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Placing the innermost nesting doll of samadhi within the context and framework of the previous seven limbs is important; in Patanjali’s view it is with samadhi that yoga becomes really interesting. Patanjali devoted the overwhelming majority of his sutras to this final limb. Samadhi denotes a deep state of meditation or the culmination thereof. Its pronounced fruit is the revelation of deep reality as such. For this reason a good translation for samadhi is “ecstasy” rather than the more puritan “bliss” or the bland “absorption.” But the term ecstasy has its limitations also. It is derived from the Greek word ekstasis, meaning to stand beside oneself or be beside oneself (with joy). In samadhi, however, one does not stand beside oneself but rather deeply within oneself.¹⁵

The ecstasy of samadhi does not happen all at once. In samadhi we work through many substages, first using easy gross objects in meditation and later complex subtle objects. And once samadhi is mastered, we are met with a paradox. The final fruit of samadhi, liberation, is bestowed through complete surrender and divine grace and cannot be acquired by means of effort and willpower.

HOW INTENSE IS THE ECSTASY OF SAMADHI?

The great Rishi Yajnavalkya, the most prominent of the rishis (seers) of the Upanishads, explained the intensity of the ecstasy of samadhi thus:

Imagine the highest joy a human being is capable of experiencing through the combined attainment of wealth, power, and sexual pleasure. Multiplying this ecstasy by the factor of one hundred, we arrive at the ecstasy that can be experienced by those of our ancestors who have attained a heavenly existence. Multiplying their ecstasy by one hundred, we arrive at the level of ecstasy of the divine nature spirits known as gandharvas. Multiplying their ecstatic state again by one hundred, we arrive, according to Yajnavalkya, at the maximum ecstasy experienced by one who has attained a state of divinity by virtuous action (karmadevah). One hundred times greater than this state of ecstasy is that of one who has attained divinity by birth or knowledge. Again one hundred times greater than that ecstasy is the state of one who has studied the scriptures and is free from desires. One hundred times greater than that, however, is the ecstasy of one who has realized the state of consciousness identified by Patanjali as “seedless samadhi.”

This highest level of ecstasy is the result of multiplying by one hundred six times, which means that — according to Yajnavalkya, who, historically speaking, was one of the greatest authorities on the matter — samadhi confers one trillion times the ecstasy that an ideal human life could possibly provide. Indian texts sometimes exaggerate the states that they describe, a tendency called stuti (praise, advertising, glorification). However, Yajnavalkya doesn’t appear to share this tendency, and judging from the recorded dialogues and texts he left behind, there is no doubt that he knew and researched each of the ecstatic states mentioned.

Samadhi is the limb through which the mind and subconscious are deconditioned — and this is a process that takes time. The conditioning (vasana) that we undergo during our lives creates fears, desires, expectations, prejudices, and so on, and these prevent us from seeing reality as such because they are superimposed on what we see. Once all this dross of the ages is removed, for the first time one can see the world and the self as they really are.

If we call meditation (dhyana) a broadband connection to our meditation object, we need to call samadhi the ability to download a holographic image of our meditation object in real time.¹⁶ In other words, the moment the samadhic mind (that is, the mind in samadhi) fixes itself to an object, the mind is capable of reproducing an identical representation of the object. Being able to exactly duplicate objects in the mind means for the first time ever it is possible to see the world as it really is and not just some pale, dusty, warped, and twisted replica of what one believes or estimates it could be. This is effectively the most complete revolution that can possibly happen to a human mind. It means that the content of the mind has become identical with reality. In other words, what is in the mind is now as real as reality outside, effectively eliminating the distinction between inside and outside.

Once the mind has achieved this quality of stainlessness it becomes capable of creating reality. This is due to the fact that at this level of concentration what is in the mind becomes so real that it will manifest as reality. This explains the various powers of the yogis, siddhas, and rishis that Patanjali describes in the third chapter of the Yoga Sutra.

The yogi, however, applies this newfound power not to hocus-pocus but to the raising of kundalini, which produces divine revelation. It is here that ethics become fundamental. If you are not firmly grounded in the first and second limbs, you may at this point fall for the dark side. It is for this reason that yoga insists on Ishvara pranidhana, a personal devoted relationship to one of the aspects or manifestations of the Supreme Being, whichever one it may be. This close intimate devotion is what will save you when the dark night of your soul arises or when the Prince of Darkness appears on your doorstep to tempt you. Devotion to the Supreme Being will keep you firmly focused on developing the highest within yourself.

When the day arrives and you may look directly into the blinding light of infinite consciousness, you need to be prepared. It is not easy to get a direct view of the supreme self. When Arjuna received the celestial eye that allowed him to behold the Supreme Being in the form of the Lord Krishna, his hair stood on end, his breath became rapid, his heart almost burst — and he could not hold the gaze.¹⁷ If you have duly practiced the eight limbs of yoga and the various types of samadhi, the final samadhi will show you what Arjuna saw on that fateful day five thousand years ago on the eve of the battle of Kurukshetra. But here comes the problem: like Arjuna on that day, you will be mightily challenged not to close your eyes before that divine glory and look in the opposite direction. This, in fact, is what we are doing every moment of our lives to sustain our own individual, insignificant, and isolated existences. We are expelling the Supreme Being from our hearts in order to stay in control because to keep looking could mean the end of our personalities as we know them. Yogic training, however, will enable you to keep your inner eyes wide open when the day arrives for you to be shown the intense light of infinite consciousness.

It is possible to have a glimpse of this light in the form of a spontaneous temporary mystical experience and come out the other end unchanged. If you have not read the ancient texts or prepared yourself in ways that allow you to put the experience in context, you can come out of such a mystical experience even more confused than before, wanting to repeat the experience by pursuing sex, power, wealth, and so on. This is one of the dangers of pursuing the “instant enlightenment” path. As long as the mind is not purified of its innate tendency to jump from thought to thought like a monkey from branch to branch, you likely will leave the mystical experience, dropping out of it to follow the next whim of the mind.

Because the mind tends to attach itself to the next object that arises, it cannot without training stay focused on the subject, consciousness. The mind will go after tangible or experiential objects (wealth, power, sex, fame, and so forth), because the subject, although the giver of infinite ecstasy, is intangible. This means that the untrained mind will abandon the mystical experience, even though this is the opposite of what must happen. You need to stay in this state with your eyes wide open, your hair standing on end, and your brain on fire for at least several hours. Some texts hint at a minimum of three hours. Buddha sustained his mystical experience for a whole night; it was more than a decade before Ramana Maharshi could speak and act conventionally after his experience.