“I have often said that yoga is meditation and meditation is yoga”
B.K.S. Iyengar
Meditation is bringing the complex mind to a state of simplicity and innocence but without ignorance. Meditation comes when ego is vanquished. As the seventh petal of yoga, it can be reached by progressing through all other stages of yoga practice. But the eight petal, samadhi, comes as the fruit of meditation. It arrives by the Grace of God and cannot be forced. Samadhi is the state in which the aspirant becomes one with the object of meditation, the Supreme Soul pervading the universe, where there is a feeling of unutterable joy and peace.
The focus is one the surrender, and fusion, of the individual Self in the Ocean of Being. It is not merely the transcendence of ego but the dissolution of self, as we know it, a hiatus in the ongoing experience of self. It brings us to the original illusion of separation between Creator and created. It is truth incarnate. It is truth in spirit. It is the divine marriage of Nature and the Universal soul. It is existential and super-existential bliss, total absorption in Origin and End. It is to be born to the eternal.
For most of us, now and throughout past history, samadhi remains theoretical. Yet yoga shows the way to this lofty peak. For the vast majority, it is envisageable only as a heavenly landscape of beatitude that we conjure up through imagination. Yet do not think for a second that I am saying that it is not real or that you cannot reach it.
To discover the individual soul you need inspiration, the creative force of breathing in. To discover the cosmic soul you need the courage to release, to breath out, to make the ultimate surrender. Do not be discouraged. The Divine Will impels humankind to this end. Hold the soul, not just the breath. There is a space between surrender and acceptance. You surrender to the Lord, and the Lord accepts your surrender. And, to accept, time and space are needed. That is retention.
B.K.S. Iyengar
Light on Life
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