Audio – How Breathing Creates Space and Time
James Traverse uses “universal respiration” as a contemplative way to explore our relationship with life. Influenced by his studies of Vedanta and the Upanishads, this original teaching extends the image of breathing to receiving, abiding, releasing, and resting. It offers a lens for spiritual awakening and direct inquiry; its language of energy, elements, space, and time is philosophical rather than a scientific model.
You “Breathe” Food and Sunlight, Not Just Air
Eating, drinking, breathing, and receiving sunlight involve different physical processes. In this teaching, James brings them together through a shared image of exchange. Fire, air, water, and earth name traditional elements within that image.
Food supplies nutrients and chemical energy, water supports bodily functions, and breathing exchanges gases. Sunlight supplies radiant energy; ultraviolet B radiation can trigger vitamin D synthesis in the skin. We do not absorb vitamin D directly from sunlight. “Fire-breathing” is a metaphor for receiving and expressing, including the warmth of passion. See the NIH vitamin D fact sheet for the biological distinction.
Viewing a sunbeam or a dinner plate as a “breath” fundamentally shifts our relationship with our physical selves. We are no longer machines that simply require fuel; we are dynamic systems in a state of constant respiratory flow. Every ounce of energy that enters us abides for a time and then flows out to “rest in potential form that manifests in the next cycle.” We are not static objects, but a continuous conversation with the elements.
The “Ultimate Element” Behind Everything
To understand this flow, we must look at what is being breathed. While we perceive a world of diverse materials, there is truly only one “Ultimate Element,” which we can identify as Energy. The world as we know it is simply this energy moving through various “degrees of solidification.”
The sequence fire, air, water, and earth is a symbolic hierarchy within this teaching. It invites reflection on the relationship between form and what is formless. It does not describe a measured process in which physical energy solidifies into chemical elements.
The Four-Part Architecture of “Om” (AUM)
James relates A-U-M and the silence following it to four phases of receiving, abiding, releasing, and resting. This is his contemplative interpretation. When sounding Om aloud, the sounds normally occur during an exhalation; the correspondences below are symbolic and do not require breath holding.
- ‘A’ (Inhalation): This is the coalescence of energy—the initial flow of the formless into a specific form.
- ‘U’ (The Pause): This is the “hold” after the inhale. It represents the material world, or “energy-in-formation.” It is the moment where energy abides and becomes “real.”
- ‘M’ (Exhalation): This is the release of that which is known—the flow of energy back out of the form.
- The Silence: This is the spiritual realm. It is the “true nature of being” and pure energy.
The “Silence” after the sound is perhaps the most vital component. In our Western rush to produce and achieve, we often ignore the gap between the breaths. Yet, this silence is the “no thing” that all “things” depend on for their existence. Without the void of the silence, the vibration of the sound could not be heard. Without the spiritual realm of pure energy, the material world would have no stage upon which to manifest.
The Iceberg Analogy and the States of Matter
“All the secrets are in the breath,” the ancient wisdom suggests. “Spirit means ‘to breathe’—breathing is the link between the body and the mind.” To bridge the gap between this high philosophy and the physical world, we can look to the states of matter. The transition of the Ultimate Element through its penultimate states is mirrored perfectly in the natural world.
Imagine an iceberg at sea on a partially cloudy day. This single scene contains the entire spectrum of universal respiration:
- Solid (Earth): The ice of the iceberg itself.
- Liquid (Water): The sea surrounding the ice.
- Gas (Air): Invisible water vapor in the atmosphere. Visible clouds contain liquid droplets or ice crystals.
- Fire: Sunlight is used symbolically here. Ordinary sunlit clouds consist of droplets or ice crystals; they are not plasma. The Sun contains plasma, and atmospheric examples include lightning’s ionized air channel and the ionosphere’s ions and free electrons. See NASA’s explanation of atmospheric plasma.
Ice can melt and water can evaporate, but these physical changes are an analogy for the teaching. Breath does not turn matter through all four states within the body. NASA explains how clouds form.
Time and Space are Byproducts of Your Breath
James invites us to explore how movement and change shape our experience of space and time. The balloon image describes that experience; it does not establish that human breathing creates physical spacetime.
However, the source of our reality is the “flow.” When energy flows into a form, it creates the experience of “space.” When that energy abides and eventually flows out, it creates a sequence of events that we describe as “time.” In this sense, time is not an external force acting upon you; it is a description of your own respiratory cycle. You are the architect of your own duration. By changing the rhythm of your flow, you essentially change the texture of the space and time you inhabit.
The Potential in the Pause
The four-part cycle of intake, pause, release, and silence is a recurring contemplative image in James’s teaching. It invites attention to change and relationship in everyday life.
As you move through your day, I invite you to become aware of the “silence” that follows your exhale. This is not a hollow void, but the “no thing” that supports your entire life. It is the space of pure potential. If you are feeling overwhelmed by the “things” of the material world, return to that silence. Ask yourself: who is the “being” that exists in the pause before the next breath begins? You might just find that your true nature is far more expansive than the body that contains it.
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