Posted on: 07 Feb 2005
[Our friend is materialistic but still gets the divine experiences of Samadhi. How is this possible?]
The main inseparable characteristic of God is the special divine knowledge. When you are associated with God in samadhi, you must get that knowledge from Him. When you associate with a hot body, you must also become hot. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, associated with God in samadhi. When He came out, He was preaching excellent, special, divine knowledge. Apart from the knowledge, He also showed love and bliss. He also had divine visions. Therefore samadhi means the association with God. The proof for such an association is the special divine knowledge (Prajnanam). Awareness, love and bliss alone cannot be the inseparable identities of God. Every living being shows awareness. Therefore every living being cannot be concluded to be having samadhi. A prostitute shows love. A drunkard shows bliss. Their experiences cannot prove that they are in samadhi. The vision of an energetic form is as good as seeing the radiating sun. For such an easily available petty vision, you need not close your eyes and convert your mental energy forcibly to become an energetic form. It is like digging a great hill and catching a small rat. First you must define samadhi as the association with God. Then this analysis can be applied.
Samadhi only means association. If you take samadhi as an association with only awareness, love or bliss, then such experiences are consequent, which are not divine. The prajnanam is always associated with awareness, love and bliss. The awareness, love and bliss can also exist independently without Prajnanam. Some take awareness as God and for them all the living beings having awareness are God! Some say that love is God and for them a loving girl or boy is also God! Some say bliss is God and for them a drunkard or a smoking person using Hukka is also God! You have to eliminate all these people. There is a heap of stones. In that heap some artificial diamonds exist and there is also one real diamond. The stones, artificial diamonds and original diamond look like the same by glittering. You have to eliminate not only the stones but also the artificial diamonds, which are very closer to the original diamond. These stones are all the human beings. The artificial diamonds are the false human incarnations, which exhibit love and bliss only and claim to be God. Finally you will get a few artificial diamonds, which are very very close to the original diamond. Such very very close artificial diamonds are the preachers of spiritual knowledge. They also preach the spiritual knowledge and appear as if having the Prajnanam. Their spiritual knowledge is not associated with love and bliss and therefore, cannot transfer love and bliss to our hearts. The other type of fraud incarnations transmits love and bliss to our hearts, but cannot transmit Prajnanam.
Thus finally you have to identify that single original diamond, which transmits infinite love and infinite bliss through the special infinite true knowledge. Lord Krishna transmitted such love and bliss through the preaching the Gita. There were several scholars like Vyasa, but even they were eliminated before Lord Krishna. Even Dharma Raja was only a devotee and not the Lord even though he showed an excellent character, which is the result of the quality, called Sattvam. The Lord is beyond even Dharma. The Gopikas showed infinite love and bliss. But they were not the Lord because they could not preach the Gita. Only Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa had real samadhi, which was proved by His Prajnanam. He never studied any scripture. Therefore, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa is treated as the human incarnation of Rama and Krishna. Even the Gopikas were not treated so. After hearing the preachings of Sri Paramahamsa, people developed infinite love and bliss. His words were Upanishads. Adi Shankara also had such samadhi and therefore He radiated the Prajnanam. He never studied the Vedas and Shastras from any teacher.
The samadhi of devotees shows their detachment from the world. It is not possible for a devotee to turn to the north and to the south simultaneously. Such an impossible state is possible only for the Lord in human form as we can see the case of Lord Krishna. But the human incarnation must be finally decided by the infinite spiritual knowledge, which is associated with love and bliss. If he is a devotee, the external detachment to the world must be an essential sign as we see in the case of the Gopikas. As per your statement your friend may be the human incarnation if he emits such special spiritual knowledge associated with love and bliss along with the samadhi experience. Otherwise he can be considered as a devotee if he shows external detachment in addition to the samadhi experience. If he does not classify as either of them, then he should be considered as a person trying to become a devotee and in such case he will be dancing between the world and God. He may also be considered as a ‘Yoga Bhrashta’ who is a person who has slipped into the world, but retains his divine contact from the previous birth. In such a case he will shortly become a real devotee, who is eligible to even become a human incarnation, provided the Lord enters his body to do some special divine work related to His divine mission.