Samadhi

Adam Wes So we'll just wait for a few minutes for everybody to arrive. Thanks for being on time.

Namaste, everybody. Welcome. We'll probably have a couple more people arrive shortly.

You know that song? I feel like it's a romance with the universe. It's talking about you, and I feel that "you" is that ecstatic, divine bliss of existence. Spirituality has to become a love affair with existence, and I hope to transmit that today.

We'll be talking about a very important thing. I can't believe it's been almost a year and I haven't talked about this specifically. I think Adam partially inspired me to talk about it.

Hey, Adam. So nice to see you here. Very cool.

This is how our sessions work with the Sangha. We do a 30-minute discussion and sermon, and then a 30-minute meditation, so it'll be about an hour. We've already used some of the time.

Today, the sermon is on samadhi. I'm calling it "Samadhi: The Luminous Strata of Love."

Kimberly M I can't hear him.

Adam Wes We can hear you, Kimberly.

Samadhi is indicative of different types of meditation states. In meditation, we can enter into varying degrees of meditation, and these states can be divided into five different strata of samadhi.

I first actually want to talk about Adam. Adam is a high school friend of mine. We knew each other in jazz band in high school. We both played the tenor sax. Marea, this was my friend who played tenor sax with me.

It just so happens he worked with an enlightened being who taught him all about samadhi, a really famous enlightened being named Adi Da. He was a contemporary of my teacher's teacher, my Param Guru, whose name I usually don't like to talk about, but Adam knows who he is as well.

It'll be really interesting to talk about samadhi with you and maybe have you share anything you'd like to contribute to the discussion.

When we meditate, we enter into varying degrees of essence. We may start from a more gross quality of meditation, where everything's physical, and move to greater degrees of essence, culminating in complete impersonal existence, in the quintessential essence of everything.

When we meditate, the qualities of light that we experience are indicative of those varying degrees. We're going to go through all the different qualities of light and the associated levels of samadhi, which actually have different names corresponding to those different qualities of light.

The first one is manas samadhi. Manas samadhi is a samadhi where you experience white light and the rainbow spectrum. This light that I'm speaking of is not an imagination. It is a phenomenal light, a direct perception of the essence of our own mind. Our own spirit is luminous light.

When we go into meditation, we can begin to see that light, bask in it, and navigate through that inner cosmology of self into varying degrees. If we're looking to achieve enlightenment, it's a very deep level of samadhi, and we can use our understanding of this inner luminous cosmology to progress and assess our progress.

Manas samadhi is the white light and the colored light. It could be any of the various colors, like all the chakra colors, each of which has a certain quality, a certain facet of essence in experience. You may experience green light, which has a sort of heart quality, or red light, which also has a heart quality, or yellow light, which may have a little bit of a willpower, navel-center quality.

That's manas samadhi. All of these levels are wonderful. It's good to be able to experience them all. One's not better than the other, but some are more essential.

What do I mean by essential? Let's use a scientific metaphor.

You may have different fruits. Fruits are not that essential. You may look at fruits and say, "Oh, they've got certain molecules in them, sugar and fibers." Those are more essential because they're common to all fruits, right? A blueberry may be very different from a banana, but both have sugar in them. Both have carbohydrates, and both have water.

You may go further down and say, "Okay, fruits are made up of these different atoms: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and so on." Then you might say, "Okay, well, there's a whole bunch of atoms, but you can go even more essential and say everything's made of electrons, protons, and neutrons." That's even more essential because it's common to everything.

You can go even further and say, "Well, electrons, protons, and neutrons are all actually just energy, and everything is energy." E equals MC squared. That's what that's referring to.

When we move to essence, we're moving to the thing that is common to all manifestations. As we move from manas samadhi to the next one, we're moving to a greater degree of essence than that, in that metaphor.

Next would be laya samadhi. Manas means mind, by the way, so it means you're experiencing a degree of essence with the presence of mind.

Laya samadhi means dissolution. In this state, we experience a beautiful sapphire blue. It's like a dark blue, and it is indicative of experiencing the essence of your incarnation. We're experiencing something more essential than the varying aspects of experience, the essence of the experience of being incarnate itself.

That's laya samadhi.

Next is savikalpa samadhi. Savikalpa means with distinctions, so there are differences. The next one is without differences, nirvikalpa, which we'll get to. This one's with differences. You start to experience the quintessential, but we're still doing it as an individual. This is right at the border of manifestation as individuality.

This is where you experience the light of the soul, the essence of the soul, which is gold light. That gold light comes in varying qualities. It can be a white gold, a molten black gold, or a sparkling gold. There are different types of gold, but the gold itself is indicative of experiencing the soul. It's quite essential.

