What is Knowledge : Ch-9-15.

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10/11/2017

Chapter 9: Yoga Meditation -15.

Thus, the thing that we are trying to achieve in meditation is not merely the inward association in a literal sense, to be achieved by the subject in relation to the object. It is inward in a different sense altogether, namely, the transcendent meaning implied in the relationship between the contemplating consciousness and the object is inward to both the two terms of the relation we call the subject and the object – consciousness, and its content.

This is something I tried to explain on an earlier occasion. In an act of deep meditation, the consciousness neither thinks of itself nor of the object as an outsider. It is trying to overcome the limit set by its own localised existence and the apparent localised existence of its outwardness in the sense of an object.

There is a larger being which includes the meditative subject as well as the object meditated upon. This association of consciousness with that transcendent something lying beyond and yet implicit in both the subject and the object is what we call samadhi in yoga.

It is not a mere blankness of the mind; it is an intense awareness of our having broken the limitations of our personality, and also outgrown the limitations of that which we call our object or our environment, to which I made reference already. This is the height of yoga meditation.

Here, we are achieving a purpose which is the purpose of everybody in the world. It is the purpose for which the universe is apparently evolving from stage to stage. It is the intention of the cosmos. In a way, we may say, in the act of meditation we are participating in the purpose of the world, in the intention of the cosmos, in the fulfilment of the direction of the universe as a whole.

Thus, there is nothing peculiar, strange, or weird about yoga mediation. It is a most necessary, invariable concomitant of any purposive and large-hearted existence.

To be continued ...

Swami Krishnananda

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