In this deep level of meditation, he will scarcely be aware of the body. What awareness there is will objectify it as something he uses or wears, certainly not as himself. He will feel that to be a purely mental being.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30217 – 15.23.7.82

BN – ZZ – D

The body stilled as if by an outside force, its limbs unwilling to move and its breathing diminished to gentleness—this is the best condition for the higher Consciousness.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30219 – 15.23.7.84

BN – X – D

Noises and sights may be still present in the background of consciousness but the pull and fascination of the inner being will be strong enough to hold him and they will not be able to move his attention away from it. This, of course, is an advanced state; but once mastered and familiar, it must yield to the next one. Here, as if passing from this waking world to a dream one, there is a slip-over into universal space, incredibly vast and totally empty. Consciousness is there but, as he discovers later, this too is only a phase through which it passes. Where, and when, will it all end? When Consciousness is led—by Grace—to itself, beyond its states, phases, and conditions where man, at last, is fit to meet God.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30220 – 15.23.7.85

BN – X – DEK

The body seems far away, but I seem closer than ever. For I feel that now I am in my mind and no longer the body's captive. There is a sense of release. I am as free as Space itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30224 – 15.23.7.89

BN – Z – D

In this third phase, contemplation, there is a feeling of being surrounded by the immensity of infinite space with one's own being somehow connected with it.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30225 – 15.23.7.90

BN – Z – D

The stage of contemplation has its own definite signs. Prominent among them are its thought-free emptiness, its utter tranquillity, its absence of personal selfishness.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30227 – 15.23.7.92

BA11 – Z – D

He enters the third stage, contemplation, when the thought or thing on which he fixed his mind alone remains there whereas the consciousness that he is meditating vanishes. He finishes this stage when this residue is none other than the Overself, thus transcending his personal self and losing it in the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30228 – 15.23.7.93

BN – Z – D

When this third stage [contemplation] is reached, there is a feeling, sometimes gradual but sometimes abrupt, that his thought activities have been cancelled out by a superior force.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30229 – 15.23.7.94

BN – Z – DK

The third stage of practice, contemplation, is definitely a joyous one. There is a subtle feeling of great comfort, sublime ease, at times even expanding into a rich and refined blissfulness.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30230 – 15.23.7.95

BN – Z

We enter into paradise when, in contemplation, we enter into awareness of the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30231 – 15.23.7.96

BN – Z – D

Those who have their first experience of the delightful peace which may be briefly felt in contemplation may become emotionally excited and mentally thrilled by it. These experiences are useful and helpful, especially for the encouragement they give; but it must be remembered that they are not in themselves the main object of meditation, for they still deal with the person, the personality, even though on its highest and best levels. Only when contemplation leads to a forgetfulness of the personality and a total immersion in the Higher Being is this purpose achieved.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30232 – 15.23.7.97

BN – Z

When consciousness is stripped of its contents and stands in naked simplicity so that it can be seen as it really is, a tremendous quietude falls upon us. All strivings cease of their own accord.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30233 – 15.23.7.98

BN – Z – D

A sudden mysterious tranquillity descends upon him, a feeling as if he were not there at all.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30234 – 15.23.7.99

BN – Z

His efforts at this stage will be saturated with the hope and expectancy with which one watches a slow sunrise.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30235 – 15.23.7.100

BN – Z

There is a great calm in this state: not a great rapture, but a patient attentive repose in the higher power.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30236 – 15.23.7.101

BN – Z

Bring to these intervals your suffering and disappointments, your weariness and burdens, and let them slide into the Mystery that suffuses some of these moments.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30237 – 15.23.7.102

BN – Z

Once he has been able to establish himself in this inward self-isolation and to adjust himself to its entirely different level of being, he will experience delight and feel peace.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30238 – 15.23.7.103

BN – Z – D

All thoughts are submerged in the stillness. The overheated brain is cooled. The emotions are reined in. The profoundest peace reigns in the whole being.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30239 – 15.23.7.104

BN – Z

He stands on the verge of a great and enigmatic stillness. All Nature seems arrested, all her processes within himself come to a halt.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30240 – 15.23.7.105

BN – Z

The beginner's ecstatic rapture will grow by degrees into the proficient's impassive serenity.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30241 – 15.23.7.106

BN – Z

Ecstatic moods, trances, or swoons are not sought by the philosopher, as they are by the saint; but if they do happen to come, as they might, through his meditations he takes care that they will find their proper place and leave his inner equilibrium undisturbed.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30242 – 15.23.7.107

BN – Z

As he enters this fourth dimension of the Soul, infinite well-being pervades him.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30243 – 15.23.7.108

BN – ZZ

The peace of contemplation, when achieved, falls upon us like eventide's hush. The brain's busy travail stops, the world's frantic pressure upon the nerves ends.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30244 – 15.23.7.109

BN – Z – D

When there is no consciousness of the world, yet Consciousness-in-itself remains, ecstasy follows.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30245 – 15.23.7.110

BN – Z

This last stage, contemplation, is neither deep reflective thinking nor self-hypnotic trance. It is intense awareness, without the intrusion of the little ego or the large world. In this state the thought-making activity comes to an end, the intellect itself is absorbed in the still centre of being, and a luminous peace enfolds the man.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30247M – 15.23.7.112

BA11 – P – DX

In this state the thought-making activity comes to an end, the intellect itself is absorbed in the still centre of being, and a luminous peace enfolds the man.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30247 – 15.23.7.112

BN – X – D

In this state the world is not presented to consciousness. Consequently none of the problems associated with it is present. No ego is active with personal emotions and particular thoughts. No inner conflicts disturb the still centre of being.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30248 – 15.23.7.113

BN – X – D

All his fears melt in this triumphant tranquillity as though they had never been.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30252 – 15.23.7.117

BN – Z

When the flowing stream of thoughts is brought to an end at last, there is indescribable satisfaction.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30253 – 15.23.7.118

BN – Z – D

The beauty of those calm moments when the tumult of the mind has been stilled, is supreme.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30255 – 15.23.7.120

BN – Z

When the mind falls into stillness, when time stretches the moment out into a limitless life, man stands on the inner edge of his true soul.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30256 – 15.23.7.121

BN – Z

The Overself should not be reached merely in trance; it must be known in full waking consciousness. Trance is merely the deepest phase of meditation, which in turn is instrumental in helping prepare the mind to discover truth. Yoga does not yield truth directly. Trance does not do more than concentrate the mind perfectly and render it completely calm. Realization can come after the mind is in that state and after it has begun to inquire, with such an improved instrument, into truth.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30257 – 15.23.7.122

BN – Z

Saint Catherine of Siena passed often into deep trances, during which she lay bodily rigid and mentally rapt in ecstasy. On some of these occasions her entire physique became so hot that her face was flushed red with blood and covered with drops of perspiration. This is Spirit-Energy.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30259 – 15.23.7.124

BN – Z

There are physical symptoms of the dawning of the semi-trance state. They are a feeling of tightness around the scalp and of pressure between the temples.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30260 – 15.23.7.125

BN – ZZ

With the feeling of the ego's displacement, all feelings of devotional worship or mystical communion also come to an end. For they presuppose duality, a relation which vanishes where there is only the consciousness of a single entity—the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30263 – 15.23.7.128

BN – ZZ – D

Contemplation, in its fullest measure, is a rehearsal for death. For in letting all thoughts go, we let the world go, we let possessions go, and lastly we let the body go!

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30264 – 15.23.7.129

BN – Z

For the meaning and use of the term 'transparency' in describing mystic experience, note (a) Mabel Collins' book on Patanjali uses the title 'The Transparent Jewel,' (b) the Chinese painter Pata Shan-Jen, seventeenth century: 'When the mind is transparent and pure as if reflected on the mirrorlike surface of water; when it is serene. . . .' (c) a Chinese modern writer on art, Juo Chang Chung-yuan: 'There is a calmness . . . the atmosphere is of rare transparency, . . . his innermost being tranquil.'

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30265 – 15.23.7.130

UR_3.2 – Z – K

The mind slides into a blankness, where time is not, the movement of hours unmarked by ticking watch, and where the pleasurableness of non-being takes over.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30266 – 15.23.7.131

BN – Z

At first strange transformations may take place in his space-time sense. Space is grotesquely narrowed while time is grotesquely slowed down. A far-off tree may seem within hand's reach while the movement of a hand itself may seem an hour's work. The concentration of attention becomes so extreme that the whole world narrows down to the preoccupation of the moment. This stage passes away.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30267 – 15.23.7.132

BN – Z

In this complete stillness, the mental waves come to rest and with them the sense of time is thrown out of function or else so strangely changed that a few minutes become a whole hour.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30268 – 15.23.7.133

BN – Z

Time itself is erased by the mysterious Power of the Stillness.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30269 – 15.23.7.134

BN – Z

In that deep state of contemplation the ego becomes a mere potential, the consciousness is unwrinkled by thoughts, the body is completely immobile.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30270 – 15.23.7.135

BN – Z

By a penetrating to the profound stillness within and a letting go of the world with its turmoil, the higher power itself is found and met: its message is then able to penetrate his consciousness. Such stillness provides the correct condition for letting the man become absorbed into it. For the period in which this happens, his ego thought-simplex vanishes; be it only a few seconds, the pause is most valuable.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30271 – 15.23.7.136

BN – Z

When the student attains to this stage of meditation, all sensations of an external world sink away but the idea of his own abstract existence still remains. His next effort must therefore be to suppress this idea and if he succeeds then this is followed by a sense of infinity.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30272 – 15.23.7.137

BN – X – D

In those moments when he has gone as deep as seems possible, when he is himself not there and the ego is obliterated, there is real freedom, and most especially freedom from desires, attachments, bonds, dependencies.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30273 – 15.23.7.138

BN – Z

In that passionless calm, where the littlenesses of the ego melt and dissolve, and its agitations sink and lose themselves, he may touch a few moments when he loses the sense of his own identity. The tremendous wonder of it, this delicious liberation from the confines of his own person!

