from the associations that we have created in respect of it by thinking of it as lovable
or not loveable, pleasurable or otherwise, liked or not liked, tall or short, etc. An
object is neither tall nor short—this also is a very important thing to remember.
Tallness and shortness, thickness and thinness, etc., are relative terms. If I bring
before you a shirt and ask you, “Is it a big shirt or a small shirt?” you cannot say it is
big or small because it depends upon the person. If it is a small child, he will say it is
too big; if it is for a big man, he will say it is too small. We cannot say anything about
any object unless we compare it with something else. This comparison should be
removed. We must take it as it is; and nothing can be more difficult than this task.
We cannot take anything as it is. We cannot take our own selves as we really are.
Even we are invested with certain false values. We are really something different
from what we appear. Everyone knows that. Likewise, everything else is different
from what we think about it, so that there is a complete confusion in every kind of
perception of the world. This is why we call it a world of relativities, where every
characteristic hangs on something else. Independently, nothing is known. Hence the
stages, or the bhumis, or the levels of the practice of samyama are the gradual
characterisations of the object, going deeper and deeper, freeing it more and more
from external association.
Ultimately, what is in the mind of Patanjali is that we have to meditate upon the
various stages through which prakriti passes in the manifestation of this world, the
grossest of them being the five elements—earth, water, fire, air and ether—of which
every physical object is made. What he expects us to do is to resolve every object into
the five elements. We do not see a son, a daughter, etc.; we see only the five elements,
because they are resolvable into these five elements. The body of that person, the
body of this object, or whatever it is, is capable of reduction to the level of the five
physical elements of which they are constituted.
Then Patanjali wants us to go above to the tanmatras, the subtle rudimentary
principles out of which the physical elements are made. Then he wants us to go above
to the cosmical principle of ahamkara tattva, the Universal ‘I’ which affirms the
manifestation of this cosmos on one side as the physical universe, and on the other
side as the individual perceivers—jivas. And so it goes up, stage by stage, until the
supreme purusha is realised. That ultimate union is the aim of yoga; but for that we
have to attain union by stages at lower levels. We have to attain this communion, or
absorption, or samyama, at each level of practice. These different levels of
absorption are called the bhumis.