Franz Bardon on Life

"God ~Since the remotest times, Mankind has always believed in something beyond human understanding, something transcendental that he idolized no matter whether there was question of personified or unpersonified conceptions of God. Anything man was unable to understand or to comprehend was imputed to the powers above such as his intuitive virtue admitted them. In this way, all the deities of mankind, good and evil ones have been born. As time went on, gods, angels, demiurges, demons and ghosts have been worshiped irrespective of their ever having been alive in reality or their having existed only in fancy."

"Now let us regard the idea of God from the magic standpoint, according to the four elements,the so-called tetragrammaton, the unspeakable, the supreme: the fiery principle involves the almightiness and the omnipotence, the airy principle owns the wisdom, purity and clarity, from which aspect proceeds the universal lawfulness. Love and eternal life are attributed to the watery principle, and omnipresence, immortality and consequently eternity belong to the earth principle. These four aspects together represent the supreme Godhead. Let us tread upon this path to this supreme Godhead practically and step by step, beginning from the lowest sphere, to arrive at the true realization of God in ourselves. Let us praise the happy man who will reach this still in his earthly existence. Us banish fear of the pains, for all of us will reach this goal."

"...The Mystery of Breathing ~ Breathing is to be given your very careful consideration. Normally each living creature is bound to breathe. There is no life at all without breathing. It is obvious that a magician ought to know more than the mere fact of inhaling oxygen and nitrogen which the lungs absorb and exhale as carbon dioxide and nitrogen. The lungs cannot exist without breathing and food. All we need for our life, and what preserves our life, to wit, breathing and food, is tetrapolar, four elements plus a fifth, the vital element or akasa principle, as we have said in the theoretical part about the elements. But the air we are breathing has a finer degree of density than the grossly material food has. But according to the universal laws, both of them have the same nature, being tetrapolar and serving to keep the body alive. Let us therefore return to breathing... By normal or unconscious breathing, the body is supplied only with as much elemental substance as is necessary for its normal preservation. Here also the supply depends on the consumption of elemental substance. It is quite different with conscious breathing."