Breath and mind are deeply connected
Your breathing and your thoughts are very closely associated with one another. The number of thoughts you are having each second is directly related to the flow of prana in your system.
Please understand, along with the length, breadth and depth of the prana movement, the thoughts per second also increases or decreases. Breath is the fuel for the mind!
If the prana movement becomes slow, the number of thoughts also goes down. That is why, when you are tense about something, you are asked to take a few deep breaths. When your breath slows down, automatically your thought flow becomes smoother and clearer.
These things you must have observed yourself.
Your entire inner chatter, the flow of thoughts that goes on continuously in your mind, is purely the expression of prana or energy.
Usually the prana flow starts from your navel and moves upwards. By the time it comes to your anahata (heart) area, it becomes narrow, and when it reaches the vishuddhi (throat area), it becomes a thin shaft.
In the throat area, this energy shaft is known as vak, the energy of verbalization. This is where the prana is molded into words, and comes out as words.
If you are carrying worries and samskaras in the navel centre, the prana becomes an alloyed metal, it is not pure prana. Because of the samskara sediment in your navel region, the prana becomes an alloy; it is not pure gold. So the vak will be molded into 18 carat jewellery, not 24 carat jewellery! Your words will be carrying the impurity of your samskaras.
Are you able to understand?
The purity of your verbalization depends directly on your prana flow. If the energy is pure, you won't even radiate it as words, you will radiate it as silence; just a silence.
But the energy will be flowing out.
Breath and mind are simply two sides of the same coin; the same movement called by two names.
Do you know, your breath and your mind both move in a circular manner? When you inhale, air enters your inner space as the incoming breath. Then it takes a turn, and comes out as the outgoing breath.
At the point where the turn takes place, where the incoming breath becomes the outgoing breath, there is a neutral space.
At this point, both your breath and your mind stop for a second! Are you aware of this?
The difficulty is, you are afraid of losing your mind for that one moment! That is why you never keep your awareness in the zone where the prana takes a turn.
If you know how to drive, you can understand that whenever you shift gears, you have to first come to the neutral zone. In the same way, when the incoming breath takes a turn and becomes the outgoing breath, it has to pass through the neutral zone.
You are afraid of this neutral zone, because in this zone you are empty! Because you cannot experience mind in the neutral zone, you don't have any identity.
When you pass through the neutral zone, your breath stops for a moment. When your breath stops, your mind also stops - and when your mind stops, you also stop.
That is why you jump this space, why you do not want to look at this space. Every moment, this is happening to you again and again. Each time your incoming breath takes a turn to become the outgoing breath, or your outgoing breath takes a turn to become the incoming breath, there is a neutral zone. But you are afraid of both these neutral zones, because you don't want to lose your identity.
The biggest fear human beings have is the fear of losing identity. I tell you, even the fear of losing life is not as great a fear as the fear of losing identity. The fear of death itself is because you don't know how you will be after death. If you are clear in some way, you will not have fear. But you don't know what will happen to you, how you will be after you leave the body. It is the fear of losing your identity which is much worse than the fear of death itself.
You are so obsessed with your identity that you do not want to remain even for a moment, a kshana, without your identity.
Constantly, you are protecting your identity.
You don't realize, your identity is completely social! It is just comparative reality, not existential reality. Whatever you think of as your identity: your name, your gender, your money and whatever else - it is just societal, and suicidal!
The big problem is you are afraid of existential reality, and you are trying to protect your comparative reality. But you think you are protecting something which 'is'. You don't know you are trying to protect something which has no basic existence.
It is really funny actually! You are trying to protect that which is not against that which is!
That which is your reality is that neutral space, that gap.
In the neutral zone, the inner space or consciousness is the reality.
It is the truth; it exists in you every moment. When you are in that neutral space, you are in the space of consciousness.
But you never want to experience that zone, because surrendering your identity means death. Just by hearing the word surrender, people get frightened!
See, all your identity is nothing but your mind. When your mind stops, what you experience the zone of consciousness.
But you never stop in this gap. You don't want it in your life. Constantly, you are trying to avoid God; constantly, you are trying to escape from God; constantly, you are trying to escape from consciousness.
Each breath opens a door for you to enter into the space of pure consciousness, into existential reality, into your reality.
When you become comfortable with the neutral zone, you are getting ready to go beyond mind and enter that space.
The more you feel comfortable, the more you feel protected, the more you feel secure in the neutral zone, the more you will start experiencing and enjoying the neutral zone. When you start enjoying the neutral zone, the more you will remain in the space of consciousness.