We concluded that the aim of life is a universal union of things, a confederation of existence, where each one exists for everyone else. Each is all, and all is each. This is the beginning of a great spiritual endeavour culminating in the communion usually known as samadhi or samapatti—the direct Realisation of the ultimate nature of things.

It is a supernatural awakening of ourselves from the dream of this world, as it were, wherein we contact the originals —whose reflections and shadows the things in this world seem to be, including our own personalities, our bodies, and our appearances here. We would realise that we are in utter darkness as to the nature of the originals which cast this shadow in the form of these phenomena, this visible creation.

This inward art of spiritual communion is called, in the language of yoga, samadhi or samapatti—the great attainment, the finale of the life of people, wherein the deepest spirit in man recognises its home everywhere. Its home is not just inside the body of some person. We have houses built everywhere. “In my Father’s house there are many mansions,” said Christ. There is not just one little room or a cottage. So, we are not located in one house. We have mansions everywhere, citadels built for us in all places. Everywhere, everybody is eager to welcome us, always.

We are like the Prodigal Son in the biblical story, who runs away from his father and, now repenting, returns; the father willingly, joyously embraces this little ignorant exile—which is what we all are. When we return to the originals, it is as if we are gazing at the sun. Because we had turned our backs to the sun, the light was behind us. Now we are face to face with the light when we effect a right-about turn of our consciousness and behold things as they really are. It is a beholding—not by the eyes, but the spirit envisaging its own original in the very structure of all things. This beholding is a pressure which the little spirit in man cannot contain.

It is like the river, the little daughter of the ocean, finding herself in a state of ecstasy when she communes herself with her father, the ocean. The river jumps and dances when it touches the ocean. It is as if the whole treasure of the world is given to us—which we cannot contain, and we cannot even think in our mind. The tentative inability of the human spirit to gather itself up before this mighty Reality of the universe is the reason for the rapture, the ecstasy that one feels in heights of spiritual communion.

It is difficult to explain what one feels at that time. It doesn’t mean that we will be always in a state of ecstasy. The ecstasy ceases when we enter into the bosom of the ocean; but, until we touch it, until we enter into it, there is an inexplicable experience, and there is joy. At the same time there is also a danger, because there is a possibility of getting frightened and then wishing to revert to the little cocoon of the body once again—and expecting the great majesty to withdraw itself, as our little eyes cannot behold this blazing sun. “Enough of this!” said Arjuna to the Great Lord. “Come down! Bind yourself. I cannot behold you any more.”

Even when desirable things come to us in large quantities, beyond our comprehension, we cannot contain them—even though they are desirable things. Our desires are puerile, feeble instruments which cannot understand their own aims and objectives. Before desires are fulfilled thoroughly to the brim, overflowing and breaking the limits of even our requirements, we will not be able to contain or understand what is happening to us. Hence, even to fulfil desires is a danger because we do not want to fulfil them thoroughly, root and branch. There is a little defect and a foible even in our expression of desires. They are misguided, thoroughly. When we come face to face with the realities, the originals of things, we are touching the samadhi of consciousness.

As I mentioned previously, this entering into the truths or the archetypes of things seems to be taking place gradually, stage by stage, as we touch the waters of the ocean when we step in for a bath. Slowly we enter, little by little—first drenching our feet, then going knee deep, navel deep, neck deep and then, finally, plunging into it. Something like that seems to be the usual way in which the spirit enters the original, though this need not necessarily be the only way. There are occasions when we can be totally inundated in one stroke, but these are rare occasions—most blessed things, that all cannot expect. Usually it is a gradual process, though occasionally it can be a sudden thing. We shall not bother about the sudden things just now because to expect too much, also, is not a happy thing.

The graduated touching of the originals of things is the graduated samadhis of the yogas. When we behold the radiance, the beauty, the glamour, the fragrance, the taste and the majesty of the original, we get pulled towards it, as iron filings may be pulled towards a magnet. This pull is the urge towards samadhi.

We cannot explain in language what samadhi means, though the word is known to us and we have heard about it one hundred times. We may go on doing japa of this word, but we will not be able to make much sense out of it because the minds of most of us are not prepared for this experience. Yet, we wish to be confident within ourselves that we are intending to have this experience; that is why we are considering it here as a theme of our studies.

The creational process is a graduated descent of the Universal Reality into grosser and grosser forms until it becomes what we are seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling. I have touched upon the lower categories which we confront in our meditations. I do not propose to revert to the other minor details of the earlier stages which we have already considered, but to gather up our minds to where we are trying to gravitate, finally, as the goal of our existence.

The physical universe is the immediate reality before us. This is the object of consciousness. While we imagine that there are many objects, they can all be grouped together under a single object: the whole physical cosmos. Inasmuch as all the forms which have a physical connotation are included in the physical form of the five elements—earth, water, fire, air and ether—all the forms which we can think in our minds do not stand outside the formations of these five elements. Actually, we cannot think of what we have not seen or heard. Even when we hear things which we have not seen, we cannot conceive them properly.

