But, the memories of the past do not wholly leave us. Although the positively repellent and undesirable powers have been practically eliminated during the process of dharana, or concentration, the memory persists. Though we do not actually come in contact with sense objects, a desire for them may persist. At the top of Mt. Everest, we may have a desire for things which we cannot get there. We cannot get those things because they are not available there. The object of sense is far removed from the person who desires that object; yet, the taste for the object will persist: “If it had been there, it would have been good.” This desire will be there; that the object is not there, is a different matter.

Similarly, though we may think that we are free, in a way, from the difficulties of personal involvement in phenomenal existence, a peculiar difficulty will persist even when we go into deep meditation. It is a type of resistance from the memories of the past—not necessarily from the gross objects of sense, the stage which we have already traversed and outgrown.

We all know what memories can do to us. They can wreak havoc. If we go on remembering the old things again and again, we feel very much distressed. Many times we try to forget the old memories. Sometimes we succeed in forgetting them. Often we cannot succeed, because there is a taste in these memories. If it is a painful memory, we would like to brush it aside; but sometimes even very agonising memories will persist.

Little things go, but the hard things do not go, whether they are pleasant or otherwise. So, the pleasures of life remain as a type of memory and a kind of subtle longing which tells us that there would be, perhaps, a possibility of regaining all those things that have been lost. A sense of having lost certain items of pleasure will persist. Unless we read the lives of saints, we cannot understand the meaning behind all these processes taking place inwardly. These are not matters for logical discussion; they are mystical processes. They are beyond academic and rational studies. But, one who resorts to the feet of God will receive such consolation and support that even the memories will go.

It is difficult for us to believe, hard-boiled individuals that we are, that God is joy and bliss. The mind cannot appreciate that God is pleasant, beautiful, happy, etc. Our idea is that God is a legal God, mostly. He is a judicial chief. This idea of God cannot leave us easily. Though we are accustomed to being told that God is everything, He is not really everything for us, because the world is also something. The taste that we feel in the things of the world has to be also seen in God, or in the supreme ideal of yoga. This is not easy, because to sense the taste in supernatural things, we require a supernatural instrument of perception. Our physical senses cannot taste them. The subtle music of the spheres cannot enchant us when we are accustomed only to listening to the jarring noise of the transistor, because our ears are not so fine-tuned as to listen to the beauty of the music of the higher realms, nor can we visualise the grandeur of the higher, supernatural realms.

To attract us towards the higher realms, yoga scriptures go into great detail. Vyasa, the commentator on the sutras of Patanjali, goes into great details about this matter—what we will see in the heavens when we rise high in meditation. We can read about all those things. These are distractions to be guarded against, he says. Temptations become stronger as we go higher and higher. They are very weak now, in this world. We cannot resist the temptations of this world itself, what to talk of the higher realms. The subtler, higher, celestial temptations are stronger because they are more delightful, more pervasive, more ethereal, more catching than the physical, gross, heavy-laden pleasures of sense.

There is a very short sutra of Patanjali in this regard, for which Vyasa has given a large commentary on the necessity to resist temptations in the higher realms also. These higher realms are not necessarily outside. They are also inside us. Again, we have to remember that there is no inside and outside when we go higher and higher, inwardly, in meditation. It is a wider conception that we have to entertain, free from the division of the spatial distinction of outside and inside. We grow entirely and wholly as we rise higher and higher, and not partially like the individuals that we are. We cease to be this person when we go higher in meditation.

Thus, coming to the point, while there are four facets in concentration, there are three facets in meditation: dhyata, dhyeya and dhyana, i.e., the meditator, the object of meditation, and the meditation process. These persist in dhyana, or meditation. As two tanks of water filled to an equal level may flow one into the other if there is a connection between the two, and we will not know that there is a flow at all because of the equality of the level of the water in the two tanks, so will be the experience, the relationship or the connection between the meditator and the object meditated upon. The object will not any more remain an object, so that one will not know where the consciousness is operating. Regarding the two tanks that I mentioned as an analogy, one is not a subject and the other is not an object. They are equal. They are placed on an equal pedestal. One tank does not see the other tank as an object.

Likewise, the so-called object on which we are meditating gradually sheds its objectivity, and it puts on a new form which is akin in character to the subjective consciousness itself. To speak in the language of the Vedanta philosophy, the visayi becomes the visaya; the chaitanya, or the consciousness that is indwelling the subject, is recognised as also indwelling the object.

The substance of the subject is the same as the substance of the object. The thing out of which the subject is made is the thing out of which the object is made, so that neither can be called ‘subject’ or ‘object’. We have to give up these definitions, these designations or epithets of ‘the seer’ and ‘the seen’. There is no seer and no seen, because such a distinction will not obtain in this deeper consciousness of meditation, where both terms of relation stand on an equal pedestal. They are on par with each other, so that either we may say that we are meditating on that, or we may say that it is meditating upon us. Both statements are equally valid. We do not know whether we are meditating on the object, or the object is meditating on us. One has entered into the other and one embraces the other, as if they are twins in the womb of the mother.

