For many seekers, Samadhi is regarded as the ultimate milestone of the spiritual path. Once attained, it is believed, the restless search ends and the mind rests in truth. Yet, the reality is more demanding. Samadhi is not the end of the journey but its true beginning.
What happens in Samadhi is a glimpse — a piercing of the veil of sense-bound consciousness, an opening to the vastness of Truth-Consciousness. This experience shifts awareness from the periphery to the centre, from the mundane to the spiritual. But when the seeker returns to ordinary waking life, the infinite clarity fades, leaving behind only memory. And memory, however luminous, is not the same as a living presence.
The real work begins here: nurturing the glimpse into a foundation that can sustain transformation.
From Memory to Insight
Through steady practice, the memory of Samadhi ripens into intuitive insights. These are not thoughts in the ordinary sense. They arrive suddenly, like rays of light piercing the habitual patterns of the mind. Problems that once seemed insurmountable begin to untangle of their own accord. Questions that haunted the seeker acquire quiet resolution.
Earlier, thought arose mechanically from the nervous system, shaped by sensory data and external impressions. Now, under the light of Truth-Consciousness, thought becomes an emanation of the inner sun of Truth Consciousness.
The Maruts and Indra
The Vedic seers symbolized this stage through the Maruts — the storm gods who represent new, luminous thoughts rushing into the seeker’s consciousness. These are not random sparks but living powers of truth, fresh currents reshaping the inner sky.
Presiding over them is Indra, the Lord of Luminous Intelligence. Indra does not merely receive these intuitions; he tests them. Each insight must pass through the acid test of peace and harmony before it can be accepted as true. In this way, the mind is no longer a battlefield of random impulses but a realm gradually ordered by the light of truth consciousness.
From Satyam to Ritam
This stage marks the passage from Satyam to Ritam.
- Satyam is truth as a glimpse, a flash of vision in Samadhi.
- Ritam is truth as order, structuring the entire field of thought and perception.
This shift is crucial. A flash of truth may inspire, but it does not yet transform. When truth begins to fashion the very structure of the mind, every thought becomes an organic expression of the higher consciousness. The nervous mind, with its restlessness, gives way to the luminous mind, harmonized and anchored.
The First Milestone of Transformation
This refashioning of thought is the first great milestone after Samadhi. Without it, the seeker remains dependent on fleeting experiences. With it, a stable inner order begins to take shape.
The importance of this stage cannot be overstated. Only when the mind is illumined by Ritam can the next movements of spiritual transformation unfold — the descent of force and, later, the descent of delight. For Truth is never static. It seeks to empower and to fulfill.
But the first step remains indispensable: allowing the sun of Truth-Consciousness to structure thought so that every perception and reflection echoes a deeper rhythm of peace and harmony. This is the quiet beginning of Dharma, the principle of order that eventually seeks to reshape not only the seeker’s inner life but also the life of society.
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