Raja Yoga (the Yoga Sūtras with commentary) — trans. Swami Vivekananda (1896)
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The translator’s English as printed (Swami Vivekananda). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
Il5 RAJA YOGA.
and as soon as we begin to know a thing we get power over it ; so also, when the mind begins to meditate on the different elements it gains power over them. That sort of meditation where the external gross elements are the objects is called Savitarka. Tarka means question,
Savitarka with-question. Questioning the elements, as
it were, that they may give up their truths and their powers to the man who meditates upon them. Again, in the very same meditation, when one struggles to take the elements out of time and space, and think of them as they are, it is called Nirvitarka, without-question.
When the meditation goes a step higher, and takes the
Tanmatras as its object, and thinks of them as in time and space, it is called Savichara, with-discrimination, and when the same meditation gets beyond time and space, and thinks of the fine elements as they are, it is called Nirvichara, without-discrimination. The next step is when the elements are given up, either as gross or as fine, and the object of meditation is the interior organ, the thinking organ, and when the thinking organ is thought of as bereft of the qualities of activity, and of dulness, it is then called Sanandam, the blissful
Samadhi. In that Samadhi, when we are thinking of the mind as the object of meditation, before we have reached the state which takes us beyond the mind even, when it has become very ripe and concentrated, when all ideas of the gross materials, or fine materials, have been given up, and the only object is the mind as it is, when the Sattva state only of the Ego remains, but
YOGA APHORISMS. II7
differentiated from all other objects, this is called Asmita Samadhi, and the man who has attained to this has attained to what is called in the Vedas " bereft of body." He can think of himself as without his gross body ; but he will have to think of himself as with a fine body. Those that in this state get merged in nature without attaining the goal are called Prakritilayas, but those who do not even stop at any enjoyments, reach the goal, which is freedom.
18. There is another Samadhi which is attained by the constant practice of cessation of all mental activity, in which the Chitta retains only the unmanifested impressions.
This is the perfect super-conscious Asamprajnata Samadhi, the state which gives us freedom. The first state does not give us freedom, does not liberate the soul. A man may attain to all powers, and yet fall again. There is no safeguard until the soul goes beyond nature, and beyond conscious concentration. It is very difficult to attain, although its method seems very easy. Its method is to hold the mind as the object, and whenever thought comes, to strike it down, allowing no thought to come into the mind, thus making it an entire vacuum. When we can really do this, in that moment we shall attain liberation. When persons without training and preparation try to make their minds vacant they are likely to succeed only in covering themselves with Tamas, material of ignorance, which makes the mind dull
Il8 RAJA YOGA.