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Yoga Sutra

Samadhi Pada

Sutra 1.50

तज्जः संस्कारोऽन्यसंस्कारप्रतिबन्धी ॥५०॥ 
 tajjas-saṁskāro-‘nya-saṁskāra pratibandhī ॥50॥
 tajja =  arise from
saṁskāra= latent impressions
saṁskāra= latent impressions
anya= different, other
pratibandhī =  contracdictory, obstruct

The impressions arise therefrom blocks the other latent impressions.

The impressions arise from Nirvichara Samadhi block the other impressions of the worldly nature. The functioning of the mind depends on the latent impressions. They are the source for the activities of the mind. Here, in Nirvichara, all latent impressions are blocked and thereby the mind ceases to function.

 

The impressions generated in Nirvichara stops the mind from its funtioning.

Commentary by Maharishi Vyasha

The impressions in this is contradictory to other impressions.

The impressions that arise from Nirvichara Samadhi blocks the other impressions of the worldly nature. Having blocked those impressions, the perceptions with regards to those impressions are suppressed that results in Nirvichara Samadhi that generate impressions of its kind. Every time a latent impression is produced, a new consciousness is produced and turn that generates newer impressions. Does this newer impressions give power, function, or capacity to the mind? They don't give power to the mind because they are the means to relieve the pain.  They separate the mind from its functioning which terminates the discriminating wisdom.

Commentary by Swami Vivekananda

The resulting impression from this Samadhi obstructs all other impressions.

We have seen in the foregoing aphorism that the only way of attaining to that super-consciousness is by concentration, and we have also seen that what hinder the mind from concentration are the past Samskaras, impressions. All of you have observed that when you are trying to concentrate your mind, your thoughts wander. When you are trying to think of God, that is the very time which all these Samskaras take to appear. At other times they are not so active, but when you want them not to be they are sure to be there, trying their best to crowd inside your mind. Why should that be so? Why should they be much more potent at the time of concentration? It is because you are repressing them and they react with all their force. At other times they do not react. How countless these old past impressions must be, all lodge somewhere in the Chitta, ready, waiting like tigers to jump up. These have to be suppressed that the one idea which we like may arise, to the exclusion of the others. Instead, they are all struggling to come up at the same time. These are the various powers of the Samskaras in hindering concentration of the mind, so this Samadhi which has just been given is the best to be practised, on account of its power of suppressing the Samskaras. The Samskara which will be raised by this sort of concentration will be so powerful that it will hinder the action of the others, and hold them in check.

Commentary by Sri Osho

THE PERCEPTION GAINED IN NIRVICHARA SAMADHI TRANSCENDS ALL NORMAL PERCEPTIONS, BOTH IN EXTENT AND INTENSITY.

These two words are very meaningful: ”extent” and ”intensity”. When you see the world through the senses, brain and the mind, the world is very dull. It has no luminosity in it, dusty, and soon it becomes boring, and one feels fed up: the same trees, the same people, the same actions – everything just a rut. It is not so.

 

Sometimes in LSD, or marijuana or hashish, suddenly the tree becomes more green. You have never known it, that the tree was so green or the rose was so rosy.

 

When Aldous Huxley first took LSD, he was sitting before a chair. Suddenly, the chair became one of the most beautiful things in the world, and that chair has remained in his room for years and he had never looked at it. It was like a prism, many shades, many colors coming out of it; it was like a diamond. The chair was no more the same chair. Huxley was fascinated with the chair. He couldn’t believe what happens when somebody takes a drug.

 

Drug is a violent effort to awake the idiots. So you shock them, and just they open their eyes a little, and just they look... ”Yes!” And yet, the world become so beautiful, unbelievably beautiful, and then you are hooked, because then you think that it is because of the drug that the world is so beautiful. Now, when you are back and the trip is over, the world will look even more dirtier and more dull than ever, because now you have a comparison in the mind. For certain moments it had become a beautiful phenomenon; it was paradise itself. Even a person like Aldous Huxley got mixed up, and he started thinking that this was the samadhi Patanjali is talking about, and Kabir attained, and Buddha, and all the mystics of the world this is the samadhi.

Drugs can give you a false sense of samadhi, but you are still in the prison. Only because of the drug shock your mechanism functions with alertness, but this alertness will not be for long. More and more if you use it, then the quantity of the drug has to be raised higher and higher, because with the same amount you cannot shock the idiots again. They become attuned to it, then more and more quantities are needed. Drugs work only just like this.

With no thoughts, you are nude. With no thoughts who are you? – a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian, a communist? Who are you without thoughts? – a man, a woman? Who are you without thoughts? – religious, irreligious? You are nobody without thoughts. All clothes have dropped. You are simply a nudity, a purity, an emptiness. Then the perception is clear, and with that clarity comes extent and intensity. Now you can look at the vast expanse of existence. Now there is no barrier to your perception; your eyes have become infinite.

 

And intensity: you can look into any event, any person, because things are no more there. Even flowers are persons now, and trees are friends, and rocks sleeping souls. Now intensity happens; you can look through and through. When you can look through and through to a flower, then you will be able to understand what mystics have been saying, and poets.

 

Tennyson says that ”If I can understand a flower, a small flower in its totality, I would have understood all.” Right, absolutely right! If you can understand the part you will understand the whole, because the part is the whole. And when you try to understand the part, by and by, unknowingly, you will have moved to the whole, because the part is organic to the whole.

 

THE PERCEPTION GAINED IN NIRVICHARA SAMADHI TRANSCENDS ALL NORMAL PERCEPTIONS BOTH IN EXTENT AND INTENSITY.

 

From everywhere vastness opens, and from everywhere, the depth... Look into a flower, and there is abyss. You can fall into a flower and disappear. It has happened. It will be absurd but it is true. It is up to you to believe it or not.

 

It happened in China that the Emperor asked a great painter to come and do some painting in the palace. The painter came and he painted a view of Himalayas, very beautiful. Years he took, and he won’t allow anybody to see unless it is complete. Then one day he told the Emperor that, ”Now it is ready and you can come.”

 

And the Emperor came with his ministers and generals and the court, and they were simply wonder-struck. They had never seen anything like that – it was so true. The peaks were exactly real, and there was a winding path around the peaks and the path disappeared somewhere. The Emperor asked, ”Where this path leads?” The painter said, ”I have not travelled on it, so how I should know?” But the Emperor insisted that it was not at all a question of travelling: ”You have painted it!” So the painter said, ”You wait. Let me go and see.” And it is said that he went and disappeared into the picture, and never came back to tell the story where it leads.

 

It cannot happen, that I know; but in nirvichara it happens. In a flower is the abyss. Because of your intensity, you look into the flower and there is the depth, and you can fall into a flower and disappear forever. You look at a beautiful face with nirvichara and there is abyss in beauty, and you can be forever and forever lost; you can fall into it. Everything becomes a door, everything! With your intensity of look, all the doors are open for you.

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