Beyond the rainbow

By Sigvaldi Hjalmarsson.
Copyright: The Theosophical Society in Iceland.

The Mystic student must attend to constant self-observation, which includes many things.

Here, there will be discussion on the moment, and how the mystic student has to observe himself moment by moment. In most cases it is regarded useless to talk about this, and therefore it's left alone, even though it's of the greatest importance. It is usually not very exiting but rather important.

We have to commune, there has to exist something between us, something more important than the one that is talking, because the moments when the mind opens up, are the moments that are important. And as I talk longer and more often it becomes ever clearer to me that the speaker is of least importance. He is mainly the voice.

Let's once again speak about mystical experience. Not because it needs explaining, it can't be explained, rather because it is the real ground for what we do when we talk about or experience incidents on the mystic path. Mystical experience is when you feel yourself in everything and even feel everything in you. Everything has changed into living wholeness, merged into inseparable continuum, a living presence.

What is a living presence? To experience, feel the life which is everywhere, without appearing in any thing in particular. It appears literally everywhere. You are it - it is you. You are not part of it, You are this presence in its entirety - it is everywhere, and it is the same here and everywhere. It is like taking the sunshine into yourself, not that the sun shines on you, that's a small matter. It is a small matter to feel the sun compared to taking the sunshine inside. And the ground for this to happen, what helps it to happen - that which prepares you to be able to receive it, though it sometimes comes as a lightening from a clear sky without any warning - is what we call the quiet mind.

The quiet mind is really quite simple, like all of this. It's such degree of control over the attention and the forming of the ideas in the mind, that you can remain in totally calm and quiet condition, even while the thinking principle is working. You are in such a calm stage that your own thoughts don't disturb you. You are unattached to your own reactions. It is worth while to examine what is involved in being free from ones own reactions, to be able to look at them, to be aware of them as they are. This is where that which has been called the path begins. This is the touch-stone of being able to tread the path.

On treading the path

On the path there is much talk about exercise, but such things are not confined to special exercising hours. It happens mostly all the time, every day, moment by moment. It is not possible to start treading the path at twenty minutes past seven in the morning, an then quit at nine o'clock. It goes on, moment by moment. Involved is an incredible grade of self awareness - and that is the whole problem.

It will make a particular impact on your life, you will start to look at yourself in a totally different way. Such life I call beyond quietness, because normally calmness is taken as the opposite to unrest, but this is beyond the difference, beyond the rainbow, the colors of ordinary people's everyday life - and it is regarded as dull, because people want pepper and salt. If people can't enjoy what they find amusing, they keep to the second best, indulging in what they find boring. Examine the truth in these words. People in general don't want peace. That which is beyond the difference of fun and boredom is not exiting enough. People often want quite different things from what they express or think themselves. If we did want real peace, real enlightenment, then we would walk trough fire and brimstone to make it become a reality. Are we doing that? There is more talked about peace than anything else in human life, but it is not one of the things that we want.

People must get information on the more profound stages of spiritual practice, for else they may seek guidance on false pretenses. Maybe our real aim is to become supermen, undoubtedly we want some super happiness, more fun, something more enjoyable and more beautiful than what we have. But we don't want the power which N. Sri Ram described as: "making man nothing in the eyes of himself and others". People in general don't want such power that breaks up the I and the selfishness with it.

This wide awake attention, moment by moment, which we mentioned before, has to do with how the moment elapses. We will go real slow because this is so very easy to understand and so important. Usually we pass over what is the most simple and understandable.

In the moment you are on the verge of infinity, having the infinity right by your side. The moment is always nearer to you than anything else that belongs to you, and in it is the infinity, the well of the grand experience that we mentioned at the beginning.

What is this moment? We also have to be clear about that. The moment is nothing special. Please take this easily. It is what is when there is thought-free condition in the mind. Then it appears. When the veil of thoughts has been wiped away, the moment appears. It has no limits, never passes, and there is no time in it. This is what we cover with the veil of thoughts. Therefore everything is in this mess in our lives; we don't recognize this moment which appears in every fleeting now, but could really be the whole of our life.

