Sit up, head, neck, chest straight in a line…
Imagine a being out of whom light is pouring in all directions. Sitting cross-legged on a lotus. Visualize this being about the size of the end of your thumb, and sitting inside your chest, right about at the center, where the right-hand part of your physical heart would be. And this being is sitting inside you, looking out the same way you’re looking out. As you look closely at this being, you see that it knows everything. It is unbearable compassion. It is absolute power. And it’s sitting right inside there, and you are sitting the way you are now sitting.
It’s very interesting to just see who happens to be inside of you.
Now imagine this being starts to swell, slowly eating away cells. It just swells until its proportions are identical with your proportions, so that you are now merely the shell that surrounds this entity who is a being of love, of light, of compassion, which means you can see it all and understand it all. Being the beauty, the divine emanation.
Then imagine your being, your body is now getting larger, so that pretty soon every sound you can hear in this room and every other person you conceive of as being in this room is now inside you.
You understand this position?
Now start to include the mountains outside, the hemisphere, and keep growing. Keep expanding. Feel all of this inside you. Earth. The entire planet is inside you. Galaxy, after galaxy. And here we are. or here I is. You in here? I’m here. It’s quiet in here. Realize that anything that’s inside of you, you are. You are.
In Hindi, the Sanskrit, “Tat twam asi,” and that too. And that too. Everything you look at, everything you can think of becomes a part of what you are. So ultimately you end up at the same exact place as you would have, had you followed the philosophy of “Neti Neti,” which means, “No, not that. No, not that.”
You can deflate any time you want, but when you get down to the size of this being of light, full consciousness, full love, full compassion, full truth, full beauty, optimum Tao…when you get down to that being that is the same size as your skin, you probably can’t hold onto it. It’s too bright. It can’t be that beautiful. You can shrink back down to being the size of half a thumb and leave this hanging around inside you, just sitting there.
I mean, you can have him hang out in there, and when you hang out with imaginary playmates like that, and you really see the world through your friends’ eyes, which is fun to do, pretty soon you become like your friends. You just keep surrendering into it and surrendering into it until you are absolute love, absolute truth, absolute beauty, absolute consciousness. Sat Chit Ananda. That being has just taken you over, and there is no more you.
– Ram Dass
