Awareness of prana is awareness in life and death
Every day, you are passing through three states of consciousness or avastha traya – the states of waking, dream and deep sleep. A simple understanding of the movement of prana in the three states can give you a tremendous understanding of what you call life and death.
You may be thinking, why should I worry now about what happens to my prana at the time of death?
Don't think that death is something that happens to you at the end of your life! As you become more aware of the subtle movements of prana in your system, you understand that life and death are daily processes happening in you. Your daily activities of sleep and waking are actually a daily process of death and rebirth.
When you are in the waking state, your prana moves, functions, and stays in the area of the ajna chakra (the subtle energy center between your eyebrows).
When you are in the dream state, it moves in the area of your neck, around the vishuddhi chakra. When you are in deep sleep, it moves around the anahata chakra or heart center.
That is why you can never fall asleep if your head is erect. You cannot fall asleep unless you relax your head, unless you allow the prana movement to move from the forehead to the heart region.
Even if you are lying down, if you keep your head straight and tense, you will never be able to fall asleep. That is why, when your brain is constantly active, when you have a lot of thoughts, you will have trouble falling asleep.
The moment you start moving towards the dream state, the prana starts moving from the ajna towards the vishuddhi. The more you move towards the deep sleep state, it moves towards the anahata, the heart center.
It is the same in the case of life and death as well. The more you are alive and energetic, the more the prana accumulates and gets centered in the forehead. When the incoming breath is bringing more prana and the outgoing breath is empty, your prana will be centered in the forehead. If the incoming breath is bringing less prana and the outgoing breath is taking more prana, slowly the prana will slip into the throat center. If the incoming breath is not bringing prana at all and only the outgoing breath is taking the prana, you will fall completely into the heart center. Actually, falling from life to death, and falling from the waking state to the deep sleep state, are both directly related to prana movement. If the prana movements of inhalation and exhalation are handled properly, you can handle dream and deep sleep, as well as life and death. Dream and sleep, life and death can all be handled by this single key, this single thread called prana.
Understand: whatever I am saying is not only going to help you at the end of your life, it can help you in every moment of your life!
If you can remain aware when the prana falls into the heart center every time you go to sleep, you can stop, alter and manage your dreams and deep sleep.
The dream state is nothing but the state of low prana. If you can be aware at that time, naturally you will be able to control your dreams. Not only will you be able to control your dreams, you can bring yourself up in energy at any moment.
You can use this understanding to heal yourself of illness. When you fall sick, the prana will start traveling towards anahata. So even before you start feeling the other symptoms of sickness, you know you are falling sick. By bringing the prana back to the ajna, you can heal yourself.
Whenever you are aware of the low prana, you can increase the percentage of prana in your body. The simple awareness that the prana is becoming low is enough to bring more prana into your body! It is the ultimate technique to heal your body and rejuvenate your body.
Not only that, at the end of your life you will be able to change your life and death. When you are dying, relaxing from the body, when the prana falls to the lower level, you can stop it and bring it up. If you want, you can bring in death a little early. If you want, you can postpone it. You can play in whichever way you want!
When you Master prana, you understand that death as you imagine doesn't exist. You will have the freedom to choose your death, to predict it, to postpone it. You will know the art of living and dying. This is the ultimate gift you can receive from any spiritual technique.