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30275 – 15.23.7.140

BN – Z

All thoughts, and most important the world-thought and the ego-thought, melt little by little into the stillness.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30276 – 15.23.7.141

BN – Z

How can one forget the first day when one sat in deep contemplation, feeling a mesmeric influence coming over him and drawing him deeper and deeper within, while the sensation of light surrounded him? Deeper and deeper one went until one forgot almost who one was and where one was. How reluctant was the slow return after having played truant to this world and to the ego!

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30277 – 15.23.7.142

BN – Z – D

When the senses are completely lulled and the thoughts completely rested, consciousness loses the feeling of movement and with it the feeling of time. The state into which it then passes is an indication of what timelessness means.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30279 – 15.23.7.144

BN – Z

The ego dissolves into that infinity of relaxed being which is unforgettable and therapeutic. All strains fade out, all pressures vanish with the gentle influx of this peace-filled mood.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30280 – 15.23.7.145

BN – ZZ

If we search into the innermost part of our self, we come in the end to an utter void where nothing from the outside world can reflect itself, to a divine stillness where no image and no form can be active. This is the essence of our being. This is the true Spirit.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Experiencing the passage into contemplation

#30284 – 15.23.7.149

BN – Z – D

This experience of self-annihilation ('fana', the Sufis call it) teaches several valuable truths, but the one which needs mention here is that whether you feel the Reality in an overwhelming mystic experience or not, what matters is that you should carry the unfaltering faith that it is always there, always present with you and within you.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30286 – 15.23.7.151

BN – Z

The mind is called pure not only when passions and desires have ceased surging through it, but also when thoughts and pictures have ceased to arise, especially the personal self-thought.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30287 – 15.23.7.152

BN – Z – D

This exercise in emptying the mind of its thoughts begins as a negative one but must end as a positive one. For when all thoughts are gone, it will then be possible to affirm the pure principle of Thought itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30288 – 15.23.7.153

BN – Z

That which IS, by its very nature, is out of time—while thinking involves a series of points in time. Thinking is finite and limits awareness to finite objects. Therefore, to contact the 'infinite' we must go beyond thought. Because human intellect is too finite, it follows that our thoughts cannot encompass it. Since that which IS cannot be taken hold of by thinking of any kind, a part of the essential requirement for contact with it is the non-acting of the thinking function. The mind must be emptied of all its contents in order that its true nature—awareness—should be revealed. At present, it is always entangled with some thought so that awareness by itself is lost in that thought. Self disappears in the ego-thought, and the "I" mistakes the object for the subject—whether the object be the world outside it, or thoughts inside it.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30289 – 15.23.7.154

BN – X – DEK

When the mind enters into this imageless and thoughtless state, there is nothing in it to resist the union with divine consciousness.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30290 – 15.23.7.155

BN – Z – D

If one remembers that speech is a form of communication with other men because it uses words, then he must conclude that thinking is a form of communication with himself since it also uses words. But that means he remains apart separate and distant from himself. This is why the art of meditation, which is the art of finding oneself, involves the practice of mental silence—cutting off words, and that which they express, thoughts.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30291 – 15.23.7.156

BN – Z

If a state of vacant mind be deliberately and successfully induced, one of the chief conditions requisite to temporary awareness of the soul will then exist.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30292 – 15.23.7.157

BN – Z – D

All that he has hitherto known as himself, all those thoughts and feelings, actions and experiences which make up the ego's ordinary life, have now to be temporarily deserted if he would know the universal element hidden behind the ego itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30293 – 15.23.7.158

BN – Z – D

When the mind is able to remain utterly still in itself, it is able to see and recognize the soul.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30294 – 15.23.7.159

BN – Z

Says the 'Mukti Upanishad': "There is only one means to control one's mind, that is to destroy thoughts as soon as they arise. That is the great dawn."

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30295 – 15.23.7.160

BN – X – D

In the 'Tibetan work Buddha Doctrine Among the Birds', there is a single line which contains an entire technique in its few words. "Put your inmost mind into a state of non-action," it runs.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30296 – 15.23.7.161

BN – Z

If he wishes to enter the stage of contemplation, he must let go of every thought as it rises, however high or holy it seems, for it is sure to bring associated thoughts in its train. However interesting or attractive these bypaths may be at other times, they are now just that—bypaths. He must rigidly seek the Void.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30297 – 15.23.7.162

BN – ZZ – DK1

Only in perfect stillness of the mind, when all discursive and invading thoughts are expelled, can the true purity be attained and the ego expelled with them.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30298 – 15.23.7.163

B_01 – ZZZ – DM1

Every state other than this perfect stillness is a manifestation of the ego, even if it be an inner mystical "experience." To be in the Overself one must be out of the ego, and consequently out of the ego's experience, thoughts, fancies, or images. All these may have their fit place and use at other times but not when the consciousness is to be raised completely to the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30299 – 15.23.7.164

BA11 – Z – DK1

The best form of meditation is to avoid thinking of anything. In the mind so kept clear, God will manifest Himself. —Shankara of Kanchi

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30300 – 15.23.7.165

BN – X – D

If he does not practise keeping himself—his body and mind—still, this presence which emanates grace is not given the chance to activate his consciousness. Here is the first secret of meditation—Be still! The second secret is—Know the I am, God! The stillness will have a relaxing and somewhat healing effect, but no more, unless he has 'faith', unless he deliberately seeks communion with God.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30302 – 15.23.7.167

BN – Z – DEK

L.C. Soper: "The mind has to be still, not made still. Effort only leads to a rigid mind. When it realizes the futility of effort to penetrate to reality, the mind becomes still. There is only a self-forgetting attentiveness."

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30303 – 15.23.7.168

BN – Z – D

The thread of contemplation once broken, it is nearly impossible to pick it up again quickly enough that same time. This is why it is important to let nothing else, not even a change in bodily posture, come to interrupt the contemplation.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30304 – 15.23.7.169

BN – X – D

When the ego is silent, the Overself can speak.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30305 – 15.23.7.170

BN – ZZ – D

Hence he must let go of every single and separate thought which arises to bar his path, every sensuous image which memory or anticipation throws down as a gauntlet before him, and every emotion which seeks to detain or distract him.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30307 – 15.23.7.172

BN – ZZ

When thoughts cease 'of themselves' the stillness comes. When thinking rejects its own activity consciousness 'is'.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30308 – 15.23.7.173

BN – Z

Be still, and know that I am God, sings the Biblical Psalmist. This simply means that the movement of thoughts and emotions is to be brought to an end by entering the deepest degree of contemplation. The same teaching is given in the 'Bhagavad Gita'. "As the wick of an oil lamp placed in a wind-free spot is flickerless, so is the yogi of mastered mind who practises union with the God-Self."

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30311 – 15.23.7.176

BN – X – DEK

To give up the self means to give up what is ordinarily known as self—that is, personal thoughts and feelings—to the deeper self within. But the latter is pure awareness and void of all emotional or intellectual contents: nothing. Hence when the personal egoity gives up to, and enters, it, such thoughts and feelings become as nothing too. The mind is stilled and they are annihilated.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30313 – 15.23.7.178

BN – Z

There is no other way to discover the Pure Consciousness than the renunciation of thinking, then the willingness to go beyond it altogether.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30315 – 15.23.7.180

BN – Z – D

It is the disentanglement of consciousness from its own projections, its thoughts of every kind, which is the final and first work of a would-be philosopher. Consciousness is then in its pure unconditioned being.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30316 – 15.23.7.181

BN – Z – D

To the extent that a man is willing to empty himself of himself, to that extent he is providing a condition for the influx into his normal consciousness of a sense of the Overself's reality. It is like emptying a cup in order that it may be filled.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30317 – 15.23.7.182

BN – Z – D

It is a fact that when the mind becomes perfectly controlled and thoughts are brought to a point and stilled, there arises a clear intuitive feeling which tells him about the mind itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30318 – 15.23.7.183

BN – Z – DK

To put an end to this constant working of the mind, this manufacture of thoughts without apparent stop, is the purpose of yoga. But by the practice of philosophy, by the utter calm, thoughts end themselves.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30321 – 15.23.7.186

BA11 – Z – D

It is the art of putting oneself into and, for experts, of remaining in the soul's consciousness. Therefore only one who is capable of doing this can write about it with either accuracy or authority. All other writers, viewing the state from outside, can get back only their own thoughts about it, not real knowledge.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30322 – 15.23.7.187

BN – ZZZ

Get away from your usual and habitual mental activities, your emotional drives and passional urges; get beneath them and you will come to pure mind, pure feeling, able to look, as from a far-off point, at God.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30324 – 15.23.7.189

BN – Z

Whenever he is still, silent, concentrated, and reverent, he will be able to place his mind in rapport with the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Still the mind

#30330 – 15.23.7.195

BN – Z

As he sinks deeper after many relapses towards the undivided mind, as he calls on all the powers of his will and concentration to keep within focus the inner work of this spiritual exercise, he may get a sense of leading, of being directed by something within.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30336 – 15.23.7.201

BN – ZZ – D

The idea around which his meditation revolved must now be used as a springboard from which to move to a higher level. Whereas he was before intent on working out his own thoughts, now he must abandon them altogether. Before he was positive; now he must be passive. The mind must become quiet, the emotions must compose themselves, before he can receive the sacred flux.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30337 – 15.23.7.202

