One morning, I found the endless interior dialogue was no longer operating. What a wonder! This time however, there was no great ecstasy, nor any revelations as in the Cosmic Consciousness experience I had in my early twenties: but it was pure clarity and a gentle joy. As I could no longer feel my usual mental pressure, I saw clearly as if without a head. I was totally there in everything. There was no longer any veil or distance between me and my environment, as is usually the case when the mind is there to create distinctions. The very fact of thinking—‘being in our heads’—tends to cut us off from the world and others. But without a mind to encase me in my body, I found that the Self was everywhere!

I had the sensory impression that I was no longer limited to the body. My sense of being extended through the walls of the body, the walls of the house and out to infinity. What I realised myself to be, interpenetrated with everything I saw. There was no need to think about it, as I was it. Yet it felt ‘right’ and far more ‘normal’ than my usual mind-bound condition. I found it wondrously amusing to sense my body ‘located’ in the centre of an endless continuum of ‘me-ness’. I was like a diver moving about in a calm and lucid ocean of myself. And I walked about in chuckling awe for many days, like a marionette on strings, being operated by the Omnipresence.

There was no difficulty in relating to people. When visitors came I could carry on conversations in a regular manner, but without formulating responses in my ‘mind’. My answers came spontaneously and I listened as interestedly to my replies as theirs, being fascinated by watching the process of words coming out of the place where the ‘centre’ of this vague impression of a body appeared to be. If no unbidden response arose, I would remain silent, simply resting in the pristine awareness.

Sampragñata samadhi

For more than three weeks I remained in this state, which I later learned is known among yogis as sampragñata samadhi. It is the stage of samadhi in which the flow of mind reposes in the Self, but the distinction between the knowledge and the things known is not yet lost. This condition might well have lasted much longer, but during the third week I became involved in the details of selling my cottage, and as I was doing my own conveyancing, I was obliged to study books of law to make up the deeds. This is a head-breaking task at the best of times, and for several days I began to feel the return of ‘mind’—like a distant balloon on a string—being slowly wound back on a spindle into my head. Soon I returned to a semblance of ‘normality’.

Since those days, my mental flow came and went like the tide, so that I was sometimes with and sometimes without ‘mind’. Gradually I came to realise that a thought-free inner peace had crept up on me unawares. I hope this assuages any fears that ‘mindlessness’ is a problem. Entering into samadhi can be a gentle process with nothing to be afraid of. We can proceed as slowly as we choose; in the same way as a child overcomes its fear of the wavelets of the sea, slowly penetrating deeper, wading the bigger waves and braving the breakers before finally plunging joyously into the ocean itself. The mind-free ocean of the Self awaits us all.

Credits: Supplied Image;

Slow it down

But not all of us can so easily carpet-whip our thoughts away at first if they are constantly coming thick and fast. An alternative practice is to keep the mind-flow focused on one thing to slow it down, whenever we do not need our full attention on the task in hand. We might perhaps hold an image of our chosen master in our heart of hearts, remaining in his vibration there, instead of in our heads. Otherwise, there are two other time-honoured methods of cleansing the toxicity of the ‘mind’ and that is by meditation or by mantra. Only these practices are capable of consuming our accumulated negativity from the past and previous existences.

Japa-mantra, or the repetition of sacred syllables, is known in many cultures as one of the most effortless and efficacious ways of clearing the mind and transforming the spirit. The repetition of mantras enhances the quality of your consciousness and redirects the mind-flow into purifying channels in the process of refining it away altogether. Its practice can bring galloping intellects to heel and awaken joy in the most incorrigible worrier.

Once one has begun to experience the joy of ‘mindlessness,’ all early fears are forgotten. Instead, there develops an inner urge to attain permanency in the natural delight of this utterly satisfying condition. The more we ‘lose our minds’ the more we find our true selves and the more we function to perfection. Whoever heard of Jesus, or a Buddha, or Krishna, Moses, Dattatreya, Gorakshanath, Milarepa, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Hui Hai, Hui Neng, or any other of the spiritual giants who inspired the world, being unable to function after experiencing samadhi?

The subsequent quality of their lives and inspiration is testament enough.

Therefore we may safely follow in their footsteps.

Author

British mystic, author, psychotherapist, spiritual counsellor, mantra yogi, fine artist and illustrator, theatrical set and costume designer. Founder-editor of Gandalf’s Garden magazine and Community in the London Sixties, and 3 years as columnist for Yoga Today magazine, BBC 4 Scriptwriter, author of four spiritual self-development books and two storybooks for children. 

Muz Murray