Introduction

An Alchemical Dialogue—

On Bardon Breathing and “Romasara”

(see “Romasara,” scroll down under January 6, 1999)

Introduction

In Bardon’s breathing practices, especially chapter two and three of Initiation into Hermetics, the breath is drawn in and vitality condensed in the body with a degree of tension. The vitality is under pressure, the body becoming like a hot radiator or miniature sun.

This method emphasizes the activating, stimulating, and awakening effect of vitality on the body. The body and metabolism are quickened.

At the same time, Bardon has the student working with the four elements. This practice slowly unites the individual’s soul to the elements as they exist in nature. But the two processes are not clearly associated.

With “Romasara,” the feeling of oneness with nature and the condensing of vitality in the body are joined in a harmonious manner. Romasara’s way of breathing is gentle and soothing while also being radiant and uplifting.

As some individuals can do quite easily, I reproduce in myself the aura of this spirit who specializes in breathing vitality. I discuss with him how his energy changes as it manifests on each of the four planes—akashic, mental, astral, and etheric/physical.

The following dialogue is meant to be light and playful. It is also a beginning, a first draft of the spirit’s teachings. I wrote this today—during a lazy afternoon of breathing and reflecting.

[Note: “Romasara is not the spirit’s actual name. I am sure by next week or maybe in a century or two someone will post the correct name for all the spirits of the earthzone. I don’t need or use names so I haven’t given it my full attention.]

Akashic Plane

Student: Say, Master R, I wonder if you could give me a few tips on breathing. I notice you living out here by yourself on the akashic plane. You must be bored to tears that no one from the human race ever comes to visit.

Spirit: Bored? How can I ever be bored? The pulse that thrives in the heart of Divine Providence beats within my heart. Human beings will seek me out when the wonder they feel is so great no obstacle life puts in their way will prevent them from knocking on my door.

Tens of thousands are about to be born who will feel what I feel—that the beauty of life is infinite and that their bodies are the temples in which this beauty is celebrated as is love and the search for wisdom.

Okay, be that as it may. I am not sure I understand this thing you do on the akashic plane with your awareness—how you identify your consciousness with the entire biosphere of the earth. Mastery of life force for you means you feel you are a part of life force as it exists everywhere on earth.

Go ahead. Give it a try. Imagine you are the biosphere, one radiant vibration of vitality encompassing the entire planet.

My mind becomes the sky; I see through the eyes of the sylphs and I feel what they feel—the electro magnetic currents of the earth and sky, the clouds and storms, the moisture and the dry air, the winds encircling the earth: sylphs crave harmony like it is an obsession and demand balance as if it is the only wisdom.

Breath in this kingdom is like the cycles of day and night and turning of the seasons—the moon rise, the sunset, the stars are blessed and held in the arms of infinite stillness.

When I breathe as a sylph the air in my chest is the winds of the earth. My body becomes the sky; the circumference of the earth, the winds, and the sky are where my heart lies.

And then there are the gnomes who make the earth their home—rocks and mountains, plants, trees, and forests, every kind of stone, the waves of energy moving through the earth, the alchemical transformations of matter as well as the periodic table and chemistry—they like things that are dense and solid because gnomes are very serious when it comes to things like dense matter.

And what is breath like for these beings?

Oh, well, here is great gnomes, Mentifil. Let me just ask him and see what he answers.

Mentifil: Breath for a gnome? You see that yonder mountain? Breath for me is extending my being so I feel that that mountain becomes my soul. The earth there was once flat. But I sense the forces that caused that mountain to rise through ages of time. Time you see for me is like waves on a sea—mountains rise and fall; like waves, they have crests and troughs and rhythm is what it is all about.

All the same, in this moment the mountain has density, structure, stability, foundation, and yet it is also in motion.

When it comes to breath, what nurtures me is form, mass, and gravity. Shape and weight, molecular vibration and electronic oscillation—the energy of these things—of the mountain you see—appear in my soul like a symphony appearing within the heart of a great composer. Matter is my art and my soul thrives when I penetrate with my mind the intricate ways in which matter divides and reunites.

I think I am getting a sense of the biosphere when it comes to physical matter and air. Breath is not just breathing in air but learning to unite with the vibrations of the earth and the sky.

