Creating Timelessness
by Von Braschler
 Becoming
a master of time and space requires a change in personal perspective. To
experience timelessness, you need to focus intently on the moment at hand. You
cannot allow your mind to wander over events of the past or wallow in deep
concern over the future. You must be in the present moment, fully alert, and
clear-headed. In short, you must be totally involved in the "now".
This was the message of teacher and author
Alan Watts, who longed for an Eastern teacher to teach Zen
meditation to Westerners. Watts considered himself a sort of "advance man," or
prophet of a teacher to come. Ironically, Watts himself became that teacher.
Watts taught people in the West how to meditate. He encouraged people to
still their internal dialogue and stop the chatter inside their minds. This is a
fundamental problem for most of us. Animal behaviorists tell us that we have
lost the ability to communicate with other species in our world, because other
animals are confused by the seeming contradictions between what we verbalize,
our body language, and our thought forms. Indeed, most of us seem at times
locked in debate with ourselves with endless internal chatter. We are so
preoccupied with our inner thoughts that we are not fully focused on the present
situation that confronts us.
Stilling the inner voices might sound easy, but for many it is not. The
Buddhists say that the mind must willingly shut itself down before our
superconsciousness may engage itself without distraction. In fact, without
distraction, our superconsciousness could not engage itself at all. The
Buddhists have an expression that the mind is "the slayer of the mind."
Moreover, it is the gatekeeper. You might be tempted to think that the mind is
the "top cop" in charge of everything. Another way to look at this, however, is
that your mind is your jailer. It keeps you confined, in a sort of
straightjacket. It's a sort of petty tyrant, claiming to be the big brains --
the one in charge. Sadly, it imprisons the higher self, or higher consciousness,
which transcends the physical self.
This gate cannot operate half open or half shut. In this sense, it is like a
floodgate. Our physical mind jealously guards what it considers to be its
rightful territory and role. It wants to be always in charge, because it
believes that it is most analytical. But the mind must totally and willingly
shut down for our higher consciousness to operate on a higher plane. This is
what's required to meditate. Like a lot of people, however, you probably had the
idea that you needed to focus on a dot on a wall, or on a certain sound or
thought. These are little ways to trick the mind to shut down and allow the
higher consciousness to operate. Really, what you need to do is still the mind.
Obviously, this is not easy. The lower mind is a jealous dictator and will
not surrender easily. So you must appeal to its reason and allow it to analyze
and adjudicate. Once the mind is satisfied that you will be safe and perhaps
even rewarded in this proposed encounter, then it should surrender temporary
control.
To meditate and enter a state of higher consciousness, however, you also must
still the clatter of sound and other distractions around you. Quieting the world
around you might seem even more difficult than stilling the inner chatter that
runs through your mind. After all, we can hope to have some personal influence
over our own bodies, but little influence over the world outside ourselves. Or
can we? Remember that the object here is to change our personal perspective. We
don't need to stop a bell from clanging to tune it out. We simply need to
control our perception. This requires training, practice, and particularly, will
power.
In short, we need to stop the world. This is not to say that we can stop the
wind, the rain, or a roaring train. We can change our perception of all of this,
however. We can tune out the outside sounds. We can tell ourselves not to be
distracted by the fragrances around us. We can control our sensory perception.
We do this not to be dead to the beauty and majesty of the physical world
around us, but to focus on attaining another higher level of consciousness,
without outside distractions. The beauty and aroma of a daffodil can be
overpowering. The chatter of children can be either amusing or bothersome, but
always hard to ignore. We are not turning our backs on the world around us, but
exploring higher consciousness from time to time.
It's almost amusing at times how hard some people work at meditation -- even
in the East. Krishnamurti told the story of Indian men, serious in their
attempts to meditate, who would become angry if children's loud play would
disrupt them in their quiet times. The challenge is to tune out the world around
us and within us as a prelude to meditation. We can do this very selectively and
creatively, in accordance to our needs. We can learn to meditate while simply
sitting, walking, or even washing the dishes with proper practice and
discipline. In time, you can do it without your eyes shut and hands folded in a
quiet, dark room. With practice, you can do it at a moment's notice.
Sometimes this is very useful. Star athletes can sometimes tune out
distractions and hear just what they want to hear. They can tune out everything
except what they want to see and focus intently on that. That becomes the focal
point of their meditation.
If you think about it, you've probably tuned out sounds and slowed down
things around you on occasion, too. For example, have you ever been in a
crowded, noisy room full of people and tried to shout to somebody in the crowd?
They couldn't hear you very well. So then you focused hard on that person and
found that you could filter out distracting noises around you to hear what that
person was saying. People around you seemed to move in slow motion, as you
focused on your friend. That's because you were meditating only on that subject,
and only seeing that person's body language and hearing that person's voice.
This is selective perception.
