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.
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