Samadhi is one of the carrots that becomes a stick in the motivating configuration of yoga practice. I’m going to enquire into the possibility of taking off the distracting gloss of its esoteric status. My friend Kisen went with enthusiasm to Mysore in 1990 and left the famous yoga shala after just a few minutes of disgust at what he called the ‘circus’ atmosphere and energy: no disrespect intended to circuses. Nevertheless he went to another teacher and while in Mysore hung out with what he called ‘the luminaries of the ashtanga world.’   Being a rogue by nature, Kisen was going to extract from them any gems they may have received from their guru without having to pay the full financial and physical price: not wanting to have his pockerts or his hip sockets damaged.  So he interrogated all of these stars of the ashtanga firmament as to what it was all about.  ‘What are you doing this for?’  The answer was always the same: ‘samadhi.  We’re doing this to get samadhi.’   So being an intelligent young man, Kisen said: ‘Ah.  How do you get that?’  The answer came always: ‘Master the sixth series.’  Now it may well not be known to you that only the gurus grandson is allowed to do the sixth series.  No body else is allowed to. Kisen did not believe for one second that samadhi could be bought at the price of becoming a contortionist.  He was far too intelligent to believe that: being uneducated and therefor not having been ruined by addiction to conceptualised knowledge,

But even when people do not approach yoga as if it were an extreme form of contortionism, even if their approach to yoga is more refined or more ‘spiritual’ and are seeking samadhi by sitting and meditating, the implicit assumption usually is that samadhi comes at a great cost of effort and skill.  Moreover, that samadhi comes only to a few: the elect, the elite.  This could not be further from the truth.  Samadhi is the very ground of your being.  The very ground of your consciousness, the very ground of your life.  But so obsessed have you become with what’s in the air: with words, concepts, ideas that you’re not looking at the ground.  You’re looking over the horizon, into the future.  So the participation of samadhi as the ground of your life, even though you are benefiting from it, is not as beneficial as it could be were you able to see clearly the ground upon which you walk.

When you are listening with delight to the song of a bird or the sound of waves upon the sea shore or to the Sex Pistols or Mozart, you are not just listening to sound.  You are listening through sounds perhaps, but what you are hearing is the relationship between sound and silence.  The organisation of sounds relative to silence, producing the particularities of rhythm and cadence. So that in the relationship of sound to silence, music is heard.  Silence is not heard.  But music is heard, not just sound arbitrarily struck: because silence is experienced but not heard.  Silence obviously cannot be heard.  That’s what silence means: nothing to be heard. 

But nothing to be heard does not mean that silence cannot be experienced, or be benefited from.  Samadhi is like this, as subtle, as elusive, as signless as silence: but as ever present, as significant, as participatory in the fluctuations of your consciousness as silence is in the organisation of sound into music: or even words into meaning.  Just because silence has no sign, no audible characteristic and just because samadhi has no sign and no discernable, perceptible characteristic does not mean that they don’t exist.  It does not mean that in not being recognised they are not present and that they have no significance.  It actually means the opposite.  It means that they derive their significance from having no overt characteristic, from having no sign. 

It is samadhi that organises your perceptions, that breaks your perceptions up.  In between every perception is a silence and this is samadhi.  Unnoticed, signless but nevertheless there all the time.  The signlessness of samadhi is more present than any particular perception.  No individual specific sign or perception is more present in your life than samadhi is.  Samadhi is the essence of consciousness, the spine on which everything else hangs: and it’s just there.  Or more accurately, just here. By nature of the fact that we are here, that we are alive, it need not be won, bought, achieved or struggled for.  It cannot be fought for, it cannot be achieved.  It succumbs to no effort.  All effort whatsoever drives it away. 

You could say ‘falling into samadhi’ is very like falling into sleep.  It is so incredibly like falling asleep that people meditating normally assume they’ve just woken up when in fact they’ve just popped out of samadhi.  In a sense they have just woken up: but they’ve not woken up from unconsciousness.  They’ve woken up from pure consciousness: from nirbijasamadhi to consciousness of particular perceptions. Perceptions which are distinguished, separated, organised within and by the sign-less background of nirbijasamadhi.  Nirbija means no sign, no condition, no characteristic, no quality at all.  Nirbijasamadhi is an absence of perception that is happening all the time that you’re awake, as well as when you’re asleep, in alternation with perception.