BN – Z

The second stage of meditation should be brought to an end the moment you become aware of a slowing down in the tempo of thinking and of a quickening of intuitive feeling; after that moment you are ready to attempt to enter the third stage of contemplation proper. Let your consciousness become quiet and still. In truth it has nothing really to do, except to permit that intuitive feeling to spread all over it and envelop it.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30339 – 15.23.7.204

BN – Z

When a certain depth is reached and the concentration remains unflagging, the ego begins to sink back into its source, to dissolve into and unite with that holy source. It is then indeed as near to God's presence as it can get.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30340 – 15.23.7.205

BN – ZZ – D

In this third stage [Contemplation] all thinking is thrust aside. He simply looks directly at the Overself, remaining inwardly quite still until he feels himself being drawn into the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30341 – 15.23.7.206

BN – Z – D

Trace consciousness back to itself, unmixed with bodily sense-reports, emotional moods, or mental thoughts. This can be done successfully only by withdrawing it inwards as you analyse. The process becomes a meditation. In the final term you are aware of nothing else, that is, of nothing but being aware. But at this point you cannot know it as a second thing, an object, but only by being it.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30343 – 15.23.7.208

BN – X – D

Take attention away from the everyday egoistic self and you may open a gate to the Overself. This is one method—and the harder one. Let attention be held by a glimpse so that the everyday self drifts out of focus. This is another method—and the easier. The first is yoga and depends on active personal effort. The second is passive and depends on absorption in art, music, landscape, or a visitation.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30344 – 15.23.7.209

BN – Z – DEK

Follow this invisible thread of tender holy feeling, keep attention close to it, do not let other things distract or bring you away from it. For at its end is entry into Awareness.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30345 – 15.23.7.210

BN – Z – DK1

The student must for minutes deliberately recall himself from the external multitude of things to their single mental ground in himself. He must remind himself that although he sees everything as an objective picture, this picture is inseparable from his own mind. He has to transcend the world-idea within himself not by trying to blot it out but by thoroughly comprehending its mentalist character. He must temporarily become an onlooker, detached in spirit but just as capable in action.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30346 – 15.23.7.211

BN – ZZ – K1

Contemplation is attained when your thinking about a spiritual truth or about the spiritual goal suddenly ceases of itself. The mind then enters into a perfectly still and rapt condition.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30347 – 15.23.7.212

BN – X – DK1

He directs his attention inward, seeking the mind itself rather than its incarnation in thought-bodies.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30348 – 15.23.7.213

BN – Z – D

The faculty of attention is interiorized and turned back upon itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30351 – 15.23.7.216

BN – X – DK

Follow the "I" back to its holy source.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30355 – 15.23.7.220

BN – Z – D

The mind undivided, that is, without a subject-object parting of it into two portions, passes into a deep contemplation.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30356 – 15.23.7.221

BN – Z

He must pursue this faint feeling as it bears him into the inmost recesses of his being. The farther he travels with it in that direction, the stronger will it become.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30357 – 15.23.7.222

BN – X – D

None of these other ways of getting absorbed is absolutely prerequisite; the essential thing is to catch the delicate feeling of being indrawn and to go along with it.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30358 – 15.23.7.223

BN – X – D

He must let himself be entirely transported by whichever of these two feelings comes to him: indrawnness or upliftment.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30359 – 15.23.7.224

BN – Z

Entry into the third or contemplative stage may be marked by a momentary lapse from any consciousness at all. Yet it will be such a deep lapse that the meditator will not know on recovery whether it has endured a few seconds or a whole hour.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30360 – 15.23.7.225

BN – Z

Letting go all thoughts—the ego-thought, the world-thought, even the God-thought—until absolutely none is present in mind: it is as simple as that!

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30361 – 15.23.7.226

BN – Z – DK

If he is sufficiently advanced he need make no verbal formulation or pictured image to prepare a point of concentration, but can begin straightaway in an abstract wordless pressure towards the heart.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30362 – 15.23.7.227

BN – Z – D

This is one of the subtlest acts which anyone can perform, this becoming conscious of consciousness, this attending to attention.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30363 – 15.23.7.228

BN – Z – D

Whether thinking of the personal God or of the impersonal God, one is still thinking of God. In the end he has to drop all thoughts, to 'be' with God and not merely to have thoughts of God, whether they are personal or impersonal.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30364 – 15.23.7.229

BN – Z

What was named in 'The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga' "The Yoga of the Untouch" can be literally translated as "The Yoga which Touches no Object," meaning—in plain English—the practice of turning attention away from every thought and image and thing in profound concentration and being utterly absorbed in pure Mind. This is a feat which obviously requires prior preparatory training. There is no attempt at self-improvement, self-purification, or mind-training here; nor any aspiration, or longing. It is a calm movement into the Silent Universal Mind, without personal aims.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30366 – 15.23.7.231

BN – X – DEK

Thinking is an activity which has its place in certain kinds of meditation—the kind which seeks self-betterment, moral improvement, or metaphysical clarification. It is an activity which occupies the generality of its practitioners in the earlier stages. In the more advanced stages and certainly on the Short Path, the attitude towards it must change. The practitioner must seek to transcend thinking so that he can enter the stillness where every movement of thought comes to an end but where consciousness remains.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30367 – 15.23.7.232

BN – Z – D

A point is reached where the seeker must stop making a 'thought' of the Overself, or he will defeat himself and ensure inability to go beyond the intellect into the Overself. At this point he is required to enter the Stillness.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30368 – 15.23.7.233

BN – Z – D

Holding the high aspiration strongly but relaxing the thoughts and personal pressures opens the way.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Deepen attention

#30372 – 15.23.7.237

BN – Z

He will understand the real spirit of meditation when he understands that he has to do nothing at all, just to sit still physically, mentally, and emotionally. For the moment he attempts to do anything, he intrudes his ego. By sitting inwardly and outwardly still, he surrenders egoistic action and thereby implies that he is willing to surrender his little self to his Overself. He shows that he is willing to step aside and let himself be worked upon, acted through, and guided by a higher power.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30373 – 15.23.7.238

BN – ZZZ – D

He has reached the subtlest area of the mind's journey. For what is to be done now must be done without bringing the ego into it, without the consciousness as a background that he is trying to do it. This may appear impossible and is certainly paradoxical. It is, however, accomplished by a process of letting go, negative rather than positive. It is a passive letting-do.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30374 – 15.23.7.239

BN – ZZZ

At this critical point consciousness shifts from forced willed attention, that is, concentration, to passive receptive attention, or contemplation. This happens by itself, by grace.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30375 – 15.23.7.240

BN – X – D

Nothing is to be held within the consciousness but rather consciousness is to let itself be held by the enveloping Grace.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30376 – 15.23.7.241

BN – X – D

The period of active effort is at an end; the period of passive waiting now follows it. Without any act on his own part and without any mental movement of his own, the Grace draws him up to the next higher stage and miraculously puts him there where he has so long and so much desired to be. Mark well the absence of self-effort at this stage, how the whole task is taken out of his hands.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30377 – 15.23.7.242

BN – ZZZ – D

This 'anti-technique' must not be misunderstood. Without the quality of self-imposed patience, the student cannot go far in this quest. If he has only a tourist mentality and nothing more, if he seeks to collect in one, sweeping, surface glance all the truths which have taken mankind lifetimes of effort and struggle to perceive, he will succeed only in collecting a series of self-deceptive impressions which may indeed provide him with the illusion of progress but will lead nowhere in the end.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30378 – 15.23.7.243

BN – Z

At this stage his business is to wait patiently, looking as deeply inward as he can while waiting. Any attempt to grasp at the Overself would now defeat itself, for the ego's willed effort could only get the ego itself back. But the willingness to sit still with hands metaphorically outstretched like a beggar's, and for a sufficient stretch of time, may lead one day to a moment when the Overself takes him by surprise as it suddenly takes hold of his mind. The much sought and memorable Glimpse will then be his. He has applied for discipleship and this is his sign of acceptance.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30379 – 15.23.7.244

BN – Z – D

Thinking must be reduced more and more until it goes. But by no deliberate act of will can he bring on contemplation. All he can do is to be passive and wait in patience and keep the correct attitude—aspiring, loving, watching, but devoid of any kind of tension.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30380 – 15.23.7.245

BN – Z – D

Look for the moment when grace intervenes. Do not, in ignorance, fail to intercept it, letting it pass by unheeded and therefore lost. There is a feeling of mystery in this moment which, if lingered with, turns to sacredness. This is the signal; seek to be alone, let go of everything else, cease other activities, begin 'not' meditation but contemplation, the thought-free state.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30381 – 15.23.7.246

BN – X – D

He has to let himself become totally absorbed by this beautiful feeling, and to remain in it as long as possible. Work, family, friends, or society may call him away but, by refusing to heed them, he is denying his own will and abandoning it to God.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30382 – 15.23.7.247

BN – ZZ – D

His own efforts at this stage will consist in removing from the field of concentration every mental association and emotional influence which distracts him from attaining the stillness. When he has succeeded in removing them, he is then to do nothing at all, only to relax.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30385 – 15.23.7.250

BN – X – D

Although it is the duty of the beginner who seeks to master concentration to resist this distraction of thoughts, this tendency to move endlessly in a circle from subject to subject, there is quite a different duty for the proficient who seeks to master contemplation. He ought not take this flow of thoughts too seriously or anxiously, but may let it go on with the attitude that he surrenders this too to the Overself. He lets the result of his efforts be in God's hands.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30386 – 15.23.7.251

BN – X – D

Withdrawn from the world's clamour to this still centre of his innermost being, waiting in utter patience for the Presence which may or may not appear, he performs a daily duty which has become of high importance and priority.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30387 – 15.23.7.252

BN – ZZZ – D

The more inert the ego can be during this exercise, and the more passively it rests before the Overself, the fuller will be the latter's entry. Obviously this condition cannot be achieved during the first stage, that of conscious effort and struggle with distractions.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30388 – 15.23.7.253

BN – Z – D

His own power will bring him to a certain point but it will not be able to bring him farther along. When this is reached, he has no alternative than to surrender patiently, acquiescently, and wait. By such submission he shows his humility and takes one step in becoming worthy of grace.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30389 – 15.23.7.254

BA12 – P – D

He is beginning to master wisdom when he tries to learn how not to try.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30390 – 15.23.7.255

BN – ZZ

It is almost impossible to throw all thoughts and all images out of the mind. But what we cannot do for ourselves can be done for us by a higher power.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30391 – 15.23.7.256

BN – Z – D

Wait with patience for His Majesty the Inner Ruler to appear in the Hall of Audience.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30392 – 15.23.7.257

BN – Z

It comes to this, that we have to learn the art of doing nothing! It would seem that everyone could practise this without the slightest preparation or training, but the fact is that hardly anyone can do so. For the expression "doing nothing" must be interpreted in an absolute sense. We must learn to be totally without action, without thought—without any tension or manifestation of the ego. The Biblical expression "Be still!" says exactly the same thing but says it positively where the other says it negatively. If we really succeed in learning this art, and sit absolutely still for long periods of time, we shall be given the best of all rewards, the one promised by the Bible: we shall "know that I am God."

