Stillness · “Stillness Reveals”
Expansion Into Infinite Space
The culmination of the course: from withdrawn senses and formless space, expand the sense of ‘I’ outward in all directions without pause, until movement ceases in a boundless Stillness Sadhu equates with the threshold of true meditation.
Ex. 9/9A: from withdrawn senses and formless space all around you, expand your “I” outward from a centre (eyebrows for 9; skull for 9A) like a luminous blast — beyond body, planet, galaxies — without pausing (a pause snaps you back; start again). Ignore any lights/voices. At a certain point motion ceases in boundless, vision-less light. Closing form (Ch. XXI): after pranayama and 9A, simply enter the Stillness and rest there — the threshold of true meditation. No haste.
What it is
This is the summit of Sadhu’s graded course, and unlike everything before it “does not call for the use of pin-heads, discs and so on.” Having reached formless space in Exercise No. 7 and sense-withdrawal in No. 8, you now expand the sense of “I” itself outward in every direction at once — “grow beyond your body, room, house, city, country and planet. beyond galaxies and new universes” — until, pushed far enough, “the ‘movement’ stops” and “a man is then bathed in the light of pure, unstained consciousness.” Sadhu, following Shankara’s Vivekachudamani, frames the true Self as “infinite, all-pervading space.” He explicitly labels the end-state “the high aspect of Samadhi.
Kevala Nirvikalpa Samadhi” — a temporary formless super-consciousness — and Chapter XXI (“On the Threshold of Meditation”) presents the closing form: simply entering, after No. 9A, into the Stillness itself, “this inner untroubled point of balance” he calls “the source of all true knowledge” and “the beginning of Samadhi.”
The Method
- Begin from No. 8’s withdrawal. Sitting in the simple Westernised asana (Crystal-White Pranayama), exclude all thoughts for about half a minute. With sight and hearing withdrawn (No. 9 permits closing eyes/plugging ears as a starting aid; No. 9A does it with senses open), bring up “the infinite, bottomless, colourless, transparent background” of Nos. 7-8 — but now feel it “surrounding you on every side. before and behind, right and left, above and below.”
- Expand from a centre. “Expand yourself, your ‘I’, your consciousness. starting from the ‘centre between your eyebrows’” (or the centre of the skull — “you can please yourself”). “Gradually, like an imaginary luminous blast from the ‘centre’, explode into space.”
- Do not stop. “First, grow beyond your body, room, house, city, country and planet. Do not stop even for a moment, otherwise you will drop back into the ‘centre’, right into your cage of flesh” — whereupon “the whole exercise must be started afresh.” Keep going “beyond galaxies and new universes, always as if from the centre of a sphere in all directions to the whole of its ever receding periphery.”
- Ignore all by-products. Pay no attention to anything you seem to “pass,” and allow “no words or thoughts.” (In No. 8 he warns that “whistles, whispers, strange voices, lights and luminous auras may be noticed” — treat them like intruding thoughts: “Simply ignore them. They are without any significance.”)
- The stopping-point. Pushed to a certain “point,” “the ‘movement’ stops,” remembrances of earth “are effaced,” and there dawns the light of “pure, unstained consciousness” — his Kevala Nirvikalpa Samadhi.
- No. 9A — eyes/senses open. The same expansion with senses unobstructed; here begin the centring “somewhere inside the skull,” not between the eyebrows (which “sometimes involves your sense of sight”). He quotes Ramana: “Meditation with the eyes fixed on the space between the eyebrows may result in fear. The right way is to fix the mind on the Self alone.”
- The closing form — enter the Stillness (Ch. XXI). “Sit restfully, do some pranayamas. then initially using No. 9A, enter into the Stillness.” “Realize that this Stillness, this inner untroubled point of balance is all!” Rest there; “no haste is permissible.” This Stillness, devoid of all visions, is what Sadhu calls the threshold of, and entry into, true meditation/Samadhi.
Source & Lineage
Chapter XX, “Fifth Series (Final Exercises),” Exercises 9/9A, and Chapter XXI, “On the Threshold of Meditation,” of Concentration (Allen & Unwin, 1959). Sadhu builds explicitly on Shankara’s Vivekachudamani (“The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom”) and the “Direct Path” of Ramana Maharshi (his own In Days of Great Peace is offered as companion reading), distinguishing temporary Kevala from the master’s perpetual Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi.
Mouni Sadhu (1897-1971). → (sadhu mouni).
Common refinements
Pausing. Any hesitation “drops you back into the cage of flesh”; the expansion must be continuous.
- Chasing phenomena. Lights, voices, auras are “without any significance” — ignore them as you would intruding thoughts.
- Attempting it cold. It presupposes mastery of Nos. 1-8; without that foundation Sadhu says it cannot succeed.
- Eyebrow-centring fear (9A). For the open-eyed form, centre in the skull, not between the brows, to avoid the fear Ramana warns of.
- Forcing or hurrying the Stillness. “No haste is permissible.” Impatience is “the unconquered emotional nature. which bars the way.”