Next is nirvikalpa samadhi, or kevala nirvikalpa samadhi. Kevala means alone, and nirvikalpa means without distinctions or differentiation. In this, we experience the quintessential aspect of existence. It's impersonal.

While savikalpa is personal, nirvikalpa is impersonal, and this is the same as nirvana. When we enter this state, we're in a very deep state of samadhi.

I remember one time I was sitting with Adam, and I said, "This is samadhi." He said, "Adi Da wouldn't call this samadhi," because we weren't in kevala nirvikalpa samadhi. But I would still call it that because I think we were in a lower samadhi at the time. I don't know if you remember that, Adam.

The next is sahaja samadhi, which actually means the natural state. Once we go into nirvikalpa samadhi so many times, there's a merging between that meditative absorption state and walking around in the world.

Somebody who is experiencing full enlightenment has not just the capacity to let go of individuality, but the capacity to retain that freedom in worldly experiences. That's sahaja samadhi.

I would call that enlightenment. Nirvikalpa I would call liberation, and savikalpa I would call self-realization. This is actually the terminology that my teacher taught me, and I like it, so I'll share it with you guys.

I've got a whole outline written here for you guys.

Really, light is, I'm going to use a math term, isomorphic to love. Isomorphic means that there's a one-to-one relationship. We can turn one thing into another. Implicit in that statement is that when light becomes more essential, love becomes more complete.

In love, we recognize the unity of all things. When we go to our essence, we find that we are no different than the other. The strawberry says, "Hey, I'm just made out of energy," or the blueberry says, "I'm just made out of energy," and they see that they are all of the same substance.

Love is a state where we connect with our deepest essence. There's this absolute, sufficient wholeness that one experiences in meditation in the deeper strata of light, which is love.

When we get in touch with our essence, our substance, what we really are, the true nature of the self, we are moving into a state of love. This is not just some cold, metaphysical roadmap. This is love. This is the warmth and wholeness that I would emphasize.

What makes people more loving? To be loving means to have this great abundance and benevolence within you. Why would one give away? They would see that the other is themselves. They would feel that they have nothing to give away because they are everything they could ever be, not as an idea, but as a direct experience.

In these samadhic states, we feel this ecstasy and wholeness, this eternal quality, that we are unassailable and complete. That gives rise to freedom, intelligence, love, and all the beautiful virtues that one could seek.

I think I've covered most of it. Maybe we can start a little bit of a discussion. Does anybody have any questions? Namaste.

Samadhi is a part of the path to enlightenment, and you don't have to know this word. It goes by many words in many different religions. There are various ways of dividing and describing the structure, but they're essentially pointing to the same continuum to essence.

Adam, would you want to say anything or share any thoughts or comments? You're muted.

Thanks, Christina. I love math, so I see things through the lens of mathematics.

Adam W I couldn't figure out how to unmute myself for a second.

I don't have much in the way of experience of samadhi, so I wish I had something to share.

Adam Wes Well, one of the reasons I invited you is that I know you had a very inspiring experience with Adi Da. It's just really amazing that you got to spend time with him.

Today, the goal is to have a samadhic experience for all of us. That's what we're going to try to do, to have some sort of experience of the inner luminosity. I'd love to try to help make that happen for you.

We'll begin that soon. Anybody else want to say anything? Hi, Marea! Yay, Marea's here! Do you want to say anything?

Marea A I guess my first experience with the light was through, remember I told you her name, Adriana? Israel? Dressed in all black.

Adam Wes You're a little echoey. I can't really hear you very well.

Marea A Okay. Well, shortly after that, I met you, so it kind of felt like the light brought us together. I don't know if you can hear that.

Adam Wes You had an experience in the light with somebody, and then it brought us together. I like that. Welcome.

We should probably get started soon. A number of you have been here for many years with me and have been going into light, so perhaps this gives you some perspective on those experiences.

For you, Ariella, for example, you always say, "I was spaced out for an hour." Well, perhaps you were in kevala nirvikalpa samadhi. I actually think you may have been. It's a very deep state. You may have actually been experiencing that.

I wouldn't call it spaced out, though. That's like a kid who's in math class, not interested, and staring out the window. That's spaced out. It's a little bit different.

Mom, would you like to say anything? Does that make sense? Okay.

Give me a second.

Let's start meditating so we can have the actual experience. It's very much not about the philosophy. You might meet somebody who knows all the different samadhi levels and probably knows the etymologies perfectly, but it's not about whether you can talk about dancing and know all the different moves. It's about getting on the dance floor and actually doing it. Right, Kelsey?

