my practice has now become. My asana is meditative, and my practice
of pranayama is devotional. Meditation itself is the final conquest and
dissolution of the ego, the false self, which impersonates the Real Self.
Once duality is reconciled and transcended, by the grace of God, the
supreme gift of samadhi may be granted.
In the final stage of samadhi (union), the individual self, with all
its attributes, merges with the Divine Self, with the Universal Spirit.
Yogis realize that the divine is not more heavenward than inward and
in this final quest of the soul, seekers become seers. In this way they ex
perience the divine at the core of their being. Samadhi is usually de
scribed as the final freedom, freedom from the wheel of karma, of
cause and effect, action and reaction. Samadhi has nothing to do with
perpetuating our mortal self. Samadhi is an opportunity to encounter
our imperishable Self before the transient vehicle of body disappears,
as in the cycle of nature, it surely must.
Yogis, however, do not stay in this stage of exalted bliss, but when
they return to the world their actions are different, as they know in
their innermost being that the divine unites us all and that a word or
action done to another is ultimately done equally to oneself. Yoga con
siders actions to be of four kinds: black-those that bring only ill con
sequences; grey-those whose effects are mixed; white-those that
hring good results; and a fourth, those that are without color, in which
action brings no reaction. These last are the deeds of the enlightened
yogi, who can act in the world without further chaining himself to the
karmic wheel of becoming, or causality. Even white actions, con
sciously performed with good intent, bind us to a future in which we
must harvest the good results. An example of a white action might be
!hat if a lawyer, for the sake of justice, were to struggle to save an in
nocent man who is wrongly accused. But if a child were to dash into
l he road in front of an oncoming car, and you, in a flash, without a
�econd's reflection, snatched the child out of harm's way, it would lw
like a yogi's action, that is to say, one based on direct, instantaneous
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