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30393 – 15.23.7.258

BN – X – D

What happens next comes from no effort on his part and depends on nothing that he does. He is simply to remain still, perfectly still in body and mind. Then from above, from the Overself, grace descends and he begins to experience the joy of feeling the divine presence.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30395 – 15.23.7.260

BN – X – D

Now that he has entered the blank silence he must be prepared to wait patiently for what is about to unfold itself. This next development cannot be forced or hurried; indeed, that attempt would effectively prevent its manifestation.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30396 – 15.23.7.261

BN – Z – D

If it is true to say that in the earlier stages of his quest he holds 'on' to the Still Thought-less stage, in the later and more settled stage he is held 'by' It.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30397 – 15.23.7.262

BN – Z – D

As he sits there, hieratically immobile, in peaceful surrender, his mind turned away from everyday matters, he feels the Presence little by little.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30398 – 15.23.7.263

BN – Z

It was quite correct to seek in the earlier stages understanding of what is happening to him, but not in this later stage. Here he is to be like a dumb creature, letting the Overself do its cleansing, ego-stilling work in him.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30399 – 15.23.7.264

BN – Z

The significant moment in meditation begins when the man stops making efforts himself and when the mind begins to take him, to withdraw him into itself quite of its own accord. This is an amazing experience for he does not know how he came to stop doing what he was already doing, trying, using effort. He is somehow led into letting it all go, into yielding to the mood of passivity which gently, imperceptibly steals over him.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30401 – 15.23.7.266

BN – Z – D

Before he can benefit by the Presence he must put himself in a receptive state, must be prepared mentally and emotionally and even physically. Rested and relaxed, self-cleansed and God-turned, humbled and involved, he is ready for the "touch."

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30402 – 15.23.7.267

BN – Z

Both mind and heart must be used in persistent effort to find the goal of this quest; but at a certain point the effort must cease, and both mind and heart must be stilled. For it is then that the divine can enter; it is then that the quester must cease trying and let the divine grace bless its preparatory work. Thus from a positive attitude he passes, eventually, into a passive one, not trying to force the issue any longer, but letting himself be receptive and relaxed.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30403 – 15.23.7.268

BN – Z

The more deeply he lets himself sink into this attitude of receptivity—whether in meditation on God or admiration of art—the finer the result.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30404 – 15.23.7.269

BN – Z – D

More than any other author, Lao Tzu has put in the tersest and simplest way the importance, the meaning, and the result of the sitting-still practice, the patient waiting for inner being to reveal itself, the submissive allowing of intuition to be felt and accepted.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30405 – 15.23.7.270

BN – Z – D

There is nothing to do, no technique to practise when you already 'are' in the Light.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30406 – 15.23.7.271

BN – ZZ – D

Once these preliminaries have been fulfilled and the ego's active devotions have subsided, all that he can do is to wait, watchfully, for the arisal of intuitive feelings and then devote his utmost attention to them.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30407 – 15.23.7.272

BN – ZZ

In the ultimate phase of meditation, he has mastered the art, finished his work, and relaxed completely. He is quite inactive, quite still in both body and mind, doing nothing. For now he is at his best level of consciousness—the holiest, calmest, widest one.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > Yield to Grace

#30408 – 15.23.7.273

BN – X – D

When the mind is as clear as a purified lake and as still as a tree in the depths of a forest, it can pick up new transcendental perceptions and feelings.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30409 – 15.23.7.274

BN – ZZ

Here I am is to be his attitude, "humbly receptive in the silence, submissively waiting with restrained ego and stilled mind for whatever guidance comes and however distasteful to personal emotion or however unwelcome to personal judgement it may be."

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30410 – 15.23.7.275

BN – ZZ

If after you reach the deepest contemplation, you then direct attention towards a particular problem on which you are seeking knowledge, knowledge which neither the senses nor the intellect has so far been able to supply, you may be able to perceive as in a flash what is the proper solution of this problem.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30411 – 15.23.7.276

BN – Z – D

Observe how still our whole being spontaneously becomes when we want to be fully receptive just before some important announcement. If it is of the highest possible importance, we almost hold our breath; such is the intense stillness needed to take it in to the utmost degree and to miss nothing. How much more should we be still throughout every part of mind and body when waiting to hear the silent pronouncements of the Overself!

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30412 – 15.23.7.277

BN – Z – D

The truth germinates in Silence.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30413 – 15.23.7.278

BN – ZZ

There is no better authority for a truth on which to rest than its own clear perception directly within oneself. But this statement is valid only if the ego has been put where it belongs, at least during the period of perception.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30414 – 15.23.7.279

BN – ZZZ

We not seldom find speech to be but the laryngeal medium whereby men convey lies to us; it is somewhat paradoxical, therefore, that silence should be the mysterious medium whereby someone should convey truth to us.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30415 – 15.23.7.280

BN – Z

Out of this silence a voice begins to speak to him.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30416 – 15.23.7.281

BN – Z

Advanced contemplation may lead to Revelation.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30417 – 15.23.7.282

BN – Z

He has developed the capacity to open the door of his inner being. He has reached the stillness which envelops its threshold. But this is only a beginning, not the end. He has now to pass beyond it and find out what the light itself holds for him.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30419 – 15.23.7.284

BN – Z

At such a time he is to put aside his own ideas and wait patiently for the Overself-inspired ideas to come to him.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30420 – 15.23.7.285

BN – ZZ

A mind cleansed, centered, quietened, and emptied is what he must offer; the revelation and benediction are what he is given.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30421 – 15.23.7.286

BN – ZZ – D

When attention is stilled, the mind void of thoughts and the desires at rest, it is possible 'for the instructed person' to perceive truth much more clearly than before, and to feel Reality. But the instruction must concern what is the always-true and the ever-real.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30422 – 15.23.7.287

BN – ZZ

It is only as he frees himself from all inward and outward pressures, all suggestions and impositions, that he becomes relaxed enough to receive what the Overself can present him with—ego-freed truth.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30423 – 15.23.7.288

BN – ZZ

In the mind's stillness it is possible to find either nothing at all or clear understanding. It depends on the man's preparation for it, on his knowledge, character, and experience.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30424 – 15.23.7.289

BN – Z – D

In the soft felicitous stillness he can wait expectantly for the answers to troubling questions.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30425 – 15.23.7.290

BN – Z

Spiritual truth passes more easily into a mind emptied of its thoughts, its cares, its desires.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30426 – 15.23.7.291

BN – ZZ

When the mind is brought to the quiescence of unstirring leaves in a windless garden, and when with this there is a habitual aspiration truthward, a devotion to the highest being, the Revelation may more easily come to it.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30427 – 15.23.7.292

BN – Z

There, in the deepest state of contemplation, the awareness of a second thing—whether this be the world of objects outside or the world of thoughts inside—vanishes. But unconsciousness does not follow. What is left over is a continuous static impersonal and unchanging consciousness. This is the inmost being of man. This is the supreme Self, dwelling within itself alone. Its stillness transcends the activity of thinking, of the knowing which distinguishes one thing from another. It is incommunicable then, inexplicable later. But after a while from this high level the meditator must descend, returning to his human condition. He has come as close in the contact with the Great Being, the most refined ultimate Godhead, as is posssible. Let him be grateful. Let him not ask for more for 'he' cannot know or experience more. This is as far as any man can go, for "Thou shalt not see God and live."

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30428 – 15.23.7.293

BN – X – DEK

The attainment of a certain experience marks the permanent attainment of a higher grade in the aspirant's evolution. When this experience comes to him, he will have "the universal vision," wherein he will actually 'experience' whatever beings, persons, forms, and creatures in the world he thinks of. For a few minutes or a few hours he will forget his real ego and be universalized.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30429 – 15.23.7.294

BN – Z

In the early stages of enlightenment, the aspirant is overwhelmed by his discovery that God is within himself. It stirs his intensest feelings and excites his deepest thoughts. But, though he does not know it, those very feelings and thoughts still form part of his ego, albeit the highest part. So he still separates his being into two—self and Overself. Only in the later stages does he find that God not only is within himself but is himself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30435 – 15.23.7.300

BA12 – Z – D

Psychologically the void trance is deeper than the world-knowing insight, but metaphysically it is not. For in both cases one and the same Reality is seen.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30436 – 15.23.7.301

BN – X – K1

The principle behind it is that once this contact with the Overself has been established during the third stage, it is only necessary first, to prolong, and second, to repeat the contact for spiritual evolution to be assured.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30437 – 15.23.7.302

BN – Z – K1

Of those who reach the third stage, some go wrong at its critical point through inexperience or incomprehension. If they try to think egoistically about what has happened or even to draw an intellectualized meaning, message, or revelation from its silence, they lose the experience itself. It cannot be dragged down to these inferior levels. They must be content with its utter stillness, its sacred emptiness.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30440 – 15.23.7.305

BN – Z

Sri Ramakrishna: "The mind ordinarily moves in the three lower chakras. But if it rises above them and reaches the heart, one gets the vision of Light. . . .""Even though it has reached the throat, the Mind may come down again (from utterly unworldly consciousness—PB). One ought to be always alert. Only if his mind reaches the spot between the eyebrows 'need he have no more fear of a fall', the Supreme Self is so close."

