What is Meditation

Meditation Techniques

Spiritual Inspirators

 

Western  Mystics


CONSCIOUSNESS VS AWARENESS

Consciousness & Evolution

Defining Awareness & Consciousness
The Mystery of Awareness

Consciousness Beyond Qualia
Between Nothing and Something
The Hierarchy of Awareness

THE OUROBOIC BIRTH
Atman, Job & the Son of Shame

Ouroboros Consciousness
The Embodiment of Ouroboros
A New Ouroboic Intelligence
 
FIELDS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Meditative Pixelation
Spatialization of the inner Body
The Spheric Eversion of the Soul
Fields of Consciousness

 


ADVERSITY AND SPIRITUALITY
Integral Suffering and Happiness
Trauma and Transcendence


LOVE AND SPIRITUALITY
The Glue of Love
God wants to be Human


The Super-Awake Flow
 
CIVILIZATION & CONSCIOUSNESS
The inner and the outer Person
● 
Eastern versus Western Consciousness
The liberation from or of the Body
Modern Forms of Suffering
 
Civilization and Consciousness 
Civilization and Consciousness Part II







 


THE SPHERIC EVERSION OF THE SOUL
A House Made of Cake, Holding Cookies, Made of the House

Meister Eckhart once stated:

'The body is much rather in the soul than the soul is in the body.'

The Meister's profound statement, invites contemplation on the expansive nature of consciousness. Now let me in the spirit of the last paragraph deconstruct our usual notion of an expanding consciousness. Normally we describe altered states of consciousness as an expansive process. As described in the eight classical siddhis this experience takes the form of 'Mahimā,' the ability to expand one's body to an infinitely large size.
 
To describe intensified states of self-consciousness as an expanding process is, however, a projection that leans too heavily on Newtonian vocabulary—a framework designed to capture the mechanics of the external world. Our language, shaped by the need to describe objects, movement, and measurable phenomena, often falters when tasked with articulating the ineffable dimensions of inner experience. What I mean to say is that this 'expansion' is not linear like a drop of oil on the surface of water.
  
Consider the phrase 'he was beside himself with happiness.' This expression vividly illustrates a condition in which an individual's joy is so intense that it transcends their usual self-constraints. In the context of 'sphere eversion,' this analogy becomes even more poignant. The individual's elation metaphorically everts, turning inward delight outward in an unbroken continuum. In this sense, we could describe the expansion as an 'innerspansion'.
 
At first, we may perceive this vast sanctuary as something contained within the body. But as consciousness continues its recursive, self-reflective loop—approaching what could be called a self-referential singularity—the relationship inverts. Suddenly, the body is no longer the container; it is revealed as a minuscule droplet suspended within an ocean of boundless awareness.
  
This leads us to a pivotal realization: as consciousness spirals inward toward its own source, the 'space' it inhabits 'innerspands' beyond measure. At a certain threshold—a point of no return—there is a profound reversal, an eversion of perspective. It is here that Meister Eckhart’s words ring true: 'The body is much more in the soul than the soul is in the body.'
  
The Eversion of the Sphere
In states of deep intense meditation, the boundaries that typically delineate the self from the external milieu begin to dissolve. Our innermost consciousness, which is generally perceived as residing within, suddenly flips outward, surpassing the physical limitations, thereby inverting our very bodily essence. In this expanded state, the 'self' is not confined to the body but extends into the surroundings, dissolving the separation between 'me' and 'not me.'

This transcendental insight is akin to a metaphysical 'sphere eversion,' a term borrowed from mathematics to describe the turning of a sphere inside out without creasing or tearing it. When such an eversion takes place the world is not longer outside you, but inside. What is inside is now also outside and vice versa.
 


Imagine a tennis ball suddenly turning inside out. I remember the first time I felt like I was that tennis ball. In a heartbeat, my entire perception shifted, and my body became this tiny little speck in an endless expanse of space.
 
This was not just 'mood making' with poetic metaphors but an experiential truth. The body, once perceived as the vessel of consciousness, was now seen as something cradled within an infinite field of conscious awareness. The container has become the contained as the sphere's inner surface emerged as its exterior.

It's mindbogling to think about, but it's true as a subjective experience: the way in leads out. This journey takes you from the meditation lounge to a limitless eversive expanse beyond anything you could have ever imagined.
 
Hegel posits in his dialectical theories that a quantitative alteration, given enough time and intensity, inevitably leads to a qualitative transformation. This idea can be applied to the concept of conscious inversion. Specifically, it suggests that a significant increase in the intensity of self-reflection and introspection can catalyze this qualitative shift in consciousness. This transformation marks a pivotal change in how an individual perceives and interacts with their internal and external realities.

The spatial shift happens as a consequence of the ouroboric feedback in consciousness. In the self-referential loop the internal becomes external and the external becomes internal. As with the sphere's eversion, the meditator's internal consciousness now unfurls, first intermingling with the environment and then the cosmos.
 
