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has been attained, one has to conduct the most extensive explorations
into the recesses of the mind.
12. The word Dhyana is difficult to define; it is used by many
writers in quite contrary senses. The question is discussed at some
length in Part I. of my Book IV. I will quote what I have written
about it in conclusion --
'Let us try a final definition. Dhyana resembles Samadhi in
many respects. There is a union of the ego and the non-ego, and a
loss of the sense of time and space and causality. Duality in any
form is abolished. The idea of time involves that of two consecutive
things, that of space two non-coincident things, that of causality
two connected things.'
13. Samadhi, on the contrary, is in a way very easy to defËine.
Etymology, aided by the persistence of the religious tradition, helps
us here. "Sam is a prefix in Sanskrit which developed into the
prefix 'syn' in Greek without changing the meaning -- 'syn' in
'synopsis,' 'synthesis,' 'syndrome.' It means 'together with.'
'Adhi' has also come down through many centuries and many
tongues. It is one of the oldest words in human language; it dates
from the time when each sound had a definite meaning proper to it, a
meaning suggested by the muscular movement made in producing the
sound. Thus, the letter D originally means 'father'; so the original
father, dead and made into a 'God,' was called Ad. This name came
down unchanged to Egypt, as you see in the Book of the Law. The word
'Adhi' in Sanskrit was usually translated 'Lord.' In the Syrian form
we get it duplicated Hadad. You remember Ben Hadad, King of Syria.
The Hebrew word for 'Lord' is Adon or Adonai. Adonai, *my* Lord, is
constantly used in the Bible to replace the name Jehovah wÆhere that
was too sacred to be mentioned, or for other reasons improper to
write down. Adonai has also come to mean, through the Rosicrucian
tradition, the Holy Guardian Angel, and thus the object of worship or
concentration. It is the same thing; worship is worth-ship, means
worthiness; and anything but the chosen object is necessarily an
unworthy object.
14. As Dhyana also represents the condition of annihilation of
dividuality, it is a little difficult to distinguish between it and
Samadhi. I wrote in Part I., Book IV. --
'These Dhyanic conditions contradict those of normal thought,
but in Samadhi they are very much more marked than in Dhyana. And
while in the latter it seems like a simple union of two things, in
the former it appears as if all things rush together and unite. One
might say this, that in Dhyana there was still this quality latent,
that the one existing was opposed to the many non-existing; in
Samadhi the many and the one are united in a union of existence with
non-existence.Û This definition is not made from reflection, but from
memory.'
15. But that was written in 1911, and since then I have had an
immense harvest of experience. I am inclined to say at this moment
that Dhyana stands to Samadhi rather as the jumping about like a
frog, described in a previous lecture, does to Levitation. In other
words, Dhyana is an unbalanced or an impure approximation to Samadhi.
Subject and object unite and disappear with ecstasy mounting to
indifference, and so forth, but there is still a presentation of some
kind in the new genus of consciousness. In this view Dhyana would be
rather like an explosion of gunpowder carelessly mixed; most of it
goes off with a bang, but there is some debris of the original
components.
These discussions are not of very great importance in them-
selves, because the entire series of the three states of meditation
proper is summed up in the word Samyama; you can translate it quite
well for yourselves, since you already know that 'sam' means 'togeth-
er,' andÙ that 'Yama' means 'control.' It represents the merging of
minor individual acts of control into a single gesture, very much as
all the separate cells, bones, veins, arteries, nerves, muscles and
so forth, of the arm combine in unconscious unanimity to make a
single stroke.
16. Now the practice of Pratyahara, properly speaking, is
introspection, and the practice of Dharana, properly speaking, is the
restraint of the thought to a single imaginary object. The former is
a movement of the mind, the latter a cessation of all movement. And
you are not likely to get much success in Pratyahara until you have
made considerable advance in Dhyana, because by introspection we mean
the exploration of the sub-strata of the consciousness which are only
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