Samadhi: Directly experiencing the sea

 We have been discussing the five S to live a spiritual life. We have discussed how Swadhyay can help us realign our rational mind to the universal consciousness; how Shraddha can realign the emotional mind to the universal consciousness and how we can work on Samvedana with the technique called Vipassana to realign the unconscious mind to the same. We also discussed how freedom from these fixations put us back on track to living life with Swadharma. Thus, we discussed the four Ss.

Now let’s discuss the fifth and the last S, which is Samadhi. Samadhi means coming out of the well of ignorance and experiencing the sea of universal consciousness. Samadhi has developed a very negative connotation in contemporary society due to the erratic ventures of some people with “Yoga”. “Samadhi does not at all mean leaving the world. It is living life with the alignment of the center of the rational, emotional, and unconscious mind to the universal consciousness and our actions being centered around Swadharma. When we recenter our life to the universal consciousness, away from the rights and wrongs, likes and dislikes, and craving or aversion to the pleasant and unpleasant sensations, we start experiencing the universal consciousness.

Generally, when we sit in meditation, closing our eyes, we experience our minds full of thoughts. Different fears and worries start troubling us. Sometimes pleasant memories flash into the mind. We identify with these thoughts and start getting engaged with these thoughts. Thoughts keep filling our minds, one after the other and we keep flowing with them. Sometimes, we bring our attention back to the breath and concentrate on what’s happening in the body. In these moments, we start engaging with the body sensations. Sometimes, we feel itching, and other times heaviness in the legs or the back. We again start engaging with these sensations and attention is fully lost in these sensations.

There are hardly any moments wherein we are free. Sanyasa is freedom from the body and thoughts. As we work with Swadhyaya and Shraddha, work on Samvedana with Vipassana, and live our day-to-day life with Swadharma, our fixation with the rights and wrongs, likes and dislikes, and pleasant or unpleasant sensations drop. While sitting in meditation, we start being aware of the reality. We stop flowing with our thoughts and are able to look at reality as it is. We are able to witness what is going on inside our body as a third person.

In these moments of Samadhi, our understanding of the reality of our true self gets broadened. We get to understand so many new dimensions of our real nature that we were so far unaware of. This new understanding helps us get rid of the fixations further. The old vicious cycle of fixations gives way to the cycle of liberation:

All five Ss support each other. As our rational mind becomes pure, it supports the emotional mind to get rid of its fixations. As the emotional mind becomes pure, it helps the unconscious mind to get rid of its fixations with pleasant/unpleasant sensations. All these help us live life with Swadharma. All these help us experience Samadhi while sitting in meditation. Vice versa is also true. The experience of Samadhi helps us getting rid of the fixations of the emotional, rational, and unconscious mind. Living the life of Swadharma also helps us get rid of all these fixations.

These have been termed as different types of Yoga. In Jnana Yoga, we try to drop the fixations by working on the rational mind. In Bhakti yoga, we try to drop the fixations by working on the emotional mind. In Vipassana, we try to drop the fixations by working on the unconscious mind. In Karma Yoga, we try to live life without identifying with the result of our actions. In Raja Yoga, we try to forget everything and fix our attention on the universal consciousness. All these Yogas complement each other. The right mix of these depends upon the nature of our fixations.