You first have to cease to be an ordinary human being. You have to be a little more
than an ordinary human being to be able to fit yourself into this technique. I would
say, rather, you must be a superhuman being. Otherwise, it is no use—you cannot go
further than a mere attempt at the concentration of mind. The best and farthest
reach of ordinary minds is only the point of concentration; beyond that you cannot
go. But our aim is something more. It is always said, “God-realisation is the goal of
life,” and you can know what it is. Realisation means identity of being. It is not
looking at something, or accosting someone, or speaking a language. It is an
absorption of being into Being that is called Realisation. God-realisation would mean
the absorption of your being into God-being, which implies, again, the cessation of
your personality completely. Otherwise, there is no absorption of being, which is
what is meant by ‘communion’. All that contributes to the affirmation of
individuality, anything that asserts the adamantine existence of personality and all
those things which are pleasant to the ego in one way or the other become
impediments there. In the beginning we have to abolish all those things which are
pleasant to the ego. What are the things that please us? They are the obstacles. Then,
later on, the ego itself is the obstacle.
Thus, we conclude our analysis of this important sutra in the Vibhuti Pada of
Patanjali: tadeva arthamātranirbhāsaṁ svarūpaśūnyam iva samādhiḥ (III.3). He has very
carefully introduced a peculiar term, ‘svarūpaśūnyam iva’: our svarupa has ceased to
be. Up to this time we had a svarupa or a status of our own: “I am something
physically, socially, psychologically, etc.” This ‘something’ that we regard ourselves to
be, ceases completely. Whatever we regarded ourselves to be—socially,
psychologically, rationally, intellectually, morally, physically, whatever it is—all this
is not our essential nature. This svarupa, which grew around us as a kind of fungus,
is completely scrubbed out because it was only an accretion that grew over our
personality. It was not our real nature and, therefore, it looks as if our svarupa, or
our personality itself, has gone.
When the individuality goes, the personality must go, because the personality is
nothing but the outer contour of the inner stuff which is the individuality. And, we
have found out what the core of this individuality is. It is the ego, the asmita. So,
when the root is plucked out, everything else goes—it withers and shivers and falls
down. ‘Arthamātranirbhāsaṁ’ and ‘svarūpaśūnyam iva’ are the two terms which define
the character of samadhi. It is a consciousness of the object as the subject, which
automatically implies the abolition of a separate subjectivity of the meditator,
because there cannot be two subjects. The moment we begin to conceive two
subjects, one of them becomes an object in respect of the other and so there is an
identity of subjectivity. We may say, in this identity of subjectivity, that we assume a
non-individual awareness. In this condition it is that we rise above the limitations
which had up to this time restricted consciousness to certain feelings, in respect of
itself.
Ultimately, the last restricting factor, namely space and time, also get absorbed into
consciousness because they too stand as objects before consciousness. When
subjectivity has entered into the object, it implies that this subjectivity has entered
into space and time also, because that also is an object. When subjectivity enters into
space, what happens? We cannot see anything in this world afterwards, because
seeing anything, or experiencing anything as an outward object, is due to an
externality of space—the objectivity of space. If space itself has become the subject,