In The Wisdom of the Overself, the first paragraph of Chapter XIII asks “Can I come into a personal relation with this transcendent reality? Can I transform the theoretical understanding which has so far been gained into a practical and conscious realization?” The second paragraph affirms that such a relationship and transformation can undoubtedly be consummated. It is, indeed, the goal of all philosophic endeavour.
PB warns that whatever is expressible by words is only a thought construction and as such subject to all its limitations, although he reminds the reader that while previous analysis in The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga was an attempt to “shatter the materialism and illusion embedded by ancient habit in man through his use of language and to silence his unreflective utterance of such words as matter, time, sight, experience, and Spirit, thus leading him to eventually change his views, the ultimate purpose is to show that what can be put into words is only the graven image of reality, never reality itself.” (p. 355, The Wisdom of the Overself)
“The absolute Mind is called unknowable only in the sense that neither the senses nor the intellect can directly know it. We may seek it through a quite different approach. …Where reason fails miserably to think the Overself because it cannot, it may however become the Overself by humbly merging into it. When this happens luminous being supplies the answer which limited thinking cannot. We must ourselves become absorbed, and with us all our baggage-train of thoughts, in that which is the hidden basis of both thinking and experience. The attempt to know the hidden observer must alter into an attempt to become it. That is to say, the distinction between the observer and the observed must disappear, the object of thought must dissolve into primal Thought itself, knowledge and being must unite with each other. (p. 359).
The term ‘insight’ is used for it (this process) primarily because he who possesses it can see what is, not merely what appears, can see into the inner reality behind the world-appearance, which our image-making faculty has super-imposed upon it, can clearly feel the internal life essence within all the transient planetary forms. Sight is a function of the body, understanding is a function of the intelligence but insight is a function of the Overself. In the ancient hidden teaching the use of this faculty was originally called ‘opening the eye of transcendental knowledge.’ (p. 360).
Thus we have reached the point where only some kind of trans-intellectual, that is some kind of mystical experience, can make sense of our declaration that this Mind is conscious and realizable in a positive sense. A reference to the dictionary gives the meaning of ‘realize’ as “to feel as vividly or strongly as if real: to bring home to one’s own experience: to acquire as the result of labour or pains.” Consequently we must now journey to the fresh waters of such a personal realization of Mind and leave behind the dry desert of merely thinking about it. (p. 361).
PB continues with an explanation of the three stages of meditation. The next e-teaching will explore more about these practices. We encourage the reader to study this valuable chapter where he explains how to learn the art of retreating from the sensuous and surface existence.