Breath of life

“ Ever close and near to thee;
Oversoul and heart of things,
Shade me always with thy wings;
Even in the vale of death,
Breathe on me thy honeyed breath.
Mother Nature, guard me when
Life is strong, and after then ”

“ As well might we say, Why should I ask for natural life, I received it half a century ago? Yes, and at every moment of that half-century I have continued to live, not because of a past gift, but because at each moment God is breathing into my nostrils the breath of life. So is it with the life which comes from His Spirit. It is maintained by constant efflux from the fountain of Life, by constant impartation of His quickening breath. ”

“ For air will be a body, be alive, If in that air the soul can keep itself, And in that air enclose those motions all Which in the thews and in the body itself A while ago 'twas making. So for this, Again, again, I say confess we must, That, when the body's wrappings are unwound, And when the vital breath is forced without, The soul, the senses of the mind dissolve,— Since for the twain the cause and ground of life Is in the fact of their conjoined estate. ”

“ As My breath sweeps the earth to prepare for seed, so My breath sweeps your hearts to prepare it for My Love. And the sap of your souls, like the sap of the tree, will flow through your life and burst into budding. ”

“ Cosmic Breath is inexhaustible–it is always waiting to pour into our blood stream. The ignorant multitude simply passes by all these gifts. We forget that our nostrils are open for the Breath of Life. To breathe is to give the body a chance for more life,–life that is full of exhilaration and strength. ”

“ Witness, for instance, our breathing. We breathe what we call the breath of life; is it by any action of ours? God made us and planted that principle within us, and sleeping or waking our lungs continue to play. ”

“ But upon what authority is it denied that God breathed the breath of life into the beasts? That they have the breath of life we are positively told; and the question therefore is, Where did they get it from, if God did not breathe it into them? Besides, what a wild imagination one must have, to see an immortal soul put into the body by the breath of life being breathed into a man’s nostrils. ”

“ The living soul or vital spirit (which is as free as air) , comes to be confined in the arterial chains of the prison houses of the different bodies; by its entering into the lungs breathing with the breath of life. ”

“ Wherever men are gathered, all the air
⁠Is charged with human feeling, human thought;
Each shout and cry and laugh, each curse and prayer,
⁠Are into its vibrations surely wrought;
Unspoken passion, wordless meditation,
Are breathed into it with our respiration;
⁠It is with our life fraught and overfraught.
So that no man there breathes earth's simple breath,
⁠As if alone on mountains or wide seas ”

“ Still do thy waters hold the infinite thrill of that Spirit which brooded above their face in the Beginning!—still is thy quickening breath an elixir unto them that flee to thee for life,—like the breath of young girls, like the breath of children, prescribed for the senescent by magicians of old,—prescribed unto weazened elders in the books of the Wizards. ”

“ We were but creatures of His breath, our souls the puppets of His will. What was left to man but to endure? Even his endurance bestowed upon him for that purpose. It was death not life that God—if such were God—had breathed into man’s nostrils. ”

“ Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of Man Which God inspired, cannot together perish With this corporeal clod; ”

“ Who keeps him in life and breath, during the dead of night, when he lies utterly powerless and helpless? Who keeps his lungs regularly heaving, and his heart beating, through the darkness, as he lies there in his unconscious slumbers? ”

“ The one is that the air has furnished the primary type of the soul as the principle of life—man's fleeting breath has suggested and fostered the idea of immortality; the wind that bloweth where it listeth, the idea of a realm of changeless spirit! The other result is that certain of nature's most obvious phenomena, when seized by intuition, can supply a key to some of her profoundest secrets. ”

“ THE MENTAL ATTITUDE is a great factor in this part of the breath, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” One must feel himself inside his own body, breathing his own breath out through his flesh just as he would if his face were covered and he was forced to breathe the breath through a thick veil. This is true Regenerative Power. “It is the breath of the Almighty that giveth us life.” This breath gives us life because it fans to a radiant flame the latent fires within the being. ”

“ Let the Anointed of the Lord be the breath of our nostrils, and let us get spiritual life breathed into us, and that breath will never be corrupted. (2.) Our time is ending: My days are extinct, are put out, as a candle which, from the first lighting, is continually wasting and burning down, and will by degrees burn out of itself, but may by a thousand accidents be extinguished. ”

“ The pivot on which this movement turns, the foundation on which it rests, the grand secret of the whole matter, is known in the Community as 'open respiration,' also as 'divine respiration;' and the starting point of the theory is, that God created man in his own image and likeness, and breathed into him the breath of life. That the breathing into man of the breath of life was the sensible point of contact between the divine and human, between God and man. ”

“ Such was the second question propounded by Greek philosophy.
Second problem. What is the soul?
Its material solution thereof.
A like course of superficial observation was resorted to in the solution of this inquiry. To breathe is to live; then the breath is the life. If we cease to breathe we die. Man only becomes a living soul when the breath of life enters his nostrils; he is a senseless and impassive form when the last breath is expired. ”

