The name
Every tradition that went far enough inward ran out of words in the same place. Vedanta calls it Brahman. Eckhart called it the Godhead, and was careful to say that even the word God stands a step in front of it. Lao Tzu opened his book by admitting the name fails. Plotinus called it the One and spent six volumes apologizing for the arithmetic.
These are not competing claims. They are reports from different hills, and each hand is pointing at the same moon.
The word absolute means released, unbound, not depending on anything. Everything you can point to depends on something else. The mystics kept asking what all of it depends on, and this is the name they left where an answer would go.
The witnesses
-
Tat tvam asi. Thou art that.
Chandogya Upanishad -
The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao.
Tao Te Ching, first line -
The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.
Meister Eckhart -
The One is all things and no one of them.
Plotinus, the Enneads -
Be still, and know that I am God.
Psalm 46:10
The practice
You cannot think your way to it, because it is what is doing the looking. So the practice is not addition. It is subtraction.
Sit somewhere quiet. Let the body settle where it sits. Let the thoughts run until they tire, and do not chase a single one. You are not trying to make silence. You are noticing the silence that was already under the noise, the way a room is under its furniture.
What remains when you stop leaving is what this page is about.
Ten minutes. Tonight counts.
The circle breathes six times a minute. Borrow the pace.