1
All that he knows and experiences are things in this
world of the five senses. The Overself is not within their sphere of operation
and therefore not to be known and experienced in the same way. This is why the
first real entry into it must necessarily be an entry into no-thing-ness. The
mystical phenomena and mystical raptures happen merely on the journey to this
void.(P)
2
At this advanced stage, Philosophy allows no idea
born of the intellect or picture born of the imagination to come between the
aspirant and the pure formless Divinity it would have him worship. All thoughts
are to be absorbed into the Void, all mental images to be merged into Mind.
3
The highest and the last of the inward-bound stages
is still to be reached, and this is the self-knowing Void of Being which can
repeat the phrase "I am that I am" of Exodus 3:14, but which is without any
other predicate.
4
The dividing frontier between the Void and Being,
between utter emptiness and inner reality, is hard to find.
5
During self-absorption in the void, the ordinary
functions of intellect are altogether suspended. This means that thinking comes
to a standstill.
6
If he has succeeded in holding his mind somewhat
still and empty, his next step is to find his centre.(P)
7
The inner movement is like no other which he has
experienced for it must guide itself, must move forward searchingly into
darkness without knowing where it will arrive. He must take some chances here,
yet he need not be afraid. They will be reasonable and safe chances if he abides
by the advice given in these pages.(P)
8
We must move from consciousness to its hidden
reality, the mind-essence which is alone true consciousness because it shines by
its own and not by a borrowed light. When we cease to consider Mind as this or
that particular mind but as all-Mind; when we cease to consider Thought as this
thought or that but as the common power which makes thinking possible; and when
we cease to consider this or that idea as such but as pure Idea, we apprehend
the absolute existence through profound insight. Insight, at this stage, has no
particular object to be conscious of. In this sense it is a Void. When the
personal mind is stripped of its memories and anticipations, when all
sense-impressions and thoughts entirely drop away from it, then it enters the
realm of empty unnameable Nothingness. It is really a kind of
self-contemplation. But this self is not finite and individual, it is cosmic and
infinite.(P)
9
When he attains the state of void, all thoughts
cease for then pure Thought thinks itself alone.(P)
10
God as MIND fills that void. In being deprived
first of his ego and then of his ecstatic emotional union with the Overself, the
mystic who is thereby inwardly reduced to a state of nothingness comes as near
to God's state as he can. However this does not mean that he comes to
God's consciousness.(P)
11
We may now perceive a further reason why all great
teachers have enjoined self-denial. For at this crucial point of perfected
concentration, when the senses are still and the world without remote, the
mystic must renounce his thoughts in favour of Thought. He can do this only by a
final act of surrender whereby his whole sense of personality - all that makes
up what he believed to be "I" - is let go as the last of his thoughts to vanish
into a Void. He must make the abrupt leap into self-identification with the wide
pure impersonal thought-less Thought. He must give up the last of all thoughts -
which is the "I" thought - and accept in return whatever may come to him out of
the great Unknown. A fear rises up and overcomes him for a time that with this
leap he may so endanger his own existence as to plunge into utter annihilation.
This naturally makes him cling all the more to his sense of personality. Shall
we wonder then, that every student shrinks at this order?(P)
12
In the deepest state of meditation, the Void,
there is utter calm. Joy cannot be felt there for it presumes the existence of
someone equipped with an active emotional nature. The religio-mystical devotee
who frequently enters ecstasies of bliss will lose it if and when he seeks to go
deeper and succeeds in entering the Void instead. He will then feel perfect
peace only.
13
He must convert himself mentally into nothingness,
merge his being into emptiness, and put aside all other thoughts.
14
Attention is kept at the highest pitch, yet the
whole direction of it is toward nothing - the Void.
15
"Well hidden and reached solely by arduous
endeavour, is that subtle Void which is the principal root of Freedom.... Here
is the Supreme Reality," says the Shat Chakra Nirupana, a Sanskrit
medieval text.
16
"The state of emptiness should be brought to the
utmost degree, and that of stillness guarded with unwearying vigour," says Lao
Tzu.
17
He must wait in the stillness until there is a
sudden catch at his heart, an abrupt intake of breath.
18
Lost within himself in utter self-absorption, numb
to everything that traces back to the world of action, no longer held by the
power and limit of the senses, he becomes pure mind, disembodied spirit.
19
All that consciousness holds must be reduced to
nothing.
20
Courage to face and accept the unknown is needed
at this deep level of meditation. But if there is insufficient information and
insufficient purification, it might be well to pause at this point and make
oneself better ready for this momentous step.
21
At this point he should turn all his inner
attention on the "emptiness" and firmly hold it there.
22
It is only in the Stillness of the Void that he
will find what he is looking for. But the Stillness is due to the shutting off
of his own clamorous voices, his thoughts and feelings. It is his
personal condition. He must look deep within it, lose himself in it, and come
out on the other side as something else - real Being, not a being.
23
To sit silently in the Void is clearly the
sequence of an act of meditation, the opened flower which bloomed after it.
24
Referring to nondual experience, Mahadevan said in
a letter: "All that one can do is to prepare oneself to be ready to receive when
the time comes."
25
Since no one can peer into the mind of God,
finite-minded as we all are, the best we can do is to try to shift the idea of
"I" over to the Stillness itself, where to lose itself as far as it can in our
innermost being.
26
He himself, the experiencer of the meditation
experience, must go, must lose himself, deny himself, if that which is beyond is
to take over, that is, the true Reality.
27
Though he is without thoughts, he may still not
have attained the highest level. For he may be conscious of their absence
itself. This consciousness must be transcended next.
28
We cannot enter the Void if we carry any
possessions - material or intellectual, emotional or social - with us. This is
surely what Jesus meant when he said that the rich man could not enter the
kingdom of heaven. It is not the bank book that can prevent anyone's entry, but
rather the heart that is unable to leave the bank book.
29
At this crucial moment the mind must be utterly
submissive, the self-will wholly relinquished.
30
He may enter, not into Nirvana, but at least next
door to it, which is the "Void."
31
In the earlier stages of the Short Path he
necessarily uses words to suggest something about the nature of his goal and to
represent it by concepts. But in the advanced stages they lose their value and
he rests calmly and patiently in the Void, identified with Mind, even though not
yet realized as such.
32
Repose in this condition of vast emptiness is
accompanied by intense and vivid happiness. He knows that he is with the living
God. He understands that he has come as close to God as it is possible for a
human being on earth to do and yet remain human and alive. But he knows and
understands all this not by the movement of ideas - for there are none here -
but by a feeling which captures his whole being. But it is during this final
experience of the Void, when he passes beyond all relativity, that he
experiences Mind to be the only reality, the only enduring existence, and that
all else is but a shadow. Entry into this stage is therefore a critical point
for every aspirant.
