Yoga, Samapatti & Me

Abstract

In this article I review Samapatti and the issues the experiences have brought for me personally [1-4]. First and foremost was the question of why I am able to enter this state without any preparation. The second was the obvious question of how does this work. Over some years people had asked to sit and talk with me about their problems, despite the fact that I have no training whatsoever in counselling or any other therapies. This was the early eighties and seminars on just about everything under the sun were on offer. I joined a ten day residential for Vipassana meditation and after sitting meditating for ten days I was no different and life continued as usual. It was obvious that most of those I listened to thought I was some kind of healer, others said I was a good listener, while some asked me to teach them to do what I did. My position was that I could not possibly, or ethically, teach something that I didn’t know anything about. Not about how it worked, if it worked, why it worked and what was it that I did. At one point I was asked what I would do next, and to my surprise I said I would not do any more of this because I needed to find out how it worked. So began this long undirected journey into thinking and consciousness. In the Yoga tradition, buddhi is consciousness in its own right and has been defined by some writers as acognitive knowing. My view is that acognitive knowing means knowing without the mind, and of course that is what Samapatti provides to the seer. And what this means in our seeking to understand consciousness is precisely what I referred to. There are possibly a number of models we could posit to accommodate this position, all of which would be counterintuitive for science. I will simply offer one which arises from the acognitive model.