Yoga Practice

When the mind is on its way to pass into the samadhi state, it is in a state of oscillation as it were between its passage into ordinary consciousness and the samadhi consciousness, until the samadhi power is sufficiently strong to prevent the invasion of ordinary consciousness. In the passage of the samadhi consciousness into higher and higher stages there is also the same oscillation, and then finally in the passage of the mind into the nirodha or asamprajnata state of absolute contentless arrest, there is the oscillation of the mind between the asamprajnata nirodha, and the samprajnata state of the asmita type, till at last the nirodha potency having destroyed the samprajnata potencies (samskara), the citta having illuminated by its extreme translucent character, the true nature of the self finally returns to prakrti. Here it is that the returning process which had once begun in the samadhi state being continued and brought to the buddhi is led back to to its ultimate equilibrium as prakrti by the gradual process of the disintegrating power, and thus the returning tendency of prakrti is finally realized. The forward movement of the prakrti had begun from beginningless time, and was satisfying itself by binding the purusha, and now the backward movement brings it back to itself, never to come out again for the bondage of the purusha. The final prajnas which help the movement of this returning process are said to be of seven kinds. The first four are as states of consciousness associated with the four stages of samadhi. The first one dawns in the form: "I have known the world, the object of suffering and misery, I have nothing more to know of it." The second is of the form: "The grounds and roots of the samskara. have been thoroughly uprooted, nothing more of it remains to be uprooted." The third is of the form: "Removal has become a fact of direct cognition by means of inhibitive trance." The fourth is of the form: "The means of knowledge in the shape of discriminative knowledge has been understood." This is the fourfold freedom of conscious discrimination from external phenomena. The three prajnas that rise after this are not psychological states of mind but metaphysical and real states of the disintegrating process of the return of the citta to prakrti These moments are as follows: (1) The double purposes of buddhi, bhoga (ordinary experience) and apavarga (salvation) have been realized; (2) The strong gravitating tendency of the disintegrated gunas drive them into the prakrti like heavy stones dropped from high hilltops, and they finally collapse into the prakrti substance where they remain merged forever; (3) the purusha having passed beyond the bondage of the three, shines forth in its own pure and ultimate freedom.

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