Ignorance To Innocence – In Gita Verse 6.3 For one who is a neophyte in the eightfold yoga system, work is said to be the means; and for one who is already elevated in yoga, cessation of all material activities is said to be the means.
Krishna is saying that the person who through the yoga’s eight-fold path started practising and through the practice realised has even left all his oaths. As the oath is also a kind of desire to achieve something from the material world. His whole objective of the action is to bring awareness and watchfulness regarding his action.
The person who has practised eight-fold of yoga, that is from Yama to Samadhi, for him a work is said to be the means. From Yama to Dhyana, meditation we have some experience. But what is the difference between Meditation and Samadhi?
Meditation means to be in non-doing. Meditation is not a doing but a state of being. It is a state of being in one’s own self.
In action we come into contact with the outside world; in no-action, with ourselves. When we are not doing anything we become aware of what we are. Otherwise, remaining involved in all sorts of doings; we never get to meet ourselves. We don’t even remember that we exist. Our busyness is very deep. Perhaps our bodies may get to rest but our minds never do. Awake, we think; asleep, we dream. Engrossed in these constant preoccupations and doings, we simply forget ourselves. We lose ourselves amidst the crowd of our own activity. How strange this is – but this is our reality. We have become lost, not in the crowds of other people, but in our own thoughts, in our own dreams, in our own preoccupations and activities. We have become lost in ourselves. Meditation is the way to extricate ourselves from this self-created crowd, from this mental wanderlust.
By its nature, meditation cannot be an activity. It is not a busy-ness, it is the term for an unoccupied mind.
Once you extricate yourself from this self-created crowd you are ready to enter into Samadhi.
Samadhi is the ultimate state of being, the ultimate flowering of consciousness. Man lives in the mind, animals live below the mind. Samadhi is the state above the mind where thinking disappears, and with the thinking, all wavering of consciousness disappears also.
Thinking is like ripples in a lake, and because of the ripples, the reflection cannot be true; the moon is reflected but the ripples distort it. God is reflected in everybody, we mirror him, but our mind is so full of thoughts, wavering, clouds, that whatsoever we come to see is no more the same; it is not that which is. The mind has imposed its own thoughts upon it, it has interpreted it, and all interpretation is a distortion. Reality needs no interpretation; it needs only reflection. There is no point in interpreting, the interpreter goes on missing the point.
If you see a rose flower, it is there: there is no need to interpret it, there is no need to dissect it, there is no need to know about its meaning. It is its meaning. It is not a metaphor, it does not stand for something else. It is simply there! It is reality, it is not a symbol. A symbol needs to be interpreted, a dream needs to be interpreted. So psychoanalysis is right because it goes on interpreting the dreams, but philosophers are not right because they go on interpreting the reality. A dream is symbolic: it stands for something else; an interpretation may be helpful to find out what it stands for. But a rose flower is a rose flower; it stands only for itself. It does not indicate anything else, it is not an arrow towards anything else; it is self-evident.
So is reality, but our mind is in the habit of interpreting. Thinking is nothing but a habit of interpreting. When thinking disappears the lake is silent, calm and quiet. Then there are no more waves, no more ripples – nothing is distorted: the moon is reflected perfectly.
So Samadhi means the ultimate state of pure reflection.
So Meditation is clearing ourselves from our identity, and Samadhi is flowering of consciousness.
Krishna tells Arjuna that Yaga’s Eight-Fold journey is from Ignorance To Innocence.
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