Samadhi and Parayanam

Sri Annamalai Swami

Bhagavan sometimes went into a trance-like samadhi state while he was listening to the tamil parayana. 

When I first saw it happening Dandapani Swami was still the ashram manager. B had gone into samadhi during the evening parayana and failed to come out of it even when the dinner bell was rung. In an attempt to wake him up, Dandapani Swami repeatedly blew a conch in B's ear while another devotee started shaking B's legs. Neither activity had any effect. B eventually regained normal consciousness without their assistance about five minutes later.

As I was a little intrigued by these states I once asked B, "What is samadhi?"

B replied by showing the 25th verse of chapter 43 of the Ribhu gita in which Nidagha explains to his guru, Ribhu, how he attained samadhi.

'I' is forever brahman and brahman is indeed 'I'. This conviction, when firmly experienced, is known as unshaken samadhi. That is samadhi when there is thought-free nirvikalpa abidance, freed from all appearances of duality. My Lord, through these two types of samadhi I have attained the bliss of jivanmukta and become the spotless Supreme.

Bhagavan once defined the true nature of nirvikalpa samadhi in the following way: 'The mere non-perception of differences outside is not the real nature of firm nirvikalpa. Know that the non-rising of differences in the dead mind alone is the true nirvikalpa.'

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When the regular parayan ended B and the devotees would often sit in silence for about half an hour. Once, during the time when I was supervising the building works, I walked into the hall during the period of silence and prostrated to B. B, who had been sitting with his eyes closed till then, immediately opened them and started talking about building matters.

When our discussion was over, one of the devotees remarked to B, "You were sitting in silence with your eyes closed but when Annamalai Swami appeared you immediately opened them and started to talk about construction work."

B replied: "Annamalai Swami's mind was full of building thoughts. You are all sitting here in silence and peace. I was also in silence. Annamalai Swami is carrying all the ashram buildings in his head. When he entered the hall all these building thoughts made me talk."