For whatever reason, I targeted that toward you, Kelsey, because you must be into that.

Adam W You know, something occurred to me that maybe I did have to share after all.

Adam Wes Oh, wonderful.

Adam W My teacher spoke about samadhi this way. He taught that most of us are probably here because we've had some kind of spiritual experience, some kind of intuition of light, a power, an ecstasy, or whatever it may be, however it's revealed to us.

Then we cling to that, or we want to repeat that, and that begins a spiritual search. But because the spiritual experience is actually of truth, it's native to us. It's not something that we can search for.

When we want to repeat that experience, we shut ourselves off from it because the search is a kind of becoming the seeker for instead of the being of.

The practice that he gave, which isn't very applicable to most people generally, is to be in the company of somebody who is in samadhi. Then you just feel it, the same way that you feel the state of anybody you're around.

He said that's the essence of the guru-devotee relationship. You're able to be in the company of somebody who is in samadhi, and therefore you feel the samadhi. If you feel it to a depth, you become that.

That's the essence of the relationship between the teacher and the master in his teaching. I did experience that in his company. I felt his samadhi. That's something that's very hard to describe, but I feel very grateful for that.

Adam Wes Beautiful. Thanks for sharing, Adam. Well said.

Christina B I have something to say.

Adam Wes I'd just like to respond to him first.

Christina B Yeah.

Adam Wes Thank you for saying that because it helps me clarify something.

I spend a lot of time in samadhi. I don't tend to spend time in kevala nirvikalpa samadhi. That happens every now and then, but I spend a lot of time in savikalpa samadhi.

When I sit here with you guys, part of the way that I'm working is like my mom says: "I don't know what you do to me, but I sit down and I have this experience."

There is a darshan element, the teacher-devotee transmission that Adam was speaking of, which I'm seeking to share with you all. It actually does happen through the internet. Not quite as well as in person, but it happens quite well, surprisingly.

I'll be helping people to have that experience by going deeply into it. I was just meditating before this in the gold light, waves of gold light, so I'm excited to share that with you.

Yes, Christina, hi. I just wanted to say that before I responded to you. Otherwise, just the way my mind works, I don't hold anything in storage. There's no RAM.

Christina B No, that's lovely. I'm sorry, Adam. I just didn't want you to move on without saying something about what you were saying, Adam.

I think that the language, all the different levels of samadhi, if you will, can also confuse somebody who maybe doesn't live in it. To your point, Adam, it can make it feel like it's something that's not just here. In that feeling itself, it's not here.

I don't know all the languages of the light, their proper Vedic terms, or if Vedic is even what you're speaking, to be honest. But I do know that this sort of experience, this light, is something that I know Adam experiences literally in meditation, in the direct perception of a literal light, often.

But that light also radiates outward from us in our daily interactions. The Spirit would not allow me to carry on the conversation without letting you all know that you can quite literally live in this. It doesn't need to be directly perceived. It can just be what you interact with other people as.

It's exactly like your guru, Adam Weiss. You were in that presence. Each of you has that same ability today, to give the 7-Eleven clerk that presence.

Adam Wes This is something endemic to everything. That's what the nature of quintessence is. It's only obscured.

Just because it's a cloudy day doesn't mean there's no sun. Just because there's an eclipse doesn't mean there's no sun. The sun is eternal, shining, and bright. We have to attune ourselves, direct our attention, or direct our energetic structure in such a way that we feel it.

The more you're surrounded by people who do it, the more it helps you remain in that state. This is the purpose of Sangha, association with truth or with true embodiments of light.

When we go into light, we get our power up. There's this residual effect of light and energy that's reverberating with us between meditations, that goes with us throughout the day. We emanate it.

Light doesn't really end at the end of a meditation. It's kind of like you can fill your light tank up, and it can be dissipated in resistance. You become more dense in various vikarmic patterns. Vikarma means bad actions, essentially, that cause the light to dissipate.

Ideally, you meditate twice a day, go into light, and then you have that throughout the day and share it.

This is not something that any guru owns. It's not about building a giant building that you don't have. It's a part of all of us. The part that people don't have, however, is an awareness of their divine endowment.

Jesus used the word gospel, which actually means the good news. The good news is that we are all kings and queens in this divine space because we are, by our very nature, ecstatic, blissful essence.

Some people choose to go away from it, and some people choose to go toward it. If everybody's listening to rock music around you, it's a little harder to get on the classical music wavelength. You could switch those around, but classical is a little bit more essence, so I said it that way.

Christina, I don't know if that helps bridge what you were sharing, corroborate it, or embrace it in a way that you wanted.

Namaste, everybody. Let's get started and do some light meditation.

