Samādhi

Samādhi is the deepest state of meditation in which the practitioner's awareness becomes fully absorbed in the object of contemplation. It is the eighth and final limb of Patañjali's Aṣṭāṅga Yoga, representing the culmination of sustained meditative practice. In everyday spiritual life, it refers to a state of profound inner stillness where the fluctuations of the mind cease entirely.

Samādhi is the experiential dissolution of the distinction between the knower, the act of knowing, and the known. In the Yoga tradition, it progresses through stages—from savikalpa samādhi, where a subtle seed of subject-object awareness remains, to nirvikalpa samādhi, where all conceptual differentiation is transcended. It is the direct means by which the jīva realizes its identity with pure consciousness.

At the absolute level, Samādhi is not an attainment but the recognition of what has always been—the unconditioned, non-dual awareness that is Brahman itself. In Advaita Vedānta, sahaja samādhi represents the natural, abiding state where the distinction between meditation and ordinary experience dissolves completely, and the Self remains established as infinite, unchanging sat-cit-ānanda regardless of outer activity.