' The Overself '...

What is meant when it is said that the Overself is man’s higher individuality must now be explained.

We know that the World ­Mind must be everywhere yet it is certainly not everywhere to the personal consciousness.

There must be a point‑instant in space-­time perception where the latter can meet it. In most mystical ex­perience such a point is first felt to exist within the heart.

But the World‑Mind cannot be confined within such a limited percep­tion. And later mystical experience always transcends this centre within the heart and largely detaches the consciousness from the body altogether.

Yet the finite self can never bring the World ­Mind in its fulness within this experience simply because finitude would itself merge and vanish while trying to do so.

This mystical meeting‑point, the Overself, represents the utmost extent to which the finite self can consciously share in the ultimate existence.

It is that fragment of God which dwells in and yet environs man, a fragment which has all the quality and grandeur of God but not all the amplitude and power of God.


- Paul Brunton