Samadhi is the final stage of meditation. It is the eighth step of Yoga. As the meditation continues for a prolonged duration, one slips into this state of Samadhi.
The question is – “is meditation a necessary precondition to attain samadhi?”.
Let me narrate a small incident in Swami Vivekananda’s life.
Those were the colonial days with most western educated Indian Hindus, considering traditional Hindus as uneducated and superstitious. Vivekananda was a college student those days – may be in his early twenties.
Swami Vivekananda – just Narendra at that time - was a western educated young man, trained in a discipline that emphasized on logic and experimentation. Not that such an approach was alien to India, but somehow India had slipped into a completely faith driven society in those days.
Vivekananda had heard of a mad priest who officiated in a remote Kali temple in Dakshineshwar, Calcutta. Apparently, this mad priest, in his early 50s, used to speak to the Goddess Kali whom he worshiped. What is more, he even claimed that Kali spoke to him in return.
That mad priest was Ramakrishna Paramahamsa who later became Vivekananda’s Guru.
There was a religious gathering organized in the house of a rich man. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was expected to attend that function. So, out of curiosity to see this mad priest, Vivekananda too attended this gathering.
There were Bhajans and Kirtans – Hindu devotional songs, and the crowd was totally immersed in religious fervor. Ramakrishna too was actively participating in the singing.
Then all of a sudden, Ramakrishna stood up. With a hand raised up, Ramakrishna stood like a statue totally frozen, as if. There was absolutely no movement in his body. He was almost like a dead man with his minimal body functions hardly palpable.
At first Vivekananda was amused. He thought that the mad priest was displaying one of his stunts. But the entire crowd was spell bound. There was utter silence and all eyes were set on the frozen Ramakrishna!
Minutes passed, but no change in Ramakrishna.
By now, Vivekananda knew that the mad priest is not acting but there is something serious going on. His analytical mind was trying to figure out what was happening. He felt that it must be some form of epileptic seizure or some kind of brain disorder!
But later Vivekananda came to know that that was not the first time this mad man had gone into that state. He used to go into such a state frequently at ‘the drop of any hat’.
Was this madness, or was it something far beyond any mundane physical condition? – Vivekananda kept thinking when he returned from the gathering.
Vivekananda had a keen interest in spiritual practices. He was a member of the Brahma Samaj which propagated a monistic form of Hindu ideology that looked down on mass Hindu practices as superstition.
Vivekananda used to meditate a lot. He had his own personal experiences and he was not unaware of Samadhi as a culminating stage of meditation.
But here is a mad priest who gets into a ‘still state’ at almost any time even without meditating! Moreover, this priest was an uneducated Brahmin with not even formal religious education. How can one explain whatever he did other than dismissing it as mere pranks of a mad man?
Just like Vivekananda you too may be wondering about the strange behavior of Ramakrishna. It is not that Ramakrishna never meditated. He used to spend hours every day, in meditation. A tantric lady Bhairavi had initiated him in Tantric meditative techniques long back.
But was the state that Ramakrishna entered every now and then a Samadhi state? He was not meditating in those occasions! Can one experience Samadhi even when one is not meditating? How different that state is from the state that one reaches when one meditates for a prolonged duration?
These were the questions haunting even Vivekananda. He later met Ramakrishna personally and asked him to explain whatever he was going through every now and then.
How did Ramakrishna explain his experiences? We will see that in the next episode.
A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King, Swami Satyapriya 2019-2020
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