Dhyāna is the continuance or changing flow of the mental effort in the object of dharaṇa unmediated by any other break of conscious states.
Samādhi, or trance contemplation, results when by deep concentration mind becomes transformed into the shape of the object of contemplation. By pratyāhāra or power of abstraction, mind desists from all other objects, except the one on which it is intended that it should be centred; the Yogin, as he thus abstracts his mind, should also try to fix it upon some internal or external object, which is called dhāraṇā; it must also be noticed that to acquire the habit of dhāraṇā and in order to inhibit the abstraction arising from shakiness and unsteadiness of the body, it is necessary to practise steadfast posture and to cultivate the prāṇāyāma. So too for the purpose of inhibiting distractions arising from breathing. Again, before a man can hope to attain steadfastness in these, he must desist from any conduct opposed to the yamas, and also acquire the mental virtues stated in the niyamas, and thus secure himself against any intrusion of distractions arising from his mental passions. These are the indirect and remote conditions which qualify a person for attaining dhāraṇā, dhyāna, and samādhi. A man who through his good deeds or by the grace of God is already so much advanced that he is naturally above all such distractions, for the removal of which it is necessary to practise the yamas, the niyamas, the āsanas, the prāṇāyāma and pratyāhara, may at once begin with dhāraṇā; dhāraṇā we have seen means concentration, with the advancement of which the mind becomes steady in repeating the object of its concentration, i.e. thinking of that thing alone and no other thing; thus we see that with the practice of this state called dhyāna, or meditation, in which the mind flows steadily in that one state without any interruption, gradually even the conscious flow of this activity ceases and the mind, transformed into the shape of the object under concentration, becomes steady therein. We see therefore that samādhi is the consummation of that process which begins in dhāraṇā or concentration. These three, dhāraṇā, dhyāna and samādhi, represent the three stages of the same process of which the last one is the perfection; and these three are together technically called saṃyama, which directly leads to and is immediately followed by the samprajñāta state, whereas the other five yogāṅgas are only its indirect or remote causes. These three are, however, not essential for the asamprajñāta state, for a person who is very far advanced, or one who is the special object of God’s grace, may pass at once by intense vairāgya and abhyāsa into the nirodha state or state of suppression.
As the knowledge of samādhi gradually dawns through the possession of saṃyama, so is the saṃyama gradually strengthened. For this saṃyama also rises higher and higher with the dawning of prajñāloka or light of samādhi knowledge. This is the beginning, for here the mind can hold saṃyama or concentrate and become one with a gross object together with its name, etc., which is called the savitarka state; the next plane or stage of saṃyama is that where the mind becomes one with the object of its meditation, without any consciousness of its name, etc. Next come the other two stages called savicāra and nirvicāra when the mind is fixed on subtle substances, as we shall see later on.
CHAPTER XIII
STAGES OF SAMĀDHI
Saṃprajñāta samādhi (absorptive concentration in an object) may be divided into four classes, savitarka, nirvitarka, savicāra and nirvicāra.
To comprehend its scope we must first of all understand the relation between a thing, its concept, and the particular name with which the concept or thing is associated. It is easy to see that the thing (artha), the concept (jñāna), and the name (śabda) are quite distinct. But still, by force of association, the word or name stands both for the thing and its concept; the function of mind, by virtue of which despite this unreality or want of their having any real identity of connection they seem to be so much associated that the name cannot be differentiated from the thing or its idea, is called vikalpa.
Now that state of samādhi in which the mind seems to become one with the thing, together with its name and concept, is the lowest stage of samādhi called savitarka; it is the lowest stage, because here the gross object does not appear to the mind in its true reality, but only in the false illusory way in which it appears associated with the concept and the name in ordinary life. This state does not differ from ordinary conceptual states, in which the particular thing is not only associated with the concepts and their names, but also with other concepts and their various relations; thus a cow will not only appear before the mind with its concept and name, but also along with other relations and thoughts associated with cows, as for example—“This is a cow, it belongs to so and so, it has so many hairs on its body, and so forth.” This state is therefore the first stage of samādhi, in which the mind has not become steady and is not as yet beyond the range of our ordinary consciousness.
The nirvitarka stage arises from this when the mind by its steadiness can become one with its object, divested of all other associations of name and concept, so that it is in direct touch with the reality of the thing, uncontaminated by associations. The thing in this state does not appear to be an object of my consciousness, but my consciousness becoming divested of all “I” or “mine,” becomes one with the object itself; so that there is no such notion here as “I know this,” but the mind becomes one with the thing, so that the notion of subject and object drops off and the result is the one steady transformation of the mind into the object of its contemplation. This state brings home to us real knowledge of the thing, divested from other false and illusory associations, which far from explaining the real nature of the object, serves only to hide it. This samādhi knowledge or prajñā is called nirvitarka. The objects of this state may be the gross material objects and the senses.
Now this state is followed by the state of savicārā prajñā, which dawns when the mind neglecting the grossness of the object sinks deeper and deeper into its finer constituents; the appearance of the thing in its grosser aspects drops off and the mind having sunk deep, centres in and identifies itself with the subtle tanmātras, which are the constituents of the atoms, as a conglomeration of which the object appeared before our eyes in the nirvitarka state. Thus when the mind, after identifying itself with the sun in its true aspect as pure light, tends to settle on a still finer state of it, either by making the senses so steady that the outward appearance vanishes, or by seeking finer and finer stages than the grosser manifestation of light as such, it apprehends the tanmātric state of the light and knows it as such, and we have what is called the savicāra stage. It has great similarities with the savitarka stage, while its differences from that stage spring from the fact that here the object is the tanmātra and not the gross bhūta. The mind in this stage holding communion with the rūpa tanmātra, for example, is not coloured variously as red, blue, etc., as in the savitarka communion with gross light, for the tanmātric light or light potential has no such varieties as different kinds of colour, etc., so that there are also no such different kinds of feeling of pleasure or pain as arise from the manifold varieties of ordinary light. This is a state of feelingless representation of one uniform tanmātric state, when the object appears as a conglomeration of tanmātras of rūpa, rasa or gandha, as the case might be. This state, however, is not indeterminate, as the nirvitarka stage, for this tanmātric conception is associated with the notions of time, space and causality, for the mind here feels that it sees those tanmātras which are in such a subtle state that they are not associated with pleasures and pains. They are also endowed with causality in such a way that from them and their particular collocations originate the atoms.
It must be noted here that the subtle objects of concentration in this stage are not the tanmātras alone, but also other subtle substances including the ego, the buddhi and the prakṛti.