The Meaning of Samadhi

PATANJALI is the greatest scientist of the inner. His approach is that of a scientific mind: he is not a poet. And in that way he is very rare, because those who enter into the inner world are almost always poets, those who enter into the outer world are always almost scientists.

Patanjali is a rare flower. He has a scientific mind, but his journey is inner. That's why he became the first and the last word: he is the alpha and the omega. For five thousand years nobody could improve upon him. It seems he cannot be improved upon. He will remain the last word - because the very combination is impossible. To have a scientific attitude and to enter into the inner is almost an impossible possibility. He talks like a mathematician, a logician. He talks like Aristotle and he is a Heraclitus.

Try to understand his each word. It will be difficult: it will be difficult because his terms will be those of logic, reasoning, but his indication is towards love, towards ecstasy, towards God. His terminology is that of the man who works in a scientific lab, but his lab is of the inner being. So don't be misguided by his terminology, and retain the feeling that he is a mathematician of the ultimate poetry. He is a paradox, but he never uses paradoxical language. He cannot. He retains to the very firm logical background. He analyzes, dissects, but his aim is synthesis. He analyzes only to synthesize.

So always remember the goal - don't be misguided by the path - reaching to the ultimate through a scientific approach. That's why Patanjali has impressed the Western mind very much. Patanjali has always been an influence. Wherever his name has reached, he has been an influence because you can understand him easily; but to understand him is not enough. To understand him is as easy as to understand an Einstein. He talks to the intellect, but his aim, his target, is the heart. This you have to remember.

We will be moving on a dangerous terrain. If you forget that he is a poet also, you will be misguided. Then you become too much attached to his terminology, language, reasoning, and you forget his goal. He wants you to go beyond reasoning, but through reasoning. That is a possibility. You can exhaust reasoning so deeply that you transcend. You go through reasoning; you don't avoid it. You use reason to go beyond it as a step. Now listen to his words. Each word has to be analyzed.

He divides samadhi, the ultimate, in two steps. The ultimate cannot be divided. It is indivisible, and there are no steps, in fact. But just to help the mind, the seeker, he divides it first into two. The first step he calls samprajnata samadhi - A samadhi in which mind is retained in its purity.

This first step, mind has to be refined and purified. You simply cannot drop it, Patanjali says - it is impossible to drop it because impurities have a tendency to cling. You can drop only when the mind is absolutely pure - so refined, so subtle, that it has no tendency to cling.

He does not say that "Drop the mind," as Zen Masters say. He says that is impossible; you are talking nonsense. You are saying the truth, but that's not possible because an impure mind has a weight. Like a stone, it hangs. And an impure mind has desires - millions of desires, unfulfilled, hankering to be fulfilled, asking to be fulfilled, millions of thoughts incomplete in it. How can you drop? - because the incomplete always tries to be completed.

Remember, says Patanjali, you can drop a thing only when it is complete. Have you watched? If you are a painter and you are painting, unless the painting becomes complete you cannot forget it. It continues, haunts you. You cannot sleep well; it is there. In the mind it has an undercurrent. It moves; it asks to be completed. Once it is completed, it is finished. You can forget about it. Mind has a tendency towards completion. Mind is a perfectionist, and so whatsoever is incomplete is a tension on the mind. Patanjali says you cannot drop thinking unless thinking is so perfect that now there is nothing to be done about it. You can simply drop it and forget.

This is completely the diametrically opposite way from Zen, from Heraclitus. First samadhi, which is samadhi only for name's sake, is samprajnata -> samadhi with a subtle purified mind. Second samadhi is asamprajnata -> samadhi with no mind. But Patanjali says that when the mind disappears, then too there are no thoughts, then, too, subtle seeds of the past are retained by the unconscious.

The conscious mind is divided in two. First, samprajnata - mind with purified state, just like purified butter. It has a beauty of its own, but it is there. And howsoever beautiful, mind is ugly. Howsoever pure and silent, the very phenomenon of mind is impure. You cannot purify a poison. It remains poison. On the contrary, the more you purify it, the more poisonous it becomes. It may look very, very beautiful. It may have its own color, shades, but it is still impure.

First you purify; then you drop. But then too the journey is not complete because this is all in the conscious mind. What you will do with the unconscious? Just behind the layers of the conscious mind is a vast continent of unconscious. There are seeds of all your past lives in the unconscious.

Then Patanjali divides the unconscious into two. He says sabeej samadhi -> when the unconscious is there and mind has been dropped consciously, it is a samadhi with seeds - sabeej. When those seeds are also burned, then you attain the perfect - the nirbeej samadhi: samadhi without seeds.

So conscious into two steps, then unconscious into two steps. And when nirbeej samadhi, the ultimate ecstasy, without any seeds within you to sprout and to flower and to take you on further journeys into existence... then you disappear.

In these sutras he says,

But this is the first step; many are misguided - they think this is the last because it is so pure and you feel so blissful and so happy that you think that now nothing is there to be achieved more. If you ask Patanjali, he will say the satori of the Zen is just the first samadhi. It is not the final, the ultimate; ultimate is still far away.

