A gaze, from the nearest thing to the depth of the sky, and back

1. Look at one thing close to you. See it exactly: its colour, its edge, where the light falls on it. Touch the screen.
2. Now the far wall, or the farthest thing in the room. Touch.
3. Out of the window, or the door. Touch.
4. The horizon, as far as the land goes. Touch.
5. The sky. Touch.
6. The depth of the sky: not its surface, how far it goes. Touch.
7. Wider, until there is no edge between the seeing and what is seen. Stay in it.
8. When it is silence, hold, and stay.
9. When you are ready, hold again. Back through the sky, the horizon, the window, the wall. Touch as each comes back.
10. The thing close to you. You are back.

• The way back is always one hold away, or the button at the top: it never leaves you in the middle.
• Never stare at the sun. A flame, a flower, the sky: yes. The sun itself, no; the sūrya trāṭaka on this site is done only in the first minutes of sunrise.
• A soft gaze. Blink whenever the eyes want to. Watering is fine; strain is not.
• If light hurts your eyes, keep the room dim and the screen low, and look at a flower instead of a flame.
• Keep a flame where it cannot fall, away from cloth and paper.

Sri Aurobindo, to someone afraid of the emptiness that came in concentration:

Consciousness is not dissolved; it is the limits of the consciousness that are dissolved.

Letters on Yoga III, CWSA 30, p. 276

This is the journey of Nādamaya with light instead of sound, made at Jyotirgana from Arjun's own description. Its widening goes into the light of the sky, because sight belongs to fire and light. This form is ours, and its name is the site's own.

It has not been tested. We claim no result from it.

the paper →

Sri Aurobindo, in A System of National Education (1910), on how a child should come to know a flower, what he should be encouraged to do:

to fix in his mind the exact shade, the peculiar glow, the precise intensity of the scent, the beauty of curve and design in the form.

Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1, p. 404

The Mother, on the psychic presence, writing for the Ashram's Bulletin in February 1952:

It is like a light that shines at the centre of the being, radiating through the thick coverings of the external consciousness.

On Education, CWM 12, p. 30

रसोऽहमप्सु कौन्तेय प्रभास्मि शशिसूर्ययोः ।
प्रणवः सर्ववेदेषु शब्दः खे पौरुषं नृषु ॥

I am the taste in the waters, Kaunteya, the light in the moon and the sun; the Oṁ in all the Vedas, the sound in space, the strength in men.

Krishna speaks. The light at the end of the gaze is His.

ākāśaṃ vimalam paśyan kṛtvā dṛṣṭiṃ nirantarām |
stabdhātmā tatkṣaṇād devi bhairavaṃ vapur āpnuyāt || 84 ||

Gazing at the clear sky, the gaze unbroken, the self still: in that moment, O Devī, one takes on the form of Bhairava.

The widening, in an old book of such practices.

Bhagavad Gītā 7.8, in the text of sanskritdocuments.org; Vijñāna Bhairava 84, in the text of GRETIL (Göttingen), in Roman letters as it is given there. The translations are ours.