October 2021, #91 A Meditation on the Timeless Self
The Wisdom of the Overself, pp. 351-353
This meditation is different from other Yoga exercises involving mystical understanding of Who and What we are. It does not require a lot of time – three or four minutes will suffice. It may be done almost anywhere, and is meant to be inserted into external life at odd moments, thereby breaking a routine environment. The solitude created must be an interior one. The intensity where the aspirant abruptly slips out of the world of time is important. The ultimate aim is one of tranquility and forgetfulness.
Copernicus changed the scientific outlook of his era when he reversed the process of believing that the earth was fixed in space while the sun and other stars wheeled around it when he imagined the earth wheeling around instead. This meditation requires the student bring about a similar reversal of outlook in life and assume that space and time are travelling in him or in her, in the higher individuality.
The practice is quite simple. The important point is to train oneself to start suddenly and let the thoughts of everything else go. PB warns that this is a knack which comes with experience. Rejecting thoughts or desires and suppressing all personal reference, is much like a dreamer awakening from a dream and witnessing the dream-figure. It is important to remember that “the metaphysical tenet that behind all those thoughts which were changing continuously, the consciousness which observed them remained static throughout, unmoved and unaltered, that through the flow of experienced events and things there was a steady element of awareness. Students should try to identify themselves with this consciousness and to disidentify from the accustomed one.” (p. 351)
PB points out that “the ultimate aim of letting the timeless existence replace the timed-existence is a delightful one…. Learning to live in the everlasting Now is not beyond human experience…. The passive submission to time keeps us enchained. The willed meditation on the infinite observer which is ever with and within us is a revolt which weakens every link of our chains…gradually a realization will come to the student that he or she is no longer imprisoned by the body, that an inexpressible spaciousness of being is now theirs…and will find the wonderful confirmation of that which reason merely affirms and religion only hints at—the glorious fact of the timeless soul.” (pp. 352-353.)