Theos-Talk Archives (November 1993 Message tl00070)

Prana is usually spoken of as the vital life energies of our body. When
it is plentiful, we are healthy, vital, active, and when it is lacking,
we become slow, sluggish, subject to disease, and even, should it be
insufficient, to withdrawal from life and death as well.

Like the other energies of life, which to go make up our complete
consciousness, we contain it, we fashion shape, we give our impress to
it, but we did not create it out of nothing. It is the life energy,
and is called prana when we contain it. Outside of ourselves, it is
called jiva. This life energy is not owned by us; we contain it and
have as much as we can expand ourselves to hold. It flows through us
as quickly as we allow it.

Prana is force in nature. It is what *makes* things happen. It could
be called *will power*, where the emphasis is on the word *power*,
beause it is the power that makes the desire manifest. Kama without
prans is impotent desire, where things are wanted but they cannot be
made to happen.

As Prana relates to our physical body, it allows for growth, change,
sustaining the body's life throughout the continual death of its cells
and loss of its energy. It is the force that heals sickness, but is
also the disease energies that we experience as well, for whatever
purpose they may have come into our lives.

Desire shapes the action, but it is Prana that gives it power. The
desire is a focusing or patterning of consciousness, but by itself is
powerless to make things happen.

Prana is a generic energy, and we can exchange or give it to others, as
in mesmerism. It is the life energies that under instinct, under the
direction of nature, power and animate physical, living forms. It is
also the energy that in magic can be used to produce phenomena. It
includes the vital airs, kundalini, the forces to manifest the psychic,
paranormal, and spiritual natures. Prana in touch with kundalini, is
really it's direct connection with Jiva, and is similar, for example,
with Kama being in direct touch with Fohat, or Manas with Mahat.

It is also an aspect of self, of further manifesting the unique
nature of a particular being, of a Monad, in the outer world. It takes
us from the sense of *desire and will*, which in themselves are
static, to *create and do*, the putting into motion, into change, of
what we would have.

Prana brings us from static selfhood into motion.  It is needed for us
to interact and participate in the world, to cause things to change
states and happen, to move upon the spaces of space. To experience
karma, to interact with others, to changes states, we must be different
from the moment before, we must give *action*, activity to what we
will do and will experience. Prana is the that power of causing action.

Prana allows for the actual *building* of what was patterned or
*archetyped* in kama. It is the crown of physical nature, of outer
life, ruling over perception and actual forms. It tops the triad of
outer life, the vital-astral-physical triad.

The mighty forces that fashion life in our physical world are from
Jiva, given shape and direction as Prana, in individual beings, or
under the direction of elementals, directing elemental forces of
nature, shape and fashion the face of our earth.

Prana is an important principle of consciousness. All the principles,
in fact, are integral to the whole being, and the lower ones are no
less important. All are needed, essential to coming to life, to
becoming a full being, to existing in the world and becoming subject
to the drama of life.

With Prana, we are able to give a *push* to things in life. To change
and grow, and not just experience a state of static being, we need it.
When apart from the oceanic flood of energies of life (Jiva) in the
world of causes, we can fashion out of the astral light creations of
our own.

We can, when apart, function as our own creators, as in dreams, and
our life energies hold sway over the "physcial world" in which we find
ourselves. But when here on Globe D, our earth, we are swept along in
the vast life energies of our world, and are compelled to follow how
*it would have things to be*. The collective co-creating of the world
happens here and we have a very distinct way that things are to
contend with.

In death, with the loss of the vital-astral-physical portion of
our constitution, we find the end of growth and change, outwardly,
in the after-death states. We are now without the principle of growth
and change, and are static, fixed, unexpressive, at least as far
as being able to go outside ourselves onto the waters of space, into
manifestation. There is a pranic subelement to our higher principles,
which we still have, but it is incomplete, cut off from the root nature
of Prana itself, only a reflection of the principle, which is now
indrawn, latent, out of action, asleep in ourselves.

Looking to the divine, it might be seen as radient, brilliant, in a
lofty tower of thought, filled with grand plans for what shall be in
life. But without Jiva, the plans may exist, and may be sensed, but
there is no sweep over the face of life, over the waters of space,
no fashioning of the outer world and the carrying out of the
divine will.