The words that he uses cannot be exactly translated into English because Sanskrit is the most perfect language; no language comes even near to it. So I would have to explain to you. The word used is vitarka: in English it is translated as reasoning. It is a poor translation. Vitarka has to be understood. Tarka means logic reasoning: then Patanjali says there are three types of logic. One he calls kutarka - reasoning oriented towards the negative: always thinking in terms of no, denying, doubting, nihilistic.

Whatsoever you say, the man who lives in kutarka - negative logic - always thinks how to deny it, how to say no to it. He looks to the negative. He is always complaining, grumbling. He always feels that something somewhere is wrong - always You cannot put him right because this is his orientation. If you tell him to see to the sun, he will not see the sun. He will see the sunspots; he will always find the darker side of things: that is kutarka. That is kutarka - wrong reasoning - but it looks like reasoning.

It leads finally to atheism. Then you deny God, because if you cannot see the good, you cannot see the lighter side of life, how can you see God? You simply deny. Then the whole existence becomes dark. Then everything is wrong, and you can create a hell around you. If everything is wrong, how can you be happy? And it is your creation, and you can always find something wrong because life consists of a duality.

In the rose bush there are beautiful flowers, but thorns also. A man of kutarka will count the thorns, and then he will come to an understanding that this rose must be illusory; it cannot exist. Amidst so many thorns, millions of thorns, how can a rose exist? It is impossible; the very possibility is denied. Somebody is deceiving.

Mulla Nasrudin was very, very sad. He went to the priest and said, "What to do? My crop is destroyed again. No rains." The priest said, "Don't be so sad, Nasrudin. Look at the lighter side of life. You can be happy because still you have much. And always believe in God who is the provider. He even provides for birds of the air, so why you are worried?" Nasrudin said, "Yes!" very bitterly, "Off my corn! God provides the birds of the air off my corn."

He cannot see the point. His crop is destroyed by these birds, and God is providing them..."and my crop is destroyed." This type of mind will always find something or other, and he will be always tense. Anxiety will follow him like a shadow. This Patanjali calls kutarka - negative logic, negative reasoning.

Then there is tarka - simple reasoning. Simple reasoning leads nowhere. It is moving in a circle because it has no goal. You can go on reasoning and reasoning and reasoning, but you will not come to any conclusion because reasoning can come to a conclusion only when there is a goal from the very beginning. You are moving in a direction, then you reach somewhere. If you move in all directions - sometimes to the south, sometimes to the east, sometimes to the west - you waste energy.

Reasoning without a goal is called tarka; reasoning with a negative attitude is called kutarka; reasoning with a positive grounding is called vitarka. Vitarka means special reasoning. So vitarka is the first element of samprajnata samadhi. A man who wants to attain to the inner peace has to be trained into vitarka - special reasoning. He always looks to the lighter side, the positive. He counts the flowers and forgets the thorns - not that there are not thorns, but he is not concerned with them. If you love the flowers and count the flowers, a moment comes when you cannot believe in the thorns, because how is it possible where so beautiful flowers exist, how can thorns exist? There must be something illusory.

The man of kutarka counts thorns; then flowers become illusory. The man of vitarka counts flowers; then thorns become illusory. That's why Patanjali says: vitarka is the first element. Only then bliss is possible. Through vitarka one attains to heaven. One creates one's own heaven all around.

Your standpoint counts. Whatsoever you found around you is your own creation - heaven or hell. And Patanjali says you can go beyond logic and reasoning only through the positive reasoning. Through the negative you can never go beyond, because the more you say 'no', the more you found things to be sad - 'no', denied. Then, by and by, you become a constant 'no' inside - a dark night, only thorns and no flowers can flower in you - a desert...

When you say 'yes', you find more and more things to be said 'yes'. When you say 'yes', you become a yea-sayer. Life is affirmed, and you absorb through your 'yes' all that is good, beautiful, all that is true.

'Yes' becomes the door in you for the divine to enter; "no" becomes a closed door. Door closed, you are a hell: doors open, all doors open, existence flows in you. You are fresh, young, alive; you become a flower.

Vitarka, vichar, ananda: Patanjali says if you are attuned with vitarka - a positive reasoning - then you can be a thinker, never before it. Then thinking arises. He has a very different meaning of thinking. You also think that you think. Patanjali will not agree. He says you have thoughts, but no thinking. That's why I say it is difficult to translate him.

He says you have thoughts, vagrant thoughts like a crowd, but no thinking. Between your two thoughts there is no inner current. They are uprooted things; there is no inner planning. Your thinking is a chaos. It is not a cosmos; it has no inner discipline. It is just like you see a rosary. There are beads; they are held together by an invisible thread running through them. Thoughts are beads; thinking is the thread. You have beads - too many, in fact, more than you need - but no inner running thread through them. That inner thread is called by Patanjali thinking - vichar. You have thoughts, but no thinking. And if this goes on and on, you will become mad. A madman is a man who has millions of thoughts and no thinking, and samprajnata samadhi is the state in which there are no thoughts, but thinking is perfect. This distinction has to be understood.

