INSIGHT | Prana: The Energy that Propels Life
- Nov 30, 2025
- 5 min read
More than twenty years ago, I had developed a practice of journaling early in the morning to capture my unfiltered thoughts. When I look back, the journal entries often surprised me -- they were vast and esoteric, and contained personal wisdom that I failed to comprehend at the time. That day in 2001, while journaling in my room in San Jose, California, I had an epiphany about my future.
To understand the significance of this, you must first understand my mindset back then. At that time in my life, I was a mechanical engineer in a literal sea of engineers in the Silicon Valley, slaving away at my job in the corporate world. I had recently finished graduate school in engineering at Stanford and prior to that, I completed my undergraduate engineering at MIT. My entire identity and sense of accomplishment was tied to my job. The world was material; my existence was practical and driven. Most of the time, I reveled in the engineering work that I did, and every so often, the politics of that world would force me to look elsewhere for joy -- that's when I delved into Vipassana meditation and began writing poetry. Perhaps, my right brain was craving some attention. Whatever it was, it pulled at me. I couldn't help myself -- meditating whenever I had free time and feeling inspired to write when I woke from sleep. I had a deep connection with this part of me that was trying to express itself through poetry and prose.
That day in 2001, in my early morning journal entry I felt compelled to scribble: my life's work would be in the space of energy.
Later that day, I read through my journal entry and scratched my head, puzzled by this pronouncement. Energy? Which energy? Immediately nuclear power plants came to mind, an area that I had zero expertise in. Momentarily, I thought about returning to school to study nuclear engineering and perhaps getting in touch with a girl I knew at MIT who studied nuclear engineering -- but she became weird around graduation, so maybe not. I wondered whether studying an entirely new discipline was the meaning behind the insight. I thought about electrical energy and electrical engineering -- as I was already surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of "double E's" (electrical engineering graduates) in San Jose -- but quickly said no, that wasn't going to be it either. Wind energy? Solar energy? Chemical energy? I couldn't figure it out.
A few days later, this poem emerged from another journaling session:
Rising above mountain tops
to endless fields of snow-like bastions of nothingness,
towering vortices shape the scape before me.
Entranced by this illusion of white pillow-like ripples,
I pass through this subtlety of nature
only to be mesmerized by a seemingly non-existent existence.
At a lofty shore, I gaze down to see an entire universe
of gross manifestations
with all the complexity of colorful matter,
seemingly real forms with an emptiness inside.
With inexplicable speed,
the billowing masses become lighter,
the wispy white forms become thinner,
the meandering muslin-like sheets flow
into a primordial tide,
until all fade into non-existence.
I couldn't find an explanation to help this poem take its place in my world. It read like an excerpt from fantasy fiction, but it had that same pull on me, and I felt a deep connection to the concepts in it. And just like the last line of my poem, both of these thoughts -- about the direction of my life's work and the poem I had written -- faded into non-existence from my conscious mind.
Since COVID (2020), I began studying Ayurveda, a full science of self-care, preserved as a living tradition in India and through ancient texts. Ayurveda was, perhaps, the envy of the ancient world (~5,000 BCE) and its centers of knowledge at Takshashila, Nalanda, and Vikramshila in the Indian sub-continent. There are records of the Greeks, Chinese, and other contemporaries learning from these centers in antiquity. And in spite of attempts to destroy the knowledge, Ayurveda went underground for almost 800 years during foreign rule in India, and has re-emerged post-partition in it's entirety as a holistic healthcare system.
The wisdom held in Ayurveda is vast. The philosophical foundations discuss both external (e.g. origins of the universe) and internal(e.g. nature of consciousness) concepts. What's relevant here is the concept of brahman, or that infinite unmanifest absolute energy through which all things manifest. This has been portrayed, in terms of function, in the 1999 movie "The Matrix", as the matrix (source code through which all life manifested). Brahman is the aditattva or the root of all existence and in its purest form is perceived as the primordial sound vibration (aum) and in movement as prana. At a cosmic level, prana is the energetic force through which the elements of nature (space, air, fire, water, earth) express themselves. Incidently, within Ayurveda, prana is also seen as the same energetic force that animates each being.
What's particularly fascinating about the elements of nature is the manifestation from subtle to gross matter, with space being the subtlest and earth being the grossest. In order to perceive subtle elements, we must slow down gross movements of the body and the mind. In stillness, the lines of my poem begin to make sense. With my mind focused ("Entranced"), I am able to perceive "the subtlety of nature", both manifest and unmanifest. As the elements become lighter, thinner, and more subtle, they return to their ultimate form as cosmic energy, as prana, and ultimately as Brahman, unmanifest energy.
Through Ayurveda, we learn ways to conserve prana or life energy -- in our actions, thoughts, and words, in our choice of ingredients in food, and in our connections to the living world -- in order to live a healthy, long, and purposeful life. Being observant of our world, and slowing down in mind and deed, conserves prana. According to Rigveda Sayana Bhashya (n.d.), in RV 10.129.1–2,
"Then there was neither non-existence nor existence. There was no realm of air nor the sky beyond it. What covered it? Where? In whose protection? Was there the water, deep and profound?
There was no death nor immortality. There was no night nor day. That One breathed without wind, by its own power. Apart from That, nothing else existed. "
Again, this theme of the ultimate form of energy, is so beautifully described in the lyrical, sacred Rig Veda. This moment before creation of the cosmos when Brahman was undifferentiated potential, and the three worlds had not come into existence, there is mention of "That One breathed without wind, by its own power. " referring to the primordial unity that holds prana, that is ultimately prana.
Now journaling some twenty-five years later at home in Southern California, as an Advanced Ayurvedic Practitioner, I find my thoughts have come full circle, as my entire sense of purpose is firmly grounded in helping society reclaim their connection to energy, to prana -- through food, through mind and deed, and through community.