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30441 – 15.23.7.306

BN – X – D

When man attains this state of harmony within himself and with Nature outside, it may be only a temporary experience or a permanent one. It is given to few to attain such a state permanently and even the hour of its temporary onset is usually unpredictable.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30444 – 15.23.7.309

BN – Z

The fear of annihilation which comes to a number of persons who meditate deeply enough, and which forces them to withdraw themselves from the practice for that session, is justifiable. There is an experience which seems to be equivalent to self-obliteration. Nevertheless it is not the end of existence, for it is followed by an entry into the beautiful white light, bringing an immense feeling of space and goodwill, of harmony and liberation from all that is low, of peace and compassion. The whole experience is so vivid, so real, so convincing—all through from beginning to end—that whether or not it recurs, it will remain forever in his memory. It has also a strange power when recalled years afterwards in moments of trouble and distress to provide inner help and support.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30449 – 15.23.7.314

BN – Z

This transparent light-world is the source of creation, the cosmic birthplace, the home of dazzling primal energy. Galaxies, universes, suns, and planets come forth from here. The revelatory, blissful vision of God's Form may happen only once in a lifetime. Beyond it all is God without Form—the still void.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30450 – 15.23.7.315

BN – Z

All these methods of establishing contact with the higher self may be dispensed with at a more advanced stage when it will suffice to have a simple turning of attention towards it or a simple remembrance.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30451 – 15.23.7.316

BN – Z – D

He will attain a stage when he can sink in self-imposed rapt absorption at will.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30452 – 15.23.7.317

BN – Z – K

We may know when we have entered into the awareness of the Self, for in that moment we shall have gone out of the awareness of the world. The spiritual records which have been left behind by the great mystics, and which evidence this rarer experience of the race, all testify to this.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30453 – 15.23.7.318

BN – Z – D

The term "cosmic consciousness" is used rather loosely by different writers. It has been equated with different kinds of mystic experience and different grades of intuition and insight. Because of this ambiguity, it is best to try to avoid the use of this term; but, when found, it should be judged by the context wherein it appears.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30454 – 15.23.7.319

UR_3.2 – Z – K

One of the uses of the term "cosmic consciousness" is certainly to indicate what has been called "unitary" consciousness. Judging by the experience of at least one advanced mystic, its most appropriate application as a name would be to the experience whereby one is able to identify oneself with all other living creatures, in feeling and in intelligence. Many mystics are referring to this when they speak of "love."

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30455 – 15.23.7.320

UR_3.2 – Z – K

The attention must be concentrated at this stage solely on the hidden soul. No other aim and even no symbol of It may now be held. When he has become so profoundly absorbed in this contemplation that his whole being, his whole psyche of thought, feeling, will, and intuition are mingled and blent in it, there may come suddenly and unexpectedly a displacement of awareness. He actually 'passes out' of what he has hitherto known as himself into a new dimension and becomes a different being. When first experienced and unknown, there is the fear that this is death itself. It is indeed what is termed in mystical traditions of the West as "dying to oneself" and of the East as "passing away from oneself." But when one has repeated periodically and grown familiar with this experience, there is not only no fear but the experience is eagerly sought and welcomed. There I dissolved myself in the lake of the Water of Life.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30456 – 15.23.7.321

BN – ZZ – DEM1

The novice must cautiously feel his way back from the divine centre at the end of his period of meditation to the plane of normal activity. This descent or return must be carefully negotiated. If he is not careful he may easily and needlessly lose the fruit of his attainment. An exercise to accomplish this, to bring the meditator slowly back to earth and to prepare him for the external life of inspired activity, is the following one: very slowly opening and shutting eyelids several times. Those moments immediately following cessation of meditation are equally as important as the period preceding. They are of crucial importance in fact. For in those few minutes he may have lost much of what he gained during the whole period. Hold the state attained as gently and preciously as you would hold a baby. Hold to the centre and do not stray from it. Such a state the yogis call 'sahaja samadhi': despite all moving about there is non-action, for the heart is free.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30457 – 15.23.7.322

BN – Z

He finds that the peace generated, the will aroused, and the insight gained do not last longer than the period of meditation itself.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30458 – 15.23.7.323

BN – Z

He should endeavour skilfully to keep active from one moment to another this wonderful faculty which lays the heart of reality open to his insight. He should keep the integrity of this insight quite unimpaired even when he is occupied with the shapes and is participating in the events of a space-time, relativity-stamped world. After he has learned to rest inwardly in the thought-free state at all times and amid all circumstances and not merely during meditation, it is not essential that he should keep permanently free from thoughts in order to keep always in the pure-Thought awareness. No mental or physical activity can interrupt this insight once it has been fully realized. For then whatever thinking the duties of earthly life may rightly demand of him will be done within the pure Thought and not with any feeling of being apart from it. He will feel that it is one and the same pure Thought which is able to play through all these separate thoughts without prejudice to its own self-identity.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30459 – 15.23.7.324

BN – Z

Although its deepest meditation culminates in thoughts ceasing to exist, the man must eventually end his meditation. As he does so, his mind necessarily returns from this condition to the common one of continuously active thought.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30460 – 15.23.7.325

BN – Z

For anyone to be able to hold the mind utterly free of all thoughts and absolutely cleared of all images is an uncommon achievement. Even when successful, the effort seldom lasts longer than a few minutes. But after that short space of time, those particular thoughts and those particular images which first rise up are important, valuable, or suggestive. They should be carefully noted or remembered.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30461 – 15.23.7.326

BN – Z – D

The deeper he plunges in meditation, the less does worldly life appeal to him when he emerges from it; the old incentives which drive him begin to weaken.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30462 – 15.23.7.327

BN – Z – D

If it is to be a continuous light that stays with him and not a fitful flash, he will need first, to cast all negative tendencies, thoughts, and feelings entirely out of his character; second, to make good the insufficiencies in his development; third, to achieve a state of balance among his faculties.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30463D – 15.23.7.328

BN – Z – D

If he emerges from this deep state, he will recognize his surroundings by slow gradations only. His reluctance to leave that region of absolute delight may account for this slowness.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30465 – 15.23.7.330

BN – Z

The end of a meditation which attains such a high state may find him unable to return at once to the body's activity. It is prudent in that case to wait patiently for warmth, force, and movement to return to it. There need be no concern about this condition, which is quite familiar to practising mystics.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30466 – 15.23.7.331

BN – Z

Experience shows that if a sufficiently deep level—not necessarily the deepest level but one that corresponds to what the yogis call 'savikalpa samadhi', which is not as deep as 'nirvikalpa'—if that can be attained and then prolonged sufficiently in time, an artist or a writer can draw from the experience creative power for his work.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30467 – 15.23.7.332

BN – Z

When the mind has really plunged very deep in contemplation, when attention has travelled very far away from its normal plane, recalling oneself to that plane is best done slowly, gently, little by little.

Advanced Contemplation > Contemplative Stillness > The deepest contemplation

#30468 – 15.23.7.333

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30470D – 15.23.8.1

BN – Z – DEK1

If he has succeeded in holding his mind somewhat still and empty, his next step is to find his centre.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30475 – 15.23.8.6

BN – Z – DK1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30476 – 15.23.8.7

BN – Z – K1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30477 – 15.23.8.8

BN – X – DEK1

When he attains the state of void, all thoughts cease for then pure Thought thinks itself alone.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30478 – 15.23.8.9

BN – X – K1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30479 – 15.23.8.10

BN – Z – K1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30491 – 15.23.8.22

BN – Z

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."

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30493 – 15.23.8.24

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30494 – 15.23.8.25

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30495 – 15.23.8.26

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30502 – 15.23.8.33

BN – X – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30503 – 15.23.8.34

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30504 – 15.23.8.35

BN – X – DEK

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30505 – 15.23.8.36

BA11 – ZZ – DEM*

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30509 – 15.23.8.40

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30515 – 15.23.8.46

BN – Z

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."

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30516 – 15.23.8.47

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30517 – 15.23.8.48

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30518 – 15.23.8.49

BN – Z – D

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!

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30520 – 15.23.8.51

BN – Z – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30521 – 15.23.8.52

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30522 – 15.23.8.53

BN – Z – K

Without dramatic happening or sensational incident, the mind slips at long last into the Great Silence.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30523 – 15.23.8.54

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30524 – 15.23.8.55

BN – ZZ

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30526 – 15.23.8.57

BN – X – DEK

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30527 – 15.23.8.58

BN – Z – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30529 – 15.23.8.60

BN – ZZ

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).

