THE BODY IN FLOW ■ 1 05this volume—to achieve control over what happens in the mind.
Although the remaining three stages do not properly belong to
the present chapter—they involve the control of consciousness through
purely mental operations, rather than physical techniques—we shall
discuss them here for the sake of continuity, and also because these
mental practices are, after all, solidly based on the earlier physical ones.
Dharana, or “holding on,” is the ability to concentrate for long periods
on a single stimulus, and thus is the mirror image of the earlier stage of
pratyahara; first one learns to keep things out of the mind, then one
learns to keep them in. Intense meditation, or dhyana, is the next step.
Here one learns to forget the self in uninterrupted concentration that
no longer needs the external stimuli of the preceding phase. Finally the
yogin may achieve samadhi, the last stage of “self-collectedness,” when
the meditator and the object of meditation become as one. Those who
have achieved it describe samadhi as the most joyful experience in their
lives.
The similarities between Yoga and flow are extremely strong; in
fact it makes sense to think of Yoga as a very thoroughly planned flow
activity. Both try to achieve a joyous, self-forgetful involvement through
concentration, which in turn is made possible by a discipline of the
body. Some critics, however, prefer to stress the differences between flow
and Yoga. Their main divergence is that, whereas flow attempts to fortify
the self, the goal of Yoga and many other Eastern techniques is to
abolish it. Samadhi, the last stage of Yoga, is only the threshold for
entering Nirvana, where the individual self merges with the universal
force like a river blending into the ocean. Therefore, it can be argued,
Yoga and flow tend toward diametrically opposite outcomes.
But this opposition may be more superficial than real. After all,
seven of the eight stages of Yoga involve building up increasingly higher
levels of skill in controlling consciousness. Samadhi and the liberation
that is supposed to follow it may not, in the end, be that significant—
they may in one sense be regarded as the justification of the activity that
takes place in the previous seven stages, just as the peak of the mountain
is important only because it justifies climbing, which is the real goal of
the enterprise. Another argument favoring the similarity of the two
processes is that, even till the final stage of liberation, the yogin must
maintain control over consciousness. He could not surrender his self
unless he was, even at the very moment of surrender, in complete
control of it. Giving up the self with its instincts, habits, and desires is
so unnatural an act that only someone supremely in control can accom
plish it.