Samadhi: The state of ecstasy
The evolutionary walk of Yoga, I
state it many times, consists in a first step of arousing the
state of attention, then to come to the awareness and from there
to the arousal of the conscience, learning along the way to
distinguish between the truth and the false, the subjective and
the objective, sometimes through hard practices of any kind.
To obtain this kind of knowledge, only with the reason, is
considered, in this discipline, almost impossible, and so, at a
certain level, the deep meditation is necessary. Through this
means, that is considered the most appropriate one, it should be
possible to determine the real nature of the existence’s
essence, just as a practical experience.
The necessary quality that gives the capacity to distinguish and
the objective view is the Vairagya: the detachment or
non-involvement. It has to be said that the Vairagya doesn’t
necessarily consists, as someone could think, in the abandonment
of the world, by retreating, for example, as the ascetics, it is
first of all an attitude, as well as an inner dimension. Who
reaches the Vairagya, guided by a perfect discernment, could, as
the tradition wants to, obtain the conditions to know the
imperturbable reality of the Brahman: the eternal, imperishable
Absolute; the higher reality, not a dual or a subjective or an
objective one, but that contains the two both.
As absolute conscience, in its abstraction, it is not accessible
to the thought, not even to the word, because it is a condition
of pure transcendence. The Brahman, on what is usually projected
a world of images that certainly doesn’t help to achieve the
real knowledge, as conscience, would make the perception of the
being and of the beatitude possible.
In the first stage of the meditation, the Yogi has a subjective
concentration in which he still doesn’t have a clear
self-consciousness; another stage, more objective than the first
one, in which he learns to have consciousness of himself and,
distinctly, of the concentration’s object; and finally the
higher stage, neither subjective nor objective, that corresponds
to a state of consciousness in which himself and the
concentration’s object are the same thing, with no differences.
This last state of concentration-consciousness is called
Samadhi.
And it is in this state of perfect non-dual and ecstatic
transcendence that we can have the opportunity to have the
Brahman’s experience. I can say that the Samadhi we are talking
about is not a real Samadhi.
I guess that it’s a state of the being that is beyond the wake,
of the dream and the deep sleep. In my personal experience, that
lasts since 26 years, I benefited only once from an ecstatic
state during a meditation. It coincided, after months of intense
practices, with the absolute downfall of every kind of tensions
and with the inner realization of the state of abandon.
Because of the lack of habit, I suppose, it scared me. I had to
work a lot to nullify the state of uneasiness that pervaded me.
That experience has been very strong, but I don’t think I tried
the real high state of Samadhi as it is described by the
authoritative texts of Yoga. Even if my Indian, American,
Belgian, French, Italian masters were the higher personalities
in that entourage, none of them could ever give me exhaustive
clarifications about what happened to me.
That was because, I suppose, not even them had enough experience
of similar states or because they chose to keep the silence on
that subject. Because of my personal experience, I suggest Yoga
teachers and the thinkers to adopt big carefulness in talking
about that. Too lightly people talk about Samadhi in the
schools, talking about something we didn’t experienced. We don’t
need that.
Yoga can bring splendid changes in the psychosomatic personality
of man, and it allows man to start a more conscious life and I
think this is a great result. Who practices a good Yoga is an
equilibrated person, conscious of the complexity of the field he
is exploring. Sometimes he thinks he is in a wide area without
any benchmarks. In these conditions it’s hard for him to
certainly state principles. To do it could already be synonymous
of fanaticism, the outcome of Avidya (non-knowledge, or
ignorance).
by Amadio Bianchi