June 11, 2023
When the attention is absorbed, it is meditation. For example when I keep on looking at you, it is concentration. When I'm completely absorbed in looking at you, it is meditation. And when I go deeper and these three (I-looking-you) become one, so that it is as though you alone are the reality and "I" is non-existent, that is samadhi.
These are again all words — which I hope do not mean much to you. When these three, concentration, meditation and samadhi are practiced simultaneously, there is intense inner awareness, illumination or enlightenment.
We can dispose of one more question that people ask. "Is yoga, especially meditation, like hypnosis?" The yogi replies, "no." In this ocean of one cosmic being the wave has already hypnotized itself into an independent entity. You really are a cosmic being, but you have hypnotized yourself into a self-limiting personality. Therefore the yoga of meditation is not self-hypnotization, but self-dehypnotization.
But there is a danger in being promised any reward for the serious practice of meditation in that we may be caught in a hunt for results. This is due to a basic insincerity. If the fundamental sincerity is not there, and then one's life on the path of yoga is full of difficulties from day-to-day.