April 23, 2024
The yoga text describes dhyana as containing all thoughts within the framework of what ever holds your attention, without allowing them to stray away. For instance, repeating a mantra in meditation demands all one's concentration upon the mantra, and observing what happens within oneself during the repetition. This is good exercise. However, you do not need a special room or church or temple to meditate. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, should be done in a state of meditation.
The last stage is called samadhi. This is been wrongly translated as 'trance' and associated with the loss of consciousness, strange visions or other extraordinary phenomena. In search of this people take drugs, smoke marijuana, etc.
According to the yoga text, there is concentration, i.e. the attention is focused on a particular area. Then, whatever mental activity goes on, takes place within that area. Eventually, you become one with that on which the mind is focused. The 'I' does not exist; only the 'object' (if it may be called so) of your attention exists. When this happens, there is samadhi. The intelligence is steady and tranquil — which is what samadhi implies.
When you rise from your meditation seat and engage yourself in worldly activity, let this inner feeling continue. Practice meditation in this way every morning, without forgetting that it is only 'practice' — not the real thing!
Real meditation is to do everything throughout the day in a state of meditation, with your whole being harmonized and focused upon whatever you are doing from moment to moment. Please remember that this concentration, this meditation, this samadhi are life itself and not a 'part' of life. Perhaps 'life' is part of this samadhi !
Spiritualization of relationship is not a psychological quality; and it is not the opposite of physical togetherness which is certainly necessary for certain forms of communication. Even while there is this physical togetherness, it is the spirit that counts: one cannot imagine that one has achieved the spiritualization , one can only ensure that the relationship is not dependent upon the physical or the material. That is spiritualization.