Your thoughts, in the first place, are not yours. You have gathered them. Just in a dark room, sometimes a beam of light comes from the roof and you see millions of dust particles floating in the beam. When I look into you, I see the same phenomenon: millions of dust particles. You call them thoughts. They are moving in you and out of you. From one head they enter another, and they go on. They have their own life.

A thought is a thing; it has its own existence. When a person dies, all his mad thoughts are released immediately and they start finding shelter somewhere or other. Immediately those who are around they enter. They are like germs: they have their own life. Even when you are alive, you go on dispersing your thoughts all around you. When you talk, then, of course, you throw your thoughts into others. But when you are silent, then also you are throwing thoughts all around. They are not yours, the first thing.

A man of positive reasoning will discard all thoughts that are not his own. They are not authentic; he has not found them through his own experience. He has accumulated from others, borrowed. They are dirty. They have been in many hands and heads. A man of thinking will not borrow. He would like to have a fresh thought of his own. And if you are positive, and if you look at the beauty, at the truth, at the goodness, at the flowers, if you become capable of seeing even in the darkest night that the morning is coming nearer, you will become capable of thinking.

Then you can create your own thoughts. And a thought that is created by you is really potential: it has a power of its own. These thoughts that you have borrowed are almost dead because they have been traveling - traveling for millions of years. Their origin is lost: they have lost all contact with their origin. They are just like dust floating all around. You catch them. Sometimes you even become aware of it, but because your awareness is such that it cannot see through things...

Sometimes you are sitting. Suddenly you become sad for no reason at all. You cannot find the reason. You look around, there is no reason; nothing there, nothing has happened. You are just the same and suddenly a sadness takes. A thought is passing; you are just in the way. It is an accident. A thought was passing like a cloud - a sad thought released by someone. It is an accident. You are in the grip. Sometimes a thought persists. You don't see why you go on thinking about it. It looks absurd; it seems to be of no use. But you cannot do anything. It goes on knocking at the gate. "Think me," it says. A thought is waiting at the door knocking. It says, "Give space. I would like to come in."

Each thought has its own life. It moves. And it has much power, and you are so impotent because you are so unaware, so you are moved by thoughts. Your whole life consists of such accidents. You meet people, and your whole life pattern changes. Something enters in you. Then you become possessed, and you forget where you were going. You change your direction; you follow this thought. And this is just an accident. You are like children.

Patanjali says this is not thinking. This is the state of absence of thinking; this is not thinking. You are a crowd. You have not a center within you which can think. When one moves in the discipline of vitarka - right reasoning, then one becomes by and by capable of thinking. Thinking is a capacity; thoughts are not. Thoughts can be learned from others; thinking, never. Thinking you have to learn yourself.

And this is the difference between the old Indian schools of learning and the modern universities: in the modern universities you are getting thoughts; in the ancient schools of learning, wisdom schools, they were teaching thinking, not thoughts.

Thinking is a quality of your inner being. What does thinking mean? It means to retain your consciousness, to remain alert and aware, to encounter a problem. A problem is there: you face it with your total awareness. And then arises an answer - a response. This is thinking. A question is posed; you have a ready-made answer. Before even you have thought about it, the answer comes in. Somebody says, "Is there God?" And he has not even said and you say, "Yes." You nod your wooden head; you say, "Yes, there is."

Is it your thought? Have you thought about the problem right now, or you carry a ready-made answer within your memory? Somebody gave it to you - your parents, your teachers, your society. Somebody has given it to you, and you carry it as a precious treasure, and this answer comes from that memory.

A man of thinking uses his consciousness each time there is a problem. Freshly, he uses his consciousness. He encounters the problem, and then arises a thought within him which is not part of memory. This is the difference. A man of thoughts is a man of memory; he has no thinking capacity. If you ask a question which is new, he will be at a loss. He cannot answer. If you ask a question which he knows the answer, he will immediately answer. This is the difference between a pundit and a man who knows; a man who can think.

Patanjali says vitarka - right reasoning, leads to reflection - vichar. Reflection - vichar, leads to bliss. This is the first glimpse, of course, and it is a glimpse. It will come and it will be lost. You cannot hold it for long. It was going to be just a glimpse, as if for a moment a lightning happened and you saw all darkness disappeared. But again the darkness is there - as if clouds disappeared and you saw the moon for a second - again clouds are there.

Or, on a sunny morning, near the Himalayas, for a moment you can have the glimpse of the Gourishankar - the highest peak. But then there is mist, and then there are clouds, and the peak is lost. This is satori. That's why never try to translate satori as samadhi. Satori is a glimpse. Much has to be done after it is attained. In fact, the real work starts after the first satori, first glimpse, because then you have tasted of the infinite. Now a real authentic search starts. Before it, it was just so-so, lukewarm, because you were not really confident, certain, what you are doing, where you are going, what is happening.

Before it, it was a faith, a trust. Before it a Master was needed to show you, to bring you back again and again. But after satori has happened, now it is no more a faith. It has become a knowing. Now the trust is not an effort. Now you trust because your own experience has shown you. After the first glimpse, the real search starts. Before it you are just going round and round. Right reasoning leads to right reflection, right reflection leads to a state of bliss, and this state of bliss leads to a sense of pure being.

 

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