Space Above and Below You

Deep dive

In the working classification used by Seven Doors, this method sits among the later practices of the Vijñāna Bhairava, where the focus shifts away from particular senses and towards space, vastness and awareness itself. It belongs mainly to the Seeing & Space family, with a secondary link to the nondual contemplations that follow. Many neighbouring methods work with the idea that awareness is not confined to the body, and this one approaches that idea along a simple axis: above and below.

Teachers in contemplative lineages influenced by Kashmir Śaivism have often described the body as a place where awareness is concentrated rather than a place where it is contained. In that view, the felt edge of the body is a habit of attention, not a fixed limit. Practices like this one are commonly read as ways of testing that habit gently, by letting attention include what is just beyond the familiar boundary. Some interpreters emphasise the space itself, as if presence were simply spreading into it. Others emphasise the knowing that already includes that space, suggesting that nothing needs to spread at all, because awareness of “above” and “below” is already present.

These readings vary, and none of them should be taken as the single meaning of the text. What they share is a movement from the narrow to the wide, and a suggestion that the sense of being a small, bounded self may be looser than it seems.

Historically, methods of this kind were not offered as introductory exercises. They tended to be taught within a relationship with a teacher, after a student had developed steady attention and some familiarity with how their own mind responds to unusual perceptions. Intense versions of expansive practice, sustained for long periods or combined with strong breath work, can produce disorientation, a sense of unreality or anxiety, particularly in people who are already vulnerable to those experiences.

A modern, careful adaptation would look quite different from an intense historical form. It would be short. It would begin and end with grounding: feeling the floor, the seat, the weight of the hands. It would treat any widening of presence as optional and light, never as a goal to push towards. It would include clear permission to stop, open the eyes and look around the room at any moment. And it would avoid language that encourages people to leave their bodies or chase special states. The short guided practice in the Seven Doors app is built along these lines, while this page describes the method rather than giving step-by-step instructions.

If this kind of contemplation interests you, the sensible preparation is simple and unglamorous: regular practice with breath, body and sound, and space-based methods that keep you well anchored. Those foundations make it easier to notice when an expansive practice is helpful and when it is time to come back to the ground.