According to Comans, samadhi has two stages: samprajana samadhi - enstasis where there is still object-consciousness; and, nirvikalpasamadhi - where there is no longer any object-consciousness.
"The purpose of yogic meditation is to *isolate* bodily fluctuations and pass into samprajana samadhi, hence to total isolation of mental fluctuations and then to pass into nirvakalpasamadhi where the Self is not hidden by external conditions of the body or the mind (citta)." 'The question of the importance of Samadhi in modern and classical Advaita Vedanta' by Michael Comans http://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/comans.htm http://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/comans.htm ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <LEnglish5@...> wrote : I don't know where the debate started, but my point was that two different groups are using the same two words in different ways: TMers equote "pure awareness"Back https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages with "pure consciousness" with "transcendental consciousness" with samadhi, which is a state devoid of any perception The passage on mindfulness equoted "pure awareness" to an advanced form of mindfulness called "open monitoring" where one is equally receptive to all stimuli. "Devoid of stimuli" is not eqivalent to "equally receptive to all stimuli" except in the trivial sense that if there are zero stimuli, that one is equally receptive to all of them. However, the phrase clarifying what "pure awareness" means in the context of "open monitoring" explicitly refers to perception of pain, so "pure awareness" ala open monitoring is NOT a state "devoid of any perception." That was my only point: two different groups are using the same two-word phrase to describe different situations. Which group is using the words "correctly" is a point that I never raised: I merely pointed out that two different groups are saying "pure awareness" and the meaning is quite different: devoid of any perception as compared to open to experience without making any attempt to interpret, change, reject or ignore painful sensation. And the implication for me is that once you mistake the label for what is being talked about, confusion follows. Nashville, Florida is NOT Nashville, Tennessee, and if you seek the Grand Ole Opry in the former, you're going to be looking for a ticket seller to a concert for a very long time indeed. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote I honestly think that many folks on this forum are far less interested in finding "truth" than they are in asserting that the TM organization holds the copyright to the word. This whole thread, after all, was started because someone essentially claimed that the TMO had the right to define what "pure consciousness" is. Right? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <LEnglish5@...> wrote : We were debating? Hmmm. My argument: TM leads to a different style of physiological functioning than mindfulness does, and so, to claim that they are spiritually identical doesn't make sense, if you by Maharishi's theory that spirituality is based on the physical functioning of the nervous system. Anartaxius' argument: No it doesn't, and research isn't good enough to show differences, and even if they DO show differences, it doesn't matter. So there. L [...] ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <LEnglish5@...> wrote : You can only measure what y ou have the equipment to measure. However, it's a truism that just because two things can be described teh same way at one level, doesn't mean that they are identifical. My favorite example is what happened to some British friends many decades ago... They got a sweetheart travel package to visit Nashville. Nashville, Florida, that is. Just because you can describe a city as "Nashville" doesn't mean it is the Nashville you were hoping to visit. Unfortunately, they actually got on the plane and landed before they discovered their mistake. The moral is: a label, "pure awareness," that is described as being "without thought," might not be referring to the same thing between two different meditation traditions. A two-word phrase may not provide you enough info to make a rationale choice any more than just knowing the name of the city without knowing the state it is in is enough to make rationale travel plans. L