I'll never forget the time I first experienced this in a crowded banquet room
at a local chamber of commerce gathering. It was an open reception in the little
town in Oregon where I was publisher of the community newspaper. The room was
crowded with people milling about, elbow to elbow, and extremely noisy. What I
heard in walking through the room was a hundred voices at once without focusing
on any one, and it was maddening! There was also the rattling of dishes and
silverware being set down for a dinner to follow, as the restaurant's wait staff
hurriedly set up. On top of this, music filtered into the room from stereo
speakers overhead. It was a madhouse.
I was just beginning to wonder how anyone could carry on a conversation with
anyone else in that room, when something incredible happened to me. I saw
somebody I thought I knew at the opposite end of the room. Suddenly, I honed in
on this person. It was like radar tracking. Her back was turned to me. I
projected a focused thought at her. She turned around to face me, as though she
had heard me. As I walked toward her, we started to talk. We could hear each
other perfectly. Somehow we filtered out the other sounds in the room. When we
were face to face, we heard only each other. The surrounding room noise had
completely disappeared! It was magical, and we both sensed this. It was one of
those big "Aha!" moments in life, where you grin ear to ear, your eyes twinkle,
and the hair on the back of your head stands on end.
Later, when we finished talking, I walked back across the room. I wondered
whether I could make all the voices in the room go away again, all on my own. I
concentrated on tuning them out. What happened was almost as amazing as the
quiet conversation with my friend. The voices disappeared, and I heard only the
music from the stereo speakers! I wondered then whether I could control the
volume of the stereo inside my head. That's how I spent the rest of the time in
that room -- turning the volume of the stereo up and then down in my head. It
was astounding how much control I had, when I really tried. I could make the
music very quiet, and then very loud, and then very quiet again.
As we sat down to eat, I momentarily shifted my attention to my fellow
diners. I concentrated on their hands working the knives and forks on their
plates. Suddenly, the sound of silverware scraping against plates became very
loud. I heard nothing but the sound of silverware scraping against plates. I did
not hear their voices. Then I shifted my attention back to the music, and heard
nothing but the music. It was as though I was alone in a quiet room, except for
the stereo.
How strange it was! I looked at their mouths moving and heard no sounds
coming out of them. Even the people seated next to me made no sounds that I
could hear. I became almost frightened that I would never hear the same again,
so shifted my attention back to a hearing mode, and heard everyone perfectly. In
time, the sound grew deafening again, so I tuned it down just a little.
I realized toward the end of the dinner that I could modulate how much I
heard. I could tune in more volume or less volume. It took a certain amount of
focused intent to do this. If I let my focused intention loosen even a little, I
lost control over what I heard. It felt a little like concentration or
attentiveness, but it was more a matter of a shift in my consciousness. I was
very aware of something tightening on my spine, beginning at the base of my neck
and anchored at the base of my spine. Castaneda used to refer to refer to this
shift in conscious awareness as a shift in the assemblage points of the spinal
region. All I know is that I seemed to have great control over my hearing.
No one else in the room seemed affected by what I was doing. It was just my
own perceptive awareness that I was modulating. But it became very clear to me
on that occasion that I was stopping the world.
Castaneda wrote endlessly about stopping the world, a term he may have picked
up from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the early twentieth century author of
Phenomenology of Perception. The mystic stops the world by selecting shutting
down sensory awareness of the immediate, physical world around him. He does this
to leave the ordinary world around him (to use Castaneda's terminology) and
enter a non-ordinary reality. The brain no longer processes the physical
sensations of smell, touch, hearing, or seeing in the ordinary manner. It is
much the same as being asleep and not being conscious of the sounds and smells
around you.
This is not to say that being inside your body and fully aware of the beauty
and majesty of nature is a bad thing. On the contrary; learning to listen and
learn from the sights and sounds of nature around us is very important and
advanced training for the shaman to be.
Our immediate exercise here is to learn to enter a meditative state and shift
your perceptive awareness away from the ordinary world and ordinary reality. You
will need to stop the world. The ordinary world is like a mixing bowl that gets
you all caught up inside it. It grinds you up and spits you out in its image.
You must learn to control your perceptive awareness if you want to seize the
moment and become a master of time and space.
Once you have learned to enter this state of heightened consciousness, you
will be able to enter a state of timelessness, where almost anything you can
conceive is possible. You must first position yourself to enter this state of
heightened consciousness, however. Unless you learn to focus your perceptive
awareness and enter this state of heightened consciousness at a moment's notice
at will, you will not be able to seize the moment and stretch time. Zen masters
and warrior athletes do this all the time, as opportunities arise. It takes
practice.
I began to practice after I left the chamber of commerce banquet, where I
first learned to control the sounds around me and stop the world to a degree.
Flushed from my success, I went on a walk later at dusk in the woods along the
river where I lived. At first, I allowed myself to enjoy the sound of the wind
through the trees, the rushing of the river, and the chirping of the birds. Then
I started to shut down all the sounds around me, muting out the external sounds
of nature as well as the internal dialogue inside my own head. When I got very
quiet inside my head, I left myself open to whatever might enter the void. For a
while, I heard nothing whatsoever and experienced total quiet and calm. Quiet
can be beautiful. But what I heard next was incredibly beautiful and most
unexpected.