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30530 – 15.23.8.61

BN – ZZ

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30531 – 15.23.8.62

BN – Z – DEK

In that moment of utter emptiness the mind becomes a blank but the person becomes united with the unspotted and untainted Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30532 – 15.23.8.63

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30533 – 15.23.8.64

BN – Z

The ego finds itself chilled by the conception of nothingness, as if it had climbed to a Himalayan height.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30535 – 15.23.8.66

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30538 – 15.23.8.69

BN – ZZ

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Entering the Void

#30539 – 15.23.8.70

BN – Z

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

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30540E – 15.23.8.71

BN – EL1/2

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30540E – 15.23.8.71

BN – EL2/2

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30545 – 15.23.8.76

BA11 – Z – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30546 – 15.23.8.77

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30547 – 15.23.8.78

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30549 – 15.23.8.80

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30550 – 15.23.8.81

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30552 – 15.23.8.83

UR_3.2 – Z – K1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30553 – 15.23.8.84

BN – ZZ – K1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30554 – 15.23.8.85

BN – ZZ – K1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30555 – 15.23.8.86

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30556 – 15.23.8.87

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30557 – 15.23.8.88

UR_3.2 – Z – K

The world suddenly vanished from view like a morning mist. I was left alone with Reality.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30558 – 15.23.8.89

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30559 – 15.23.8.90

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30560 – 15.23.8.91

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30562 – 15.23.8.93

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30563 – 15.23.8.94

BN – Z – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30564 – 15.23.8.95

BN – Z

It is not that personal identity was wholly lost but rather that it was immersed in the vast ocean of universal being.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30565 – 15.23.8.96

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30566 – 15.23.8.97

BN – Z

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. We feel the presence of the Overself.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30567 – 15.23.8.98

BSG_5 – Z – D

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?"

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30569 – 15.23.8.100

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30570 – 15.23.8.101

BN – Z

His own being mingles with the Great Being and vanishes for a while.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30572 – 15.23.8.103

BN – Z

It is consciousness almost without content, what there is of the latter being perhaps the point from which all this began and rippled out.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30573 – 15.23.8.104

BN – X – K

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30574 – 15.23.8.105

BN – Z

Both self and universe vanish together. There is nothing and no one left during such temporary enlightenments.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30576 – 15.23.8.107

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Nirvikalpa Samadhi

#30578 – 15.23.8.109

BN – Z – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30583 – 15.23.8.114

BN – Z – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30586 – 15.23.8.117

BN – Z – DK1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30587 – 15.23.8.118

BN – ZZ – DEK1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30588 – 15.23.8.119

BN – Z – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30589 – 15.23.8.120

BN – ZZ

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30590 – 15.23.8.121

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30591 – 15.23.8.122

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30592 – 15.23.8.123

BN – Z – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30593 – 15.23.8.124

BN – Z – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30596 – 15.23.8.127

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30597 – 15.23.8.128

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30598 – 15.23.8.129

BN – Z – DK1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30599 – 15.23.8.130

BN – X – DEK1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30600 – 15.23.8.131

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30601 – 15.23.8.132

BN – Z – D

He feels that he has touched something that always was even before his own body appeared on earth, something primeval and boundless.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30603 – 15.23.8.134

BN – Z – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30607 – 15.23.8.138

BN – Z

For when awareness is retracted into its source, all thoughts fall away and no second thing other than Mind itself is known to us.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30608 – 15.23.8.139

BN – Z – D

He must begin by ceasing to think of the Divine Being as if it were one object put among others, but preferred to them.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30609 – 15.23.8.140

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30610 – 15.23.8.141

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30612 – 15.23.8.143

BN – Z – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30613 – 15.23.8.144

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30614 – 15.23.8.145

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30616 – 15.23.8.147

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30617 – 15.23.8.148

BN – Z

The best form of meditation is that which lifts us above time and into the Eternal Now.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30618 – 15.23.8.149

BN – Z – D

The longer you remain in this particular meditation the closer you will understand what the eternal Now means.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30619 – 15.23.8.150

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30620 – 15.23.8.151

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30621 – 15.23.8.152

BN – ZZZ – DK1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30622 – 15.23.8.153

BN – ZZZ – DEK1*

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30623 – 15.23.8.154

BN – Z – K1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30624 – 15.23.8.155

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30625 – 15.23.8.156

BN – Z – DK1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30626 – 15.23.8.157

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30627 – 15.23.8.158

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30628 – 15.23.8.159

BN – Z – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30629 – 15.23.8.160

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30631 – 15.23.8.162

BN – Z – DK1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30632 – 15.23.8.163

BN – Z – D

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.)

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30633 – 15.23.8.164

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30634 – 15.23.8.165

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30636 – 15.23.8.167

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30637 – 15.23.8.168

BN – Z – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Meditation upon the Void

#30638 – 15.23.8.169

BN – X – D

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Emerging from the Void

#30643 – 15.23.8.174

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Emerging from the Void

#30644 – 15.23.8.175

BN – X – D

When these powers come into his possession, there also comes a deep sense of responsibility for their right use.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Emerging from the Void

#30645 – 15.23.8.176

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Emerging from the Void

#30646 – 15.23.8.177

BN – Z

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."

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Emerging from the Void

#30647 – 15.23.8.178

BN – X – K1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Emerging from the Void

#30648 – 15.23.8.179

BN – ZZ – K1

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Emerging from the Void

#30649 – 15.23.8.180

BSG_5 – ZZZ – K1

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 . . .

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Emerging from the Void

#30651 – 15.23.8.182

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Emerging from the Void

#30652E – 15.23.8.183

BSG_5 – P – DE

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Emerging from the Void

#30653 – 15.23.8.184

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Emerging from the Void

#30655 – 15.23.8.186

BSG_5 – Z

The awareness of what is Real must be found not only in deep meditation, in its trance, but when fully awake.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Emerging from the Void

#30657 – 15.23.8.188

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Why Buddha smiled

#30658 – 15.23.8.189

BN – Z – DK1

Gautama's face, set in a half-smile indicative of being transported in consciousness to a transcendental world, is unforgettable.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Why Buddha smiled

#30659 – 15.23.8.190

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Why Buddha smiled

#30662 – 15.23.8.193

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Why Buddha smiled

#30663 – 15.23.8.194

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Why Buddha smiled

#30664 – 15.23.8.195

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Why Buddha smiled

#30665 – 15.23.8.196

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Why Buddha smiled

#30666 – 15.23.8.197

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Why Buddha smiled

#30667 – 15.23.8.198

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Why Buddha smiled

#30668 – 15.23.8.199

BN – ZZ

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Why Buddha smiled

#30669 – 15.23.8.200

BN – Z

The knowledge that all things are moving toward all-good keeps a quiet smile around the corner of his lips.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Why Buddha smiled

#30670 – 15.23.8.201

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Why Buddha smiled

#30671 – 15.23.8.202

BN – Z

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.

Advanced Contemplation > The Void As Contemplative Experience > Why Buddha smiled

#30673 – 15.23.8.204

BN – X – DEK

For the person who is not a complete beginner, who has attained a modest proficiency in the inner life, there is no real contradiction between the inner and the outer life. The one kind of existence will be inspired by the other. Neither despising the world nor becoming lost in it, he moves in poised safety through it.

The Peace within You > The Peace within You > The Peace within You

#30674 – 15.24.0.1

BN – ZZ

Outwardly we live and have to live in the very midst of cruel struggle and grievous conflict, for we share the planet's karma; but inwardly we can live by striking contrast in an intense stillness, a consecrated peace, a sublime security. The central stillness is always there, whether we are absorbed in bustling activity or not. Hence a part of this training consists in becoming conscious of its presence. Indeed only by bringing the mystical realization into the active life of the wakeful world can it attain its own fullness. The peaceful state must not only be attained during meditation, but also sustained during action.

The Peace within You > The Peace within You > The Peace within You

#30675 – 15.24.0.2

BN – ZZZ – DEK

Where is the person who has gained total satisfaction of all his needs, let alone his wants and desires? Therefore no one is totally happy. It is better not to be a candidate for happiness and suffer frustration. Then what is the next goal worth seeking? It is peace within oneself.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#30676 – 15.24.1.1

BN – ZZ

It is in the World-Idea that the living creature is made to undergo so many varieties of unhappiness along with its experience of so many varieties of happiness.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#30677 – 15.24.1.2

BN – Z

He has learned through the experiences of many births not to cling desperately to anything, not to hold on stubbornly when life's clear indication is to let go, not to get so attached to persons or objects that all his happiness rests solely upon them.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#30683 – 15.24.1.8

BN – X – D

The wisdom of experience teaches us that all things change. Friendship wanes and realized ambition brings its own new troubles or disappointments. A fixed and unalterable worldly happiness based on outward things is sought by many but found by none.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#30685 – 15.24.1.10

B_01 – ZZZ – K

When one has received a terrible blow—such as losing someone very dear to him—he will understand better why the Buddha taught that all living is suffering. In pleasanter times, this truth goes unrecognized. It is only through heart-rending sorrow that many finally arrive at the gates of the Quest, for they have learned at last that only in seeking some knowledge of the Higher Power can they obtain an enduring measure of inner peace. In the calm heart of the inner life—in its strength and understanding—compensation may be found for our outward hardships, griefs, and losses.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#30690 – 15.24.1.15

BN – Z – D

Young souls look for happiness, older ones for peace, calm, and equilibrium.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#30691D – 15.24.1.16

BN – ZZ – K

No other person can bring us happiness if he or she does not possess it in himself or in herself. The romantic urge to seek in a second individual that which neither of the two has, can never find successful fulfilment.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#30692D – 15.24.1.17

BN – ZZ – K

You may make yourself happy, by spiritual or other means, but will other human beings let you remain so? Not having accomplished this feat themselves, they are notorious for their interference in their neighbours' lives.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#30693 – 15.24.1.18

BN – Z – K

If it be true, as the pessimist says, that life moves us from one trouble to another, it is also true that it moves us from one joy to another. But it is a question whether the anxieties and miseries of life are sufficiently compensated by its pleasures and satisfactions.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#30695 – 15.24.1.20

BN – X – D

The Buddha tried to teach men to look only on the decay and death and suffering inherent in existence on this physical plane. This is as unfair and as extreme—if isolated—as the teaching of modern American cults which look only on the growth and life and joy which are also inherent here.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#30701D – 15.24.1.26

BN – Z – K

Gautama's assertion that "life is suffering" may be matched with Socrates' assertion that "life is terrible." But both Indian and Greek sage referred solely to life in the ego. Is it quite fair to stress the misery of human existence without pointing to its mystery? For that is just as much there, even if attention is seldom turned toward it. Man, in order to complete and fulfil himself, will and must rise to life in the Overself with the ego put into place, belittled and broken.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#30705D – 15.24.1.30

A241129 – ZZZ – DK

The criticism of life which the pessimists like Gautama and Schopenhauer make, is too negative. This is not because it is not true but because it is not complete and hence is lopsided.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The limitations of life

#30708 – 15.24.1.33

BN – X – D

"Sadness does not befit a sage" is the reminder of an ancient Confucian text. "He is a man inwardly free of sorrow and care. He should be like the sun at midday—illuminating and gladdening everyone. This is not given to every human—only one whose will is directed to 'The Great' is able to it. For the attribute of 'The Great' is joyousness."

