We may, now, resume and sum up our studies on the profundities of yoga-samadhi, or samapatti, for purpose of a better comprehension. The meditation on the categories of the Samkhya, which is known as the samapatti, goes also by the name of samadhi, a gradual absorption of the meditating principle in the object of meditation. We have seen the four earlier stages which go by the name of the Savitarka, Nirvitarka, Savichara and Nirvichara attainments. The object associated with name and idea and the object as such in its own status unqualified by the idea of the percipient and by the name associated with it, both in its gross and subtle forms, is the content of these stages. When the contemplation is practised on gross forms, it is savitarka or nirvitarka when associated or not associated with conditioning factors. When the meditating consciousness so gets absorbed in the object that the idea of the object and the name of the object drop out altogether and there is a consciousness of the object alone, independently, without any kind of external associations, where one becomes the true friend of the object, not merely an observer or a judge of the object, but an organic mass of sentience in which the object is dissolved, as it were, in one's being - that is to be known as the great freedom of the self.

When you commune with the gross form of the object, you become the object itself, in essence. You occupy its own position and there is an interchange of characters. The subject enters into the object, or, you may say, the other way round, the object enters into the subject. There is an equilibrium established between the status of the subject and that of the object. This equilibrium is known as samadhi. The object does not any more stand in the position of something which you have to describe or hold an opinion about or judge, etc. There is no necessity any more to have ideas about the object. It does not any longer exist as an object at all.

This is as regards the gross form of the object. But, it has a subtle form wherein it exists not as a tangible solid object, but as a force which is called the Tanmatra, the subtle essential principle, the power, or the constitutive element which is more general and pervasive in its character than the isolated form of the gross object. This is a stage which cannot be conceived in the mind at present. We can speak about it as if we understand it, but really it cannot enter into our heads because we do not know what this essential force is behind the physical object. We can only stretch our thought and visualise that every physical object is constituted of an electromagnetic force in its core.

We cannot see this force but only conceive in a laboured manner what this electromagnetic constitution of an object could be. These stages in yoga are not subjects for discussion or academic description. They are stages of actual experience and we describe them for the purpose of a guidance that is given beforehand to the student as a sort of fore-warning concerning what is going to come and what is to be encountered. The invariable feature of everything, whether it is gross or subtle, is its position or location in space and in time. This is an important fact which we have to bear in mind. Everything is in space; space is inseparable from time, and time is inseparable from space. These days we say it is 'space-time' and not 'space-and-time'. The two are not different things. When the one is there, the other is also there, automatically.

But, everything is in space-time, whatever be the intensity of our thought in regard to an object, gross or subtle. We will find that we cannot escape the predicament of space-time-association when we conceive of anything. Even when we think of such featureless things as electricity or the electromagnetic field, which is really not a space-time content, we have somehow to imagine that it is some power that is moving like air in space. The so-called electricity or electromagnetic power can be imagined only as a content of space-time. It exists somewhere. Even if it exists everywhere it is in space, and it exists sometime. It is now, it was here, it will be there, etc., are unavoidable notions. These ideas cannot leave us. And, this is the last trouble that we have to face in our quest. The notion of the grossness of the object is also a difficulty which we have to overcome by an intensive self-identification by which we drop the idea of the object and the name associated with it, and 'become' it rather. But more difficult is the other problem of the 'location' of the object in space-time. We cannot get over this idea as long as we remain as human beings.

This stage of meditation is not a stage of human thinking; we are no more supposed to be persons, thinking something, because when we remain as persons, we are in space and time. The subtle form, the tanmatra, is then taken up for consideration and it becomes the object of meditation. But it is in space-time, again. So we deeply ponder, brood over, meditate upon this subtle pervasive principle behind the element, the tanmatra, the force that is inherent in and forms all that is gross, as conditioned by space-time, because we cannot do anything else. We have to agree that it is in space and in time, due to the very limitations of the mind which cannot think in any other way. This association of consciousness with the subtle principles behind the elements, as conditioned by space and time, is a tendency towards an absorption of a higher order.

Things as they are in themselves, the thing-in-itself, the reality that is independent of any association with the perceiving consciousness, the reality that is unconditioned, and not the reality as we think it, is not in space, not in time. The pervasive character of reality, the omnipresence of it, precludes any interference in the form of space-time associations, for, to be in space and time is to be located somewhere and sometime. But reality is not somewhere and sometime. It is everywhere and at all times. Now, we cannot imagine what it is to be everywhere and to be at all times, because our imagination can conceive this everywhereness only as a kind of existence inside space, though it is everywhere in space, and an existence for a lengthened period of time, an indefinite period, for, the idea of time does not leave us.

Even when we think of an indefinite, endless period of time, we are thinking of time only. But reality is timeless and not endless duration. Even if we are to conceive of an infinitude of the series of durational existences of something, we are thinking in terms of space and time, again. But the absorption becomes so intense that the ideas of space and time evaporate into pure being. The thing ceases to be a thing by itself. Neither are we somewhere, nor is the thing anywhere. The idea of 'where' and 'when' does not arise. This, again, is an unintelligible experience for the beginner. No human being ever born can imagine what this state can be, where space is not, and time is not, too. Even the idea of there being no space and time is in space and time. When you abolish the idea of space and time, you have done this feat in space and time only.

We cannot escape this difficulty however much we may try. It comes as a direct experience which each one has to pass through and know by one's own self. This is a stage where one becomes a superhuman force and not an individual any more. No more is the humanness present there. The individual is taken possession of by the powers of the universe. One becomes a part and parcel of the entire Nature in its vast expanse. Man, then, is not a national of any country; one is no more a man or a woman. One is, then, not a human being at all. Nothing on earth can be adequate to describe one's presence there. The 'I' and the 'you' are not there. The ideas of 'you' and 'I' cease. This is the penultimate state of the divine merger of the individual in the Supreme Reality.

The union has not taken place, as yet, but it is as if one has touched the ocean of Being and is enchanted by its very contact, is transformed through every fibre of one's being, and the iron that man is has become the gold, the philosopher's stone, of that great reality. The soul reveals itself in its pristine purity. The peace that passeth understanding, the joy of the soul, reveals itself here, and one is happy merely because one is. The very fact of being becomes a source of inexpressible and immeasurable satisfaction. One exists not as a person but as a Super-Person, a Super-Individual, a God-Man.

This joy itself is an object of experience. There is no object any more, in the sense of the objects we speak of. We have been referring to objects on which we have to meditate or do samyama. Now, there is no more the object. The gross form of the object has gone; even the subtle has been transcended. The self is in possession of the infinite joy of a cosmic comprehensiveness. This joy is an experience, inasmuch as consciousness experiences this joy. The joy itself is the object of consciousness; though for all practical purposes, joy cannot be regarded as an object in the ordinary sense, it does not remain any more outside consciousness. Yet there is a supreme Self-Consciousness of a universal character, though not the self-consciousness that we have as individuals. It is an indescribable, pure and subtle Awareness of Being which remains at the time of that experience - a joy that does not come from things and objects, because they are not any more there - a joy that is the very characteristic of the Self, the Consciousness, supervenes.