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drawn inward, awareness is free to expand into great bliss and peace, which is God’s more subtle form.
A Personal Meditative Practice
Allow me to share a favorite way of moving into meditation. This meditative process helps me detach from sense objects, leading me from the gross to the subtle. Siing on the floor cross-legged at the foot of my bed, I bend forward, releasing tension in my lower back and legs. Shuing my eyes releases me from outer objects. In my mind’s eye, I place myself on a train platform in the dark of night. Everything is black around me except the light coming from the windows of a train.
As I approach the train, it begins to move, and I can see through the windows into the compartments. The train begins to pick up speed, and my eyes follow each compartment, looking at the people seated inside. More and more quickly my eyes move from one compartment to another as the train gains speed. Though my vision initially aaches to the objects inside the train, soon the train is going too fast for my vision to grab hold of them, and I let them go. This subtle release from inner sense objects leaves me relaxed and expanded.
In this example I have released both outer and inner sense objects, which leads me to an expanded, quiet darkness. This experience of nothingness is vast and very peaceful. I feel waves of energy bringing me ever more deeply into this dimension. In time, I began to see light in the darkness. Swami says that when we control the senses and detach from desire, we can experience more elevated realms of mind. What is this dimension, and what is its meaning?
Terms that Swami defines related to higher dimensions of mind include the super mind, higher mind, illuminated mind, and over mind. For those readers who would like to look more deeply into this subject, I have provided a summary of some of Swami’s insights taken from his discourses in Summer Showers in Brindavan, 1990 and 1993, and from a discourse in November
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