33
Those who can pass in to the Void with eager
anticipation and glad acceptance of it are few. Those who hover at its brink,
terrified, refusing to make the plunge, are inevitably more.
34
Men who are strongly attached by the cords of
desire to the things of this world naturally find the very idea of the void
repulsive. But even mystics who have loosed themselves from such things still
hesitate when on the threshold of the void and often withdraw without taking the
plunge. For with them it is the clinging to personal self-consciousness which
holds them captive.
35
The first contact of the student with the Void
will probably frighten him. The sense of being alone - a disembodied spirit - in
an immense abyss of limitless space gives a kind of shock to him unless he comes
well prepared by metaphysical understanding and well fortified by a resolve to
reach the supreme reality. His terror is, however, unjustified. In the act of
projecting the personal ego the Overself has necessarily to veil itself from the
ego at the same time. Thus ignorance is born.
36
In the nihilistic experience of void, the mystic
finds memory sense and thought utterly closed, he knows no separate thing and no
particular person; he is blank to all lower phenomena but it is a conscious
living rich blissful sublime blankness; it is simply consciousness freed from
both the pleasant and the unpleasant burdens of earthly existence.
37
At some point his mind slips from its accustomed
anchorage; an impersonal consciousness that is not his own and knows nothing of
himself takes over, and all memories of experience in the world lapse as if they
never were. He is isolated from everything and everyone. Only a knowingness
remains. At first the loss of personality induces fear as he feels its onset but
if he holds his ground and lies still, unresisting, quiet, trusting the
beneficence of the process, the fear of it ebbs and vanishes. Then a calm,
before unknown and now unutterable, replaces it. Such an experience will be
remembered long after all others are forgotten.
38
Those who succeed in reaching this point in their
meditation often withdraw just there, overcome by terror or gripped by panic.
For the prospect of utter annihilation seems to yawn, like an abyss, beneath
their feet. It is indeed the crucial point. The ego, which has lurked behind all
their spiritual aspirations and hidden in disguise within all their spiritual
thinking, must now emerge and show itself as it really is. For where, in this
utter void, can it now conceal itself?
39
When he lets the last active thoughts go, the
great Void may replace them. And if he is fortunate, the great Light will come
and flash across the Void, as point, ray, shaft, or space, as pulsating dynamic
energy or as focused stillness.
40
The womb of mysterious nothingness out of which
the soul emerged is God, the World-Mind. When, in deep meditation, the ego faces
the soul and is then led by it to that nothingness, the first reaction is, at
worst, terrifying fear of annihilation, or, at best, an almost equally
terrifying fear of utter aloneness.
41
In these first moments when he feels the Void
opening up in the centre of his being, an intense expectancy thrills him.
42
He is to look for no support elsewhere and no
light. Evidently the passage to such a unique position may frighten some
aspirants to such a degree that they refuse to traverse it. This is not an
ordinary kind of courage which is required here. All that ties him to his nature
as a human being, to his very existence, must be let go. Nothing less than
annihilation seems to confront him. Indeed, afterwards, when the experience is
over, he thinks to himself that it was really "a kind of dying." He had been
swallowed by death but disgorged again later. He had slipped into it so
imperceptibly, so unconsciously, and so suddenly, that all this became known
only after it was over.
43
Students draw back affrighted at the concept of a
great void which leaves them nothing, human or divine, to which they may cling.
How much the more will they draw back, not from a mere concept, but from an
actual experience through which they must personally pass! Yet this is an event,
albeit not the final one on the ultimate ultramystic path, which they can
neither avoid nor evade. It is a trial which must be endured, although to the
student who has resigned himself to acceptance of the truth whatever face it
bears - who has consequently comprehended already the intellectual emptiness of
both Matter and Personality - this experience will not assume the form of a
trial but rather of an adventure. After such a rare realization, he will emerge
a different man. Henceforth he will know that nothing that has shape, nobody who
bears a form, no voice save that which is soundless can ever help him again. He
will know that his whole trust, his whole hope, and his whole heart are now and
forevermore to be surrendered unconditionally to this Void which mysteriously
will no longer be a Void for him. For it is God.(P)
44
If the glimpse goes as far as an experience of the
Void, it may leave him frightened or elated: the first, if he is utterly
unfamiliar with everything esoteric and completely indoctrinated by conventional
religious dogmas; the second, if he surrenders fear, trusts the Higher Power.
45
When all mental ideation is thus little by little
brought to an end; when all mental forms are gradually eradicated by the
suppressive power of Yoga, the container of those forms - Space - being itself
an idea, is then also suppressed along with the ideas of ego, time, and matter.
In the apparent emptiness which results, the Real is experienced in all its
mysterious fullness. Man comes as close to God as he may. But few mystics have
the courage to take this final step. Most falter on its very edge, stricken by
fear of the Unknown or by unfamiliarity with this mental territory. They stop
and withdraw. The chance to venture beyond is lost and often does not recur for
many years.
46
Not only does the mind become utterly blank and
lose all its thoughts, but it loses at last the oldest, the most familiar, and
the strongest thought of all - the idea of the personal ego.
47
We have become so habituated to our bodily gaols
that even in the deepest meditation, when we stand on the verge of the soul's
infinitude, we draw back affrighted and would rather cling to our captivity than
be liberated from it. These timidities and fears will arise but they must be
overcome. Bhagavad Gita VI:25 teaches the meditation on the Void: "Let
him not think of anything."
48
This is the Void wherein, as in deep sleep, the
thought of world-experience is temporarily stilled. But here consciousness is
kept, whereas in sleep it is lost.
49
The threshold of this inner being cannot be
crossed without overcoming the fear that arises on reaching it. This is a fear
of the unknown, the unfamiliar, the fantastic, and the illusory. The ego shrinks
back from what is so strange to its past experience. It is afraid of losing
itself in this emptiness that confronts it, and with that losing hold of the
solid ground of physical life. Only by calling up all its inner courage and
inner strength can these enemies be conquered.
50
But because the capacity to remain in the void for
more than a moment imposes an intolerable strain upon a man's faculties and an
almost impossible task upon his consciousness, his intellect or imagination
will, in the very next moment, people this void with an idea or an image and
thus end the tension. Thereafter a whole series of other ideas or images will
naturally follow the primal one.
51
He stands on the very verge of non-existence.
