Vedantham : ( 07/11/2012. )

31/03/2018 10.The Stages of Samadhi- 13. Now, Sage Patanjali tells us it is possible for us to enter into the essence of the object, as we have been able to enter into our own essence and come to the conclusion that there is something in us which is not so involved in space and time. This contemplation of any particular thing as something in itself, not involved in space and time, would be to attempt at a union with that object. What prevents us from coming in union with anything? It is the externality of the object. That which is outside is always outside – it cannot become something that is inside – and, as we have noted, the outsideness of a thing is the spatio-temporality of that thing, or the conditioned character of that thing in space. So, the freedom of the object from the thought of involvement in space and time is at once the grasping of the eternal principle that is in that object. And eternity is not temporality; it is not time, it is not space. But you may as...

15/03/2018 10.The Stages of Samadhi- 12. The Yoga Sutra, or any system of yoga, catches hold of this point. If there is something in us which knows the involvement of things in space and time, and therefore that something in us cannot itself be part and parcel of space and time, this can also be said to be the essence of every other object. If we can consider ourselves essentially as something not in space and time, anyone else also can think in the same way, and all objects in the world – even an atom, even a particle of sand – can be thought of in terms of something by itself, and capable of being known as not involved in space and time. This non-involved something which knows the involvements in space and time is the eternity that is speaking through temporality. The eternal something in us speaks in its own style that everything is temporally involved, and the knowledge of temporality cannot itself be a part of temporality. This eternity that is in someone is also...

06/03/2018 10.The Stages of Samadhi- 11. In philosophical circles, certain schools of thinking tell us again and again that a thing as such can never be known because all thinking is through space and time and by the conditions of thought; therefore, there is no such thing as knowing a thing as it is in itself. We may feel for the time being we are satisfied with this kind of statement of the philosopher, because we know very well what actually he means. We accept the fact that our minds are accustomed to think in a particular way only. There is a set, logical way of thinking, and we cannot jump out of this set mould of logical thought. So it is true that even when we are trying to think in a super-logical way, we are not actually freeing ourselves from the conditions in which the very thought is involved. But, that there is something called the thing as it is in itself, and it cannot be known under the circumstances of the placement of the mind in space and time, is a subtl...