Salvakalpa samadhi is absorption in eternity to the point where there is no real concept of self but there's still a karmic chain. Nirvikalpa samadhi is absorption in nirvana; concepts of self and no-self go away completely.
For years and years you enter into samadhi every day in order to attain liberation. Eternity fashions a new self which you find yourself with when you come out of samadhi. Each time you come out a little less, you might say, or your real self comes out a little more
Salvakalpa samadhi is a tremendous acceptance and liberation, but it is not complete absorption in nirvana, in that consciousness.
The final entrance into Nirvikalpa Samadhi, into nirvana, God-realization, when you become the absolutely best friend of God, can only come when your love is completely pure.
Nirvikalpa samadhi is another matter. I don't feel that's really up to us. That happens at a certain time when our being has gone through countless changes and refinements.
There is a big difference between the lower samadhis and the upper samadhis, like the difference between the Sierras and the Himalayas.
Salvakalpa samadhi is like a sea of perfect light; nirvikalpa samadhi is no light, no darkness, no way to describe it. Absorption is complete, that's nirvana.
The teaching process becomes most interesting for spiritual seekers once they've managed to hit the lower samadhis. However at that point many seekers become very egotistical.
They reach the point where they feel, "I can go into samadhi now. I can do everything on my own," and that's exactly where they stay, in the lower samadhis. There are many, many people on this earth who can go into salvakalpa samadhi.
Once you become very powerful and advanced, you must be willing to go back to school and start over, and go to a wise person who will show you the way. Very few people are willing to do that.
Nirvikalpa samadhi is another matter. In order to enter into nirvikalpa samadhi, you must have a great deal of humility.
When you eneter into samadhi and seek to make that magical walk between salvikalpa and nirvikalpa samadhi, it's necessary to focus your awareness not on being or nonbeing.
You must realize you are not the doer, that you are not the action.
Now that you've reached everything, you must slay this illusion without slaying it - without becoming caught up in the illusion of slaying illusions.
Nirvikalpa samadhi is a state of no mind, beyond the ten thousand states of mind, where there is nothing but perfection, where the self no longer exists...the ego dissolves into immortality.
Nirvikalpa Samadhi means you are sitting in meditation and you go beyond the planes of light to nirvana. Then you come back and here you are "back in the saddle again".
Sahaja samadhi means that you have just gone back and forth so many times that there is no back and forth. All you see is enlightenment in this world and the other side. There is no other side anymore. It means that you are wakeful.
To be fixated on Sahaja Samadhi is to be fixated. To be fixated on the idea of being not fixated is fixation too. All these ideas and definitions about enlightenment become silly.
The best meditation I ever had, I haven't had yet. It's in the future, which as anyone knows doesn't exist - anyone who meditates knows. But yet, I will have it someday.
The Buddha taught three cycles of teachings. His first cycle of teachings cover the basics, the prerequisites. This would include the Dharmapada.
His second cycle of teachings discusses the cosmology of the universes. But in his later years, he wrote the tantric texts.
Some people go into tantra with the idea, sort of an intellectual approach, that now they can just do everything and stay high. That doesn't work at all.
Tantra is not sexual yoga. When the word tantra is used in the West, very often people immediately associate it with some kind of sexual yoga in which you use sex as a vehicle for enlightenment.
Sexuality, for the person who practices tantra, is a marvelous way to experience illusion. Illusion is just another way of seeing things. There are no illusions because there is no self.
Tantra works well for people who are engaged in relationships and sexuality. Sex itself is just an action. It's just part of the dream.
