Savitarka Samadhi YS - I - 42

Pantanjali's Yoga Sutra I-42 - TATRA SABDARTHA JNANA VIKALPAIH SAMKIRNA SAVITARKA- The samadhi in which name, form and knowledge of them is mixed is called savitarka samadhi, or samadhi with deliberation.

A definition of Savitarka Samadhi is that the second state of samadhi where there is alternating association of the consciousness between word, knowledge and sensory perception ...

Swami Satchidananda says " that in savitarka samadhi you can actually understand the sound, the meaning, and the resulting knowledge of an object." In an earlier sutra I- 17 VITARKA VICARANANDASMITANUGAMAT SAMPRAJNATAH Swami Satchidananda said "When the mind is focused on a concrete object, that is called savitarka samadhi."

Some of you reading this might think what is this all about. Basically Swami Satchidananda gives an example of this sutra by giving an example of the fact that every time we hear a sound (like the word dog), we simultaneously do all these three things:

• Hear the word
• try to understand the object by the sound
• gain the knowledge of the object

The sound of the word "dog" goes into the brain and tries to find a similar grove. If it does, then we understand the word "dog" that we heard before. So the sound or name (sabda), the object (artha) and the knowledge (jnana) all happen spontaneously. In this samadhi Swami Satchidananda says we can separate them one after the other and that it is a process that we can stop whenever we want.