And now water.

I see the seas and the waves. I sense the currents and the tides. Here the undines sing and dance and play with an innocence beyond the knowledge of the human race.

Surely, their knowledge of love is so great that if a viable colony of mermen and mermaids appeared on earth in human form, in that instant the human race and all future races would become obsolete. The mysterious purposes of the earth would be fulfilled. Slowly these beings of water would incorporate the other elements into their souls and even the archangels would then not be able to match their light.

But this line of reasoning is irrelevant. The mermaids breathe in this way: the vibration of water amplifies their perceptions and soul connections. They feel joined to the sea and anything within it such that they feel there is no separation.

Like water, the life force in the sea is constantly in motion, giving and receiving, and the flow of vitality in body and soul has no ending.

And now the opposite of water—fire.

There is the heat of the sun and the volcanoes that rise and unleash their power. But deeper down beneath the mantel of the earth lie great domains of massive magma and fire. Here the greater salamanders live and thrive.

There is great range and variety in their skills and vocations. The life in fire is in its intensity, its desire to expand, and to take command.

The great salamanders look at the human body and see a furnace in which ordinary matter combined with energy is being refined and perfected in order to produce a divine essence.

The fire in the earth is massive and its movement produces the magnetic field that protects the earth as well as the shifting of tectonic plates that refurbishes the biosphere’s chemistry.

To breathe as a salamander is to feel that those seas of magma and fire are the substance of your soul that continuously gives birth to indomitable will and power. And this will cries out with a passion and a hunger that will never be satisfied until it transforms into a light that shines forever.

Four domains with their separate gifts unite in each breath. If I breathe with this awareness, there is no longer a me or a body with which I identify, just a sea of ecstasy. The mystery of Divine Providence as infinite energy offers this magical key to those who seek.

You perceive the elements and components of breath the way a beginning student listens to the notes of the scales he plays on a piano. There is far more hidden in each note than you can yet imagine and far more to be mastered before the notes and tones of this art turn into beauty. Keep practicing. Just don’t forget to keep alive your sense of wonder and your quest for beauty as you master the basics. The biosphere of the earth is one of the most beautiful symphonies being played in this galaxy.

Mental Plane

Now then, take it down a level. What do you sense of my energy on the mental plane?

Here the mind rests within a sea of radiant vitality. It is bright like the sun, yet soft and gentle at the same time. It is peaceful yet also vast.

There is also immense power of will and command that is able to shape vitality and attach it to various purposes.

What am I missing?

Through a great deal of practice, condensing and transforming the vitality in your body in different ways for different purposes, you begin to naturally shine like a brilliant sun.

Your body becomes the vehicle through which the great work is accomplished—as you condense and dissolve vitality in your self, you yourself become a sea of vitality. And then like a mermaid in the ocean or a salamander in a vast cavern of fire, you and the energy around you in the biosphere flow in and through each other.

Astral

This is how I would describe your energy manifesting on the astral plane: For astral breathing to work, an individual needs to feel fully alive. In other words, include your opposite within yourself.

If an individual is receptive and sensitive, loving and nurturing, then she will need to embody the opposite—an explosive power of will and absolute conviction that goals and missions can be accomplished within specific time frames.

The sea with its dreams of being one and being at peace also seeks the electrical storm; and that raging inferno of charging and discharging electricity also seeks a state of equilibrium in which opposites attain balance and become calm.

To feel fully alive is to expand outward and to embrace all opposites retaining the full potential and tension in their attractions; and it is to turn inward, joined to all opposites from within, so that there is no longer a journey of becoming but only a place to be—a place of oneness that is also free.

To put it simply, just imagine yourself and your opposite—the two of you at the very height of creative interaction and in the same moment one with each other so that all separation is overcome.

Take every desire, instinct, need, and dream—raise it to its highest power of hunger and craving and purpose that must be made complete. And now, while retaining the full tension, embody in yourself the image and feeling of what is it to be complete, fulfilled, and to have attained all that there is to attain.

The astral breathing draws in and circulates energy because it does not deny what is desired and wanted while at the same time it does not refuse to exist within the dream that one day shall be—it is hope and it is a time when hope shall no longer be needed; it is an act of daring that dreams and it is also the dream when it has become reality.

