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ANCIENT
INTUITIVE
AUTHENTIC
LIFE-CHANGING
Traditional, energetic practises, for anyone, anywhere.
Welcome back to the final limb in Patanjali’s 8 Limbs of yoga, Samadhi. Samadhi or illuminated consciousness, is the fullest extension of dhyana. It is the climax, yes, the climax of meditation. It is divided into four stages, all of which must be transcended before we can eventually reach the self-realisation or oneness with reality. These four stages are so far above normal experience that words are almost inadequate to describe them.
Patanjali, himself, described samadhi as that state during meditation where there is only consciousness of the object and no concurrent consciousness of the mind.
Now what does that really mean?
During lower states of meditation the object's deeper reality slowly begins to show itself. Yet the ultimate essence, of the object, does not show itself, there’s something that prevents it from revealing itself. What is it? Well, it’s us, or more specifically, our mind.
It acts as a screen between the object and consciousness.
The self-conscious nature of the mind veils the reality of the object from consciousness. We can compare this to when we are singing, assuming we aren’t professional singers. If we are singing without awareness, such as in the car or in the shower, our singing is generally much better than if we are self-conscious and aware that people are listening to us sing. When the mind can remove this self-consciousness, higher states of meditation can begin to occur.
In samadhi the self-consciousness of the mind disappears completely.
The quality of object and perceiving subject disappears so that the object and subject become one. It is only under these circumstances that the ultimate essence of the object reveals itself, for if the object and subject are no longer different but the same, then the subject must know everything about the object, the object of perception, the person perceiving and the perception that takes place all become one entity. This in itself is a little bit tricky to get your around, as it transcends normal experiences.
Let us take a very gross analogy. A man sees a large crowd of people from a distance. He feels that he is separate from the crowd and of course he is. This is like our normal relationship to the things around us. The crowd is discussing something but it is too far away for the man to hear. A large fence exists between him and the crowd, preventing him from discovering what is being talked about. Now let’s think abut this fence as being the mind. It must be overcome or climbed if he wants to find out what the crowd is talking about. He climbs the fence, joins the crowd and finds out what it is talking about. So in a primitive sense, the man becomes one with the crowd and also the knowledge that keeps the crowd together, which is the reason for the formation of the crowd in the first place. The viewer joins with the viewed and the point of view held by the viewed. They become one. It is the same in samadhi. Of course the unity obtained during samadhi is indescribable and far transcends any of our day-to-day experiences.
Now if we were to look at someone in samadhi, we will have no comprehension of what they are experiencing. Perhaps the person in samadhi may not even consciously know the height of their experience. Yet when they leave the state of samadhi and return to normal awareness, or perhaps we should say normal non-awareness, they maintain the deep wisdom and peace, and will carry this through into everyday activities. Someone who has experienced samadhi even once is a completely changed person. They have raised themselves above the average and begin to see everything in a totally new light.