You’re benefiting from nirbijasamadhi in your being able to distinguish perceptions, in being able to function.  Without nirbijasamadhi you would not be able to perceive, or to function.  But you’re benefiting from it also because in the moment that nirbijasamadhi separates thought, your mind is totally at rest; your brain is totally at rest.  You are being rested.  If you did not have that rest you’d probably need to sleep for 20 or 22 hours a day to make up for a couple of hours of constant mental activity.  But as it is, mental activity is punctuated by bouts, pockets and slithers of silence resting our minds. 

If we wish to benefit from nirbijasamadhi more, if we wish to be rested more deeply by it, there is nothing that we can do.  All we can do is enquire into the possibility of letting go of some of our habituated doing.  In letting go of that doing, the space for samadhi may open as we relax enough for the mind to relinquish its concerns. Concerns that it uses to organise our life, to protect and uphold our life, to respond to events.  The ability to respond to events depends upon events and their participating objects being known, recognised, perceived.  Perception, recognition, of any phenomenon is a function of mental effort.  It’s in the letting go of effort that samadhi flourishes, flowers and pours forth. 

However nirbijasamadhi is signless, attributeless, qualityless; therefore its pouring forth is not to be directly experienced.  This does not mean that it is not to be benefited from.  Nor does it not mean that it can’t be recognised. This is not so hard.  When I describe this process I’m quite sure that you all will recognise it, that you all will be familiar with it: unless you’ve never, ever meditated.  Unless you were just sitting here this morning and Saturday morning thinking about things.

You may have even tasted nirbijasamadhi in balasana.  Balasana is the context in which I invite nirbijasamadhi to happen for you right from the very first class without letting on what I’m doing.  When your exhalation dissolves into the awareness of the passive quality of your core, what perhaps also dissolves, along with the exhalation, is your perception stream. Your recognition of particular phenomena, however subtle, perhaps ceases.  The dissolution of the exhalation into the awareness of the passive quality of your core is an invitation to the dissolution of perception into silence, the dissolution of perception into nirbijasamadhi, even if only for a millionth of a second.  But you can’t tell the difference between a millionth of a second and 10 seconds in nirbijasamadhi.

But if it is long enough for the whole organism to really quieten down, for the nervous system to benefit from the lack of mental activity, then coming back into the perceptual stream, coming back to perceptions of particular phenomena can bring with it certain qualities and flavours.  They’re not always the same.  They can be totally the opposite.  For some it can be a shock: ‘I’ve come back!’  Or, especially when you are more familiar to it, as you come out more slowly, a lingering taste of the benefits of having been there can come with you as a wisp of delight, satisfaction and peace. So this is an indication that you’ve just left nirbijasamadhi.  You can either be shocked to come back to the perceiver and his perceptions.  Or you can bring with you a draught of that peace and delight that nirbijasamadhi delivers unconsciously to the whole system, to the whole unity of being human.

Whedn i began my Zen training, I’d been meditating for a long time but with no clear sense of direction. I’d been doing yoga for a long time.  So it didn’t take very long to go very deep into this practice of meditation which was so intelligently organised by my teachers.  But one thing that really started to bother me was why I kept falling asleep.  Even with my eyes open.  Why and how could I possibly be falling asleep with my eyes open until it dawned on me after a few years that I wasn’t falling asleep.  This was nirbijasamadhi.  Eyes open, eyes closed no difference to it makes.  It got to the point, before I even realised that this was nirbijasamadhi, that I could feel or experience perception disappearing and my eyes staying open.  I was that close to what was going on that I could watch my perception disappear but see my eyes last, still being open when everything else disappeared.  Then of course my eyes disappeared and then I disappeared: till i popped back again. 