Shall he take the plunge? The courageous aspirant must not waver at this crucial
moment. He must gather up all his force and draw the veil which conceals the
face of Isis. A moment more - and he stands in the presence of the Unknown God!
52
What happens is not a passing-out of consciousness
but a passing-into a vast consciousness, an all-space without any objects or any
creatures, a Void.
53
If he is willing to accept this emptiness with all
the annihilation of self that goes with it, he will succeed in passing the
hardest of ordeals and the most rigorous of tests.
54
Without dramatic happening or sensational
incident, the mind slips at long last into the Great Silence.
55
In this deep stillness there occurs the event
which will hold his remembrance for long afterwards - the passage from his mere
existence to his glorious essence. It is brief but transforming.
56
Out of his own large experience of meditation,
"Fear not the stillness," wrote A.E. in a poem.
57
So many mystics are quite unnecessarily frightened
by this concept of the Void that it is necessary to reassure them. They halt on
the very threshold of their high attainment and go no farther, because they fear
they will be extinguished, annihilated. The truth is that this will happen only
to their lower nature. They themselves will remain very much alive. Thus it is
not the best part of their nature which really dreads the experience of the
Void, but the worst part.
58
The fear of losing individuality and dissolving in
a mass consciousness, or of losing identity and disappearing as a personal self,
comes up as an obstacle in a certain deep stage of meditation - but not the
deepest. It has to be overcome, transcended.
59
Those who find that beyond the Light they must
pass through the Void, the unbounded emptiness, often draw back affrighted and
refuse to venture farther. For here they have naught to gain or get, no glorious
spiritual rapture to add to their memories, no great power to increase their
sense of being a co-worker with God. Here their very life-blood is to be
squeezed out as the price of entry; here they must become the feeblest of
creatures.
60
It is an experience which comes of itself, not
constructed by the ego and not following the intake of a hallucinogenic drug. It
leads into a consciousness where there are no objects, no activities, and no
others. It is a zero, a nothing, yet simultaneously an utter intensity, clarity,
and purity of consciousness.
61
The forms of meditation vary, but all in the end
must lead the meditator beyond them. This is the crucial point when he must be
willing to let them go: they have served their purpose. This is the
crossing-over into contemplation (in Christian mystical terms) or
Nirvikalpa (in Hindu yoga terms).
62
There is no need to yield to the fear of the void,
which comes in the deepest meditation. That is merely the personal ego offering
its resistance to the higher self. That same fear of never being able to come
back has to be faced by all advanced mystics when they reach this stage of
meditation, but it is utterly groundless and is really a test of faith in God to
protect them in a most laudable endeavour: to come closer to him and to advance
farther from their lower self. Having once yielded to the fear and failed to
make the necessary advance, the aspirant has failed in the test and it may be a
long time before a similar opportunity will present itself again, if at all.
Nevertheless, the memory of that great experience should always be an
inspiration toward a more impersonal life.
63
In that moment of utter emptiness the mind becomes
a blank but the person becomes united with the unspotted and untainted Overself.
64
When the state of void is first attained, a
trance-like stillness falls on the soul. The constant operation of thinking
comes to an end for a time. The resultant freedom from this activity is marked
and prized. The resultant feeling is memorable and pleasant.
65
A point will be reached in contemplation when the
self makes immediate contact with, and is taken up into, the holy Void.
66
The ego finds itself chilled by the conception of
nothingness, as if it had climbed to a Himalayan height.
67
Most men who are confronted with this concept for
the first time shudder at the thought of annihilation, are terrified at the
possibility of vanishing from existence altogether, and may even regard the
quest of such self-destruction as madness.
68
He feels that to advance a single step farther is
to place himself at the mercy of unpredictable forces and unfamiliar powers.
69
He feels himself to be on the very edge of
existence, with a dark annihilating void just in front and the lighted, safe
solidity of familiar ground just behind him.
70
In the deep waters of meditation, where self is
absent and thoughts negated, he sinks into the Void. It is an indescribable
condition and, to others, an incomprehensible one.
71
When he travels the course of meditation into the
deep places of his being, and if he plumbs them to their utmost reach, at the
end he crosses the threshold of the Void and enters a state which is nonbeing to
the ego. For no memory and no activity of his personal self can exist there. Yet
it is not annihilation, for one thing remains - Consciousness. In this way, and
regarding what happens from the standpoint of his ordinary state at a later
time, he learns that this residue is his real being, his very Spirit, his
enduring life. He learns too why every movement which takes him out of the Void
stillness into a personal mental activity is a return to an inferior state and a
descent to a lower plane. He sees that among such movements there must
necessarily be classed even the answering of such thoughts as "I am a Master. He
is my disciple," or "I am being used to heal the disease of this man." In his
own mind he is neither a teacher nor a healer. If other men choose to consider
him as such and gain help toward sinlessness or get cured of sickness, he takes
no credit to himself for the result but looks at it as if the "miracle" were
done by a stranger.
72
For us - human beings - the Void is not so much a
factual thing as a state of contemplation. Its deepest level is where the
contemplator himself is so completely immersed, so utterly absorbed, as to
vanish entirely - and the whole world with him. Selfhood has gone - where and
into what? These things that were here, this world to which they belonged,
suspended in space, unknown in time - were they hallucinations of consciousness,
and is this Void a non-experience too?
73
Whoever succeeds in going down deeply enough into
his own consciousness can find a phase where it passes away as person, as
the limited little self, but is transformed into the Universal being and then,
still farther, into the Void. This Void is not the annihilation of Consciousness
but the fullness of it, not blankness but true awareness, unhindered by
subsiding activities, not the adulteration of it by thoughts or imaginations but
the purity of it. In this way he experiences his own personal self-nothingness.
From this he can understand two things: why so many prophets have taught that
self blocks our way and why the Mahayana Buddhists have taught the reality of
the Void.
74
It is consciousness severed from all its objects,
awareness with nothing other than itself.
75
Much of the writing of Plotinus is descriptive of
the state Hindus call Nirvikalpa Samadhi. It is the total dispersal of
the world from the field of awareness, a complete flight from sensations,
thoughts, mental images, the physical body, and, above all, from any and every
kind of activity. To an outside observer, it may seem to be a trance state, but
he would not be correct in his observation, nor altogether wrong. It is as deep
as contemplation can possibly go. It is Consciousness freed from any kind of
personal admixture, staying only with itself. All these other things being
removed, what is left is then true self-knowledge, even if it is unconscious
to the ego.
