Prana and Apana

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…

Question: what is prana and how is it manifested in each of the seven bodies?

When the magnetic force is in you, when it is coming into you, you are great; when it has gone from you, you are just a nobody. And this is changing back and forth, just like day and night; the circle revolves, the wheel revolves. So even a person like Napoleon had his impotent moments and even a very cowardly person has his moments of bravery. In judo there is a technique to know when a person is powerless. That is the moment to attack him. When he is powerful you are bound to be defeated, so you have to know the moment when his magnetic power is going out and attack him then, and you should incite him to attack you when your magnetic force is coming in. This coming in and going out of the magnetic force corresponds to your breathing. That is why, when you have to…

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, if the goal is to attain shunya, the zero, then what is the need to awaken kundalini? And what is the need for sadhana?

This question arises because you think shunya means nothingness—so why practice? If there were something to gain, practice would be needed. You imagine that shunya means becoming a non-entity, so what is the point of sadhana? Sadhana seems necessary only when there is something to become. But you do not know that shunya means the whole; shunya means everything. Shunya does not mean nothing—shunya means all. Right now you cannot conceive what it means that shunya is everything. A well might say: “If going toward the ocean only means discovering that I do not exist, then why go?” The well sounds right. It says, “If I go toward the ocean and in the end it turns out that I am not, why should I go?” But whether you go or not makes no difference. That you are not is the fact; the question of going or not going does not…