolutely stupid — not the least possibility there of it ever happening. How can a ripple on the lake move somewhere on its own? It will remain part of the lake. If it is moving somewhere it must be the will of the lake, that’s how it is moving.

When one understands, one knows. One starts laughing that “I was in a great dream — now the dream has disappeared. I am no more. I was the dream and the dreamer, both. Now the whole exists.”

Pranayam creates the situation in which return becomes possible, because now there is nowhere to go. The fight has stopped. The enemy disappears. Now you start floating towards your own being — and that is not a going, really, that is a floating. If you stop fighting, if you stop going outward, you will start floating inward. That’s natural.