Quote of the Week $45 - The Void

During deep sleep, there is the experience of the void; the same void can be experienced during meditation. That void is not empty, but there is a feeling of emptiness. During that time, there is no content, and that is why it is called deep sleep. So sleep is an unconscious state without content; there is no awareness. When one is in the void, he does not know that he is in the void, but once awake, he remembers being in the void. In deep meditation, one is in the void and is aware of it at the time. The meditative state is a fully awakened state.

--Swami Rama, Mandukya Upanishad, Enlightenment Without God, p. 98; OM, The Eternal Witness, Secrets of the Mandukya Upanishad, p. 161

Quotes of the Week #44 - Light of Different Grades/A Luminous Perspective

Light of Different Grades

The soul is light, the mind is light, and the body is light – light of different grades; it is this relation which connects man with the planets and stars.

--Hazrat Inayat Khan

A Luminous Perspective

The perception that dawns on a person to see the world, not as finished, but as in the process of continued becoming, ascending, developing - this changes us from being 'under the sun' to being 'above the sun' from the place where everything takes on new form. The joy of heaven and earth abide in us as on the day they were created.

In this luminous perspective one looks at all the worlds, at the general and human development, at the destiny of each creature, at all the events of all times.

--Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook