~~ FROM SOUND TO INNER SILENCE 9 ~~

Have you observed that whenever you are tense you will sigh - "AH" - and you will feel relaxed. Or whenever you are in joy, overjoyed, you say "AH," and the whole breath is thrown out and you feel within a tranquility that you have never felt. Try this: when you are feeling very good, take the breath in and then see what you feel. You cannot feel that well-being that comes with "AH." It is coming because of the breath.

So languages differ, but these two things never differ. All over the world, whenever someone feels tired he will say "AH." Really, he is calling for death to come and relax him. Whenever one feels overjoyed, blissful, he says "AH." He is so overfilled with joy that he is not afraid of death now. He can relieve himself completely, relax completely.

And what will happen if you go on trying it, trying it? You will become fully aware of something within you - the spontaneousness of your being; of SAHAJ of being spontaneous. That you are already, but you are too much engaged with life, too much occupied with life. You cannot become aware of the being which is behind.

When you are not occupied with life, with the incoming breath, the being behind is revealed; there is a glimpse. But the glimpse will become, by and by, a realization. And once it is known you cannot forget it - and this is not something which you are creating. That is why it is spontaneous: it is not something you are creating. It is there, you have simply forgotten. It is a remembrance! It is a rediscovery!

Try to see children, very small children, taking their breaths. They take them in a different way. Look at a child sleeping. His belly comes up and down, not the chest. If you are sleeping and you are being observed, your chest comes up and down; your breath never goes down to the belly. The breath can go down to the belly only if you exhale and do not inhale. If you inhale and do not exhale, the breath cannot go down to the belly. The reason why breath goes to the belly is that when one exhales, the whole breath is thrown out and then the BODY takes it in. And the body takes only that amount which is needed - never more, never less.

The body has its own wisdom, and it is more wise than you. Do not disturb it. You can take more - then it will be disturbed. You can take less - then it will be disturbed. The body has its own wisdom, it only takes that amount which is needed. When more is needed, it creates the situation. When less is needed, it creates the situation. It never goes to the extreme, it is always balanced. But if YOU inhale it is never balanced, because you do not know what you are doing, you do not know what is the need of the body. And the need changes every moment.

Allow the body! You just exhale, you just throw it out, and then the body will take breath in - and it will take it deeply and slowly, and the breath will go down to the belly. It will hit the navel point exactly and your belly will go up and down. If you inhale then really, you never exhale totally. Then the breath is in and you go on inhaling, so the breath which is already in will not allow your breath to go down to the very bottom. Then just shallow breathing happens. You go on taking breath in, and the poisonous breath is there, filling you up.

They say that you have six thousand sacs in your lungs and only two thousand are touched by your breath. The four thousand are always filled with poisonous gases which need to be exhaled, and that two-thirds portion of your chest creates much anxiety, much anguish and misery in the mind, in the body. A child exhales, he never inhales. Inhaling is done by the body itself.