Samadhi: where the demands lead

Three become one

"Samadhi means the oneness of human consciousness with cosmic consciousness." In meditation there are three aspects — the meditator, the act of meditation, and God as its object. "Samadhi is final union … In this state, the three factors of meditation become one."

The image is the one the poem returns to again and again: "Just as the wave melts in the sea, so the human soul becomes the Supreme Spirit."

It is emphatically not unconsciousness. "Such unconsciousness is easily induced by drugs, anesthetics, and other artificial means" — while samadhi comes only "through the regular, continuous, right discipline of meditation."

Sabikalpa and nirbikalpa

In the first state, sabikalpa, the yogi is so absorbed in Spirit that he is oblivious of the created universes — as a reader can be oblivious of a room. From this state, Yogananda warns, one can still fall, because one must return to ego-consciousness.

In the higher state, nirbikalpa, the yogi perceives Spirit as beyond creation, untouched by it, and manifested in all of it at once. "His domain of consciousness now extends out from his body to include the whole universe."

"One is freed forever once he attains the highest state: nirbikalpa samadhi."

Watching the cosmic motion picture

The same vision has a practical face. In "Watching the Cosmic Motion Picture of Life" Yogananda writes: "In this cinema theater of life we are both viewers and actors."

Because every wave has its trough, he says, one should "learn to view everything as passing and temporary" and "look upon whatever happens to you with the certainty that nothing can touch you in your true, inner Self: your soul."

Compassion, not pity, follows from that standpoint: "Compassion is like being able to swim strongly enough to save someone from drowning. Pity may mean jumping into the water and drowning with him!"

Watch this teaching

The centerpiece reading of Yogananda's Samadhi, as offered by Ananda Sangha. Listen once with the text open, then once with eyes closed.

Samadhi — the poem of Paramhansa Yogananda