I ended my nighttime meditation a little early to move into writing meditation. Suddenly a few things seemed clear to me. The need to align one’s own body in meditation, to find the right position, which for me means following the movements, the tensions and relaxations of the muscles, the skeleton, the spine. Then to observe the breath, breathing in and out, the turning point of the breath, the pause in which to observe oneself, how thoughts begin to loosen, following them attentively to see where they wander. To establish a connection with the outside world and the inner world. How far do the thoughts roam? Where am I now? Is this real? Which part of reality is this? The world of other people, the world of work or of interest, the interpersonal world, nature or the daydream, fantasy, vision, the world of fear and missed opportunities, the world of regret and hope, the world of art and philosophy, music and architecture. These are a few of my worlds; others may enter entirely different worlds, lifeworlds in which I do not move, all those worlds explored in crime series, for example.
There is, then, a correlation between one’s own body in meditation and the world of thought wandering through memory, and the world of thought that associates relatively freely and leaps about unguided and unconsciously. To see this interplay and realize that there is a connection is a first step into deeper meditation.
This process of inner alignment serves to position one’s own Self within a larger context. I can now meditate on my different levels of existence: my material body, my living body, my world of feelings, my world of thoughts, my world of the intellect, and the world of spirituality. I can meditate on my individual senses, the outer and inner ones, and on how they interact, what kinds of experiences they have brought forth, and how I can call up these experiences again in memory. I can meditate on how these experiences, connected with wishes and fears, with expectations, goals, and conventions, develop into a plan — a LIFE. For this life I live is embedded in a context: the context of my own body, my own soul, my lifeworld and surroundings.
This level of life is pure immanence. Here everything flows together; it is nourished by consciousness, consciousness is its primordial source, it can be nothing else, only here can life be experienced. But consciousness must now be understood broadly. It is not my reactive, unreflective, thoughtless association and being caught in patterns, compulsions, habits, desire, and suffering, but consciousness as that which underlies all my experiences, an experience of consciousness as consciousness itself. I have consciousness that fills with contents; I can concentrate and direct, align and clarify myself; I can empty my consciousness and invite something new. Consciousness is the level of my existence where this existence of mine, my life, is constituted. Consciousness itself, when it individualizes, makes life possible. This is the mystery of the soul, of the relation between Brahman, Purusha, Atman, Prakriti.
Around me, many people speak of a psychic being and of how it relates to the Divine, to the soul, to one’s own person and identity. It is not entirely clear to me as a philosophical concept of Aurobindo’s, but in meditation I am developing an intuition of what it might be. It is that being which, in meditation, for example, reflects on its own conditions and holds them together in an individualized way; that which underlies my I; that which recognizes that the experiential world of the outer senses is an illusion; that which recognizes that a universal principle of individuation in the form of a soul or Atman or Purusha is a condition of my existence. That being, then, which glides through the different levels of being, moves in the worlds of yoga, transcends time and space, and understands the boundaries of life and death as permeable. This seems to me to be the psychic being.