This unity transcends our ususal notions of duality and non-duality. It obliterates the binary of 'self' and 'other,' broadening one's identity to embrace the entire universe, not in an expansive movement but in an eversive inside out transformation. As there is an eternal beginning in no beginning and an eternal end in no end, as there is existence in no existence, there is inside in outside and outside in inside. I have become the outside, and the outside has become my inside.
 
And in that revelation, space itself is no longer just a backdrop for experience—it is the experience as well as the experiencer in an inside that has become outside. I read the following quote from the Meister in this light:

God's exit is his entrance. He broke in to let us out.
Meister Eckhart


Eversive Love - When Self Interest becomes Altruism


An experience of a true spheric eversive consciousness can be identified by one thing only: It is a state of self centered love, a reality where everything is glued together from the inside by love.
A genuine spheric eversion leads to a unified state where your self centered 'egoism' transcends itself and becomes 'altruism' from within. In this state you are everybody's egoic inside with the very same egoic drive for survival. In this eversive sense we are all sitting inside each others as small self-protective egoic entitites.
  

In summary, a state of deep meditative conscious attention, the sensations and feelings you experience are all contained within inner space: various phenomena arise and dissolve, seemingly unfolding within a familiar three-dimensional framework. However, as your focus spirals inward, the very fabric of this cathedral of awe begins to morph, transcending the confines of conventional logic and spatial understanding.
 
In the medieval period, scholastic philosophers—much to the ridicule of scientists during the later Enlightenment—wrote lengthy treatises speculating on how many angels could fit on the tip of a needle. Perhaps, however, they were onto something with their lofty deliberations. In their own way, they were gazing inward, eversive projecting outward, attempting to describe consciousness as a spaceless space—a locationless location—that could indeed fit on the tip of a needle or be a multi location, simultaneously conscious of a thousand drops of Pepsi in a split second. What I mean to suggest is this: both entanglement and superposition occur within a space without distance. In such a dimension there is truly no separation.
  
The Ourobororos
The miracle of this spatial transformation mirrors the ancient symbol of the Ouroboros—the self-devouring snake, eternally feeding on its own tail. As we discussed in the chapter Ouroboros Consciousness, this is not just a metaphor but an experiential reality: as senses within the realm of raw awareness merge with the expansive field of self-referential consciousness, a profound shift occurs. The boundaries between subject and object, observer and observed, begin to dissolve and with this our cosy Newtonian world.
     
At the heart of this spiraling inward motion lies what could be called a singularity—a point where all distinctions collapse. Here, even light and sound, the fundamental signals of perception, vanish into the void of pure, unfathomable nothingness. And yet, paradoxically, this nothingness is not empty. It is full—radiantly, silently full. It is the groundless ground of being, the eternal presence that was always there, unnoticed beneath the layers of experience.
    
The ultimate paradox reveals itself: It unfolds only in the moment consciousness folds back into itself, realizing that it has never been separate from what it observes. And yet, in the same breath, it has always been here—unchanging, untouched.

A House Made of Cake, Holding Cookies, Made of the House
Recently, I went to buy a larger amount of luxury cookies for my little son's birthday. My choise fell on a pastry shop called 'The Cake House.' Suddenly I realized that this was, in fact, the ideal metaphor for the Spheric inversion of the Soul:  Imagine a house made entirely of cake. It contains cookies—each cookie made of the same substance as the house itself. This recursive image captures the essence of spheric eversion: a paradox where container and content, inner and outer, self and world, fold into each other so deeply that the boundary dissolves.
 
In the same way, consciousness appears at first to reside inside the body, much like cookies inside a cake house. But through deep meditation and self-reflection, the perspective inverts: the body is revealed as a small feature within the vast field of awareness—a cookie inside a much larger cake it thought it contained.
 
This process, called spheric eversion, is not linear expansion but innerspansion: a self-referential turning-inside-out of experience. Like the mathematical eversion of a sphere, what was once inside becomes outside, and vice versa.

Just as the cake and cookie are made of the same dough, so too is the ego and the cosmos, the individual and the collective, the observer and the observed, bound by a shared essence. In its most profound moment, consciousness discovers that the self is not a solid nugget at the center of experience, but rather a hollowed structure—open, fluid, interwoven with all others.

Remember Meister Eckhart’s view that the body is within the soul, not the other way around. This reversal culminates in a spiritual realization: what began as self-centeredness turns into a unified field of love, where ego and altruism are no longer separate—each cookie now contains the house, and the house is made from the cookies it contains.

Like the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail, this inward spiral leads to a point where all distinctions—self and other, space and time, light and dark—collapse into a single, silent fullness.

And in this infinite recursion, this sweet loop of being:

You are not merely in the house—
You are the house,
the cake, the cookie,
the craving, and the bite.

 

With warm regards,
Gunnar Mühlmann
gunnars@mail.com