“ He shaped the body out of the dust of the earth and breathed into the nostrils of that human form that which made him become a living soul. It was the breath of God that gave life to man and hence he will return again to dust when that breath is withdrawn. ”

“ But, furthermore, thought commences and corresponds with respiration. The reader has before attended to the presence of the heaving over the body; now let him feel his thoughts, and he will see that they too heave with the mass. When he entertains a long thought he draws a long breath; when he thinks quickly, his breath vibrates with rapid alternations; when the tempest of anger shakes his mind, his breath is tumultuous; when his soul is deep and tranquil, so is his respiration; when success inflates him, his lungs are as tumid as his conceits. ”

“ We reach vague-gesturing hands, we lift our heads, Hear sounds far off,—and dream, with quivering breath, Our curious separate ways through life and death. ”

“ The more positive the demand, the greater the supply. Therefore, while breathing deeply and rhythmically in harmony with the universal breath, will to open yourself more fully to the inflow of the life force from the source of all life in the innermost parts of your being. ”

“ As in each man the man's breath or spirit is the life of the body, so in each man there is a certain holy breath or spirit which is the life of his soul; whence also cometh every good thought and deed unto the man. ”

“ "What is meditation? What is leaving one's body? What is fasting? What is holding one's breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. ”

“ What we assuredly know is that the states of life and death are different, and the first more desirable than the other, and by effort attainable, whether we understand being "born of the spirit" to signify having the breath of heaven in our flesh, or its power in our hearts. ”

“ In like manner, faith, hope, love, and resignation to God, are in the religious life, its acts of respiration, which unite God and the creature, in the same essential manner, as animal respiration, unites the breath of the animal, with the breath of this world. ”

“ To be out of spirits is to be out of breath. To be animated and joyous is to be full of breath." [50] "Breathing," writes Dr. von der Deeken, "is an actual vivifying act, and the need of breath as felt is a real life-hunger and a proof that without the continual charging of the blood-column with the proper force, all the other vital organs would soon stagnate and cease action altogether." ”

“ This is of primary importance. Breathing means the taking of breath. We should begin the day with joyous and glad acceptance of life and all that it brings. A spirit of thankfulness and acceptance is the true spirit of life. ”

“ Hence the Greek name ψυχή,26 [pg 070] which originally meant breath, was chosen to express at first the principle of life, as distinguished from the decaying body, afterwards the incorporeal, the immaterial, the undecaying, the immortal part of man—his soul, his mind, his Self. All this was very natural. When a person dies, we too say that he has given up the ghost, and ghost, too, meant originally spirit, and spirit meant breath. ”

“ Such do not think more of the life to come than they do of the present life. When the breath leaves the body, your life has not become extinct; your life is still in existence. And when you are in the spirit world. everything there will appear as natural as things now do. Spirits will be familiar with spirits in the spirit world—will converse, behold, and exercise every variety of communication one with another as familiarly and naturally as while here in tabernacles. ”

“ At the door of life, by the gate of breath,
There are worse things waiting for men than death; ”

“ That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death? ”

“ That living breath is not only the supporter of creatures, but also a constant admonisher of the transitoriness of life, who addresses his call to young and old, sages and fools, &c. The important mystic rite of inspiration and expiration is described by Spence Hardy, Eastern Monachism, p. ”

“ Thus breath and the soul are one and the same thing. Who then can say that wind shall be punished? What is God? Can He be seen? He is the universe. I die—that means nothing more than that my body is resolved into its original elements—water, fire, earth, air. ”

“ The fitful meanings of the wind, in the more boisterous moments of Æolus, through the branches, speak not louder of God than the whisper of his breath that plays with the foliage. The low and broken murmurs of the water in the gill are as audibly eloquent as the lashing of the waves of the ocean in a storm, or the wild roar of the cataract. The voice of nature, come in what form it may, brings unutterable thoughts of the majesty of the creation. ”

“ Are you not aware that the fresh air which you inhale and which purifies and invigorates the blood contains for you the germ of death, which justifies in your good parents the anxious care they take of your health, but which you perhaps regard as entirely unnecessary?
Now, what the lungs are to the human body, that the heart is to the soul. It is by the heart that we breathe the spiritual and divine atmosphere that sustains our moral life. This atmosphere is composed of three elements,—truth, goodness and beauty, which envelop and penetrate the soul's substance ”

“ What lies behind all these words is the feeling familiar to man in those times, that breathing was not only a means of keeping the body alive, but that a spiritual essence streamed in with the breath. ”

“ Other metaphors, in ancient tongues of our Indo-European family, indentify to be with to breathe or to dwell. The real also in general lives; for it is internally self-sustaining, as, to a more primitive mind, natural life may seem to be. And breathing is a well-known token of life. ”

“ For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? ”

“ As the air causes hair to wave and flutter on the neck, so the breath of the Holy Spirit stirs the strong love that it may fly upwards to God; for without this divine wind, which excites the powers of the soul to the practice of divine love, all the virtues the soul may possess become ineffectual and fruitless. ”

“ From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.
The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapors dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.
Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires!
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys
And the more noble instinct that aspires. ”