What Is Samadhi?
Samadhi is the supreme goal of Kriya Yoga — the state of total absorption in which the individual soul merges with the infinite Divine. It is not a mood, a belief, or a philosophical position. It is a direct experience of one's own true nature, beyond all words and concepts.
Yogiraj Gurunath Siddhanath maps the whole ascent of samadhi — from concentration, through the four seeded absorptions, to the seedless singularity of kaivalya.
Understanding Samadhi
The word Samadhi comes from the Sanskrit roots sam (together or complete) and dhi (mind or consciousness). It means the complete gathering of the mind — a state in which all mental distractions have ceased and only pure awareness remains.
The Types of Samadhi
The yoga tradition describes several stages of Samadhi, each representing a deeper level of absorption:
Savikalpa Samadhi
The initial stage where the meditator experiences unity with the Divine while still maintaining a trace of individual consciousness. There is bliss, light, and expanded awareness, but the "I" who experiences has not yet dissolved.
Nirvikalpa Samadhi
The advanced state of complete absorption where the individual ego is fully dissolved. The meditator and the meditation become one. There is no experiencer — only the experience of pure, undifferentiated consciousness.
Sahaja Samadhi
The highest state — natural, effortless Samadhi that persists even during daily activity. The realised master lives in this state continuously, seeing the Divine in every moment, in every form, in every circumstance.
How Kriya Leads to Samadhi
Kriya Yoga is specifically designed to systematically prepare the body, mind, and energy system for Samadhi. Each technique has a purpose:
Purification
The techniques cleanse the nadis and chakras, removing the energetic blockages that prevent the free flow of consciousness.
Concentration
Pranayama and meditation develop one-pointed focus, gathering the scattered mind into a laser beam of attention.
Absorption
As the energy rises to the crown chakra, the sense of separation dissolves, and Samadhi dawns naturally.
The Rower and the Boat
Yogiraj Gurunath Siddhanath gives a vivid image for how absorption deepens. Picture a person rowing a boat across a still lake toward the far shore of the Self.
Concentration (dharana) is the repeated effort of bringing the attention back to the object of meditation — the constant pull of the oars. Meditation (dhyana) is when that movement has become so practised it flows without strain, carried by its own momentum. Samadhi is when the one who meditates, the act of meditation, and the object of meditation fuse into a single reality — the rower and the boat are no longer two. Beyond even this lies enlightenment, where the little self dissolves utterly into the boundless ocean.
The Ascent Through the Bodies
Samadhi, Gurunath explains, is the journey of consciousness inward through ever more refined sheaths of one’s own being — travelling home to the divine spark at the core. The self "travels through ever more refined and ever more expanded spheres of consciousness."
Physical → sensual
Consciousness withdraws from the physical body into the subtle body of sensation.
Sensual → emotional
From sensation into the emotional body — the body of feeling.
Emotional → mental
Into the mental body — the body of thought.
Mental → intellectual
Into the intellectual body — the discerning buddhi.
Intellectual → intuitional
Into the intuitional body, where knowing no longer needs reasoning.
Intuitional → soul
And at last into the soul body — the innermost sheath, nearest the divine spark.
Beyond the individual sheaths lie their vast cosmic counterparts — the cosmic physical, mental and spiritual bodies — until the soul merges into the universal.
From Self-Realization to God-Realization
The crown of savikalpa samadhi is a state Gurunath calls the truth-bearing mind — in Sanskrit, ritambhara. The mind has become "as pure as purity itself," a flawless crystal in which the whole of creation is reflected; whatever it turns to, it knows, and nothing is hidden from it. Yet even this is still seeing God through the mirror of the mind, from within the three dimensions of relativity.
To cross from self-realization to God-realization, the divine mind itself must dissolve. The meditator must pass through what the lineage calls the five-pointed star of the third eye — the stargate. Here lies a profound paradox: any effort to pierce it is a desire, and desire contaminates the passage; yet to make no effort is itself a subtle desire. One can only be — waiting in perfect stillness for the descending grace of the Guru and the Divine Mother to carry the soul across.
The Seedless Beyond: Nirvikalpa and Kaivalya
Beyond the "seeded" absorptions (sabija) lies seedless samadhi — nirbija, Patanjali’s asamprajnata. At first it is reached only briefly, and the pull of past-life impressions draws the yogi back — a temporary seedless state, entered and left again and again. When even the deepest impressions of past lives are cleared, it becomes permanent: the seedless samadhi in which causation, space and time no longer exist.
At the ultimate horizon stands kaivalya, the solitary singularity — total immersion in pure consciousness. Whether the soul returns from that absolute mergence, Gurunath says with humility, is a mystery known only to the One "about whom we know nothing." He speaks of seven infinities of creation opening one within the next, the soul passing beyond the realm of the gods themselves into an unspeakable, unbounded bliss and truth "which cannot be described in any human words."
For the stages of the seeded absorption in detail, see Savikalpa Samadhi; for the soul’s final freedom, see The Soul’s Bondage & Liberation.
The Goal of All Yoga
As Patanjali states in the Yoga Sutras, "Yogas chitta vritti nirodha" — Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. When the mind becomes still, the Self is revealed. This is Samadhi. This is the birthright of every human being.