To learn not to think

Many times I have heard yogis speak of thought-free condition, thought-free from moment to moment, as it is called, completely without thought. Not that we should not think, but we should know the art of using the thinking principle in a right way, like learning to use the hand. If the hand was always mowing and could not be still, how then could the carpenter work? - He couldn't.

We should know how not to think, to know how to think. Then we could spend most of the time in thought-free state, so that which we call the daily moment would be on the surface of our life. We have to feel this, it's useless to listen to these words and remember. We have to feel it. It must be done now, not tomorrow or the day after. Now! A moment - a thought-free state - the present - now.

The razor sharp now becomes continuous reality if we wipe away the veil of thought. If we are content with being beyond the rainbow, beyond the color of the everyday life, then many interesting things take form, and later it becomes apparent that we are rewarded, but I don't want to buy you. One has to start on this path for nothing, or one will never get anywhere.

When we are able to stay with the moment for a little while, in this thought-free state of mind, then it can deepen, without any high mystical or transcendental experience happening. Let's look at this. The now becomes deeper if one stays with it. If Thought-free state prevails it appears that the now or the moment contains much more than we think. This is the main change that has to be grasped. It contains much more because it is not a line, it has become a kind of space. It's like a veil has been swept away, and the veil seems to be a kind of carelessness in the way of attending thoroughly. Usually we are either ahead or behind the now, although the now is neither here nor there, it's always. It's like we are looking without having cleared the eyes. When this grand space is present in the moment, then it is possible to attend to many things simultaneously, and without this, there is nothing we can do to fundamentally change ourselves. Let's repeat this: There is nothing we can do to fundamentally change ourselves without mastering this momentous space. You can be aware of your own attitudes, what you do and what goes on inside you from many viewpoints. And don't think that this is some mysterious faculty which only some people possess, it comes spontaneously with the thought-less state of mind.

Six details of a whole

This incredibly awake awareness consists in being aware of six details simultaneously. This can be explained in another way, perhaps there could be hundred details, but my choice is six. These are not from books. To be aware of these six details simultaneously is not particularly difficult if one has attained thought-free mind, but it requires great persistence, practice and thoughtfulness to be able to maintain thought-free mind for some considerable time. You can maintain many things at time in the field of your vision, and that is no magic. In the same manner it is possible to be aware of the details inside oneself, even many details - if the mind is tranquil and not in the dreamlike mode of thought-wandering.

Why do we feel that we can't be aware of many things simultaneously? It is because the attention is used to run away with what it notices. It happens like this: notice something and going away, noticing it again, or perhaps something new, and going away from it again. Thus there is never any continuous attention on anything. This is caused by our own reactions which constantly debauch us. With whatever we notice, something awakens inside us, and this something catches us so that we stop noticing for a fleeting moment. Thus the attention is cut up, instead of being continuous.

The problem is not in that we can't notice many things at a time, it only takes perseverance to attain thought-free state of mind, to maintain that state when the moment surfaces and takes everything over. It takes a considerable amount of self denial.

Let's look at the six details we have to be aware of so that our life undergoes fundamental change.

First it has to be understood that this has to take place in the awareness of the moment, and the moment must not go away, must not slip under the veil of thought. It has to be continuous. The trick is to be able to position all these details together.

The first: We have to learn to notice and keep in the awareness every moment, i.e. steady in a continuous ongoing now, is to be pure attention. You have to be pure attention in everything you do - you are what you do. It's like when we forget ourselves in a work, when there is none that is working, only the work is done. That is how the attention must stay, always beyond that which you are doing. It's almost as you watch yourself while working. Don't let this slip too easily by because it is such an ordinary phrase. You have to almost watch yourself working, letting the work you are doing go on by itself, you being only pure attention in it. You don't perform the work, it is performed with you. But you also have to be pure attention doing nothing, which is perhaps the most important thing. And when everything is empty, you can afford to be only awake awareness, which is the most magnificent thing there is.

The second: To always remember the Godhead, the Ultimate Reality or the Absolute - call it what you like. To always remember the Godhead, the awareness of the highest, must never wander away. It's like the fish in the sea would use every moment of its life to try to feel the sea, not words, not thought, but constant feeling for the living infinity. It should not be discernible from the awareness of ones own existence. Later the feeling of existing may blend into this feeling of infinity.

