According to Osho, expansion in pranayama is followed by return in pratyahara because life thrives as a rhythmic dance of opposites: breath goes out and comes in, creation unfolds and dissolves. Out-breath expands you toward the infinite (fullness); in-breath draws you back to inner emptiness (void). When this polarity stabilizes in awareness, you flow between the two banks—birth and death—and taste the Godlike nature that embraces both.
Life works like breathing: you open out, then come back in, and holding both sides keeps you truly alive and balanced.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, yesterday you explained that with joyful awareness (sukh-purvak surati) resolution happens on its own. Yet I find myself having to go through great effort, practice, and labor—why? How long, and why, must a seeker pass through so much effort, toil, and austerity?
If there is laziness in the mind, even little things feel like great effort. It’s a matter of your interpretation. In truth, you are not exerting at all. I tell you, those who are near me and engaged in “practice” are the people on earth who are laboring the least. You have no idea what real effort is. When a person is deeply lazy, even trivial things seem like toil. What are you actually doing? What is it you keep calling “great effort”? Which great effort are you making? You dance a little—and you call that great effort? Is dancing an effort? Dancing is joy! But your perspective is wrong. If you take joy to be effort, you have missed. Dancing is celebration, a juicy happening. Where is the effort in it? If even dancing is effort for you, then what would non-effort be? If I tell you, “Just sit…
Beloved Osho, yesterday you explained that pranayam is the method which expands the bio-energy and pratyahar is to return to the original source. First it is expansion, then it is return to the source. Why is it so?
Because life is made of contradiction and there is no other way for life to exist. Breath goes out, then goes in -- did you ever ask why it is so? When the breath has to go in then why is it taken out? But if the breath remains in and does not come out then the result will be death and not life. If the breath remains out and does not go in, even then it will be death and not life. Life is movement, movement between two opposites. It is like the flowing of a river between two banks. Breath goes out, goes in; comes in then goes out. Every moment it is pranayam and every moment it is pratyahar. When breath goes out it is pranayam; when the breath goes in, it is pratyahar. If your consciousness gets used to this type of rhythm, if this type…
Verse (Sanskrit): Chapter 5 : Sutra 2 May not the space between Heaven and Earth be compared to a bellows. It is emptied, Yet it loses not its power; It is moved again, and sends forth air the more. Much speech to swift exhaustion lead we see; Your inner being guard, and keep it free. Transliteration: Chapter 5 : Sutra 2 May not the space between Heaven and Earth be compared to a bellows. It is emptied, Yet it loses not its power; It is moved again, and sends forth air the more. Much speech to swift exhaustion lead we see; Your inner being guard, and keep it free. Translation: The Blessed Lord said: Renunciation of action and the yoga of action both lead to the highest good; yet of the two, the yoga of action is superior to renunciation of action. Life is built upon many opposing foundations.
Therefore one who masters pranayama becomes skillful in rising upward—he is expanding, extending, enlarging the upward current. These are two currents—two streams of air within the body. And between them sits Paramatma—or Atman, or consciousness—whatever name you wish. The thumb-sized Atman is present between these two currents. He pushes the air downward—He pushes the air upward. Prana—the air that goes upward. Apana—the air that goes downward. Western medical science has not yet recognized this double current; it holds that air is only of one kind. Hence many things based on the vital air which Ayurveda can accomplish allopathy cannot. One who understands these currents well can create great revolutions in life. A small child breathes: when a child breathes, his stomach rises and falls—the chest hardly moves. His breath is very deep. When you breathe, the chest rises and falls—your breath is shallow, not deep.
Osho, what is prana and what is apana? What does it mean to offer prana into apana, and to offer apana into prana? Please clarify this again.
What is within us is also part of the outside. Right now a breath is inside me. A little while ago it was with you, it was yours. A little earlier it was with a tree, it belonged to the tree. Before that, somewhere else. Now it is within me. Before I can even say it is inside me, it has gone out. If we dedicate what is within us to the outer world of prana, if we know it too as given back to the outside, then nothing remains inside—everything becomes empty. This is one kind of surrender: to offer the inner breath into that vast net of prana spread through the atmosphere, to pour it there as an oblation, to consign it there. Or we can do the reverse. The whole outer pranic cosmos is also but a part of my within, spread outwards. If we dedicate that…