The astral sees what shall be and in the seeing is in the present state of being incomplete and also in the state of completion—neither denying one nor the other. To feel in this way, to love without fear, is to be free and to live each moment fully alive and without suffering loss or feeling separate.

In other words, to breathe on an astral level, to draw in and exchange energy with the greater sea of vitality that encircles the planet, is to bring a powerful level of feeling to the breathing practice. You have to put all of your heart and soul into it.

And for you what would this be—all of your heart and soul engaged in the practice of breathing?

Ah, that would be to imagine another who feels all that I feel—and in the sharing the two of us light up like the sun in which all opposites are overcome.

It requires daring and being free of all fear; an absolute inner silence that acts like a mirror; it requires a will like the will that called the stars into being and a love that can embrace both the light and the dark.

Passion and peace; hunger and craving and well-being and being free—breathing on the astral requires imagination and dreaming. They must be so intense and penetrating that life herself finds you so attractive she is willing to reveal her greatest secrets because you are now the gate through which she must pass in order to give birth to new light on earth.

Physical

What do you sense here?

The body is like an electrical generator. An electrical power plant uses water power, wind, coal, oil, nuclear fission or fusion with copper and magnetism interacting to generate electricity. So also the body uses food and air to generate heat, energy, and excess vitality.

The surplus vitality can be circulated in the body, refined, transformed, and transferred outside of the body.

The three inner planes—the akasha with its connection to the entire biosphere and elemental domains, the mental with its sea of vitality in the form of light, and the astral that brings to life the deepest instincts, desires, longings and dreams—these three inner planes, when hooked up to the physical/etheric breathing, amplify the production of surplus vitality.

There is no limit set on the quality or quantity of vitality that may be produced.

To breathe is to be aware of the vitality within air. And that in every breath of air the entire biosphere as well as all realms of desire, kingdoms of nature, and planes of divine being are present at the same time. Even as right now as I breathe I am imitating the way that you yourself breathe when you are in physical form. It is my imagination, psychic power, and will that hold your attention so I can write this dialogue.

As I breathe in now and accumulate this energy in myself …. What is this? What is happening to me?

For a little while, for the space of a short meditation, you have become even as we are—free of form, pure spiritual being, self-generating in energy and unconfined in consciousness. One day on earth either humanity or another race shall attain on the physical plane what you now feel in your astral body—the entire race shall ascend and become free of physical being having completely mastered energy on all four planes.

I exist to reveal this. As you so well understand, it is one of the gifts I possess and I am waiting for some race to claim as its own. And yet, as I have already said, tens of thousands shall seek me out not just to be free or to master physical being. They shall seek me because they wish to celebrate the beauty of this planet and unite with the deeper purposes for which she exists—even as an undine is one with the sea, they shall seek to be one with all things:

Like the earth herself—to nurture, to shelter, to protect, to guide, to inspire, to empower, and to fulfill according to the heart’s desire of each being a path to perfection guided by wisdom yet designed by the deepest desires hidden within their own hearts.

So, how does it feel when you breathe in on all four levels in imitation of my aura?

It feels very peaceful like I am quite outside of human history; this is not same the body I was assigned when I was born.

The spectacle of human history passes before my eyes—I am three wise men coming upon a child of light and I am the ghosts of past, present, and future talking to a Scrooge.

I am Arjuna coming upon Shiva and also Krishna counseling Arjuna on how to find the spirit hidden within himself.

I am Shakespeare writing Hamlet and I am Hermes Trismegistus writing the Emerald Tablet.

I am architects designing pyramids and the Parthenon. And while others burn their fingers with the discovery of acid and poison their lungs with vapors of mercury, I am an alchemist who discovers his own body contains the philosopher’s stone.

The struggles of history and the desire to be free, the energy required to accomplish this and the wisdom that enables it—hidden in every breath is a Ninth Symphony with an Ode to Joy--an Ode we are free to write in our own way and to define and design as a path that leads us back to the divine.

You have a flair for words and metaphors. I shall make you my scribe, for I have not had one for a very long time.

As you well know, vitality is an area over which you have the least mastery. Your condition is rather appalling. If by some means or another I can get you up and running so you shine radiant and bright, then anyone will be able to follow along. I think with enough practice we shall make some great progress.