We were discussing the strange and unusual experience that Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used to go through every now and then. What was it?
Let me start with a simple analogy.
Have you observed a bee circling around a flower? What does it do?
It then goes round and round the flower before finally settling on it. Once it settles down, the fluttering of its wings stops. The humming too stops. But the bee is still quite agitated.
It feels the center of the flower – the source of nectar it is looking for. It is happy that it found it at last. It lowers its head and starts sucking in the nectar.
Once that starts, all of a sudden, the agitation stops. The bee is totally engrossed in sucking the nectar. It is totally unaware of the outside world! It knows nothing but the nectar. It has become one with the flower, as if.
Ramakrishna used to give this simile to explain how he felt before he entered that still state. He was dancing, singing like everyone else. He was gradually filled with ecstasy. In that ecstatic state, there was no dancing, no singing, not even the awareness of what he was doing! In fact, there was no awareness at all and he was almost like dead!
If you are a devotional type of person who sings devotional songs, no matter whether it is Hindu Bhajans, Christian carols, or even recitation of Holy Quran, you probably have gone through such an experience.
As you sing, you seem to be going through a flood of gradually intensifying emotions. In the beginning you will be enjoying the narratives in the lyrics – the beautiful imagery it creates, the heart touching feelings it arouses and so on.
But as you move on, you seem to be less and less interested in the meaning of individual words, but only in the general mood captured by the lyrics.
A stage later, only the tune or melody of the song seizes your attention. And you stop singing and just start humming the tune. Your heart would be filled with inexplicable joy. Tears of joy would be running down your eyes.
You have no explanation for the feelings you are going through but you are happy – happy beyond anything you have ever experienced. The emotion gets so intense that you would even stop humming all together, and you would remain frozen in that state with no external awareness at all.
In that state, you are neither aware that you were supposed to be singing, nor you are aware of the intense emotion you are going through. In fact, you are not aware of your existence itself. You just continue to remain in that state which is beyond the Mind for quite a long time.
Have you ever gone through such an experience? If you have, you are lucky. What you went through was Samadhi.
Even if you never had such an experience, believe me, it is possible. And that is the experience Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used to have. Ramakrishna was not meditating. But the stage he reached was no different from the stage a meditator would attain at the culmination of his meditative practice.
In one case, there is a purposeful attempt to enter the Samadhi through the long process of Yoga. In the other, there is a quick jump into the ultimate stage, guided by shear force of emotion and intense devotion.
Some call such a Samadhi as Bhava Samadhi. Bhava means emotion. So, a Samadhi that is driven by intense emotion or Bhava.
Though Ramakrishna may not have been aware of the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, nor the detailed discussion on the various stages of Yogic meditation, his simile is an excellent description of the stages one goes through when one meditates. Though he uses crude informal words, the stages are quite similar.
We will discuss this beautiful similarity, more formally, 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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