SAMADHI

    Samadhi is a Sanskrit word that generally means intense focus with a quiet mind. According to whatever is being focused upon there has evolved a multitude of different kinds of samadhi.   If someone is very well focused on the sun there will be sun-samadhi; if on water, there will be water-samadhi; if on wind, there will be wind-samadhi, etc., etc.   But we are primarily concerned with the aspects of only two states of samadhi, those of nirvikalpa and savikalpa.  Nirvikalpa means the absence of thoughts while savikalpa applies to focus with related thoughts.   Savikalpa is an approach to nirvikalpa and is required in order to learn and get knowledge about most things.   Nirvikalpa occurs only in a contemplative practitioner when introverted attention seeks re-identity with itself as pure consciousness.   Nirvikalpa is the gap we keep talking about in these Advaitayana monographs.

     All thoughts, as soon as they are noticed to be arising into view are to be released; simply dismiss them and note the mechanicalness of their arising but give no mental comment.    They just get put away and discarded and disappear into the state beyond and before thoughts.   The other mode of thought construction we call “thinking” and it is willful and purposeful, practical, necessary, and useful.   What we are concerned with here is the obstructive, habitual automaton mind of nescience and robotic mental activity.    No matter what we are doing, it is upon the background of our own consciousness, and we can learn to be mindful and aware of the antics of mind. When this discipline of samadhi is mastered, over a long period of practice, the dreamlike propensities of mind are no longer the master and the mechanical habits of mind are weakened; we then get stability of attention without retrogression.    As a result of samadhi we realize the oneness of reality and the sameness of essence (of consciousness) everywhere.  There are countless kinds and types of samadhi, but the samadhi of the contemplative where he is not absorbed in various mental activities, but just relaxed, open, and free, is the samadhi that allows him to join the ranks of those who have also become entitled to enter supreme identity.