I started to hear what I can only describe as "pan pipes." I had only heard
something like this once before, in a recording by the great flutist Jean-Paul
Rampal. These riverside pan pipes were even more beautiful and out of this
world. This truly was the non-ordinary world; perhaps they really were Pan's
pipes. All I know for certain is that I could walk through the woods and
modulate the volume of the pan pipes by focusing my attention on them or
allowing my focus to wane. I walked through the woods for what seemed like
hours, listening to the pan pipes and hearing nothing else. It probably was more
like a few minutes at best, because it was fast becoming dark outside. When the
woods became very dark, I wandered off for home, dumbstruck by this amazing
out-of-this-world experience.
Wonderful things can happen to you when you clear your mind, stop the world,
and allow yourself to enter the "now". The present moment is pregnant with
potential, if you will open yourself up to it fully. The sacrifices are small.
You must be willing to forego the shopping list of haunting memories that lock
you into the past, and your concerns that try to trap you into a contrived
future. You must be open to the moment at hand and all that it offers you. You
must seize the moment.
In this special state of heightened awareness, you may experience insight
from your own higher consciousness, receive higher wisdom from the universal
intelligence around you, or even step outside of yourself and explore a
non-ordinary world of unlimited possibilities. In this state of heightened
awareness, you will experience a personal sense of timelessness. Mystics and
warrior athletes have been doing this for years. All it requires is discipline
and practice.
You may want to try various meditation exercises to start you on your way. To
simplify things a bit, I suggest a few meditation techniques that have always
worked very well for me.
"Fade to Black" Meditation Exercise
You'll need:
* A straight-back chair
* A quiet, dimly lit room
* Solitude
Close the door to the room, so you can be quietly alone. Remove your shoes
and sit erect in the chair with good upright posture and hands open (palms
upright) on your legs. Get comfortable. Relax into a meditative state of mind
by clearing your mind of internal thought and chatter. Close your eyes. Tune
out any external noises or distractions. Begin to take deep, regular breaths.
Allow your body to become numb. Let your mind go blank. As your mind goes
blank, picture a clean slate in your mind's eye. Concentrate on seeing a black
slate. Everything comes out of darkness. Start with darkness and wait to see
what comes next. Do not anticipate anything. Simply stare at the black screen.
It won't necessarily pop up instantly, but may take a while to appear to you.
It's all up to you. Once you see the black slate, be open to what comes next.
This is an opportunity for great insight and personal discovery.
Did you see the black slate in your mind's eye? It might not appear to you
the first time you try. If you have difficulty with this approach, you might try
picturing a white board instead, the kind of white board used for writing with
colored grease pencils. Once you see the slate, you begin to might begin to see
things written on the slate, things important to you. Your higher consciousness
or soul might be speaking to you. Or perhaps you are receiving information
outside yourself. Did you see anything on your slate? Keep trying. This is not
the only way to meditate, but it's a good way to start.
"Stopping the World "Exercise
You'll need:
* Many people gathered together
* Many conversations or activities going on at once in a confined area
Step One
This exercise is done in two steps. In the first step, you should observe
people's conversations and activities as best you can in ordinary fashion, by
simply listening and watching as best you can to see what you can comprehend.
(It's important, for the sake of this experiment, that many people be talking at
once in a confused, noisy atmosphere, similar to what you might find at a party
or social gathering.) Stand more or less in the middle of the group and look
around, trying as best you can to understand what people are saying and doing.
Step Two
In the second step, remain in the middle of the group with the noise and
confusion the same as before. For the sake of the experience, in fact, it would
be ideal if you simply stayed in the same location and did the second step of
this experiment immediately after doing step one. In short, this is a
continuation of the same confused scene. In this step, however, you should
attempt to focus your attention on only one person talking at a time. Try to
tune out everything else. You will need to shift your awareness and enter a
heightened state of consciousness. Quiet yourself. Focus intently on one of the
people talking. Project your personal energy to that person, as though you were
hooking on to them like a magnet. Project your energy from your will center.
Picture it leaving your body from the region of your abdomen. Listen with your
head, not your ears. Concentrate on the person you are watching speak. See and
hear nothing else. Tune out everything else.
Were you successful in "stopping the world" around you and selectively
focusing your sensory perception? This requires great discipline and practice,
but is something you can learn to do to your great personal advantage.
This
article is excerpted from:
 Perfect Timing: Mastering Time Perception for Personal Excellence
by Von Braschler.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. ©2002. www.llewellyn.com.
Info/Order this book.
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 About the Author
Von
Braschler (Minnesota) is a former editor and publisher of community newspapers
and magazines. A lifelong Theosophist, he has led workshops on energetic
healing, meditation, and Kirlian photography. He is a certified massage
therapist who specializes in pet massage. He is donating half of all personal
profit from the sale of this book to animal charities.
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