Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

Author(s): Prabhavnanda Swami, Christopher Isherwood
Publisher: Ramkrishna Math Madras

Page 67

PATANJALI YOGA SUTRAS
For him, the sorrows of this world are over. Though he possesses a finite body, he remains united with the Infinite. His heart knows no anxiety. Such a man is said to be free even in this life.
Once nirvikalpa samadhi has been achieved, it is possible for the saint to pass into and out of it repeatedly. This was the case with Sri Ramakrishna. While in nirvikalpa, he experienced union with the impersonal Brahman. But, on returning to normal consciousness, he would speak of God in the aspect of the Divine Mother, his Chosen Ideal. Mother did not lose her reality for him because he had known Brahman. It is important to remember this for, in our language, the word "real" is used vaguely and loosely, and is apt to lead to confusion. When we say that Brahman alone is real, we do not mean that everything else is an illusion, but rather that Brahman alone is fundamental and omnipresent. The aspects of God, the divine incarnations, have their own relative order of reality; so do the subtle and the gross objects. The materialists—those who describe themselves as being “down to earth”-are the ones who are living in an unreal world, because they limit themselves to the level of gross sense-perception. But the perception of the illuminated saint ranges over the whole scale, from gross to subtle and from subtle to absolute; and it is only he who knows what the nature of this universe actually is.