76
When he experiences the deepest possible state,
all mental acts are suspended, all mental activities ended. This includes the
act of identifying oneself with the ego. There is then nothing more to prevent
the coming of enlightenment.
77
Because the Real is also the One, and because
thinking implies the existence of a thinker and his thought - that is, a duality
- rapt absorption in the Real brings about cessation of thoughts.
78
In the deepest trance state we enter by
introversion into the pure Void. There are then no forms to witness, no visions
to behold, no emotions to thrill, no duality of knower and known. The
experiencer of the world and the world itself vanish because the first as ego is
idea and the second is also idea; both merge into their Source, the Mind.
79
In this awesome experience where the diverse world
is annulled, even the experiencing self has its individuality annulled too. Yet,
because both world and self reappear later, annulment is here not the same as
annihilation.
80
This is the experience whose mystery as well as
peace passeth understanding. It is incommunicable by or to the intellect. For
with it we attain unity but lose personality yet preserve identity.
81
The culmination of these efforts is a thought-free
state wherein no impressions arise either externally from the senses or
internally from the reason. The consequence is that the felt contrast between
the "I" and the "not-I" melts away like sugar in water and only the sense of
Being remains - Being which stretches out wide and still like the infinitude of
space. This is the Void.
82
This can be done only by entering the void of
empty thought and being merged into its stillness. Because the Mind transcends
the objective world, it transcends the manyness of this world. In it there is
"no-thing." The dream-world is really a projection of the dreamer's mind. He is
the subject and it is the object. But when he awakes the world vanishes. Where
has it gone? It could only have gone back into his mind, for it is there that it
originally arose. But this is something intangible, a veritable void. In the
same way the external world as an object of thought is during this first stage
deliberately retracted into the Mind-Void.
83
What we call here the Void, following the
Mongolian-Tibetan tradition, is not dissimilar from what Spanish Saint John of
the Cross called "complete detachment and emptiness of spirit." It is a
casting-out of all impressions from the mind, an elimination of every remembered
or imagined experience from it, a turning-away from every idea even psychically
referable to the five senses and the ego; finally, even a loss of personal
identity.(P)
84
In this experience he finds himself in sheer
nothingness. There is not even the comfort of having a personal identity. Yet it
is a paradoxical experience, for despite the total nothingness, he is neither
asleep nor dead nor unconscious. Something is, but what it is, or
how, or anything else about it, stays an unravelled mystery.(P)
85
In that sacred moment when an awed silence grips
the soul, we are undone. The small and narrow bricks with which we have built
our house of personal life collapse and tumble to the ground. The things we
worked and hungered for slip into the limbo of undesired and undesirable relics.
The world of achievement, flickering with the activities of ambition, pales away
into the pettiness of a third-rate play.(P)
86
When metaphysics speaks of the antithesis between
subject and object, it means that between the ego and the world. When philosophy
speaks of transcending them, it means entry into the Source of both in that
still Void where they no longer appear.
87
Matter, form, and place collapse and vanish when
you experience this endless emptiness; hence there is no world at all in the
Void, no consciousness of persons, things, landscapes, or skies.
88
This mysterious experience seems also to have been
known to Dionysius the Areopagite. It is definitely an experience terminating
the process of meditation, for the mystic can then go no higher and no deeper.
It is variously called the Nought in the West and Nirvikalpa
Samadhi in the East. Everything in the world vanishes and along with the
world goes the personal ego; nothing indeed is left except
Consciousness-in-itself. If anything can burrow under the foundation of the ego
and unsettle its present and future stability, it is this awesome event.
89
The world suddenly vanished from view like a
morning mist. I was left alone with Reality.
90
This is the transcendental sight - that under all
the multifarious phenomena of the cosmos, the inner eye sees its root and
source, the great Void.
91
The old ego suppresses itself. There is only a
liberated awareness of pure Mind, of something which he cannot speak of without
feeling that it is the root of his own existence.
92
When the finite life surrenders to the infinite
life, when it gives up self-will and earthly attachment for the sake of finding
what is beyond self and earth, this unique experience comes to it. Everything is
asked from it but everything is then given to it.
93
In this state he is no longer a thinking centre of
existence, an individual human entity. For the intellect ceases to be active,
the emotions cease to move.
94
The world abruptly vanishes from his ken. He is
poised for a few minutes in No-thing, the same great Void in which God is
eternally poised. His contemplation has succeeded and, succeeding, has led him
from self to Overself.
95
Nirvana - by Sri Aurobindo:
96
It is not that personal identity was wholly lost
but rather that it was immersed in the vast ocean of universal being.
97
The world, being for each of us a mental activity,
vanishes as soon as that activity is wholly suppressed by yoga. It is only an
appearance in time, space, matter, and form. The essence behind it is revealed
when the idea of it is suppressed without consciousness itself being suppressed.
98
This condition, this entry into the Void, is a
kind of death. Everything is taken away from him; he is nothing and has nothing;
yet he still feels one thing which utterly compensates for this loss. He feels
the presence of the Overself.
99
It is as if the world had never entered his
experience and never even existed.
100
At this point he gets so lost in the Void that
he forgets who it is who is meditating. Then and thus he receives a further
answer to the question "Who am I?"
101
In the practice of Indian Yoga, Nirvikalpa
Samadhi is considered to be the farthest point to which the practitioner can
travel. Nirvikalpa Samadhi is the condition of the emptied mind, without
any trace of thought, whether of the world or of the person himself; yet fully
aware.
102
So many conversations on the words of Jesus have
taken his sentence "I and my Father are one" to mean a kind of union like
marriage. But they overlook the fact that married couples still remain couples,
still express the number two. Jesus did not say, "I and my father are two." The
number one is definitely not two. For Jesus found, as every other man who
attains that stage of consciousness finds, that when contemplating the Infinite
Life-Power (which he named the Father) he himself vanished. There was then no
other consciousness except that of the Infinite itself. For That was the
substratum of his own "I." But what happened in his contemplation two thousand
years ago still happens today; the same discovery is made when the illusion of
egoity vanishes.
103
His own being mingles with the Great Being and
vanishes for a while.
104
It is consciousness almost without content, what
there is of the latter being perhaps the point from which all this began and
rippled out.
105
No one can enter into the Absolute state as an
individual entity and with an individual relation to it. It could not be what it
is if the two could exist side by side on the same level. If a man is to
approach it he can do so only by becoming as nothing, by casting out his
personal ego.
106
If anyone says he has experienced the Void or if
he says he has merged into the Absolute Spirit, then he must have been present
to note that it is a Void or to know that it is Absolute Spirit. But clearly he
was not present in his ordinary self, or he would not dare to deny its presence
nor claim its complete merger.
