Nirvikalpa Samadhi & Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi - 07.29.10

Student Question: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the differences between being in the now, the present, during meditation vs. when you’re going about doing errands and other activities in the world.

“In the field of yoga, these two different possibilities of what you can achieve in the sitting meditation and what you can achieve in the daily life meditation are referred to on the one hand as nirvikalpa samadhi, and on the other hand as sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi,” maintains Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “In sitting meditation, you can reach such a state where the ego completely dissolves, and there is a realization of, not only the oneness of all things, but of the presence of the past and the future; one enters the eternal now. . . . The greatest yogis say that that’s not enough. We want to be able to be in a state in which the mind is silent and we experience that eternal now even while we’re walking around and working and doing whatever we need to do in our daily tasks.” And once one is in that state, “then life is just joyous because you are seeing the Absolute in everyone.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 29, 2010.