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > Philosophic happiness

#30710D – 15.24.1.35

BN – ZZ – K

Because he is seeking the ultimate source of true joy, he is more likely to find it if he searches for it with a cheerful heart than if with a miserable one.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > Philosophic happiness

#30711 – 15.24.1.36

BN – X – DK

The attitude of Emerson, which induced him to call himself "a professor of the science of Joy," is more attractive than that of Schopenhauer, who taught the futility of life, proclaimed the vanity of existence, and spread the mood of despair. Emerson declined to accept the massive Oriental doctrine of melancholy resignation along with the Oriental gems of wisdom which he treasured. "This world belongs to the cheerful!" he said.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > Philosophic happiness

#30712D – 15.24.1.37

BN – Z – K

"I enjoy life and try to spend it in peace, joy, and cheerfulness," Spinoza wrote to a correspondent.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > Philosophic happiness

#30716 – 15.24.1.41

BN – X – DK*

The man of deep thought and sensitive feeling cannot be happy in a world like ours. But he can be serene.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > Philosophic happiness

#30743 – 15.24.1.68

BN – Z

When one finds a constant happiness within oneself, the pleasures of the senses will not be missed if they are not there. They are no longer necessary to stimulate him, although they will still be appreciated if they are there.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > Philosophic happiness

#30747 – 15.24.1.72

BN – X – D

If you investigate the matter deeply enough and widely enough, you will find that happiness eludes nearly all men despite the fact that they are forever seeking it. The fortunate and successful few are those who have stopped seeking with the ego alone and allow the search to be directed inwardly by the higher self. They alone can find a happiness unblemished by defects or deficiencies, a Supreme Good which is not a further source of pain and sorrow but an endless source of satisfaction and peace.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30749D – 15.24.1.74

BN – ZZZ – DK

Pleasure is satisfaction derived from the things and persons outside us. Happiness is satisfaction derived from the core of deepest being inside us. Because we get our pleasures through the five senses, they are more exciting and are sharper, more vivid, than the diffused self-induced thoughts and feelings which bring us happiness. In short, pleasure is of the body whereas something quite immaterial and impalpable is the source of our happiness. This is not to say that all pleasures are to be ascetically rejected, but that whereas we are helplessly dependent for them on some object or some person, we are dependent only on ourselves for happiness.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30750D – 15.24.1.75

BN – ZZ – K

He will be honest enough to admit that he does care if things are going wrong, if possessions are falling away, and if his desires are ending in frustration instead of fulfilment. But he will also be wise enough to declare that he knows that peace of mind is still worth seeking despite these disappointments and that intuitions of the Overself are no less necessary to his happiness and well-being than are the comforts of this world.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30751 – 15.24.1.76

BN – X – DK

If the mind can reach a state where it is free from its own ideas, projections, and wishes, it can reach true happiness.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30752D – 15.24.1.77

BN – ZZ – DK

In those moments when he touches the still centre of his being, he forgets his miseries and enjoys its happiness. This provides a clue to the correct way to find real happiness, which so many are seeking and so few are finding. It lies within.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30754 – 15.24.1.79

BN – X – D

Artificial pleasures are not the same as enduring happiness. They come from outside, from stimulated senses, whereas it comes from within.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30760 – 15.24.1.85

BN – X – D

No environment is ideal. Not in outward search but in deeper self-penetration shall we find true lasting happiness.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30763 – 15.24.1.88

BA12 – P – D

He who has learned how to enter at will into this silent inner world will return to it again and again. In no other way can such calm holy joy be felt, such deep meaning be known, such release from personal problems be secured.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30765 – 15.24.1.90

BN – X – D

We think that this or that will bring us to the great happiness. But the fortunate few know that in meditation the mind is at its most blissful when it is most empty.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30766D – 15.24.1.91

BN – X – D

He is happy even though he has no blessed consciousness of the Overself, no transcendental knowledge of it, but only secondhand news about it. Why, then, is he happy? Because he knows that he has found the way to both consciousness and knowledge. He is content to wait, working nevertheless as he waits; for if he remains faithful to the quest, what other result can there be than attainment? Even if he has to wait fifty years or fifty lifetimes, he will and must gain it.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30768 – 15.24.1.93

BN – X – D

When we find the still centre of our being, we find it to be all happiness. When we remain in the surface of our being, we yearn for happiness but never find it. For there the mind is always moving, restless, scattered.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30773 – 15.24.1.98

BN – X – D

The Overself is present with man, and life is nothing more, in the end, than a searching for this presence. He engages in this activity quite unconsciously in the belief that he is looking for happiness.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30774 – 15.24.1.99

BA11 – P – D

Hidden under its miseries, life keeps incredible happiness waiting for one who will search and work for it.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30775 – 15.24.1.100

BN – X – D

The law which pushes us into, or out of, physical bodies is a cosmic law. There is no blind chance about it…; [there is] a vast harmony, an immense love, an incredible peace, and a universal support.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30777EM – 15.24.1.102

BSG_4 – P – DX

If suffering brings moods of dejection, it is only fulfilling its intention. This is part of its place in the scheme of things, leading to the awareness that underneath the sweet pleasures of life there is always pain. But thought would present only a half-truth if it stopped there. The other half is much harder to find: it is that underneath the surface sufferings which no one escapes, far deeper down than its counterpart, is a vast harmony, an immense love, an incredible peace, and a universal support.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30777 – 15.24.1.102

B_01 – ZZZ – DEK

Joy and sorrow are, after all, only states of mind. He who gets his mind under control, keeping it unshakeably serene, will not let these usurpers gain entry. They do not come from the best part of himself. They come from the ego. How many persons could learn from him to give up their unhappiness if they learnt that most of their sorrows are mental states, the false ego pitying itself?

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30779D – 15.24.1.104

BN – ZZ – K

If the divine presence is dwelling at the core of his mind, then the divine bliss, peace, and strength are dwelling at the core of his mind too. Why then should he let outward troubles rob him of the chance to share them? Why should he let only the troubles enter his consciousness, and withdraw all attention from the bliss and peace and strength? The conditions of this world are subject to the cosmic law of change. They are temporary. But the bright core within him is not. Why then give a permanent meaning to those conditions by a total surrender to the sadness they cause?

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30781 – 15.24.1.106

BN – X – DEK

It is always hard to watch others who are near and dear to him suffer, but he must not let go of his own inner faith and peace, however little they be, because of having to witness such suffering. It ought not to take him by surprise if he remembers that earthly life is usually a mixture of pleasure and pain, and that only in the Overself is there lasting happiness.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30783 – 15.24.1.108

BN – X – D

The incentive to seek happiness will always be present so long as the consciousness of the Overself is absent. But so soon as that is found, the incentive vanishes. For then we are that which was sought—seeker, search, and object blend into one.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30784 – 15.24.1.109

B_05 – P – D

He will see that no affliction and no misfortune need be allowed to take away his happiness.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30786 – 15.24.1.111

BN – X – K

It is not enough to achieve peace of mind. He must penetrate the Real still farther and achieve joy of heart.