Oh, where's Kira? I knew somebody was missing. Goodness.

All right, let's begin our guided meditation. Darshan, transmission, empathic attunement, all of those things are Sangha, satsang.

I like to put a little bit of music on. It helps.

The first thing we can do is let all of the philosophy fall away and bring attention to our heart center.

You're welcome to keep your eyes open and gaze. In fact, I'll do that with you. If you're used to doing it with your eyes closed, you can do that.

Let's take a moment and bring sentiment, bringing attention to the body, to the mind, to our condition, and just allowing ourselves to let go and dissolve into a more gentle space.

One of the techniques that one can use to go into light is gazing. Just hold your vision very broadly. We're looking forward, but we're looking at the periphery, gently making our focus more gentle, perhaps even a little blurry. We're not really using our eyes as much.

In some ways, we're looking behind us. We're just becoming aware with our mind of the whole space, and we let the light build. It comes to us.

Just like what Adam said, we're not seeking. We're revealing, and that usually happens when we allow it to build up of its own volition.

Sometimes the light can be very intimidating because it's truth and real love. One thing you can do is bring your attention to your heart center if you feel overwhelmed. Let it fill your heart. There's a quality of safety that arises when we do that.

Any visual perturbation, any mistiness or visual obscuration, give your attention to that. Sometimes people think, "Oh, that was just my eyes." But if you go deeper, you'll see so much more.

Give your attention to that luminosity in the visual field. Feel it. Give it permission to be brilliant. It's a part of ourselves.

Be patient with yourself, too. The light works on us, chipping away at the calcifications of density. Let it work. Stay with it.

There's a lot of light right now. It begins to fill the room with a substance. It's truly, truly a blissful experience, so just keep your attention on it. Stay with it.

When you begin to see the light, notice that you can work with it, move with it, and allow it to wash through your body and your spirit. It is deeply purifying and cleansing because it is the essence, melting out the dross, the impurities, returning to pure essence, whence we rose.

It's emanating from us, too. All of it. Washing through us, it is us.

Another thing you can do to access the light is feel your third eye, just a little above the spot between the eyebrows. It feels like a magnetic pole. If you subtly activate that, the subtle perceptual faculties that allow us to see the light activate.

We need a song that blasts us off a little bit now.

There's love, power, energy, and vitality in the light. Sometimes the music can be very gentle. That usually is a good way to get going. But then we can make the music a little bit more invigorating.

This will be our final song.

Gratitude.

Namaste, everybody.

Wow, there was a lot of light there. I hope all of you had a really wonderful experience. Definitely don't judge it. Sometimes it takes time to move through.

It's like cleaning a house. If you haven't cleaned it for a while, you make progress, but it's still not clean. You may not experience the light, or you might have just opened yourself more to it, but it's a step in the direction.

Mom, would you like to share your experience? We usually do little quick shares, just 30 seconds to a minute per person who's interested. You can pass if I call on you.

Colleen Straight away, I went into that deep red light.

Adam Wes Beautiful.

Colleen I saw a lot of images today. A kid kicking a soccer ball, a fence, a whole lot of weird things. Near the end, I did see white, but then it changed back to something like somebody had taken a white pencil and made swirls on another color. Mostly orange and red, and the white today. I feel really good and relaxed now. Thank you.

Adam Wes Good. Namaste, Mom. Nice work. Wonderful. A true samadhi experience she has every week here.

Ariella, would you like to share?

AriellaShira L It was a bit different for me in the beginning. I was feeling waves of purple light, which I don't usually experience. Then later on, that stopped, and it was just the white.

Adam Wes Beautiful.

AriellaShira L Special.

Adam Wes Those waves are special. They're transmutive. There's a transmutive property in the waves. It's actually working.

The essence is between the astral and the causal. It's between the subtle physical planes and the light planes. There's this interplay of soma, which is waves. It will wash through and purify your chakras, so it's very healing. Wonderful. Namaste.

How about you, Adam? We should do something in person soon. Maybe we'll do a meditation in person. That would be nice.

Adam W I'll have to pass for now.

Adam Wes Okay, wonderful. I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for doing that with me.

Adam W Thank you.

Adam Wes You're welcome. How about you, Marea? Yay, Marea! I'm so glad you made it.

Marea A We've gone into light a bunch, and I was kind of skeptical. I was like, "I don't know, will it be effective virtually?"

I'm at Cafe Gratitude because I didn't want to be in the hot van, and there are people here. But I definitely dropped into the light. There's a field.

At first I was closing my eyes, and then I opened my eyes, and you're like this sagely figure there. I walked into your eyes, and I was imagining the time before when we weren't listening and the light came. There was a lot of it. It was very palpable all up around here.