Then it is that a miracle takes place. ‘Miracle’ is the only word we can use. We cannot call it by any other name. A wonder, a marvel happens which will enable the joy of creation to burst out in the midst of this process of meditation. The ananda, the bliss that is at the core of creation, will open up its treasures, and nature will begin to smile through every nook and corner. Afterwards, there will be no inimical impact. Nobody will frown at us. Everyone will smile, “Now my friend has come.” Just as our family will receive us back when we return after long, long years of separation, the exiled one, the Prodigal Son, comes back to the father who receives the son with great affection: “My son, you have come back.”

The Chhandogya Upanishad says that all nature will receive us. Tribute will be offered to us by every point in creation, as if we are kings of this world. From every nook and corner, from every part of the horizon, tribute will come to us. Offerings will be poured at our feet, as if we are the owners of this creation. Is this not a miracle?

But, we are yet on the verge of entering into the bosom of things. We have not yet gone deeper. There is only a sensation of having touched the borderland of the truth of things; we have not yet entered. Like the vision of Arjuna that is described to us in the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavadgita, it is only a vision. We have not yet possessed it. We are seeing a large treasure in front of us, but it has not yet become our property.

These are the indications that we are merging into a state which is often called samadhi, or it can be called by any other name we may use to describe it. Sakshatkara is one name, which means direct Realisation, immediate experience, entering into the substance of things. Samapatti, is another name, which means the acquisition of the noumenal truth in all things. Many other rapturous terms are used to describe this sense of possession, which is not like the possession of the goods of this world.

There is a difference between that possession and this possession of property here. We do not really possess anything in this world. We are imaginary possessors of things. We are in a delusion when we think that things are possessed by us. Nothing can be possessed, because things are outside us—and everyone knows that everything is outside. The money that we have, the land that we possess, the buildings —these are not ours. How can they be ours? They are not clinging to our body. They are independent. They were there before we were born, and they will be there even if we die. How then can we think that things are ours? So, we are imaginary, deluded possessors of things in this world, madmen thinking that things are ours. But when we unite with objects through samadhi, we become real possessors, because to really possess a thing is to enter into the being of that thing. As long as the being of the possessed object is outside the being of the possessor, nothing is possessed.

The being of money is outside us and, therefore, we cannot possess that money. At any moment it can leave us; and, even now, when we are thinking that it is ours, it is not ours. We are under a total illusion. But in meditative union, a real possession of an uncanny type takes place. That is why the joy is unbounded. Samadhi, samapatti, sakshatkara, or Realisation, is unimaginable at present.

When we possess a dear object and embrace it, enjoy it, swallow it, we are in a condition where we lose self-consciousness. To possess the dearest object and make it one’s own is to lose the sense of being. This experience is faintly reflected in artistic possessions, rapturous music, elevated literature, and romantic experiences which go beyond the human level of experience. There, one loses the sense of being. It is a kind of giddiness of consciousness, where it cannot know what is happening to it. It is simply merged in a joy, and joy possesses it. It becomes joy. There is no I, no you, no object—nothing. It is just bliss bursting forth.

A faint reflection of this kind of joy is sometimes, though rarely, also felt by people in this world—for a fraction of a moment, not for a long time. But there, it is a different thing altogether. The Reality is possessed—the archetypes, as Plato sometimes tells us in his great philosophical disquisitions. The archetypes, the originals of things, are possessed—not the reflections that we are catching now. If the reflections make us giddy with joy, what will happen to us if we possess the originals? We become mad with joy by catching shadows; what will happen to us if we catch the originals? Unthinkable is that condition! Nobody knows what samadhi is.

There are stages of this attainment, and even this attainment is not a sudden jump into the ocean. Perhaps even when we enter the ocean, there is a gradual entering. We touch the water slowly with our feet or with our fingers, and a little of our body goes into the ocean. Little by little, we go inside, and we do not suddenly enter into the bosom of the waters. Similarly, this great attainment is a gradual experience. Sometimes —very rarely, in exceptional cases—it may look like a sudden possession, like a devil coming and catching hold of us. But, very rarely it is so. Mostly, it is a graduated process. We rarely get possessed like that.

Thus, we gradually, slowly, enter into these substances which are the realities, the archetypes or the originals of things, and we become pulled towards these things. When we touch the substance, the reality, the archetype, the original of a thing, it is as if we are touching a live wire which will pull us with a tremendous force, because the force of Reality is the force of anything that is here in this phenomenal world.