For example, if we hear of heaven, we will imagine heaven in terms of what we have seen with our eyes. Unseen things cannot be imagined by the mind; and, all seen things are physically connected. The formations, the features, the shapes, and everything connected with these things are, somehow or other, related to the physical universe. All things in the world are physically constituted. Our bodies and everything that our bodies are related to, i.e. the physical objects, all objects of sense, these are a part of the physical cosmos. So, the spirit within man, the consciousness within us, directly confronts the physical cosmos.

This is not done at once. As the mind cannot think of the whole universe at one stroke, we are advised to take certain symbols for concentration—an image, a portrait, an idea, a picture, a candle flame, a flower—anything that is dear to us, and anything that can attract our attention. The whole universe cannot attract us, because we do not know what it is. Unseen things do not pull us towards themselves. Inasmuch as we seem to be concerned with what is visible and intelligible, the advice given by the masters is that we should, in the earlier stages, concentrate on those visible forms or concepts, externally or internally, which are dear to us, which we consider as our own and which we regard as very valuable—the most endearing things conceivable.

I mentioned previously that concentration on the object in yoga has, on the one side, a religious connotation and, on the other side, a purely psychological significance. The religiously conceived object is God as we think of Him—our Ishta Devata, our deity, our dear Lord, the God of the universe as we can envisage in our consciousness. It can be with form or without form, sitting in one place or everywhere—whatever the case may be. This is something which everyone can understand. There is not much of a difficulty here. Everyone has a God, and we may concentrate on our God.

The God that we think of is That, beyond which there cannot be a value for us. That is the meaning of God. If there is something superior to that object or ideal, that cannot be our God. Hence, to utilise that objective as an instrument to satisfy another need would be to misconstrue the whole aim and to regard the final goal as an instrument of another goal altogether. Therefore, the God that we think of in our minds should be the finality of things in which we can attain, achieve, or experience everything that we would like to attain, achieve, or experience.

We have to stretch our minds a little bit to conceive such an idea. As was pointed out before, the psychological concentration involves the process of breaking the knot which intensely ties up the mind to this body-consciousness and all the desires connected therewith. Intense concentration on any conceptual or physical point is an effective method of piercing through this network of mental operation, or psychological activity. We have to go on hammering this point again and again. A few minutes of thinking deeply will not do, because the mind is harder than a ball of steel. We can melt steel, but not the mind. The ego-consciousness is the steel point in us—flint-like, impossible to melt —and it requires great energy and force to bombard and break through it so that what is behind it, at the base of it, can be discovered.

Therefore, concentration on any point, whatever the point be from our own angle of vision, should be a perpetual habit of the mind. It is the only objective and aim of our life, and we are living here only for that purpose; we have no other duty to perform. Even if it appears as if we have other duties to perform in our daily life, they are subsidiary to this great duty, accessories to this duty, contributory to this duty—not opposed to this duty. All our functions in life are small rivulets moving towards this major stream of the movement of consciousness towards the ideal, the goal of yoga. Thus, we are gathered up in our spirits in an intensive aspiration for a communion with the original, of which the universe is a reflection.

Every object in this world has a threefold character: It is something in itself, it appears to be something to each one who beholds it, sees it, conceives it, contacts it, experiences it, and it has a relationship to other things, which is what we call the definition of an object. These are subtle points which are worth considering. Our concept of an object is nothing but a relation that we try to establish, psychologically, with other objects. Generally, when we look at any object, we do not understand how this process takes place. We take everything for granted, and do not probe into the intricacy of the process of perception.

The location of any particular object in the world and the cognition of its location is a result of a simultaneous rapid process of a relating of that thing with every other thing by comparison and contrast. The mind does this so quickly that we cannot even know how it has worked. If comparison and contrast are not there, no object can be visualised or known. This is what is called the definition of an object, creating in the mind an idea about that object independent of what the object is in itself.

Why go so far? Even in our social life—look at a mother seeing her child, and look at a physician seeing the child as a patient. Is there not a difference? The physician who treats the child as a patient has one idea of that child, and the mother has another idea of that child. They see two different things there. Perhaps, a tiger who is a man-eater may see a third thing altogether in that human body. It cannot see what the mother sees or what the physician sees. And a scientist viewing it through a microscope may see a fourth thing altogether. He will not see a child; it will appear as something else. The subtle microscope, which reveals the atomic structure of things, will not show the form of the child. It will look like something else.

I placed these as examples before you to give you an idea of the various possibilities of visualising of one and the same thing, and that the thing in itself may be quite different from the visualisations thereof. We have to concede that a thing is what it is from its own point of view and it may not necessarily be what it appears to others. My idea about you need not be the idea that you have about yourself or what you actually are. Thus, every object has a threefold character—two characters foisted upon it by the process of externalised perception, and one ontological status which is its own being.