Chapter 5The Inward Movement · The Inner Consciousness and the Body

It is the inner consciousness that you felt separated from the body, liberated from the identification with the body, and yet in touch with all the material surroundings. It is a very helpful experience — indispensable for the Yoga.

* It is that the consciousness is detaching itself from the body.1 Usually in men it is identified with the body and bound to it — in Yoga it detaches itself and becomes free. The body is no longer felt as oneself, but as something not oneself, something that one carries with oneself or else as an instrument which one uses for certain purposes.

* If you went inside and lost consciousness of the outer world, it would be called a kind of samadhi — but this experience can 1 The correspondent wrote that sometimes he felt raindrops or sunlight falling on his light, as if he had no body at all. — Ed.

be got in the waking state also. It is a liberation from body consciousness and an awakening into the spiritual wideness. At first it is usually felt as a void of all other things but consciousness alone or existence alone.

* The feeling [in meditation] of having no head usually means that the mental consciousness is no longer imprisoned in the head at the time — but silent and extended.