Eckhart Tolle describes how looking at the night sky as a teenager became his first meditation, then draws a parallel between outer space and the inner space of awareness. He frames space as that which underlies all form — formless, mysterious, and not quite captured by the word 'exist'.
Transcript
The best meditation object perhaps is in the external world is space because there are certain things that outer space has in common with inner space. When I was a teenager, at night time, I would often look up into the sky, the night sky in the summer, lying in a deck chair, and I was fascinated by the the night sky and the stars. and the space. And I didn't know at the time that that was my first meditation because when I looked up at the sky, the night sky and the vastness uh it was so vast that I it stopped my mind and so I just looked up and then and I didn't know too much then. I still don't know that much about what these things are called, different star systems and so on. I had very little knowledge. So the knowledge did didn't interfere. So their mind couldn't interpret what it saw and say this is this is this is the serious the star Sirius and this is such and such and this. Uh I knew one or two constellations but that was all. So there wasn't much food for thought. There was only the vast emptiness of space plus the luminous pinpoints of countless stars and the stillness and the background scent. I'm reminiscing now to this moment of my first meditation. This the scent of pine trees in the summer breeze, the warm breeze. As a teenager, I was living in Spain and there was just the uh the sound of crickets in the warm night, the scent, the stillness and the vastness of the sky. And all that together stopped my mind. I didn't experience I didn't even know that it stopped my mind. I just realized this wonderful sense of oneness and peace as and that became my favorite activity throughout the long and hot summer months. We were on the top of a apartment building and I sat out on the on the deck. I sat in the deck like in a deck chair and looked. That was my first invitation and that first was the first time I experienced uh the stopping of the mind without loss of consciousness. So I wasn't falling below thought. There was just thought withdrew and just conscious attention remained. And of course it didn't the effect didn't last but it it was a beautiful taste of what is possible. I I by the way I do recommend that as a very good meditation. If you want a meditation object, the um meditation many of you or some of you will uh already be practicing meditation. It for many people it is a important part of awakening. It can be a great help. It's not for everybody. It's not everybody needs to meditate, but it may be a good thing if you take up meditation or you're doing it already. And usually you in meditation you have a meditation object that you focus your attention on so that your mind doesn't go all over the place in order to uh prevent the voracious mind from absorbing your entire consciousness. You just focus the mind on one thing. It could the meditation object can either be an external object, a candle, a flower, a tree, a sacred object, and you focus your attention on it for a certain period of time. Or it can be an inner object. It can be a mantra or an in an image that you hold in your mind or yes a word. It could be a simple thing like I am. It could be the question who am I? These things can become meditation objects. After a while, it's good to drop the meditation object. Once the mind is still, then you drop the meditation object also. And then just the stillness remains. But the best meditation object perhaps is in the external world is space because there are certain things that outer space has in common with inner space. So if you focus on outer space and you do that when you look up at night, you look up into space that vast this darkness of space and you can sense the in unbelievable inconceivable depth and vastness of it. That's even more awe inspiring than the fact that there are billions and billions of stars or suns and galaxies there. That's incredible, too. It is inconceivable too. So the only thing that's more inconceivable than the multiplicity of celestial objects is the vastness of the space that contains them all that enables them to be there. So you can f you're focusing not on the things in space, but you're focusing on the the total impression of space itself, the totality of that space. So that you're not you're not focusing on one particular po point in this meditation. You're taking in the totality of that space. You can also do that meditation during the daytime when the sky is either totally clear or there just a few clouds here and there. And you can also in during the daytime you can look up and focus attention on the totality of space that you see. So I would say at night time perhaps it's even more incredible. But even during the daytime the luminosity of that vastness vast space is beautiful. And so if you use that as a meditation object that's that's that is very helpful because when you are focusing your attention on space as a totality, you're really focusing your attention on nothing. No thing. English language is quite good in that respect. Your focus, the word nothing consists of the word no thing. So you're focusing your attention on something that has no form and on something that you you can't even you say that space exists because can one say that space exists? Most people would say yes of course you can say that space exists. But if you the ethmologically the the the word exist comes from Latin and it means X means out. The isist part is from stand out. If something exists it stands out. It manifests. But you can't really apply the word exist to space because space doesn't stand out. Things exist in space. But space itself, can you say that it exists? It is something totally and utterly mysterious. It is formless. It is that which underlies all form. But itself in itself is not form. It's formless.