107
Both self and universe vanish together. There is
nothing and no one left during such temporary enlightenments.
108
Allama Prabhu, gnani of Northern Mysore
State, probably fourteenth century, author of the book Sunyasampadane
(Attaining of the Void), only half of which has (in the 1960s) been
translated into English and published in Dharwar, thus describes the loftiest
condition reached in mystical meditation:
109
To enter this strange state, a primeval yet
delightful void, where the ego, the intellect, the emotional desires, and the
body do not intrude, is to be born again.
110
The Surangama Sutra chooses, as the best
meditation method for the present historic cycle, the one used by
Avalokitesvara. It disengages bodily hearing from outward sound, then penetrates
still deeper into the void beyond this duality, then beyond ego and its object,
until all opposites and dualities vanish, leaving absoluteness. Nirvana follows
as a natural consequence. In other words, disengage consciousness from the
senses and return to pure Consciousness itself.
111
Guhyasamajatantra: "The steady way of
attaining enlightenment is to avoid any conception about the highest knowledge
or its realization."
112
All other thoughts are banished by the single
thought of the Void but this in turn cannot be got rid of by his own effort. The
descent of grace is necessary for that.
113
When we contemplate World-Mind as existing in
and for itself, not for its universe, not for the All, we have to contemplate it
as the formless Void. And this can be achieved only by becoming for the time
being indistinguishable from the ineffable Void, identified with it. There is
then only the single and simple insight of Being into its own wonder. The circle
has closed in with itself.
114
Through repeated contemplation of the void, the
mind rids itself of the illusions of matter time space and personality and
eventually the truth is reached.
115
A further result of this contemplation of the
world as the great Void is that the work done by mentalistic study is advanced
still further, for not only are the things experienced by the five senses seen
to be only thoughts but the thoughts themselves are now seen to be the transient
spume and spray flung out of seeming Emptiness. Thus there is a complete
reorientation from thoughts to Thought. Instead of holding a single thought or
scenes of ideas in perfect concentration, the practiser must now move away from
all ideas altogether to that seeming emptiness in which they arise. And the
latter, of course, is the pure, passive, undifferentiated mind-stuff out of
which the separate ideas are produced. Here there is no knowing and
discriminating between one idea and another, no stirring into consciousness of
this and that, but rather a sublime vacancy. For the Mind-essence is not
something which we can picture to ourselves; it is utterly formless. It is as
empty and as ungraspable as space.
116
Lao Tzu: "Having once arrived at a state of
absolute emptiness, keep yourself perfectly still. This stillness is going home
to the First, the Origin."
117
The adverse force present in his ego will
continually try to draw him away from positive concentration on pure being into
negative consideration of lower topics. Each time he must become aware of what
is happening, of the change in trend, and resist it at once. Out of this
wearying conflict will eventually be born fresh inner strength if he succeeds,
but only more mental weakness if he fails. For meditation is potently
creative.(P)
118
We must withdraw every thing and thought from
the mind except this single thought of trying to achieve the absence of what is
not the Absolute. This is called Gnana Yoga: "Neti, Neti" (It is
not this), as Shankara called it. And he must go on with this negative
elimination until he reaches the stage where a great Void envelops him. If he
can succeed in holding resolutely to this Void in sustained concentration - and
he will discover it is one of the hardest things in the world to do so - he will
abruptly find that it is not a mere mental abstraction but something real, not a
dream but the most concrete thing in his experience. Then and then only can he
declare positively, "It is This." For he has found the Overself.(P)
119
Mystic experience has its limitation. It still
remains within the realm of duality. This is because the subject-object
relationship still remains. How is this limitation to be removed? The answer is
only by being Being, only by transcending this relation.
120
The meditations on All-is-Matterless,
Empty-of-Form, and Nothing-but-Pure-Mind are so subtle that they will cause
confusion to those persons who are quite unsubtle.
121
1. Do all meditation work with open eyes, with
the Buddhic smile. 2. Keep attention inside on the No-thought state and refrain
from unnecessary talk. 3. When residual impressions from the last incarnation
come in, ignore them. 4. Kill out the mind. Be free from its activity. Stay in
the Void.
122
Give four exercises of a highly advanced
metaphysical character: (a) Meditation on the Void; (b) Meditation on
Nonduality; (c) Meditation on Space; (d) Meditation on Ego's non-existence.
123
Knowledge of and deep meditation upon
understanding the Void lead in the end, and more quickly than by wearisome yoga
methods, to the dissolution of the thinking process.
124
The best meditation in forgetting our personal
miseries is the meditation on the Void. For if we succeed in it to only a
partial degree, we succeed to that extent in forgetting the ego, who also is the
sufferer, and his miseries vanish with it.
125
Mind manifests itself in the most astonishing
variety of forms and the most antagonistic array of oppositions. Its masked
presence is the unity which binds them all together. Each man may prove this
truth for himself, for each man may penetrate in contemplation to its void
within himself.
126
If we make this discrimination between the
Mind-essence and its products, between the Seer and the Seen - and we must make
it at this ultimate stage - then we must follow it to the logical end. Not by
adding more information, or more learning, or more study, can we now enter the
Kingdom of Heaven, but rather by letting go, by ceasing this continual mental
movement, and finding out what lies behind the movement.
127
One ordinary opposition between the experiencer
and the experienced suddenly leaves him as they are both perceived to be one and
the same "stuff" - Mind.
128
At one stage of meditation the student realizes
that everything in the universe is the result of the activity of imagination and
has no more if no less reality than an imagination itself has. At this stage the
student realizes the nothingness of everything so that the incomprehensibility
of this concept to the finite intellect vanishes.
129
It is not the objects of conscious
attention which are to be allowed to trap the mind forever and divert the man
from his higher duty. It is the consciousness itself which ought to
engage his interest and hold his deepest concentration.(P)
130
When we comprehend that the pure essence of mind
is reality, then we can also comprehend the rationale of the higher yoga which
would settle attention in pure thought itself rather than in finite thoughts.
When this is done the mind becomes vacant, still, and utterly undisturbed. This
grand calm of nonduality comes to the philosophic yogi alone and is not to be
confused with the lower-mystical experience of emotional ecstasy, clairvoyant
vision, and inner voice. For in the latter the ego is present as its enjoyer,
whereas in the former it is absent because the philosophic discipline has led to
its denial. The lower type of mystic must make a special effort to gain his
ecstatic experience, but the higher type finds it arises spontaneously without
personal effort at all. The first is in the realm of duality, whilst the second
has realized nonduality.(P)
131
This exercise requires us to imagine the Divine
as, first, all pervasive and everywhere present, unbounded and limitless, and
second, the hidden origin of everything in the cosmos.
