ライブラリ
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…
15.23.8.1,If he has succeeded in holding his mind somewhat still and empty, his next step is to find his centre.
15.23.8.6... 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.
15.23.8.8,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.
15.23.8.33The 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…
15.23.8.35,In the nihilistic experience of void, the mystic finds memory sense and thought utterly closed, he knows no separate thing and no particular person... it is simply consciousness freed from both the pleasant and the unpleasant burdens of earthly existence.
0.23.8.36,In the nihilistic experience of void, the mystic finds memory sense and thought utterly closed... it is simply consciousness freed from both the pleasant and the unpleasant burdens of earthly existence.
15.23.8.36,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.
15.23.8.49He 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!
15.23.8.51So 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…
15.23.8.57,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.
15.23.8.58There 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…
15.23.8.62,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.
15.23.8.76The 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.
15.23.8.94This condition, this entry into the Void, is a kind of death. Everything is taken away from him; he is nothing and has nothing; yet he still feels one thing which utterly compensates for this loss. He feels the presence of the Overself.
15.23.8.98To 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.
15.23.8.109Through repeated contemplation of the void, the mind rids itself of the illusions of matter time space and personality and eventually the truth is reached.
15.23.8.114The 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.
15.23.8.117... 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.
15.23.8.118,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.
15.23.8.119Knowledge 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.
15.23.8.123The 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.
15.23.8.124It 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.
15.23.8.129When 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 …
15.23.8.130,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.
15.23.8.132He feels that he has touched something that always was even before his own body appeared on earth, something primeval and boundless.
15.23.8.134For when awareness is retracted into its source, all thoughts fall away and no second thing other than Mind itself is known to us.
15.23.8.139We 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.
15.23.8.143The best form of meditation is that which lifts us above time and into the Eternal Now.
15.23.8.149When 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.
15.23.8.152Everything 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...
15.23.8.153,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.
15.23.8.156Hidden 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.
15.23.8.159During 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.
15.23.8.162The 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.
15.23.8.163The 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.
15.23.8.168When 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.
15.23.8.169Paradoxically 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.
15.23.8.175This 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.
15.23.8.180… 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…
15.23.8.183,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.
15.23.8.189... When Buddha brought to an end the meditation which culminated in final enlightenment, dawn was just breaking…
15.23.8.203,… 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.
15.23.8.204,
23 5 2013
1 11 2014
14 11 2011
15 11 2023
29 8 2015
31 5 2016
25 6 2016
5 10 2014
22 7 2018
8 10 2015
22 2 2019
5 10 2013
10 5 2017
10 10 2015
30 11 2015
25 12 2012
3 6 2016
10 4 2019
1 8 2015
15 3 2017
20 5 2023
21 3 2016
25 5 2016
16 7 2023
26 12 2019
25 4 2019
30 12 2021
17 1 2014
8 11 2013
15 9 2013
8 6 2016
6 4 2020
2 6 2016
28 10 2011
14 6 2016
17 9 2011
25 3 2017
27 3 2011
29 7 2017
13 12 2019
25 5 2017
1 6 2015
20 1 2018
The notebooks are copyright © 1984-1989 The Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation
This site is run by Paul Brunton-stiftelsen · info@paulbruntondailynote.se