You should always remember the Godhead, always have the feeling for the Ultimate Reality, which certainly is discernible and appears easily in the thought-less state of mind.

The third detail is to maintain thought-free state of mind. Constantly maintaining thought-free state of mind has to be a part of this practice. The thought-faculty should be used as rarely as possible, but briskly when necessary. But even when you have become unattached to the thought-faculty there will still gather some dust on the mirror of consciousness, because you are still thinking, even as you are unattached. Realize that the thought-faculty is only a tool, it is not you, we have only forgot ourselves. We are like a man that is digging a hole and has forgotten that he is he and thinks that he is the spade in his hands.

The fourth detail is that you must give away everything you do. What you do is not yours. This feeling must prevail incessantly. What you do doesn't belong to you and this is a major misapprehension in life. When you speak your talk belongs to him that you are talking to. If you dawdle, the loafing doesn't belong to you. You must be in the condition of mind that you in advance have given everything you are and do. This is beautifully stated in Sankarasaria's prayer to the World Mother. I will only mention one sentence from that prayer: "All my idleness is a sacred time with you" The idleness was also hers, it belonged to the divinity too, and you must also give away your sins and failures, everything will be taken from you. Think of the responsibility to exist, when one doesn't even own ones sins and mistakes. All this we have done in the name of the almighty, and it won't be wiped out. I'm inclined to think that people will become more conscientious if they take up this view.

The fifth detail is to acquire new feeling for the body. It mustn't be a thing, and of course you don't own it, no more than anything else. It must become a kind of function, a kind of power field. It should be as a wave on a infinite ocean, as little distinct from this ocean of infinity as the wave from the sea.

The sixth and final detail, which is the most important, and I hope that you don't feel that what I say has anything to do with sentiment. Few moments in thought-free state of mind will wipe out any traces of sentiment or emotions.

To love all and everything. In fact you must love, there is no other way. That feeling must impregnate all the endeavor, all the other details, everything. Such love has nothing to do with personal feelings or emotionalism, it most resembles a kind of certainty, an incredibly enlightened and sparkling certainty. You are not only incessantly conscious of the divine, you keep at heart such intimate warmth to all living things, to everything sensible. The answer to everything that you sense is this warmth, ant that warmth is no fiddle. It's a rejoicing in itself, infinite delight which needs no repayment, for with all taken into account, being loved is such a pittance compared to loving. This is what replaces the enjoyment that alternate with boredom, which people won't let go of. And if this does not pay for all the trouble, then nothing can pay. But all this you have to do for nothing.

Concepts becoming experience.

This is all easier in practice than talking about it. At first one has to be attentive, constantly reminding oneself until it fuses into one thing. It's really a meditation that goes on constantly, an endless meditation. And when all this has fused into one indivisible outlook, then there is self-awareness. This is an attitude of subtle continuous quiet attention which emits warmth to the infinite as well as to that which is all around you. And you yourself are nothing - living, conscious, smiling nothing - nothing that knows, nothing that feels, nothing that loves. Work, talk and confusion don't disturb, for this quiet subtle attention is in fact what you are.

From this outlook many thing become experience which ordinary are only words. Take brotherhood. It's not to have a brother but to be one. Love is to loose any feeling of being something specific by oneself. The one that loves is nothing in himself. The loveless state of mind begins with the feeling of being something. To be clean you have to wash off the feeling of being clean. To be innocent you must not feel innocent. To be free, you must forget the freedom. Being rich you have no feeling of ownership. Working, you have no feeling of being the one who is working. Your importance lies in being totally unimportant, for everything is perfect, everything is provided for.

Finally I proclaim that provided the will is there, it is less of a work than one or two years at university, to be able to live in this quiet, subtle self-awareness. Everyone can do this, it is nothing superhuman. A life in such awareness is literally a beginning of entirely new human life. And when you have settled in this awareness, no longer aware that you are so, then it may happen that the Absolute settles on your nose and sits there. This is beyond the colors of the rainbow, but being colorless no rainbow can compare to it.

A talk held at the Icelandic section's Summer School in 1981.
Transcript from tape published in Gangleri 1992,
Translated in May 1993 by Einar Adalsteinsson.