So now they say that it has become possible to treat a person before he has fallen ill. Once it becomes so, then there is no need for humanity to fall ill. Before you will become aware that you are ill your photographs by Kirlian methods will show that some illness is going to happen to your physical body; it can be prevented in the pranamay kosh.
That’s why yoga insists very much on the purity of breathing, because the pranamay kosh is made of a subtle energy that travels with the breathing, inside you. If you breathe rightly, your pranamay kosh remains healthy and whole and alive. Such a person never feels tired; such a person is always available to do anything. Such a person is always responsive, always ready to respond to the moment, ready to take the challenge. He is always ready. You will never find him unprepared for any moment. Not that he plans for the future, no – but he has so much energy that whatsoever happens he is ready to respond. He has overflowing energy. T’ai-chi works on pranamay kosh. pranayam works on pranamay kosh.
And if you know just how to breathe naturally, you will grow into your second body. And the second body is stronger than the first. And the second body lives longer than the first.
When somebody dies, for almost three days you can see his bioplasma. Sometimes that is mistaken for his ghost. The physical body dies, but the energy body continues to move. And those who have experimented deeply about death, they say that for three days it is very difficult for the person who has died to believe that he has died, because the same form – and more vital than ever, more healthy than ever, more beautiful than ever – surrounds him. It depends on how big a bioplasma you have; then it can continue for thirteen days or even for more.
Around the samadhis of yogis – in India we burn everybody’s body except the body of one who has attained to samadhi – we don’t burn his body, for a certain reason. Once you burn the body, the bioplasma starts moving away from the earth. You can feel it for a few days, but then it disappears into the cosmos. But if the physical body is left, then the bioplasma can cling to it. And a man who has attained samadhi, who has become enlightened, if his bioplasma can remain somewhere around his samadhi, many people will be benefited by it. That’s how many people come to see their gurus’ forms.
In Aurobindo ashram, Aurobindo’s body is put in a samadhi, not destroyed, not burned. Many people have felt as if they have seen Aurobindo around it. Or sometimes they have heard the same footsteps, the way Aurobindo used to walk, and sometimes he is there just standing before them. This is not Aurobindo. This is the bioplasma. Aurobindo is gone, but the bioplasma, the pranamay kosh, can persist for centuries. If the person has been really in tune with his pranamay kosh, it can persist. It can have its own existence.
Natural breathing has to be understood. Watch small children – they breathe naturally. That’s why small children are so full of energy; the parents are tired, but they are not tired.