Besides this aspect of Prana and Jiva carrying out the forces of
creation, they also relate to flexibility in life, to the ability of
a being to grow and change and be different. Changing one's habits,
becoming different, taking on new karma all are *made to happen* with
Prana. Prana is associated with our very deepest principles as well,
and is concerned with the Path and the most far-reaching changes that
we can make in our lives as well.

Consider two men, seriously sick, in the hospital. Both have a strong
will to live, but only one survives. The surviver had the energy to
effect that will on his body. Consider two people with the same desire
to trod the Path. One penetrates deeply into the Mysteries and is
profoundly changed; the other cannot change himself and soon forgets
the object of his desire. The one who was radically changed did so
through the pranic consciousness, the aspect of his consciousness that
enables him to effect changes and see his will is carried out.

When applied to the mind, Prana-Manas is experienced as flexibility of
mind, the ability to have creative thought, to change what we think,
to break the molds of mind and fashion new thoughts out of the existing
content of our minds. And turned outwards, it is seen as thoughts
put into action in life.

Applied to our will, Prana-Kama is experienced as creativity, the
ability to take thoughts and turn them into plans of action, into
the *would be's* of life, into the ties or bonds that lead us into
life in the world. Turned outwards, it is seen as the shaping or
fashioning of the actions we take, as desire or will given expression
in life.

Looking higher, Prana-Atman involves the changing nature of being,
the ability to change the quality or experience of life in our world.
This quality can dynamically express itself, and it not simply an idle,
static sense of perfection, of unity. The root nature of our world, our
plane of being, is self-expressive and itself is subject to change and
growth. Applied outwards, it is seen as the changing nature of the
quality of life, the meaning and purpose and *suchness* of what it means
to be alive. It is seen as the changing nature of Idam, *this*, the
quality of being, as constrasted to Tat, *that*, the quality of the
mystery behind being.

And reflected back onto itself, Prana-Prana involves the ability of
life to grow and change, the active participation in life, the generic
ability to not just *be*, but to *change* or *grow*, one's power to
create and express in life. Within ourselves, it powers the emanation
of latent capibilities, and ultimately our new evolution of qualities
not previously had. Turned outwards, it involves the mastery of life
and the forces of nature, and our ability to do things in the world.

Besides, in one sense, being the "volume control to life", where we
set how much or how little it will be, how much of ourselves will be
seen and felt in the world, there are yet other aspects to Prana.
Think of what it means to take desire or will, and to fashion the world
with it. What we know of other beings is through their effects on us,
and that is observed from the actions powered by their Prana.

Looking inwards, towards our deeper nature within, we perceive the
effects of our Higher Self or Manasaputra, a being that is ourselves,
in one sense, but not us, in another sense. It is through that being's
Prana, its power to make its effects felt and known, that we come to
realize it. The changes that we are led to make within, coming from
this Higher Self, are effected by its Prana, they are one form of
expression of it in outer life, as coming out *through* us.

Our Self, similarly, is expressed in and through our Lower Self, the
being in our constitution one lower than our Human Monad or Ego, our
animal nature in which we, as humans, sit in and *ride* (much as we
would ride a horse). It is changed and effected through our Prana as
well.

This chain of beings, of Monads, from the Divine, through many levels
or stages down through the Human, and yet lower, forms in ourselves a
personal representation of the Tree of Life, which we see outsides
ourselves, forming the golden chain of manifest universes, stretching
upwards without end. In us, it involves mysteries regarding how the
animals enter the human kingdom, and how we eventually enter the
Dhyani-Chohanic kingdom as well. These are mysteries that were not
openly talked about in the earlier years of the theosophical movement,
but rather were discussed under secrecy. Written records of some of
the materials have become public, but the keys to them have not been
given, so they still, in a sense, remain secret to this day.

Considering that Tree of Life, reaching upwards into the divine until
we can no longer see where it goes, reaching upwards without end, we
find ourselves rooted in a grand scheme of things, a grand hierarchy
of life in which there is never a end, never a top, never a finish to
what life has in store for us. And this entire plan is made manifest,
is empowered to live and move and have its being, through its all
prevasive life, which we collectively know as Jiva, and in ourselves
as we are able to contain it, as Prana. It is a wonderous power!

                                 Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com)