Have you ever wondered what Samadhi looks like? In our dedicated practice, we learn about the eight limbs of yoga, of which the last and highest is Samadhi, a total union of body, mind and spirit. This is what we strive for. Paramhansa Yogananda, in his “Autobiography of a Yogi” gives a description of his first experience of this blissful state.

Yogananda is sitting in meditation, striving to concentrate but his thoughts are wavering. He hears his guru call him to his side. He is irritated but goes to him and the guru promises him his heart’s desire. The guru strikes Yogananda gently on his chest just above the heart. This is what Yogananda says happened next:

“My body became immovably rooted; breath was drawn out of my lungs as if by some huge magnet. Soul and mind instantly lost their physical bondage, and streamed out like a fluid piercing light from my every pore. The flesh was as though dead, yet in my intense awareness I knew that never before had I been fully alive. My sense of identity was no longer narrowly confined to a body, but embraced the circumambient atoms.

…My ordinary frontal vision was now changed to a vast spherical sight, simultaneously all-perceptive. …All objects within my panoramic gaze trembled and vibrated like quick motion pictures. My body, Master’s, the pillared courtyard, the furniture and floor, the trees and sunshine, occasionally became violently agitated, until all melted into a luminescent sea; even as sugar crystals, thrown into a glass of water, dissolve after being shaken. The unifying light alternated with materializations of form, the metamorphoses revealing the law of cause and effect in creation.

An oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul. ….A swelling glory within me began to envelop towns, continents, the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae, and floating universes. The entire cosmos, gently luminous, like a city seen afar at night, glimmered within the infinitude of my being. The sharply etched global outlines faded somewhat at the farthest edges; there I could see a mellow radiance, ever –undiminished. It was indescribably subtle; the planetary pictures were formed of a grosser light.

The divine dispersion of rays poured from the Eternal Source, blazing into galaxies, transfigured with the ineffable auras. Again and again I saw the creative beams condense into constellations, then resolve into sheets of transparent flame. By rhythmic reversion, sextillion worlds passed into diaphanous luster; fire became firmament.

I cognized the center of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception in my heart. Irradiating splendor issued from my nucleus to every part of the universal structure. Blissful “amrita”, the nectar of immortality, pulsed through me with a quicksilver like fluidity. The creative voice of God I heard resounding as “Aum”, the vibration of the Cosmic Motor.

Suddenly the breath returned to my lungs. With a disappointment almost unbearable, I realized that my infinite immensity was lost. Once more I was limited to the humiliating cage of a body, not easily accommodative to the Spirit. Like a prodigal child, I had run away from my macrocosmic home and imprisoned myself in a narrow microcosm.

My guru was standing motionless before me; I started to drop at his feet in gratitude for the experience in cosmic consciousness which I had long passionately sought. He held me upright, and spoke calmly, unpretentiously. “You must not get overdrunk with ecstasy. Much work yet remains for you in the world. Come; let us sweep the balcony floor; then we shall walk by the Ganges”.”

Quoted from “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramhansa Yogananda