132
In this exercise he first tries to comprehend
that there is an immaterial and infinite Mind back of himself and, second, tries
to identify himself with it. This he can successfully do only by an inner
withdrawal in the one case and by a forgetting of personality in the other.
133
He may use the ocean or sky as a starting point
for concentrating, its character being one of unlimited stretch, but he should
think of it as being within himself.
134
He feels that he has touched something that
always was even before his own body appeared on earth, something primeval and
boundless.
135
He passes into all-engulfing space.
136
In itself, Thought is beyond thoughts. In
himself, the Thinker is on a level different from all the activity of thinking.
137
He has to reject the form of the thought
but seek out and keep what remains as its essence or being, Thought, which could
never be rejected even if he tried a lifetime. He must fix - and he will need
the utmost power of concentration to do so - his attention on this essence
exclusively and steadily.
138
The mind thus turned inward upon itself can then
discover what its own stuff is. It can comprehend how persons can be put forth
and retracted through the incarnations while their basis remains ever the same.
139
For when awareness is retracted into its source,
all thoughts fall away and no second thing other than Mind itself is known to
us.
140
He must begin by ceasing to think of the Divine
Being as if it were one object put among others, but preferred to them.
141
After one has meditated on the nature of Mind in
itself, he must carry the same meditation into the thought of Mind's presence
within himself. Thus he moves from its cosmic to its individualized character.
142
Suzuki: "Have your mind like unto space."
143
We have to seek Consciousness-in-itself, not
those shadowy fragmentary and very limited expressions of it which are ideas. No
collection of thoughts or combination of words can do other than misrepresent
it.
144
How can we win this freedom of timelessness?
There is one way and that is to step into the Void and to stay there. We must
find, in short, the eternal Now.
145
The exercise of trying to break through the
mystery of time, which is a mental state, into timelessness, which is not,
belongs to the Short Path and is important, valuable, but admittedly difficult
for beginners. It is practised by confining the thoughts again and again during
spare moments and brief leisurely periods to the meaning of timelessness, of the
eternal now, and of the everlasting Presence.
146
The aim here is to get at the very source of
thinking itself, to penetrate to that deep ground whence it rises, it falls.
147
In this ultramystic state a man may verify the
teaching that the Real World is a timeless one. For the sense of time can only
exist when the succession of thoughts exists. But in this condition thoughts may
be suggested at will and with them time itself.
148
He has to seek not merely another standpoint but
that which is beyond all possible standpoints. He has to enter not just a
different space-time level but that which is the base of all existing space-time
levels.
149
The best form of meditation is that which lifts
us above time and into the Eternal Now.
150
The longer you remain in this particular
meditation the closer you will understand what the eternal Now means.
151
The student achieves the end of ordinary
exercises when during the practice period his attention is able to rest
introverted effortlessly naturally steadily and unswervingly. This by itself is
an unusual achievement and brings with it an unusual sense of inner peace, an
indifference to worldly attractions and moods of rapt ecstasy. We need not be
surprised therefore that most students are content to stop here. But the
philosophic student must proceed farther. He must use this interval of inward
silence to attack the ego.
152
When all thoughts are extinguished; when even
the thought of the quest itself vanishes; when even the final thought of seeking
to control thoughts also subsides, then the great battle with the ego can take
place. But the last scene of this invisible drama is always played by the
Overself. For only when its Grace shoots forth and strikes down this final
thought, does success come.(P)
153
Everything that intrudes upon the mental
stillness in this highly critical stage must be rejected, no matter how virtuous
or how "spiritual" a face it puts on. Only by the lapse of all thought, by the
loss of all thinking capacity can he maintain this rigid stillness as it should
be maintained. It is here alone that the last great battle will be fought and
that the first great fulfilment will be achieved. That battle will be the one
which will give the final deathblow to the ego; that fulfilment will be the
union with his Overself after the ego's death. Both the battle and the
fulfilment must take place within the stillness; they must not be a merely
intellectual matter of thought alone nor a merely emotional matter of feeling
alone. Here in the stillness both thought and emotion must die and the ego will
then lose their powerful support. Therefore here alone is it possible to tackle
the ego with any possibility of victory.(P)
154
He separates the thought of his own existence
from all other thoughts, then attacks and annuls it by the most penetrating
insight he has ever shown.(P)
155
Self is a tree with many branches - body,
intellect, feeling, will, and intuition - but only one root. Aim at finding this
root and you may control the growth of the whole tree. Hold your will (thoughts)
within the leash.
156
The root-thought which underlies the ego that
has to be slain is not that it is separate from all other creatures but that it
is separate from the one infinite life-power.(P)
157
If meditation is ever to escape from the finite
objects on which it is centered to union with the infinite subject which is its
ultimate aim, it must find the meditator's real jailer and kill him; it must
bring the ego out of its hiding place and face it boldly in mortal combat. If it
is ever to transcend itself and become contemplation, by transcending all
thinking whatsoever, it must catch the last thought, the "I" thought, and slay
it.
158
Meditation on the void has, as one of its chief
aims, the overcoming of egoism. It not only destroys the narrow view of self but
sublimates the very thought of self into the thought of pure unbounded
existence. Employed at the proper time and not prematurely, it burns up the
delusion of separateness.
159
Hidden behind every particular thought there
exists the divine element which makes possible our consciousness of that
thought. If therefore we seek that element, we must seek it first by widening
the gap between them and then dissolving all thoughts, and second by
contemplating that out of which they have arisen.
160
This ultramystic exercise which enables us to
slip into the gap between one moment and another, one thought and another, is
the practical means of attaining enlightenment as to the true nature of Mind.
161
When thought is transcended, that moment - it
may be one millionth of a second - he can comprehend the truth about Brahman's
transcending thought. For then the idea becomes the mind. At that moment the
mind negates all thoughts. This is called the lightning flash in the
Upanishads. You must watch vigilantly for it. When between two thoughts
you catch this brief flash you have to understand that the thoughts were still
in your mind whether they had appeared or vanished. The thought-gap is hidden.
That gap is the see-er of the thoughts, that is, Drik, Mind, Brahman.
162
During the gap - infinitesimal though it be -
between two thoughts, the ego vanishes. Hence it may truly be said that with
each thought it reincarnates anew. There is no real need to wait for the series
of long-lived births to be passed through before liberation can be achieved. The
series of momentary births also offers this opportunity, provided a man knows
how to use it.(P)
163
The succession of thoughts appears in time, but
the gap between two of them is outside time. The gap itself is normally
unobserved. The chance of enlightenment is missed.
