My Pilgrimage to the Spirit

February 16, 1933

Experience: Neither calm nor disturbance; neither joy nor sorrow; no individuality nor universality, but everything melting away in an unimaginable vastness which is behind and beyond everything....

This state which cannot be called static nor can it be called dynamic, but such state, which is neither a state conditioned or limited by any word but which is beyond all conditions or meanings attached to it, because it is none of these conditions and yet all.

I do not live in this limited body all the time, but I feel a living presence in each and every atom, which links the whole universe with one inconceivable unity in universal multiplicity...

There does not exist any "I", but the hierarchy of the universal planes full of the one reality, the sole support—the Divine Presence.

There are rainbow colours on all planes above which I stand and observe. Even here on the one hand the living Presence of the Divine tries to beguile this pose of mine by its sweetness; and on the other hand, the uncleanliness and the impurity of things try to drag and disturb, but nothing really touches me. There is no desire to nullify the coming vibrations nor is there any opening through which they can penetrate.... complete aloofness… complete freedom… no fear of death or of ego....

A. If your description is accurate, it is a realization or reflection—one cannot say easily which—of the state of consciousness of the Neutral Witness. These experiences are always felt in the subtle consciousness somewhere. To make it a reality in the exterior being and in the physical consciousness is a very difficult and laborious affair—it means an application to every movement, act, happenings, impact in life—in an active life. Those who make this neutral state their aim, usually draw back from active life and remain within.

Sri Aurobindo