Page 235 - Meditation – Pujya SriRamchandraji Maharaj

heart and making us move on and on. Nearer the Centre the waves are subtle yet very powerful and do not permit any peep into the Sanctum. Master said he could have a peep and was pushed out.
Another difficulty is the experience of torpor, which has two varieties. There is what we could call torpor itself, and there is obscurity, which is a further development of that. Torpor is the absence of clarity, the absence of any cognitive lucidity in the meditation, and obscurity is even beyond that, where there is a thick dullness. Now, the problem with torpor and obscurity is that they obviously bring about the disappearance of mindfulness and, therefore, of alertness as well. This cannot be confused with the state of Nothingness which we arrive at much later.
The final state of Nothingness is a direct awareness of Nothingness. We may remind ourselves of the basic mathematical principle of Zero. Every thing in the world consists of positive and negative elements called by various names in various sciences. But it is Zero that makes a thing positive or negative. This is what our Master tried to explain in his
philosophy. Zero is the essence of existence. 235