By Victor M Fontane
Spiritual teachings are simply fingers pointing to the transcendent truth. Samadhi begins with a leap into the unknown. In ancient traditions, in order to realize Samadhi it was said that one must ultimately turn consciousness away from all known objects; from all external phenomena, conditioned thoughts and sensations toward consciousness itself.
Samadhi is used to point to the transcendent union, but we could have used a word from other tradition just as easily. Samadhi is an ancient Sanskrit term common to the Vedic yogic and Samkya traditions of India, and has permeated many other spiritual traditions and is the eighth limb of Patanjali’s yoga and the eighth part of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. Buddha used the word “Nirvana” as the cessation of “vana” or the cessation of self activity. Patanjali described yoga or Samadhi as “chitta vritti nirodha”, the Sanskrit meaning “cessation of the whirlpool or spiral of mind.”Christian mystics such as Saint Francis of Assisi Saint Teresa of Āvila and Saint John of the Cross describe a divine union with God, the Kingdom of God within. In the Gospel of Thomas, Christ said: “the kingdom is not here or there, rather the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth and men do not see it.” The works of the Greek philosophers Plato, Plotinus, Parmenides and Heraclitus when seen also through the lens of the perennial teaching point towards the same wisdom. Plotinus teaches that the greatest human endeavor is to guide the human soul towards the supreme state of perfection and union with the One. What is born of the union of the polarity of the relative and the absolute is a new divine consciousness and the collapse of dualistic. A new way of being in the world, a Universal energy that is without center, free of limitation. It is pure love, there is nothing to be gained or lost because it is utterly empty but absolutely full.
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