“With distinction,” with a seed

The Sanskrit savikalpa means “with vikalpa” — with distinction, with an object or idea still present. It corresponds to what Patanjali calls samprajnata samadhi (“samadhi with cognition”), and it is sabija, “with seed” — the latent impressions (samskaras) remain, like seeds that could sprout again. In savikalpa samadhi the meditator is utterly absorbed, yet a faint sense of “I am beholding this” remains.

The four stages

Patanjali (Sutra 1.17) describes samprajnata / savikalpa samadhi as deepening through four supports:

• Vitarka — absorption with a gross object and reasoning.
• Vichara — absorption with a subtle object and fine insight.
• Ananda — absorption suffused with bliss.
• Asmita — absorption in pure “I-am-ness,” the bare sense of being.

Gurunath on the living ascent

Yogiraj Gurunath Siddhanath describes these four stages not as dry categories but as a living ascent, taking devotion to Lord Shiva as his example. At each step the meditator first partially takes on what is contemplated, and then wholly becomes it.

1. The form (savitarka). The yogi fixes on the physical form of Shiva and reflects on his attributes — compassion, mercy, the destroyer of the demon within. Absorption in the form deepens until one partially, and then totally, becomes that luminous form.

2. The thought (savichara). Consciousness crosses beyond the physical form to its subtle qualities. Here the meditator inherits the very power of the deity — the destroyer of negativity who redeems the ego — first in part, then completely.

3. The bliss (ananda). Beyond form and thought dawns the joy that Shiva gives once the negativity is destroyed: Satyam Shivam Sundaram — the true, the auspicious, the beautiful. The subtler self is filled with this bliss.

4. The I-am (asmita). Finally consciousness expands until one feels oneself to be a part of his existence, consciousness and bliss — and then the very "undifferentiated fabric of radiant ether light," his being in its entirety. This is the full flowering of savikalpa, the three-dimensional samadhi.

No bliss on this earth can be greater, no fortune bigger, and no blessing more peaceful and satisfying than this stage of savikalpa samadhi.

Here the mind has become ritambhara, the bearer of truth — so crystalline that God can be perceived through it clearly. And yet, Gurunath reminds us, this exalted "property level" of realization is still perception through the divine mind, within the third dimension. One is fully self-realized, but not yet God-realized — for that, even this pure mind must dissolve into the seedless samadhi beyond the stargate.

The threshold beyond

Gurunath calls this exalted state soulfulness — the divine mind, so purified it almost mirrors consciousness itself. Yet, he says, even here one still beholds God through the mirror of the mind. To know the Supreme Reality as it is, the divine mind must dissolve — as a cube of sugar melts into tea — into nirvikalpa samadhi (Patanjali’s asamprajnata, the seedless nirbija): absorption without any distinction, object or seed. This passage cannot be forced, for effort is itself a desire; it is crossed only by surrendering even the subtle knower, and by the grace of the guru — the “piercing of the stargate” we describe in From Mind to Divine Consciousness.

How it is reached

Savikalpa samadhi ripens naturally as the vrittis are stilled through samyama and the deep meditative breath of Kundalini Kriya Yoga. It is not an experience to be chased, but the fruit of steady, devoted practice — and a luminous foretaste of the freedom explored in What Is Enlightenment?