This series covers events from 07/27/1983 - 11/30/1983

This series of classes is an in-depth exploration of the practice of meditation through close analysis and discussion of paragraphs from categories 4, “Elementary Meditation,” 22, "Inspiration and the Overself," and 23, “Advanced Contemplation,” of Paul Brunton’s Notebooks.

Several classes focus on PB’s division of the practice into the stages of concentration, meditation, and contemplation: concentration aims to develop intense, one-pointed attention on a given theme; meditation is achieved when you experience yourself as a disembodied consciousness realizing the meaning of the chosen spiritual theme from all points of view, but there is still effort being made by the ego; and contemplation is thought-free absorption in which the ego has been temporarily displaced by the Overself and intuitive understanding is born.

Three classes provide detailed examination of the Interior Word—an advanced contemplative phenomenon in which the Overself communicates very precise guidance wordlessly to the mind of the contemplator directly rather than through audible sound, which places it on a higher level than visions and psychical experiences.

Two classes develop the idea that the mental being that receives the Interior Word is what PB calls “awareness of awareness,” which is to be distinguished from the Overself proper as pure awareness, or the I AM. Synthesizing astrological symbolism and Plotinian ideas about the soul, Damiani suggests that this mental being can also be conceived of as the 360 degrees of the zodiac, or the 360 gods, which provide the reproductive soul that has the desire for earthly existence with content or substance. The mind’s acquisition of this content is what forms the I-thought. This “I” is what must be eliminated in the stillness of contemplation.

The profound mysteries of the final battle with the ego and the life in the spirit that follows are discussed in relation to a PB para about the three Sufi stations, as is the difference between nirvikalpa samadhi and its application to everyday life, which turns it into sahaja (the permanent realization of nonduality).

Finally, the three primal hypostases of the One, Intellectual-Principle, and the Soul can be regarded as the Void because they are eternal immaterial principles, and thus when PB talks about penetrating deeper into the Void by stages, these stages can be correlated with deepening insight into the three primal hypostases.

Classes and documents available in this series