Stillness · “Stillness Reveals”
The Diagram of Meditation
To shift identification from the limited personal ego to the universal Self by daily ‘acquiring’ the conception of all-space-and-time and ‘depriving’ the mind of every sense of separateness.
Sit. Conceive of Unity — expansion in Space, infinite in Time. ACQUIRE: hold perpetual presence in all space/time (courage); meet all things with neither love nor hate (calm); see only limitation in all forms (discrimination) — “I am all Space and Time.” DEPRIVE: refuse the reality of separateness, friend/foe, possessions, personality, sensation — “I am without attributes.” Carry both attitudes into the day.
What it is
The Diagram of Meditation is Blavatsky’s one explicit, prescribed, step-by-step daily meditation — dictated privately to her Esoteric Section around 1887-88. Unlike her more poetic works, it is a deliberate worksheet: a daily discipline for moving identification away from the small personal ego toward the universal Self.
It has two complementary halves, the Acquirements (conceptions to take up “perpetually in imagination”) and the Deprivations (renunciations — things to refuse to think real). The whole is bracketed by two summary realisations: the Acquirements complete in “I am all Space and Time,” and the Deprivations complete in “I am without attributes.” It operationalises the unity of consciousness (All Is One), the deeper Self (All Is One), stillness (The Inner Creates the Outer), and liberation through inner knowing (All Is One).
It is not relaxation and not a breathing exercise; it is a sustained re-conception of who one is, held in meditation and then carried into daily life.
The Method
Blavatsky’s diagram begins from a single instruction and then branches into the two columns. Opening conception.
“First conceive of UNITY by Expansion in Space and Infinite in Time.” Sit and deliberately build, in imagination, a sense of yourself as boundless in space and without beginning or end in time. This is the seed of everything that follows. A. The Acquirements — taken up “perpetually in imagination,” each with a quality it yields:
- A perpetual presence in imagination in all Space and Time — its fruit is courage.
- An attitude of mind toward all existing things which is neither love, hate, nor indifference — its fruit is equilibrium / calm. (Note: this “neither love nor hate” is impartial, equanimous regard, not coldness — it is the even ground from which genuine compassion later acts.)
- The perception in all embodied beings of limitation only — criticism (discernment) “without praise or blame.” Its fruit is discrimination between the real and the limited. These complete in the conception: “I am all Space and Time.” (“Beyond that, it cannot be said.”) B. The Deprivations — renunciations; refusing to grant reality to the following, and noting what each generates (bondage, ignorance, strife):
- Separations and meetings, association with places, times and forms — and the “futile longings and broken-heartedness” they breed.
- Distinctions of friend and foe — replaced by impartial judgment.
- Possessions — greed, selfishness, ambition.
- Personality — vanity, remorse.
- Sensation — gluttony, lust. These complete in the conception: “I am without attributes.” How to actually do it. Each day, sit quietly and (a) build the Acquirement side — expand into space/time, hold the even attitude, see limitation-only in all forms; rest in “I am all Space and Time.” Then (b) take the Deprivation side — one by one, refuse to grant reality to separateness, partiality, possession, personality, sensation; rest in “I am without attributes.” Blavatsky meant the diagram not only for the cushion but as a set of attitudes observed during daily life — catching the mind whenever it slips back into separateness, longing, or self-importance. (Sourcing: the Diagram was dictated to her Inner Group and survives via The Inner Group Teachings of H.P. Blavatsky; wordings above — “First conceive of UNITY.”, “I am all Space and Time”, “I am without attributes”, and the Acquirement/Deprivation entries — follow the published reconstructions. Phrasings vary slightly between transcriptions; the structure is stable.)
Source & Lineage
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) co-founded the Theosophical Society (1875) and authored Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. Near the end of her life she formed an Esoteric (Inner) Section for committed students, and it was in this context — around 1887-88 — that she dictated the Diagram of Meditation as a practical aid.
It draws on the Vedantic move of discriminating the eternal Self from the transient (viveka) and the Buddhist renunciation of attachment, recast in Theosophical terms. It is the most concrete meditation instruction she left, and contrasts sharply with the abstract metaphysics of her major works.
Common refinements
Reading “neither love nor hate” as coldness. It means impartiality — the steady ground equanimity, not suppression of warmth. Blavatsky’s path culminates in compassion.
- Doing only the cushion half. The Diagram is explicitly also a daytime discipline of catching the mind slipping into separateness and longing.
- Forcing dissolution. The Deprivations are a gradual loosening, not a violent self-erasure. Bullied detachment becomes numbness.
- Treating it as visualisation theatre. The “expansion” is a conception held with the whole attention, not a cinematic image.