' The Overself '...

Let it never be forgotten what earlier studies have iterated and re‑iterated. The Overself is the real teacher in the heart, the one initiator of all struggling aspirants. It is the final bestower of in­sight. It is the benign mediator of grace to the imploring ego. It is not a theoretical presence but a living one with whom the aspirant can remotely or intimately commune. It can liberate him from his ignorance, instruct him in super‑intellectual truth and guide him to philosophic enlightenment.

All his efforts in yoga should be interfused with warm devotion to the inner reality for unless he really loves it he will never unite with it. He should therefore comprehend that a leading principle of all these ultramystic medi­tation exercises is that success ultimately depends not on the con­scious efforts he puts forth but on the mysterious reaction to those efforts. This does not of course mean that the efforts are valueless in themselves for without them there would be no reaction.

It means that the over‑conscious gets to work independently upon him at a certain stage. When this actually manifests itself it will not be during any of his struggles to obtain it but during the periods of cessation from those struggles, not during positive con­centration but during the absence of concentration. It becomes articulate not during the thinking about it but during the intervals of not thinking about it.

Henceforth, whatever has to he done, will not be done by himself. Instead, it will be done to him. He will be taken by the hand, as it were, and led into the profound stillness which guards the threshold of the Overself. Across that threshold he will receive the reply to the question: What Am I? Like a loving mother the Overself will take its progeny up into itself at this won­derful moment of initiation and thus the inner rebirth will occur. It will come as the culmination of long striving but it is not
itself an act of striving. For only the divine grace can bring it about.


Paul Brunton- WOTO The Mystical Phenomena of Meditation