I really liked what you said about extending behind. I felt that.

I see a lot of things when I go into light. Usually, when I go into light, it's with you. That's why I was like, "Man, I really want to come to these. Can you hold me accountable to the light?"

Adam Wes Yes. Forty minutes of light every week.

Marea A This time, the light had almost a personhood to it. I know it's not, but for some reason, it felt like an old friend coming up. It had a kind of personified quality to it, which I thought was interesting.

Adam Wes Interesting. The Hindu religion personifies these energies in their deities, and in a way Christianity does it too. That's what I can think of.

Wonderful.

Marea A Thank you!

Adam Wes Namaste. Wonderful.

Marea A I can't wait until you get back.

Adam Wes Yay. We'll do it soon.

One more share. Christina, would you like to share? I'd love to hear from you if you feel like it.

Christina B First, Kimberly, thank you for sharing that in the chat. I'm so sorry to hear about your beloved father. I didn't know that before, but there was definitely a presence in that, for sure. Now, reading what you wrote, it makes a lot of sense.

It was a very reverent experience today. It felt like a very threshold moment for me, if I'm being honest.

Adam Wes Beautiful. Wonderful. I'd love to hear more about that, now or later. That's up to you.

Christina B We'll definitely talk. It's late over here at this time, and I think I probably want to continue sitting with myself for a little while. But we'll definitely catch up this week.

Adam Wes Namaste, Christina. Thank you.

Kimberly, would you like to share, talk, or say anything? I just read that. Oh my God. I'm sending condolences and love.

We were just talking about him. He helped you pay for the course. That was so sweet of him.

Kimberly M Thanks, Christina. I think I'm good. I think what I put in the chat is what I wanted to say. I had a great experience there. It was the perfect place to be.

Adam Wes It's interesting. This light reaches beyond life and death because it is eternal.

Remember that laya samadhi is incarnate light. Savikalpa samadhi is the light that is common, essential to all incarnations. At least, this is my apprehension and experience of it. You have to go through a few incarnations with enough consciousness to see that, right?

There's a consoling quality in knowing that we are eternal in that. I don't think that makes anything easier. I'm not saying that at all. But it's interesting that there's a synchronicity with your loss today, or yesterday.

Sending you love, Kimberly, and your father. Thank you.

I'm not sure if I said it earlier, but there's a luminous darkness, a black light, with nirvikalpa samadhi. I just wanted to make sure I said that. I may have said it before. That's a really important thing to have shared.

All right, everybody. Namaste. Thank you for being here, and I'll see you next time. Nice to see you, Adam.

Bye, everybody.

Samadhi reveals increasingly essential qualities of luminous being, where light is experienced as love, wholeness, freedom, and the essence common to all manifestations.

• Samadhi includes different strata of meditation, moving from more gross qualities toward the quintessential essence of everything.
• Manas samadhi includes white light and the rainbow spectrum, with the presence of mind.
• Laya samadhi is dissolution and is associated with sapphire blue, the essence of being incarnate.
• Savikalpa samadhi is with distinctions and individuality. It is associated with gold light and the essence of the soul.
• Nirvikalpa samadhi is without distinctions or differentiation. It is impersonal and is associated with luminous darkness or black light.
• Sahaja samadhi is the natural state, where freedom remains present in worldly experience.
• One level is not better than another, but some levels are more essential, meaning they are common to more manifestations.
• Light is a direct perception of the essence of mind, and our own spirit is luminous light.
• Light is isomorphic to love. As light becomes more essential, love becomes more complete.
• Sangha supports attunement to light and helps that state remain present between meditations.
• Light does not end when meditation ends. Its energy can reverberate throughout the day and be shared.
• The teaching is not about knowing the philosophy. It is about entering the experience directly.

Let the philosophy fall away and spend time directly attending to the light. Bring attention to the heart center, soften and broaden the gaze, notice any luminosity or mistiness in the visual field, and allow the light to build without seeking. Let it wash through the body and spirit, with patience and without judging the experience.

• Attention to the heart center and the gentle space that arises there.
• A broad, soft gaze that includes the periphery.
• Luminosity, mistiness, or subtle changes within the visual field.
• Allowing the light to build of its own volition rather than seeking it.
• Patience with the experience, whether the light is clear or only beginning to be revealed.
• The residual effect of light and energy between meditations.
• Association with Sangha and true embodiments of light.
• Awareness of actions and patterns that cause the light to dissipate.

• What becomes present when the gaze and attention soften?
• How does the light remain with you after meditation?
• Where do you experience warmth, wholeness, or love?