If people around him are speaking, he does not hear them, except now and then, but they may make fun of him or enjoy watching him for reasons that are not clear: apparently a combination of genuine interest and ridicule. This is noted when one meditates in public places.
If you have long remained in absolute samadhi, then you have charged yourself to be free from preoccupations that occur one after the other, punctuated by wakefulness, what am I doing? and then back again and so on.
To be free from these preoccupations, in all of their variations, be it thought, emotions, imaginary persons, objects and so on, is true emancipation indeed.
The suggestion here is that without a absolute samadhi, or its equivalent, real emancipation shall remain elusive.
In counting the breath, two forms of attention is practiced. One is paying attention to the order, from one to ten and the the other is paying attention to individual breaths, order and instances.
From me doing this kind of breath work allows me to develop two forms of attention, that of choosing what to do and that of keeping the end in mind, so that I do only what is necessary to attain the end in mind and nothing else. I tend to be, in this state, more detail oriented and yet keep an end in mind.
But then I am lost now and then either on minor details or on longer term issues, so that I am not present as the time passes. This happens again and again. To maintain both forms of attention one would need, it appears to me, an eternal vigilance, even so one will find herself with this or that, now and then. Awareness of such things is sufficient.
To overcome recurring preoccupations of some sort or another, one may work on mu, leading possibly to absolute samadhi, and thus gain freedom from preoccupations.
It is possible to deeply exhale all the expiratory reserve volume and expire slowly and thus acquire that brilliant condition of the consciousness that the author notes.
It is difficult to enter into samadhi or enjoy a better consciousness, if one were to be moderately exhaling: because different kinds of thoughts shall arise to preoccupy the person, such thoughts are enumerated by the author at the end of the chapter on Counting and Following the Breath.
Exhaling slowly, but breathing as urgently as needed, and spacing 20 seconds between exhalations or so, generally allows me to empty myself from pressures that hang on different places on my body such as at the back of the head and on my shoulders. This is probably what the author means by methodical regulation of exhalation, a method the author believes to be effective in getting us into samadhi.
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