For sure, everybody who has ever meditated has had such experiences.  There is an Indian guru called Samdarshi.  He lives up in the Himalayas.  He calls nirbijasamadhi the ‘gap’.  When there’s nothing happening, there’s a gap in your experience: which means a gap in your sense of self,.  Yet very few meditation teachers talk about this gap.  Very few meditation and yoga teachers and students, realise the deep familiarity that they have with nirbijasamadhi and therefore keep looking for it somewhere else. They trying to establish it through so called skilful means or accomplishments of technological ability.  Not because they don’t have the capacity to experience samadhi but because they have not yet recognised it, felt it.  They have not yet recognised that taste of delight, satisfaction, peace in coming back over the perceptual threshold. 

So you could say nirbijasamadhi is no big deal.  It’s not just meditaters who have it.  Anybody who has flung themselves down slightly drunk upon the sand or into a hammock has been there too.  Anybody who by whatever means has become deeply relaxed has been there too.  Of course under the influence of alcohol, you’re less likely to recognise the return over the perceptual threshold.  But you can bet your boots, that’s why you’re getting drunk: so you can go into nirbijasamadhi.  That’s why you’re having sex: so that you can go into nirbijasamadhi in the moment of orgasm. Because nirbijasamadhi is the deepest, richest source of nourishment: and this is well known to every cell of your body.  It’s happening all the time.  The more relaxed you are, the more often and the more obviously it is happening.  But even if you are not relaxed, so long as you are not in the grip of fear for your life, or whatever, it’s going to be happening much more than you might imagine. 

In your yoga posture practice does this therefore mean that you should enter a space of signlessness, unconsciousness in your postures?  If you went there too long you would fall over if you werent on the floor.  The inherent integrity of your body knows this. In trikonasana or hastatadasana, if you lose consciousness for more than a very short time you’re going to fall over.  Nirbijasamadhi is more relevant, applicable and possible whilst sitting.   So another form of samadhi becomes relevant to yoga posture practice. The samadhi that’s a continuous possibility in yoga posture practice, and in fact under all circumstances free from danger, is sabijasamadhi. 

What sabijasamadhi means is that the perceptual field is wide open.  Whereas in nirbijasamadhi the perceptual stream has stopped and the perceptual field has vanished.  The perceived has vanished, the perceiver has vanished and perceiving has vanished.  But in sabijasamadhi, samadhi qualified with characteristics, attributes or signs, the perceiver is absent,  the perceived is absent.  But perceiving is not absent.  Perceiving is present.  That means the perceptual field is open but nothing is being done with or to it because nothing needs to be done to it or with it.  Because everything is so fine.  If all of a sudden everything becomes not fine you will snap straight out of sabijasamadhi, recognise an action that needs to be taken or an object that needs to be related to and relate to it or act.   When you don’t need to any more you might slip back into sabijasamadhi. 

So you could be in hastatrikonasana and you go into sabijasamadhi. This means you are awake and you know that you are awake, you are present and you know that you are present.  But you are totally unconcerned with any aspect of your body, its functioning, its activity, your environment: everything.  But you know that they are all there.  Then all of a sudden, one of your muscles can’t maintain its activation any longer and so you recognise that part of your body as such.  So you’ve come out of sabijasamadhi and you relate to that part of the body somehow by saying: ‘Oh that hurts.’  Or whatever. 

Of course you can fluctuate between these two really fast. So fast that you don’t notice the fluctuation back into sabijasamadhi at all. When the fluctuation slows down that’s when you notice it. You can also fluctuate  between sabijasamadhi and nirbijasamadhi.  Then you could say you are really in samadhi: staying in its inherent spectrum.  Fluctuation, oscillation is the nature of manifestation: it is the nature of existence.  Duality,  yinyang, yabyum, hatha, idapingala…  Call it what you like.  There is always fluctuation.  There is always oscillation.  But the fluctuation and oscillation can become subtle.  The most subtle oscillation is between nirbijasamadhi and sabijasamadhi. Once it’s been recognised that samadhi is always happening in one form or another, with no esoteric or spiritual intention whatsoever, then the wild goose chase of esotericised assumptions about samadhi can stop.  You can come back down to earth and stop chasing wild geese and you can decide what to cook for dinner and who to invite instead. 

