Samadhi

Samadhi

Some other important words, which recur from time to time in the

Yoga-sutras, need to be understood, though there are no exact

English equivalents. As they must be used to avoid clumsy

circumlocutions, it is necessary to explain them. It is said:

"Yoga is Samadhi." Samadhi is a state in which the consciousness

is so dissociated from the body that the latter remains

insensible. It is a state of trance in which the mind is fully

self-conscious, though the body is insensitive, and from which

the mind returns to the body with the experiences it has had in

the superphysical state, remembering them when again immersed in

the physical brain. Samadhi for any one person is relative to his

waking consciousness, but implies insensitiveness of the body. If

an ordinary person throws himself into trance and is active on

the astral plane, his Samadhi is on the astral. If his

consciousness is functioning in the mental plane, Samadhi is

there. The man who can so withdraw from the body as to leave it

insensitive, while his mind is fully self-conscious, can practice

Samadhi.

The phrase "Yoga is Samadhi" covers facts of the highest

significance and greatest instruction. Suppose you are only able

to reach the astral world when you are asleep, your consciousness

there is, as we have seen, in the Svapna state. But as you slowly

unfold your powers, the astral forms begin to intrude upon your

waking physical consciousness until they appear as distinctly as

do physical forms, and thus become objects of your waking

consciousness. The astral world then, for you, no longer belongs

to the Svapna consciousness, but to the Jagrat; you have taken

two worlds within the scope of your Jagrat consciousness--the

physical and the astral worlds--and the mental world is in your

Svapna consciousness. "Your body" is then the physical and the

astral bodies taken together. As you go on, the mental plane

begins similarly to intrude itself, and the physical, astral and

mental all come within your waking consciousness; all these are,

then, your Jagrat world. These three worlds form but one world to

you; their three corresponding bodies but one body, that

perceives and acts. The three bodies of the ordinary man have

become one body for the yogi. If under these conditions you want

to see only one world at a time, you must fix your attention on

it, and thus focus it. You can, in that state of enlarged waking,

concentrate your attention on the physical and see it; then the

astral and mental will appear hazy. So you can focus your

attention on the astral and see it; then the physical and the

mental, being out of focus, will appear dim. You will easily

understand this if you remember that, in this hall, I may focus

my sight in the middle of the hall, when the pillars on both

sides will appear indistinctly. Or I may concentrate my attention

on a pillar and see it distinctly, but I then see you only

vaguely at the same time. It is a change of focus, not a change

of body. Remember that all which you can put aside as not

yourself is the body of the yogi, and hence, as you go higher,

the lower bodies form but a single body and the consciousness in

that sheath of matter which it still cannot throw away, that

becomes the man.

"Yoga is Samadhi." It is the power to withdraw from all that you

know as body, and to concentrate yourself within. That is

Samadhi. No ordinary means will then call you back to the world

that you have left.[FN#4: An Indian yogi in Samadhi, discovered

in a forest by some ignorant and brutal Englishmen, was so

violently ill used that he returned to his tortured body, only to

leave it again at once by death.] This will also explain to you

the phrase in The Secret Doctrine that the Adept " begins his

Samadhi on the atmic plane " When a Jivan-mukta enters into

Samadhi, he begins it on the atmic plane. All planes below the

atmic are one plane for him. He begins his Samadhi on a plane to

which the mere man cannot rise. He begins it on the atmic plane,

and thence rises stage by stage to the higher cosmic planes. The

same word, samadhi, is used to describe the states of the

consciousness, whether it rises above the physical into the

astral, as in self-induced trance of an ordinary man, or as in

the case of a Jivan-mukta when, the consciousness being already

centred in the fifth, or atmic plane, it rises to the higher

planes of a larger world.