Nirvikalpa Samadhi (Teachings)

The state of nirvikalpa samadhi can last for a few hours or a few days for most spiritual masters. It is said if they stay in nirvikalpa samadhi for 18 or 21 days, their consciousness may permanently leave their physical body. Nirvikalpa samadhi is recognized as one of the highest states of samadhi. The state of consciousness before this is savikalpa samadhi where the experience of time and space alters.

The yogi recognizes that everything is complete and there is nothing more to do. Thoughts still exist, but they do not affect the yogi in this state. After experiencing savikalpa samadhi, however, normal human consciousness returns. The difference between this stage is that in nirvikalpa samadhi all thoughts dissolve. This is considered a state of being at one with the Divine. It is a state of true ecstasy, oneness and limitless bliss. After experiencing nirvikalpa samadhi, a yogi does not wish to return to the world.

They may forget their own name, how to speak or how to think properly. With practice, though, they may find it easier to experience this state and then function in a normal way afterward. Beyond nirvikalpa samadhi is sahaja samadhi.

This state is only achieved by very few spiritual masters and is said to allow them to achieve the highest level of spiritual consciousness while still functioning in the physical world. Home Dictionary Tags Meditation Enlightenment. For this reason, nirvikalpa-samAdhi is not an experience that can be controlled and, thus, used as a repeatable practice. Admittedly, nirvikalpa-samAdhi is a highly revered experience—or, perhaps more accurately put, non-experience—in the spiritual world.

Since all experience is by nature limited i. The value of experience, therefore, is not the quality of the experience itself, but the knowledge that is gained from it. In this regard, however, nirvikalpa-samAdhi is about as helpful and the state of deep sleep because the intellect is not functioning while in the throes of it. Nevertheless, Vedanta offers a litany of prakriyA- s , methods for analyzing experience, that allow one to reach an understanding of the true nature of reality.

Advaita for the 21st Century

In one sense, we might say that each of these prakriyA- s produces an experience of nirvikalpa-samAdhi , so to speak, but none necessarily annihilate all thinking for an extended period of time. The fact of the matter is that nirvikalpa-samAdhi is your true nature. You are pure awareness. The mind-body-sense complex that you erroneously identify as yourself is nothing more than an inert mechanism that spontaneously performs a variety of functions—namely thinking, feeling, and doing—when illumined by awareness i.

NIRVIKALPA SAMADHI

The subtle objects or vRRitti -s, thought-waves, arising within the scope of the component of the mind are not yours. They are projections of mAyA.

You, all-pervasive awareness, are by definition incapable of executing actions, and thus you, awareness, are not thinking thoughts. You, awareness, are always and ever completely thought-free.

And, ultimately, when you have fully assimilated the knowledge of your fundamentally thought-free eternality i. I am quoting Swami Paramarthananda from his commentary on verse 2. That judgment, I suppose, is subjective. I would say not. Of course, a good degree of mind and sense control is required as part of sAdhana chatuShTaya sampatti before the mind is capable of taking on board the teaching of Advaita.

But nirvikalpa samAdhi is a practice of Yoga or neo-Vedanta and leads nowhere. Meditation is perhaps necessary — it is certainly an invaluable practice for the mind — and NS may well come as a result of this. But it is important not to be diverted or seduced by the experience; only Self-knowledge matters in the final analysis. And, if you think about it, they do have to be the same — you cannot have two types of non-duality!

The bottom line here is that enlightenment cannot be an experience. Accordingly, enlightenment has to be simply Self-knowledge. Either vikalpa or nirvikalpa — with thoughts or without thoughts involve the mind. It is the mind that has wrong notions about the self and it is the mind that needs the Advaita knowledge via shravana and manana SM.

If the mind is pure enough clear abiding knowledge takes by SM. If the mind still has lingering likes and dislikes and has not be been fully prepared before vedantic study, but purified enough to understand the truth, the knowledge gained by SM will not be firm when one is dealing with the world.

The remnant raaga and dweshasa or likes and dislikes will hijack the mind to deeper emotions and entanglements in the world. Hence further purification is required. Hence Scriptures, understanding this problem, recommend Nidhidhyaasana — contemplation of the teaching or on the advaitic nature of the truth- that is recognition of absolute oneness in spite of experiential duality, which is inevitable during transactions.

One can keep the mind in the teaching or one can withdraw the mind from transactions and contemplate on the truth. Constant shifting the mind from the contents of the thought to the light of consciousness is meditation — like looking at the full moon and shifting from the perception of the moon to the sunlight that is illumining the moon and making the moon luminous — is meditation.

Here thought is taken as object for reference. Nirvikalpa sandha involves thought-less mind — but still the mind which itself becomes object of vision where the mind itself is seen and meditation involves it is not the mind that because of which the mind as object known. There is no object-less meditation — objectlessness is pure self which does not need to meditate since it is all pervading and eternal. The self-realization is for the mind enlivened by consciousness called chidaabhaasa.