Taila dhara is the flow of the oil from one vessel to another. A continuous stream is
there, and such should be the stream of the flow of thought of the subject towards the
object. That is called dhyana, or meditation. There is no interruption of thought;
there is no breaking of the flow; there is no driplet or droplet of the mind. It is a
continuous movement without any kind of intervention of any other thought. In the
dhyana, or the meditation process, there is not even the attempt at the elimination of
extraneous thought, because there is no extraneous thought—there is only one
thought. When we are fondling our dearest of objectives, we cannot have the time to
think of eliminating other thoughts. The other thoughts do not exist and,
therefore, the question of eliminating them does not arise. There is only that
which we want, and our heart has gone for it; and it has drawn, together with it,
all the accessories—the thought, the will, the memory, everything. That is tatra
pratyaya ekatānatā dhyānam (III.2).
Tadeva arthamātranirbhāsaṁ svarūpaśūnyam iva samādhiḥ (III.3): The total absorption
of the meditating consciousness on the form of the object, with such intensity as to
forget its own existence, as it were, and to identify itself with the object with such
force that it looks as if the object itself—not the subject—is meditating; that is called
samadhi. These sutras are very important. Deśa bandhaḥ cittasya dhāraṇā (III.1) is the
definition of concentration. The fixing of the attention of the mind on a particular
spot or objective is concentration. Tatra pratyaya ekatānatā dhyānam (III.2): ‘There
itself’, that means to say, at the very point of concentration when the flow of the mind
becomes continuous, without any kind of interruption—that is called meditation, or
dhyana.
Tadeva arthamātranirbhāsaṁ iva (III.3): That meditation itself becomes samadhi.
How? When it becomes arthamatranirbhasam—that is, the object only shines; the
subject has vanished out of sight. We do not exist there any more. We have
evaporated like burnt-up camphor, as it were, and our residuum is absent. There is
nothing to call our own—our existence itself has lifted itself up to the level of the
object. Tadeva arthamātranirbhāsaṁ svarūpaśūnyam iva. The svarupa is the self-
consciousness of the subject, the individuality or the self-sense. That has become
absent. There is a vanishing of personality; that is called svarupasunyata—that is
called samadhi. The term ‘samadhi’ in Sanskrit means the balancing of
consciousness. Sama adhana, the equilibrated condition of consciousness, where it
establishes a total harmony in content and intensity between itself and its object, is
called samadhi.
Generally, this kind of balance between the subject and the object is not maintained
in ordinary perception. There is always a dichotomy, a gulf between the seer and the
seen; therefore, there is no proper communication of the one with the other except by
way of artificial contact by the senses. But in this deep absorption of consciousness,
the contact of the subject with the object is not sensory. It is not at all contact in the
ordinary sense. It is not one thing coming in contact with another thing. It is not a
juxtaposition of one object with another. It is not the proximity of one thing with
another. It is the commingling of one with the other—water mixing with water, milk
with milk, so that one cannot know which is what; both have become one mass. This
sort of experience, where there is an utter equilibration of consciousness with its
object so that one does not know which is consciousness and which is the object,
where they stand on equal footing in every respect—that condition is called samadhi.
It is not merely the flowing of consciousness towards the object. The flowing stops.