First Light
How First Light worksTuesday 27 October·
- Sunrise
- 07:55
- Quiet hour
- 06:19–07:07
- Brahma Muhurta
- Moon
- Waning gibbous
- Next full moon: Tue 24 Nov
Autumn
The quiet hour (Brahma Muhurta) is the traditional time for practice, just before sunrise.
बहिरकल्पिता वृत्तिर्महाविदेहा ततः प्रकाशावरणक्षयः
bahir akalpitā vṛttir mahā-videhā tataḥ prakāśāvaraṇa-kṣayaḥ
When the mind functions outside the body, not merely in imagination, that is the great disembodied state. From it, the covering over the light is destroyed.
Yoga Sutras 3.44 · verse 150 of 196
Unfolding the thread
There is a state where awareness is felt beyond the body, not as a fantasy but as a real mode of mind: mahā-videhā, the great bodiless. In it, the veil over the inner light is removed. Some meditators and mystics describe exactly this.
Try today
Lie down for a few minutes and let your sense of where your body ends grow soft and wide.
The Echo
The same truth, heard in another tradition
“The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world before her, leaving worlds behind her.”
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