Samadhi — the highest spiritual state of a yogin.
Facebook archive. First published on 19.04.2016.
I do not think this post will be all that interesting to people who have not heard of yoga, or who treat it as physical exercise. Usually, to make the beginning boring, I move away from the topic and write a lot of personal things. This way a person scrolling through the feed can safely skip a text without a beautiful esoteric picture or an animated GIF.
In general, the popularization of anything is, in my view, harmful and leads away from specifics. The same is true with samadhi. There is a logical chain: neophyte-student-teacher-samadhi.
At the same time, the practice of higher spiritual states must necessarily take place under the supervision of a guru, in some closed ashram. If you think this way, you will not attain samadhi. Likewise, no state that society idealizes will become accessible to you. You will not become a genius, because being a genius is cool; you will not become a poet, writer, or musician if you have spent your whole life doing manual labor and consider creativity something magnificent and inherent only in the chosen.
In society it is accepted that one cannot become chosen, one must only be born so. And not simply be born: at your birth, many signs must occur that point to chosenness:
"The mother of the future Buddha (Siddhartha), Queen Maya, saw in a dream a beautiful white elephant descend into her womb. During pregnancy the queen experienced such deep happiness that it spread to everyone who communicated with her. Her husband Shuddhodana, king of the Shakya tribe, abandoned all affairs of state and devoted himself entirely to spiritual matters. Several years later, Shuddhodana once found Siddhartha meditating in the shade of a tree. The boy remained in contemplation all day, but the shadow did not move from its place. Thus the king understood that his son was different from other people."
Savikalpa samadhi — or samadhi with support. In fact, it can be attained entirely without any effort whatsoever, that is, accidentally. But since no one has taken the trouble to explain the accidental nature of such a phenomenon, it will most likely not be described anywhere. This state looks like a short-term ability to see a situation from the outside. Long before practicing yoga, I entered such a state several times. When I described it, many of my interlocutors spoke of something similar.
But at that time neither I nor they could even imagine that we had entered a higher spiritual state that yogis try to obtain for years or decades. In this state, everything that is happening is seen as happening to someone else. On the one hand, it is as if you are a participant in an everyday situation, but it does not affect you emotionally at all. And every object surrounding you becomes filled with additional details. In a spontaneous state of Savikalpa samadhi, the duration is too short, only a few seconds.
Only through practice can this state be prolonged, and the deeper a yogin penetrates into Savikalpa samadhi, the less desire he has to return to ordinary life. But one still has to return to ordinary life. My longest stay in Savikalpa samadhi lasted several hours. That is my level today. I started talking about levels because for me any meditation is similar to the process of diving into water.
As much air as you have, and as strong as the initial impulse was, that is how deep you will be able to dive. In meditation, this is the power of concentration and inner purity. If the power of concentration does not need to be explained, then inner purity is worth discussing separately.
The first is nutrition. Nothing interferes with the depth of meditation like a full stomach. Of course, consuming meat interferes; too much has been written on the subject of vegetarianism, I will merely note that meat should be absent from the diet for a couple of days before practice. Hygiene is the second point that gives inner purity, and it is better for there to be fewer synthetic smells, soap, toothpaste, and so on. Smells distract, just like a full stomach. Purity of thoughts is difficult to attain, and one must come to it.
This is, first of all, following for some time ahimsa (non-harming), satya (truthfulness), and asteya (not taking what belongs to another). It is clear that following the principles laid down in yama and niyama will bring purity of thoughts. But for the initial immersion, the first three are enough, which I consider foundational.
If Savikalpa samadhi is not so very difficult to attain, this state is very well described. But attaining Nirvikalpa samadhi is much more difficult. And first of all this is connected with the fact that this state is poorly described, and it is difficult to describe in principle.
Nirvikalpa samadhi is samadhi without support. The support in this case is your personality, or ego. In Savikalpa samadhi, concepts become visible, that which fills the world and makes it real. A concept is the structure of any object or action. It is very similar to the concept of classes in programming. Or to a drawing with all the details. So in order to attain Nirvikalpa samadhi, in Savikalpa samadhi one needs to find the notion of concept and try to destroy it.
At first I destroyed the most distant concepts, such as the universe, the galaxy, and the solar system. I created the image that the earth is in a room, and the starry sky is a fabric with a pattern of constellations. In the end I came to the conclusion that the whole world is drawn, and my personality is likewise only an image. But this turned out not to be enough, because at the very highest level there remained the observer, the one who meditates, and the objects of meditation.
From the small number of descriptions of Nirvikalpa samadhi, I took only one thing: the observer and the observed must unite into a single whole. This worked only when I changed the concept of the world to the concept of a mirror. Then there remained an observer who observes himself. And that turned out not to be all, because the notion of observation and the notion of self remained. But understanding, from Savikalpa samadhi, how concepts are structured, I began to destroy the concept of observation and the concept of self.
After this, meditation began to pulsate; observation and the observer disappeared and appeared. Because my being could not fully realize existence outside all concepts. But my experience, even if brief, of being in Nirvikalpa samadhi showed me that this state exists. And that means Sahaja samadhi exists as well.
The very fact that I wrote this post indicates that Sahaja samadhi is still unattainable for me now. Because I am trying to explain to the objects of the dream that they are asleep, which means I have not finally awakened. Probably for this reason there is no more detailed description of either Nirvikalpa samadhi or Sahaja samadhi. For a yogin who has experienced these states, the needs of the ego completely lose their relevance. Likewise, a guru will stop transmitting the teaching to his students after a long stay in Nirvikalpa samadhi.
For him, obligations to students will lose all meaning. The lack of desire to speak after samadhi is not connected with a brain hemorrhage, as some authors frighten people. A lack of desire to speak is a lack of desire, and nothing more.
I do not know whether unfortunately or fortunately, but there was no ecstasy in Nirvikalpa samadhi. In the moments when the observer appeared, the surrounding environment seemed extraordinarily alive, and the observer understood that he himself consisted of this changing environment, which Vasistha calls superconsciousness. The very understanding that the world consists of such intelligent living clay changes one's inner bearings after returning back into egoistic existence. This experience is curious and not dangerous. The states described exist.
I do not know what conclusion I was supposed to draw from all this; let us imagine that I drew it.
Peace and well-being to all.