quote:

---

Originally posted by Domos

...If the mind doesn't come back, then your I (ego) has been dissolved permamently.

---

quote:

---

Q: At the face of it, AYP seems a very simple practice to reach the ultimate goal of human existence. Then I wonder why did the Indian seers bog it down in so many esoteric practices, tantra procedures, yantras, rituals, etc.

Also I was reading Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda in which he quotes Patanjali mentioning many levels of Samadhi, and talks about Prakritilayas (sadhakas who don't reach the ultimate samadhi).

Can you please throw some light on the above two things.

---

quote:

---

On grades of samadhi, you know, the Eskimos have many words for snow. Why? Because they see so much of it, and have come to know its many grades of manifestation. Do all these different words for snow mean anything to a Hawaiian? Not much - not until the Hawaiian goes and lives with the Eskimos for a while. Then the words for snow begin to make sense. Samadhi is like that. When it becomes the common experience, then conversation about the different grades of samadhi begins to make sense. Until then, to study all that is an academic exercise. Does this promote enlightenment? Not really. Well, maybe it can motivate one to do practices. That is the real value of intellectual knowledge - its ability to inspire action!

Having said that, there are certain traditions that rely on determining the level of samadhi one is experiencing to decide which style of meditation to do. For them, this is very important, and it is to be respected. In AYP we use one style of meditation that covers the full scope of mind from the surface to the silent depths, so making all the samadhi distinctions is not necessary for effective practice. They are "under the hood" as we drive the car of our nervous system along with the easy-to-use meditation controls. It is just the same as chakras, which have been discussed as being "under the hood" in the early lessons (see #47). When we have a simple, effective practice, delving too much into the inner workings can be a distraction.So, in AYP we avoid going too far off into all those tempting tangents, whether they be intellectual tidbits or flashy experiences. We are interested in going deep into inner silence in meditation. Then we cultivate silence into dynamic manifestation throughout our nervous system with pranayama, samyama and many other means, until finally we see our Self, our inner silence, as being the essence of everything. Then we can appreciate all the grades of experience as manifestations of inner silence. And then we will be able to understand all those words for samadhi, and probably come up with a few of our own, because we will be living in it every day. It is much better to be cultivating our nervous system to live in samadhi than to be intellectualizing about it too much. That is the AYP approach.

---