About Samadhi…
Famous quotations that reveal the experience of the Samadhi state
The one who has this understanding (that the Universe is identical to his Inner Self) and sees the entire manifestation as a God’s game with Himself, is, doubtless, a living liberated person.
(Spanda Karika, V, 5)
Like the salt becomes one with the water it is dissolved in, when Atman (the individual Inner Self) and the mind become one, the Samadhi (the divine ecstasy) state appears.
(Hatha Yoga Pradipika, II, 5)
The equality and the unity between the individual Inner Self, Atman and the universal Inner Self, Paramatman is called Samadhi, in order to describe what is beyond words, for it can be known only by direct experience.
(Hatha Yoga Pradipika, IV, 7, 32)
Paramahansa Yogananda’s “Samadhi” poem:
“The darkness and the light have vanished both,
The wings of sadness have evaporated,
The ephemeral joys have run like rapid boats,
The mirage of senses doesn’t exist anymore for me.
Sickness or health, hatred, love or death,
Meaningless shadows on the screen of duality – all these are gone.
Sarcasm, laughter, gloomy melancholy
Have melted in a single ocean of happiness.
His meditation, this magic wand
Has abated the storm of illusion.
Past, present and future are nothing for me
But an eternal present: the omniscient Inner Self.
The planets, the stars, the galaxies, or the Earth,
Thousands of craters in fire, seismic calamities,
Enormous crucibles of creation!”
Paramahansa Yogananda describes this state in his book (“The autobiography of a yogi”):
“Sri Yukteshwar hit me gently in the chest, a little above the heart. My body seemed turned to stone; the air got out of my lungs as if it were aspirated by a large strainer; the soul and the spirit, pulled out of their spatial location sprang out through every pore as a luminous fluid.
I couldn’t feel my body as if it were dead; although my exacerbated faculties have never before, with such an intensity, given me the feeling of life. The feeling of identity was no longer limited to my body, but it embraced the surrounding atoms. Men on faraway streets seemed to cross slowly my own purlieus. I could see the roots of the plants and of the trees in the soil hat was transparent to me and I could watch the intense circulation of their sap. The surroundings appeared to my eyes in their totality. My visual field, turned global, allowed me to include everything in a single glance. Behind me I could see people going down the Rai Ghat Street and I noticed a white cow that was approaching slowly. It reached the door of the ashram, entering thus my normal visual field. After it entered the door, I could still clearly see it through the brick walls.
In the field of my global vision, the objects vibrated and flickered like cinema images. My body, my Master’s body, the pillars of the courtyard, the furniture, the ceiling, the trees and the sunrays were agitating more and more; until they melted in a single ocean of luminescent waves, as the sugar melts in the water it was placed. The unifying light alternated with the materialisation of the forms; these metamorphoses revealed the law of the cause and the effect in the creation.
An oceanic joy reached the calm and unlimited shore of my soul. I understood that God’s spirit was inexhaustible happiness and that God’s body was made of infinity of rays. A splendid nimbus sprang out of the innermost depths of my being, amplifying itself and including towns, continents, the Earth, the Sun, the constellations, the star agglomerations, up to the last galaxies. The entire Cosmos, lit as a town you can see faraway in the night, was irradiating in my unlimited being. The shining light from beyond the net outlines of the objects was degrading slightly at the extreme limit of my vision, but I could perceive, even further away, a non-material, equal radiation, of an uniform brightness; an even more subtle light formed the images of the planets.
The divine fascicle of light that came from the eternal Source, hatching the galaxies was transfigured in ineffable auras of an inexpressible splendour. Again and again I saw the creative rays condensing in constellations and transforming in translucent flames. Myriads of worlds flew in an alternant rhythm, in a diaphanous halo; the entire firmament was only forming a single blaze. I knew that the centre of this canopy of heaven was in a centre of intimate intuitive perception in my heart. So much splendour was radiating from my cells, penetrating the intimate structure of the Universe? Amrita of the happiness, the nectar of the immortality was flowing in me like the quicksilver. I could hear the creative voice of God, consisting in the AUM sound, the vibration of the cosmic motor.
Suddenly, the breath came back to my lungs. With an unbearable dissatisfaction I realised my cosmic immensity disappeared. Once more, I was limited to the humiliating prison of my body that the spirit can hardly accommodate with. Disobedient child, I ran out of my cosmic home in order to lock myself in my narrow microcosm.
My guru stood still in front of me; I made a move to kow-tow to his holy feet, grateful for the experience of the cosmic consciousness he has given me, an experience I’ve been long searched for. He stopped me and told me calmly:
“You shouldn’t get drunk with the ecstasy! You’ve got so much left to do in this world. Let’s sweep the balcony; then we’ll go for a walk along the Ganges’ beach.” I took a broom; I realised my Master was teaching me the secrets of a balanced life. The soul should be above the cosmic abysses while the body should fulfil the daily duties.
My cosmic vision was of very much use for me. Working every day for calming my thoughts, I could elude from the illusion that my body was a mask of flesh and bones, breaking through the tough crust of matter. I could see that the breath and the mind were like storms that continuously gave birth to waves of material forms: earth, sky, human beings, animals, plants; birds and trees on the surface of the ocean light. One cannot perceive the Infinite as Unique Light unless in the moments of mental peace.
Every time I succeeded to abate these two natural storms, the waves of creation were reabsorbed in the quietness of a vast luminous sea; the waves dissolve as such to become one with the ocean, when the storm abates.
A Master offers the experience of the cosmic consciousness as soon as his disciple has fortified his mind through meditation enough to be able to stand such vast horizons. The simple intellectual goodwill and the enlargement of the views are not sufficient. Only the adequate dilatation of the consciousness through an assiduous practice of the Yoga system and of the devotion (Bhakti) allow the preparation of the spirit to stand the liberating stroke of the Omnipresence. Any sincere adept gets here inevitably: the adoration of his faith pushes him irresistibly towards God.”
