Eckhart Tolle describes his first meditation as a teenager staring at the night sky in Spain, where the vastness stopped his mind without losing consciousness. He explains how meditation objects like candles or mantras work, but once stillness arrives, you drop them. Outer space is the best object because it represents nothingness and the formless presence beneath all form.
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 nighttime 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 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, it was so vast that it stopped my mind. And so I just looked up and then 'Ah!' 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 didn't interfere, so my mind couldn't interpret what it saw and say, 'This is Sirius, the star Sirius, and this is such and such, and this.' 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. 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 sound of crickets in the warm night, the sound, 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. And that became my favorite activity throughout the long and hot summer months. We were on the top of an apartment building and I sat out on the deck. I sat in a deck chair and looked. That was my first meditation and that was the first time I experienced 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, the effect didn't last, but it was a beautiful taste of what is possible. By the way, I do recommend that as a very good meditation, if you want a meditation object. Meditation— many of you, or some of you, will already be practicing meditation. For many people, it is an 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 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 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 inner— 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 out at night, you look up into space, the vast darkness of space, and you can sense the 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's 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— you're focusing not on the things in space, but you're focusing on the total impression of space itself, the totality of that space. So that you're not focusing on one particular 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 are just a few clouds here and there. And you can also, during the daytime, you can look up and focus attention on the totality of space that you see. So I would say at nighttime 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 can't even— could you even 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— etymologically, the word 'exist' comes from Latin, and it means— 'ex' means 'out,' the 'ist' part is from 'stand'— '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.
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