Paramahansa Yogananda was a practitioner of Kriya Yoga who recorded his spiritual journey in the classic work “Autobiography of a Yogi”.It is a classic book that was first written in 1946, and has been continually rediscovered by people all over the world for many years. Basically, it is one of the few books in English about the wise men of India, and it is written about yogis by a yogi.

You can find copies of this book in the following languages: English, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi; Kannada; Japanese; Arabic; Greek; Icelandic; Danish; Dutch; French; German; Italian; Portuguese; and Spanish.

He was born in Calcutta in 1893.

His autobiography was first published in 1946, twenty-six years after he was instructed by his Guru to leave India and go to America to spread the teachings of Kriya Yoga (literally, the Yoga of “ritual action”).

What is Samadhi ?

Samadhi is a spiritual experience that opens us to the highest state of consciousness and inner bliss. It is stepping into your enlightened nature that is free from all suffering. Samadhi is found through diving into a consistent state of pure consciousness, that is void of attachment to any thought. Samadhi is a deep personal, intimate merging with the divine inside you and all around you. It is being unified with the Universe through your consciousness.

When one reaches Samadhi there is a deep knowing that all is one, and that “oneness” is at the core of who you are. Samadhi gives you a moment to moment spiritual experience that is opening, trusting and softening into each new moment of your life. Samadhi is the eternally expanding realization that your ego is not real, and that you (the soul, spirit and divine essence) are what is truly real and will never die.

Samadhi
by Paramahansa Yogananda

Vanished the veils of light and shade,
Lifted every vapor of sorrow,
Sailed away all dawns of fleeting joy,
Gone the dim sensory mirage.
Love, hate, health, disease, life, death,
Perished these false shadows on the screen of duality.
Waves of laughter, scyllas of sarcasm, melancholic whirlpools,
Melting in the vast sea of bliss.
The storm of maya stilled
By magic wand of intuition deep.
The universe, forgotten dream, subconsciously lurks,
Ready to invade my newly wakened memory divine.
I live without the cosmic shadow,
But it is not, bereft of me;
As the sea exists without the waves,
But they breathe not without the sea.
Dreams, wakings, states of deep turiya sleep,
Present, past, future, no more for me,
But ever-present, all-flowing I, I, everywhere.
Planets, stars, stardust, earth,
Volcanic bursts of doomsday cataclysms,
Creation’s molding furnace,
Glaciers of silent x-rays, burning electron floods,
Thoughts of all men, past, present, to come,
Every blade of grass, myself, mankind,
Each particle of universal dust,
Anger, greed, good, bad, salvation, lust,
I swallowed, transmuted all
Into a vast ocean of blood of my own one Being!
Smoldering joy, oft-puffed by meditation
Blinding my tearful eyes,
Burst into immortal flames of bliss,
Consumed my tears, my frame, my all.
Thou art I, I am Thou,
Knowing, Knower, Known, as One!
Tranquilled, unbroken thrill, eternally living, ever new peace!
Enjoyable beyond imagination of expectancy, samadhi bliss!
Not a mental chloroform
Or unconscious state without wilful return,
Samadhi but extends my conscious realm
Beyond the limits of the mortal frame
To farthest boundary of eternity
Where I, the Cosmic Sea,
Watch the little ego floating in me.
The sparrow, each grain of sand, fall not without my sight.
All space like an iceberg floats within my mental sea.
Colossal Container, I, of all things made.
By deeper, longer, thirsty, guru-given meditation
Comes this celestial samadhi
Mobile murmurs of atoms are heard,
The dark earth, mountains, vales, lo! molten liquid!
Flowing seas change into vapors of nebulae!
Aum blows upon the vapors, opening wondrously their veils,
Oceans stand revealed, shining electrons,
Till, at last sound of the cosmic drum,
Vanish the grosser lights into eternal rays
Of all-pervading bliss.
From joy I came, for joy I live, in sacred joy I melt.
Ocean of mind, I drink all creation’s waves.
Four veils of solid, liquid, vapor, light,
Lift aright.
Myself, in everything, enters the Great Myself.
Gone forever, fitful, flickering shadows of mortal memory.
Spotless is my mental sky, below, ahead, and high above.
Eternity and I, one united ray.
A tiny bubble of laughter, I
Am become the Sea of Mirth Itself.

In the poem, Turiya is a Hindi term describing a state of absolute reality, transcending all other experiences and releasing a completely pure consciousness. Turiya is a transcendent state of awakening, and at the same time it is a state that is always present, underlying all other states of consciousness.
Consciousness can be looked at as having three common states. The first state is when the mind is awake, and is called in Sanskrit jagrata. In this state, the subject, a person in the world, interacts with the object that is the physical world. The waking state is what most of us experience in the vast majority of our lives, with our conscious mind interpreting things we see, and processing the material world instant by instant.

The second state of consciousness is that of the dreaming sleep, or svapna. This is when we are asleep, but our minds are still engaging on a conscious level with the mental world. The dreaming sleep is looked at as a corollary to wakefulness, with the conscious mind still interacting with a world directly, albeit the world of sleep. Both jagrata and svapna can be looked at as fundamentally dualistic, with a subject interpreting objects, or an ego-state interacting with that outside of the self.

The third state of common consciousness is that of dreamless sleep, or susupti. In susupti the conscious mind does not appear to be present, as there is no subject interacting with objects. In this sense, susupti is seen as a non-dualistic state of consciousness. It is still said to be conscious, however, because the very recognition that one is not dreaming shows an understanding of the self. Just as saying you did not hear anything in a silent room shows there is someone to be hearing, or saying you did not see anything in the dark shows there is someone to be seeing, so is the recognition that you dreamed nothing looked on as an acknowledgment that there was someone to be dreaming or not dreaming.
In contrast, turiya is looked at as a state of consciousness beyond the three normal states. It is sometimes called simply the fourth state, and is both beneath and above the other three states. Turiya is the embodiment of consciousness itself, not a manifestation of it. It is the totality of everything, and the headwaters from which all consciousness flows. At the same time, turiya is more than simply a concept of everything. It is said in the Mandukya Upanishad that turiya is not that which is conscious of the objective, nor of the subjective, nor of both, nor simply consciousness, nor all sentience, nor all darkness. It is “unseen, transcendent, the sole essence of the consciousness of self, the completion of the world.”

Samadhi by Paramahansa Yogananda

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