The Peace within You > The Search for Happiness > The heart of joy

#30787D – 15.24.1.112

BN – Z – K

After the brief hour of peace come the long months of storm: its purity is then contested by opposition, its light by the world's darkness. It is through the varying episodes of experience that he must struggle back to the peace and purity which he saw in vision and felt in meditation. True, he had found them even then but they were still only latent and undeveloped.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > Be Calm

#30789D – 15.24.2.1

BN – Z – K

Is the search for inner peace a hopeless one? There is enough testimony to prove that it is not.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > Be Calm

#30793 – 15.24.2.5

BN – X – DK

It is easy to attain a kind of artificial serenity while seated in the comfort of an armchair and reading a philosophic book, but to keep calm in the midst of provocation or peril is the test. So the would-be philosopher will try to keep an even mind at all times, to chill its passions and control its agitations.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > Be Calm

#30804 – 15.24.2.16

BA12 – P – D

Seek the centre of inner gravity and try to stay in it. Try to avoid being pulled out of it by emotions and passions, whether your own or other people's, by anxieties and troubles—in short, by the ego.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The goal of tranquillity

#30809 – 15.24.2.21

BN – X – D

To attain knowledge of Brahman, the mind must be held in the prerequisite state of being calm, tranquil, and in equilibrium—not carried away by attachment to anything. 'After' this is established, and only then, can you begin enquiry with any hope of success. Unless the mind is balanced you cannot get Brahman.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The goal of tranquillity

#30812D – 15.24.2.24

BN – Z – K

The importance of cultivating calmness is well known in India. The Brahmin youth at puberty when initiated into his caste status and given the sacred thread is taught to make the first sought-for attribute calmness. Why is this? Because it helps a man to achieve self-control and because without it he becomes filled with tensions. These tensions come from the ego and prevent him from responding to intuitive feelings and intuitive ideas. For the student of philosophy it is of course absolutely essential to achieve a composed and relaxed inner habit.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The goal of tranquillity

#30813D – 15.24.2.25

BN – Z – K

The Psalmist’s advice, “Be still, and know that I am God,” may be taken on one level—the mystical—as a reference to the ultimate state achieved intermittently in contemplation; but on another level—the philosophical—the reference can be carried even deeper. For here it is a continuous state achieved not by quietening the mind for half an hour but by emptying the mind for all time of agitation and illusion. Towards this end the cultivation of calmness amid all circumstances makes a weighty contribution.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The goal of tranquillity

#30815 – 15.24.2.27

BN – Z – DK*

Half of Asia holds this faith, burns its sweet-scented incense before the firm conviction that the search for inner calm and emotional freedom is the highest duty of man.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The goal of tranquillity

#30816 – 15.24.2.28

BN – X – DK

He sets up the ideal of meeting events, be they favourable or adverse, with equanimity.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The goal of tranquillity

#30824 – 15.24.2.36

BN – Z – D

He should learn to cultivate the feelings of peace whenever they are strongly present. He should give himself to them completely, putting aside everything else. For they will bear to him something hidden inside of them that is even still more valuable.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The goal of tranquillity

#30826 – 15.24.2.38

BN – X – D

If at any time he feels the touch of Peace, he should stay where he is, forget all else, and surrender to it.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The goal of tranquillity

#30827 – 15.24.2.39

BN – X – D

If his daily life makes him feel that it is taking him farther away from this peace, this inner harmony, he may have to reconsider his situation, environment, and activities.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > In daily life

#30839 – 15.24.2.51

BN – X – D

No pleasure which is brief, sensual, and fugitive is worth exchanging for equanimity and peace, not even if it is multiplied a thousand times during a lifetime's course.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > In daily life

#30840D – 15.24.2.52

BA12 – ZZ – DK

The worst result of all this hurry and tumult and preoccupation with externals is that it leaves no time for intuitive living.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > In daily life

#30844 – 15.24.2.56

BN – X – D

He must find and keep a centre within himself which he is determined to keep inviolate against the changes, alarms, and disturbances of the outside world. Human life being what it is, he knows that troubles may come but he is resolved that they shall not invade this inner sanctuary and shall be kept at a mental distance.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > In daily life

#30848 – 15.24.2.60

BN – X – D

He trains himself to talk without rancour of those who criticize him, and without bias of those whose ideas or ideals are antithetic to his own. In the face of provocation he seeks to keep his equanimity. But such calm, such satisfying equanimity, can only be kept if he does not expect too much from others, does not make too many demands on life, and is not too fussy about trifles.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > In daily life

#30851M – 15.24.2.63

BSG_4 – Z – DX

But such calm, such satisfying equanimity, can only be kept if he does not expect too much from others, does not make too many demands on life, and is not too fussy about trifles.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > In daily life

#30851 – 15.24.2.63

BSG_4 – Z – DX

If the world tires you, if the evil deeds of others torment you, you can find blessed peace and healing refuge by turning within.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > In daily life

#30857 – 15.24.2.69

BN – X – D

In the Stillness we find the perfect shelter from the unease brought by so many human presences, with all their radiating auras.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > In daily life

#30861 – 15.24.2.73

B_01 – ZZ – K

Remember to recess back into consciousness, to the centre, when other persons are present. This instantly subjugates nerve strain and self-consciousness.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > In daily life

#30862 – 15.24.2.74

BN – X – D

When confronted by turmoil, he will remember to remain calm. When in the presence of ugliness, he will think of beauty. When others show forth their animality and brutality, he will show forth his spiritual refinement and gentleness. Above all, when all around seems dark and hopeless, he will remember that nothing can extinguish the Overself's light and that it will shine again as surely as spring follows winter.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > In daily life

#30866 – 15.24.2.78

BA12 – ZZZ – DK

When the evils or tribulations or disappointments of life become too heavy a weight, if he has made some advance he has only to pause, turn away and inward, and there he can find a radiant peace of mind which offsets the dark things and counterbalances the menacing depressions.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > In daily life

#30868 – 15.24.2.80

BN – X – D

Tranquillity—the first psychological quality taught at his caste-initiation to the Brahmin youth; much admired by Benjamin Disraeli because seldom met with in society; prized by Marcus Aurelius and his Stoic sect as the best of virtues—this is to be practised by those who would become philosophers and sought by those who would become saints. Yet for others, who must perforce stay, mix, and work in the world, it is not less valuable to smooth their path and reduce their difficulties. The first it does by putting men at their ease, the second by bestowing clearer sight. For them too it is the defense against rancour, the preserver of humour and peace, and, lastly, if they desire, the way to be in the world but not of it. As Lao Tzu wrote: "There is an Infinite Being which was before Heaven and Earth. How calm it is!"

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30884 – 15.24.2.96

BN – Z – K

He who attains this beautiful serenity is absolved from the misery of frustrated desires, is healed of the wounds of bitter memories, is liberated from the burden of earthly struggles. He has created a secret, invulnerable centre within himself, a garden of the spirit which neither the world's hurts nor the world's joys can touch. He has found a transcendental singleness of mind.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30885D – 15.24.2.97

BN – ZZ – DEK

As his centre moves to a profounder depth of being, peace of mind becomes increasingly a constant companion. This in turn influences the way in which he handles his share of the world's activities. Impatience and stupidity recede, wrath at malignity is disciplined; discouragement under adversity is controlled and stress under pressures relaxed.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30886D – 15.24.2.98

BN – ZZ – DK

Depression cannot coexist with this realization of the presence.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30888 – 15.24.2.100

BN – X – D

The fruits of the Spirit are several but the list begins with inner peace. The agitation and anxiety, the desires and passions are enfeebled or extinguished.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30894 – 15.24.2.106

BN – X – D

The man who is established in the Overself cannot be deflected from the calm which it gives into passions, angers, hatreds, and similar base things. Calmness has become his natural attitude.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30901 – 15.24.2.113

BN – ZZ – DK

Those desired moments of the mind when peace falls are rare, but they exist and are still to be found. The solace they can confer becomes with time the most prized possession of those few who have touched it.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30902 – 15.24.2.114

BN – Z – K

Where this attitude of philosophic detachment is lacking, one's sufferings under the blows of karma will inevitably be more intense.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30909 – 15.24.2.121

B_17 – Z – K

This freedom from inner conflict, this disburdenment of troubling complexes, this liberation from gnawing unrest, releases his mental and emotional energies for concentration upon his work.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30910 – 15.24.2.122

BN – Z – DK

If he has real inner peace he will never know the mental shock and nervous collapse which come to numbers of people when bereavement or loss of fortune comes. Such a calamity may not be preventable, but the emotional suffering it causes may be cut off at the very start by a philosophic attitude toward life generally.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30916 – 15.24.2.128

B_17 – Z – DK

As the inner peace advances, the outer problems recede; as truth permeates the mind, harmony re-arranges the life.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30919 – 15.24.2.131

BN – ZZ – DEK

Does the phrase "peace of mind" suggest that he will not suffer in a suffering world? This can hardly be true, or even possible. As actual experience, it means that his thoughts are brought under sufficient control to enable him to repel disturbance and to retain sensitivity. The sacred stillness behind them becomes the centre.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30930D – 15.24.2.142

B_17 – ZZ – K

It is not that he has no likes and dislikes—he is still human enough for them—but that he knows that they are secondary to a true and just view, and that his inner calm must not be disturbed by them.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30932D – 15.24.2.144

BN – ZZ – K

It is not that the years pass by unregarded, nor that he is dead to human feelings, but that at this centre of his being to which he now has access, there is utter calm, a high indifference to agitations which compels him to treat them with serene dignity. He is a dweller in two worlds more or less at the same time.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30933D – 15.24.2.145

BN – ZZZ – K

It is not correct to believe that the stricken body of a sage suffers no pain. It is there and it is felt, but it is enclosed by a larger peace-filled consciousness. The one is a witness of the other. So pain is countered but not removed.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30938 – 15.24.2.150

BN – X – D

Some people mistake philosophic calm for fatalistic resignation. This is because the philosopher will seem to endure some situations stoically unperturbed. They do not know that where he finds that he cannot work outwardly to improve a situation, he will work inwardly to extract the utmost spiritual profit from it.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30940 – 15.24.2.152

BN – ZZZ – K

The more he practises this inward calm, the less he shows concern about outward situations. If this seems to lead to a kind of casualness, it actually leads to inner peace.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > The qualities of calm

#30942 – 15.24.2.154

BN – X – D

Holding on to the future in anxiety and apprehension must be abandoned. It must be committed to the higher power completely and faithfully. Calmness comes easily to the man who really trusts the higher power. This is unarguable.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > Staying calm

#30946D – 15.24.2.158

BN – ZZ – DM

Think of the Overself as an ever-deepening calm. It may seem to come spontaneously after you have practised it much and found the helpfulness.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > Staying calm

#30948 – 15.24.2.160

BN – X – D

With sufficient intelligence, reverent devotion, and personal purification, it is possible to enter one day into this experience of being enclosed within the divine mystery, enravished by the divine peace.

The Peace within You > Be Calm > Staying calm

#30949 – 15.24.2.161

BN – X – D