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continuity. If you shoot a hundred feet of film without moving your camera or your object, and then project the result on a screen, your audience might just as well be looking at a single still photograph. The many identical images are fused into one.
It will be seen from this definition that Patanjali's dhyana does not exactly correspond to our usual understanding of the word “meditation.” By “meditation" we commonly mean a more or less discursive operation of the mind around a central idea. If, for example, we say that we have been meditating on Christ, we are apt to mean that we have not only tried to fix our minds on Christ's ideal form but have also been thinking about his teachings, his miracles, his disciples, his crucifixation, and so on. All this is very good, but it is a mere preliminary to what may properly be called dharana and dhyana.
तदेवार्थमात्रनिर्भासं स्वरूपशून्यमिव समाधिः ॥३॥ 3. When, in meditation, the true nature of the object shines
forth, not distorted by the mind of the perceiver, that is
absorption (samadhi). Ordinary sense-perception is distorted and colored by the imagination of the perceiver. We decide in advance what it is we think we are going to see, and this preconception interferes with our vision. Great painters have often been violently attacked because they painted scenery as it actually looked, not as people thought it ought to look.
It is only in the supersensuous perception of samadhi that we see an object in the truth of its own nature, absolutely free from the distortions of our imagination. Samadhi is, in fact, much more than perception; it is direct knowledge. When Sri Ramakrishna told Vivekananda, "I see God more real than I see you,” he was speaking the literal truth. For Ramakrishna meant that he saw God in samadhi, while he saw Vivekananda