Patanjali seems to have been fascinated by the technicalities of the human condition.  A fascination which we do not necessarily share, and which we absolutely do not need to share in order to know the deepest possible fruits of yoga.  Nevertheless, we may well have been infected by it unknowingly and unhelpfully.  We may have been infected into thinking that samadhi is very complex, difficult and hard to achieve.  This is partly due to Patanjali’s presentation.  The Buddha’s presentation was a little bit more simple but still a bit complex.  Patanjali’s presentation is complex: very technical and very subtle.  But actually, not difficult to understand if you have meditated a bit.  Or if you have enjoyed the meditative mind without having any formal meditative experience: as many people do sitting and watching a sunset perhaps.  Watching or listening to waves breaking on the sea shore the meditative mind is quite likely to arise. Then you may think you are enjoying the colours in the sky, the sounds in your ears.  But you may actually be enjoying is samadhi: the joy and delight of being present to that which is actually happening without anxiety, intention or agenda. 

The meditative mind is not only available to meditators.  Many people are pre-disposed towards the meditative mind.  So called creative people tend to have a familiarity with a non-linear, non-discursive open and relaxed awareness into which their creativity, their ideas spring.  This is the meditative mind, within which things are not being distinguished, clarified, formulated and analysed but are being left alone and enjoyed and therefore seen quite differently. 

My friend Kisen is an artist.  Technically a very good artist.  His speciality was the human body in action.  He used to get commissions to make drawings of boxes and runners and whatever.  He turned that to great advantage making portraits of himself doing yoga postures as you can well imagine.  He has a phenomenal eye.  As an artist, he can see things that I can’t see.  He can see things that most people can’t see: until he’s shown them to us, as Giotto, Picasso and Cezanne did.  This seeing is not a function of effort.  This seeing is a function of being relaxed and not looking for anything but just looking directly at whatever there is to be seen.  To have that kind of visual perception is a fantastic advantage for a yoga teacher because you can see things happening in people’s bodies and faces that other people don’t see.  So when I wasn’t really sure what was going on in my body in a posture I would ask Kisen to watch me doing it and tell me what he saw and from that I learnt.  I could then see those things from the inside that he was telling me were happening on the outside.  Subtle things that my eye couldn’t catch.  Meditation is like this.  Learning to be able to catch the subtleties of perception, to catch the subtleties of consciousness, to feel yourself falling towards the threshold of samadhi and rising back out again: noticing these things, enjoying them, benefiting from these things. 

If samadhi is indeed so simple and quotidian, why has yoga taken it upon itself to be the repository of it do you think?

It doesn’t matter to me really, why or how.

Maybe not ‘why’ but is there something or do you believe nonetheless there is something in yoga that enables one to…

Well yes because it allows you to relax very deeply.  To bring about a genuine, sustained capacity to relax in a way that the odd sip of alcohol doesn’t as it’s just for the moment.  So yoga practice can allow you to hang out more in sabijasamadhi. Yes, so of course there’s a reason for it. If you’re living a normal life you’re going to get stressed therefore you’re going to want to relax.  The most relaxing thing for me to do is to sit in lotus, especially after I’ve got rid of some of the tensions in my body by doing a little bit of posture stuff.  The need for that never goes away even though you’ve become deeply familiar with what samadhi really is, it doesn’t mean that your life will allow you to hang out there.  If you’ve got lots of responsibilities like you do then you’ve got to get your head into those responsibilities and so many things can go wrong that that can create stress.

Where do all the myths of yoga come from?  Are they from the Indian people? Or is it just the western people who went to India and brought them to the west? 

Yoga has been around in India for so long.  You could say that it’s inevitably the victim of time.  Just as Christianity is a victim of time.  Imagine what Jesus would think if he walked into St Peter’s Square.  He’d want to put it on the real estate market straightaway and feed the poor!  So it’s just time.  That’s what time does to things.  It wears them down.  It wears them away.  They become distorted and then they become legends.  Samadhi becomes a legend.  Enlightenment becomes a legend. 

But normally there’s some people keeping the true faith alive.  My Zen teacher can name his teacher’s teacher’s teacher’s teacher’s teacher’s teacher all the way, 82 generations back to the Buddha through whom the teaching was transmitted.  This is yoga.  It may be called Zen Buddhism but what does Zen mean?  It means dhyana which is the last doorway of yoga before samadhi.  Zen is pure yoga and it maintains the purity of yoga more clearly, more successfully than any other tradition including so called yoga itself.