164
While the dualistic division of subject/object
(self and non-self) is practised, there is ordinary physical sense-experience.
But when consciousness is detached from this division, the real nondualist world
as it is, and not as it is received by ordinary minds, reveals itself. (This can
be done by entering the gap between two thoughts.)
165
The space of time between a man's two thoughts
is quite infinitesimal so that he is not conscious of it at all. Yet it is real.
166
This is the indefinable middle point between
consciousness and unconsciousness.
167
Time is for consciousness a succession of
moments. It is at the end of the interval between the first two that we become
aware of its passage and can call the measurement one second. If thinking stops
but consciousness remains and we manage to stay with it without introducing the
ego - which restarts the process, the movement - we are caught and held in the
gap. This is pure consciousness.
168
The exercise of watching a thought arise and
vanish and then intently holding on to the interval before the next thought
arises, is a hard one. It needs months and years of patient practice. But the
reward, when it comes, is immense.
169
When I wrote down the exercise in The Wisdom
of the Overself of concentrating on the gap between two thoughts, I did not
know that the Buddha had stated that Nirvana exists "between two mind moments."
I take this statement to confirm the usefulness of that exercise - admittedly a
very difficult one.
170
In The Wisdom of the Overself I gave an
exercise for entering the gap in consciousness between two thoughts, as a means
of entering the egoless state. Those who succeeded in mastering it at times went
through this tremendous experience which follows, but admittedly few were able
to find their way into this gap.
It is needful, when mentioning the subject again, to point out the significance that is given to holding the breath in the practice of yoga. This experience, although induced deliberately and artificially by the would-be yogis, can also come about involuntarily - of its own accord, by itself - purely through meditation or saying a prayer, when it is called "the catch in the breath." It can come unexpectedly. When the grace descends, one falls into utter stillness, a great deep silence, and the breath seems to stop of itself. Of that moment is written, in an age-old sacred work belonging to a period far earlier than the times of Plato and Buddha, that it is the soul of man.
171
The moment he emerges from the void, he regains
his individuality. For with this he has to live and move in this lower world.
But it is not the personal ego which is regained. That is already dead. It is
his soul.
172
The "great void" mentioned in my book is not
synonymous with death. Death conveys the idea of the loss of consciousness.
There is no loss of consciousness in this state, but the consciousness is
transformed indescribably. The state is so blissful, moreover, that there is no
worrying about the loss of the ego. However, it is a temporary state because so
long as we are living in the flesh we are unable to sustain it and are drawn
back by the forces of nature - first to the ego and then to the body. But anyone
who has been through that experience even once cannot possibly regard the ego
and the body ever again in the same way, because their limitations are clearly
felt.
In any case, one need not worry about this absolute condition but rather should await its arrival - then judge whether it is worthwhile or not.
173
If he has once passed through the experience of
the Sacred Nothingness, the Eternal Emptiness, and understood its correct
meaning, he will be ready to pass discerningly tranquilly and securely through
every experience that the world of activity and movement may offer him.
174
Could an individual succeed in stopping these
thoughts of the manifested universe from overpowering him, he would attain to a
knowledge of the Void. This can be done by yoga, and the consequent state is
technically termed "the vacuum mind." Naturally there is nothing in the void to
suffer the pains of illness, the decay of old age, the transition of death, and
the miseries of ill-fortune. Therefore it is said that he who succeeds in
attaining mentally to it, succeeds also in attaining the blessed life of exalted
peace.
175
Paradoxically enough, tremendous forces lie
latent here. Indeed the law is that the deeper a man penetrates into the void
and the longer he sustains this penetration, the greater will be the power with
which he will emerge from it.
176
When these powers come into his possession,
there also comes a deep sense of responsibility for their right use.
177
Paradoxically, it is in the trancelike state of
self-absorption that the degree of passing away from the personal self is
completely achieved. But when nature reasserts herself and brings the mystic
back to his normal condition, she brings him back to the personality too. For
without some kind of self-identification with his body, his thoughts, and his
feelings, he could not attend to personal duties and necessities at all.
178
We are meditating on something which will not
arise and disappear, as ideas do and as material forms do, on something which is
not ephemeral. Because that which vanishes contradicts its own arisal, we seek
for that which does not contradict itself. Hence this kind of meditation which
brings contemplation into action, sleep into wakefulness, has been called by the
ancients "The Yoga of the Uncontradictable."(P)
179
It comes as a state of intense bliss, and then
you are your personal self no longer. The world is blotted out; Being alone
exists. That Being has neither shape nor form. It is, shall we say, coexistent
with space...in it you seem to fulfil the highest purpose of our Being. It is
not the Ultimate, but for the sake of your meditation practice you nevertheless
may regard it as the Ultimate. You will come back after a while. You cannot stay
in it for long. You will come back and when you come back you will come back to
the intellect; then you will begin to think very, very slowly at first, and each
thought will be full of tremendous meaning, tremendous vitality, tremendous
beauty and reality. You will be alive and inspired and you will know that you
have had a transcendent experience. You will feel a great joy, and then for some
time you may have to live on the memory of this glorious experience. Such
experiences do not come often, but they will provide a memory that will act as a
positive inspiration to you from time to time.(P)
180
He who passes through these deeper phases of the
Void can never again call anything or anyone his own. He becomes secretly and
spiritually deprived of all personal possessions. This is because he has
thoroughly realized the complete immateriality, spacelessness, timelessness, and
formlessness of the Real - a realization which consequently leaves him nothing
to take hold of, either within the world or within his personality. Not only
does the possessive sense fall away from his attitude towards physical things
but also towards intellectual ones.(P)
181
All desires are naturally quenched in the void
because nothing that is relative can coexist with it. This ever-renewed
contemplation of our infinite Root will in time dissolve our lower tendencies
and give the quietus to our animal passions. Thus it is not merely a theoretical
exercise but a practical one yielding valuable fruit.
182
He must learn not only to identify himself with
the Void but to remain immovably fixed in such nihilistic identity. He must not
only learn to regard everything as Mind but to remain unshakeably certain that
it is so. When no doubt can penetrate this insight and no experience can
dislodge him from this inner vacuum...
