If you go hunt­ing, hunt rhino­cer­os. Do not set your­self cheap and eas­ily reached goals, which are not even worth set­ting out for. The impossible must be attemp­ted, for even if you achieved no more than half a suc­cess, that too would be far more than a com­fort­able goal in life.

What is this rhino­cer­os to be? Accord­ing to hol­ist­ic think­ing, man can embrace all that exists out­side him, which is to say that the uni­verse is inter­n­al­ised, in body and in con­scious­ness.

In med­it­a­tion man can recog­nise the par­al­lels between his own psy­cho-physiolo­gic­al organ­ism and the uni­verse. His heart is an inner Sun, the Sun a cos­mic heart. The golden Mount Meru, rising at the centre of the world, is identic­al with the spin­al column, the Ganges is the mys­tic­al ida chan­nel of prana, the river Yamuna its coun­ter­part, the pin­gala, while the river Saraswati, invis­ible today, is the sushumna. Pray­ag, the sac­red place of pil­grim­age that opens the pas­sage between the earthly and heav­enly spheres, where the three rivers flow into one, is the mys­tic­al open­ing at the crown of the skull, the brah­marandhra; and sac­red Mount Kailash, home to Shiva, is the highest chakra, the thou­sand-pet­alled lotus. The earth ele­ment is present in the bones, the water ele­ment in the bod­ily flu­ids, the fire ele­ment in the power of the root chakra, and the cos­mic life energy (prana) in the air we breathe.

The mys­tery of breath­ing is very well known in Indi­an philo­sophy. The rhythm of inhal­a­tion and exhal­a­tion is traced back to the res­on­ance of prim­or­di­al con­scious­ness and prim­al energy, and the frag­ments of time between the phases of breath­ing keep the mind com­posed. In the rhythm of man's breath­ing pulses the prim­al sound of cre­ation, the sac­red Om, which also per­vades the aware­ness of every liv­ing being. Hold­ing the breath – one of the basic tech­niques of yoga – fur­thers the open­ing of aware­ness and enlight­en­ment. An aver­age of 21,600 breaths a day, assum­ing a lifespan of eighty years, comes to almost 650 mil­lion breaths. The cos­mos is in con­stant, subtle vibra­tion, and the motion of the plan­ets, their bal­ance and their changes give nature its char­ac­ter in time. This char­ac­ter pulses in the rhythm of man's breath­ing and heart­beat too.

Let the uni­verse, then, be the rhino­cer­os to hunt down! Tak­ing in the uni­verse, grasp­ing full­ness, is already a high enough goal. In the ele­ment­ary yoga prac­tices – obser­va­tion, aware­ness, pres­ence, con­tem­pla­tion – con­scious­ness is turned chiefly out­wards, but the prac­ti­tion­er slowly detaches him­self from the outer world. The high­er yoga prac­tices aim at mas­tery of the mind, and fur­ther the open­ing of con­scious­ness and inner exper­i­en­cing. In the state of trance the prac­ti­tion­er recog­nises that the whole uni­verse is one, since all that exists can be traced back to one ulti­mate source, root, cause. Bey­ond this exper­i­ence of unity there exists a spir­itu­al exper­i­ence of dual­ity, for the other neces­sary com­pon­ent of unity is diversity. Unity and diversity are two sides of the same coin, and the inscrip­tion on its rim is divine love.

Man's chakra levels respond to the uni­verse. The lower chakra levels rep­res­ent the creature of instinct, man's bio­lo­gic­al nature. The root and sac­ral chakras draw two ener­gies into the organ­ism, the ser­pent fire of the earth ele­ment and the life force of water. The middle chakra levels con­sti­tute the truly human field. This sphere is bound up with man's bod­ily exist­ence and his intel­lec­tu­al poten­tial; the solar plex­us, heart and throat chakras influ­ence the human per­son­al­ity, sus­tain a healthy energy bal­ance and mobil­ise the forces of emo­tion and truth. Finally, the upper chakras point towards the heav­enly, cos­mic planes of con­scious­ness: the third eye and the crown chakra stand apart from the rest and are activ­ated only after suf­fi­cient spir­itu­al puri­fic­a­tion and devel­op­ment. Their power is intu­it­ive clear-sighted­ness and enlight­en­ment.

Meas­ure your­self against the uni­verse… – the purer the level you stand on, the truer the say­ing. That is, earthly, bio­lo­gic­al exist­ence can be grasped with the lower chakras, but this is a rab­bit at best, not a rhino­cer­os. Unfold­ing the middle chakra levels makes you a good per­son, and with the upper chakras the Akash­ic Record can be read. Through this chan­nel the uni­verse can be grasped, and the best it holds is worth tak­ing in too. This insight is already a noble enough aim. If you go hunt­ing, hunt rhino­cer­os.