The Four Stages of Samadhi
As spiritual seekers we’ve all heard the term Samadhi. If we’ve been practicing meditation for a while, we’ve heard this term hundreds, if not thousands, of times.
But what does Samadhi mean? If it’s a specific stage or region of enlightened consciousness, how do we achieve it? How should we prepare ourselves to be able to reach Samadhi?
The ancient practice of Samadhi started in ancient China among monks following the path of Tao Consciousness. They simply called it “The Middle Way.” It’s the middle way beyond all dualities - including the dualistic visions of existence-versus-non-existence. By “holding on to the Tao” for days, or weeks at a time, the ancient Taoist seemed immortal. And this is one of the reasons why some of the most advanced Taoist mystics were called “Taoist Immortals.”
In ancient India, around the time of the Vedas, the term Samadhi was used to describe the states of total absorption into celestial awareness. And the term Samadhi is still being used today to describe the same “middle-way” experiences.
Samadhi is a continuous absorption of pure awareness into the flow of your Celestial Awareness as it flows from the center of the Cosmos, through your soul and out into the world that you live in. Samadhi is a concentrated state of still, clear, focused, awareness that is well beyond mind-body awareness and space-time awareness.
You never have any feelings of how long you’ve been in Samadhi. You might come back to normal mind-body awareness after a few minutes of Samadhi. Or, you might stay in Samadhi for several days, weeks or months.
Many new seekers seem to think that you need to live in a cave when you’re practicing Samadhi. But that’s not true at all. You can walk around in the world while completely absorbed in a deep state of Samadhi.
There are four major phases, or stages of Samadhi. In the book, “Be As You Are” David Goodman mentions the first three states of Samadhi that Ramana once talked about.
The Samadhi Podcast
In the following podcast I explain all four stages of Samadhi and what you need to do to prepare yourself to melt into Samadhi.
Be As YOU Are
I don’t know where the title of David Godman’s book on Ramana came from. But it’s great advice for all of us.
Our inner clear awareness is who and what we really are - way beyond the disturbing distractions of thoughts, emotions, memories, and concepts.
By simply allowing our inner awareness to act instinctively, we can sometimes easily melt into Samadhi.