Prana is the stuff of dream and reality
When you deeply understand the working of prana, you will have the clarity not only to handle your own states of waking and sleep, but to understand and handle the external reality as well.
When you start experiencing the subtle movements of prana, you make a shocking discovery: prana is responsible for creating the world as you see it!
Prana is the energy of desire, and it is desire which creates and sustains your world. Not only your waking world, your dream world too is created by prana. After all, your dreams are only expressions of your own desires. Even your nightmares are made of prana, because fear is nothing but negative desire. When you have a desire which might not be fulfilled, you experience fear.
So it is prana that creates both your reality and your dreams!
Whatever you call reality and whatever you call dream are both made of prana. This is what Sankara means when he says this entire world is maya, an illusion. Each individual manufactures his private world, his 'reality', according to his conscious and unconscious desires.
Not only your dreams, even your waking world is a pure illusion.
Now your mind will ask, 'If even my waking world is a dream, why should I act? Why should I do anything?' Why should you not act? If you are dreaming, why should you not do anything? Understand, you ask this question because you take action too seriously! You relate your action with something you need to attain. You become attached to an action because of the result you expect from it.
Be very clear: when you act out of the deep understanding that there is nothing to gain or lose in action, your actions will arise from a center of pure energy inside you.
Because of this, suddenly you will have the tremendous energy needed to direct both your life and your dreams.
Not only that, you will be totally relaxed and in control, even when you are in action.
As of now, you are just a victim of life. You can't even control your own dreams! Can you dream what you want? You can't! You can't control a single incident in your dream. As of now, either you go through the whole dream or you can try to get out of it by waking up. You can't control the dream itself.
If you can bring more awareness to the dream state, the awareness in the waking state will also increase. When the awareness in the living state increases, naturally you will be able to control death.
The person who is aware in his dreams will simply stop dreaming. The person who is aware in his deep sleep will simply stop the cycle of birth and death. He will not take one more body.
When I use the word 'death', I don't mean that you will commit suicide!
When I say that when you become aware of life, you enter into death, it does not mean that you will commit suicide. What I mean is, you will stop living in the normal way. You will stop living with an identity. You will be reborn.
That is why enlightened Masters are called dead people!
Actually, enlightened people are already dead, as far as the world is concerned. Because they no longer carry an identity, they are not alive in the way you understand. Their life cannot be called 'life' anymore. If at all you want to use some term to describe their life, the only term you can use is 'death'! They are not alive as you think.
They are no longer tortured by the things of life.
Life is like a game or a drama to them. It cannot penetrate them and disturb their inner space.
Watching the breath is a powerful and effective meditation. It has led more people to enlightenment than any other meditation. Watching the breath tremendously increases awareness. As awareness increases, inner awakening happens, and bliss follows.
Understand, your breath is entwined with your mind. Your mind is nothing but a constant movement between the past and the future. Your breath holds the key to drop your mind and enter into higher planes of Consciousness. It holds the key to enter into a space of pure awareness, where the mind is no more and only the Being exists.
As you watch your breath, you realize the constant movement of life and death in you. Every inhalation is life, every exhalation is death!
And you deeply understand one more thing: in the gap between the two, in the neutral space where neither life or death exists, still you exist, YOU ARE!
You experience yourself as the silent space that is beyond the inward-moving breath and the outward-moving breath. You are the pure consciousness that is beyond both, your inner-world identity and your outer-world identity.
Once you have experienced yourself as pure consciousness, even when you are using your identity, you are free of it! When you know you can fly out if it anytime you want, your identity is no longer a trap, it is just a swing on which you can swing whenever you want. Whenever you want, you can play with your identity. Whenever you feel like it, you can simply drop it and fly.
When you watch your breath with total awareness, it can become a key to liberate you from your very identity!