183
There are two ultimate experiences open to the
meditator. Both share in common a contentment and calmness that is supernormal
in quality and an absorption in superphysical states. The mystic attains this by
religious devotion and the concentration practice alone. But where the latter is
accompanied by philosophical discrimination and knowledge, the consciousness is
carried almost twice as far into still subtler states and values until it
reaches the second ultimate experience. This is near to indescribable, so it has
been called "the plane of neither perception nor non-perception." This is
because the ego, the conscious observer, is no longer functioning; the
experience, the object observed, is no longer there; the residue is a Void. Yet
it is not total annihilation; consciousness of some kind must have been held
there: for on returning to the normal state, it is picked up again. This raises
the interesting question: what, then, is the Void? Ordinarily the term is used
for that state where personal, physical, and mental experiences come to a stop
but with a rarefied consciousness still remaining. There is no-thing to be known
and no-one to know it, certainly no personal memory. This, in the understanding
of most students, is the end of the matter: after all, it is too abstract a
conception to have any bearing on the lives of those, most of us, who are not
monks or hermits with the time and opportunity for prolonged meditations in
depth or for intensive analysis of such subtleties. But to complete the record
before it is too late, let it be said that there is another kind of Void, seldom
studied by the monks and less known among them. In the first kind, there is what
might be called "the awareness of awareness." In the second kind, even that
ceases. It might be called "death in life." Once experienced, it need not be
gone through again, for it leaves its mark permanently on the man. But in the
ordinary circumstances of worldly life, especially today, there is little chance
for a safe approach to it. Nor is it necessary. For us non-monastic Westerners,
the practice of philosophy is the best way.
184
The Void which he finds within frees him for a
while from all attachments without. The more deeply and more often he penetrates
it, the freer will he become on the surface of his life.
185
One may be fortunate enough to have a most
uncommon mystical experience. His desire to experience it again may be fulfilled
if he attempts the exercise in the fourteenth chapter of The Wisdom of the
Overself in which this experience is given as one of the results. It is
inevitable that such a high, advanced experience usually occurs at rare
intervals. Had he been able to sustain and prolong it for as much as five hours,
he would permanently and unbrokenly have entered into the consciousness of his
divine soul.
186
The Void must not be misunderstood. Although it
is the deepest state of meditation and one where he is deprived of all
possessions, including his own personal self, it has a parallel state in the
ordinary active non-meditative condition, which can best be called detachment.
187
After all, even the Void, grand and awesome as
it is, is nothing but a temporary experience, a period of meditation.
188
The awareness of what is Real must be found not
only in deep meditation, in its trance, but when fully awake.
189
I have often been asked what I thought was the
secret of Buddha's smile. It is - it can only be - that he smiled at himself for
searching all those years for what he already possessed.(P)
190
Gautama's face, set in a half-smile indicative
of being transported in consciousness to a transcendental world, is
unforgettable.
191
Two-and-a-half thousand years ago Gautama
attained peace more completely than our sense-bound, intellect-confined
contemporaries can imagine. On the statues which have come down to us from near
his time, there appears the flicker of a smile. Yet this was the man who
formulated the tragedy of human existence, the everlasting frustration of human
desire.
192
The bland secret smile of a Buddha,
cobra-canopied and legs curled under him...
193
The Buddha's face is passionless but not
expressionless. If its skin is taut like a mask, that is due to achieved
serenity and not to hard cold stoniness. The lips are just beginning to break
into the smile of Nirvana's joy and compassion's feeling.
194
What does Gautama's quiet smile mean? It means
that here is a man who has found a benign relation with all other people and an
assured one with himself.
195
The contemplative inner work of a Buddha, as
exemplified by his seated statues, is a gentle one, not like the austere
determined self-combative yogi's. It is also a patient one, as if he had all the
time in the world.
196
Those little figures and large statues of the
Buddha which are to be found in some Western homes, museums, and art galleries
of quality, show us perfect examples not only of the power of concentration, but
also of the meaning of contemplation. For in them we behold the sage utterly
absorbed in the Void's stillness, ego merged in the universal being,
consciousness empty of all moving thoughts.
197
Why did Gautama smile? Nothing outward had
happened to him; all remained as it had been! Yet his lips and mouth formed the
tenderest, gentlest, happiest shape.
198
What does the faint, half-hidden smile of Buddha
tell us? That he came from Nirvana, assured of peace and hope for mankind's
inner future.
199
The small, slowly beginning, and delicately
mysterious smile of Buddha is full of meaning. But the happiness which it points
to does not belong to the simple carnal pleasures or the egoistic intellectual
ones.
200
The Buddha's delicate half-smile, pathetically
self-deceptive to the cynic, beautifully compassionate to the devotee, is not
impenetrable to the man who can let his ego go, however briefly. For then there
is utter relaxation, freedom from tension, the disavowal of negativity, and the
clear perception of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.
201
The knowledge that all things are moving toward
all-good keeps a quiet smile around the corner of his lips.
202
When the West was first confronted by these
pictures and statuaries of the Buddha, it could make nothing of his inward
smile. Today it knows better.
203
The traditional Buddhist belief that all
happiness must in the end change into unhappiness is not a cheerful one. It need
never be taken too literally as being universally true, nor by itself alone, for
there are counterweighting truths. When Buddha brought to an end the meditation
which culminated in final enlightenment, dawn was just breaking.
The last star which vanished with the night and the first one which he saw as he raised his head was Venus. What was his inner state, then? Did it synchronize with the reputed planetary influence of Venus - joyous and happy felicity - or with the gloomy view of life which tradition later associated with Buddhism? Who that has had a glimpse of those higher states, felt their serenity, can doubt it was the first? The Overself is not subjected to suffering. But this is not to say that it is bubbling with happiness. It is rather like an immensely deep ocean, perfectly tranquil below the surface. That tranquillity is its ever-present condition and is a true joyousness which ordinary people rarely know. This is what Buddha felt. This is what he called NIRVANA.(P)
204
As I gaze upon the rigid rapt figure of the
Buddha upon my desk, I realize anew how much of Gautama's power is drawn from
the practice of contemplation. It ties wings to the mind and sends the soul
soaring up to its primal home. Gautama found his peace during that wonderful
night when he came, weary of long search, dejected with six years of fruitless
effort, to the Bo-tree near Gaya and sat in motionless meditation beneath its
friendly branches, sinking the plummet of mind into the sacred well within. The
true nature of human existence is obscured by the ceaseless changes of human
thought. Whilst we remain embroiled in the multitude of thoughts which pass and
re-pass, we cannot discover the pure unit of consciousness which exists beneath
them all. These thoughts must first be steadied, next stilled. Every man has a
fount within him. He has but to arise and go unto it. There he may find what he
really needs.