Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c16.21

c16.21

Śaṅkara marks out three stages in this Meditation leading up to a knowledge of the Self, viz. (1) the seeker after Truth is to start by meditating anything he chooses either within his own "heart" (as representing a specific centre of experience in spiritual discipline), or outside his body as apart from its name and form; (2) the second stage is that of uninterrupted meditation upon the One Entity, Absolute, Impartite, of the nature of *Sat-Chit-Ānanda*, "the Supreme and only Reality, Self-luminous Consciousness, and Bliss"; (3) in the third stage the *sādhaka* remains completely immobile in rapturous self-realization, in which all notion of "*mine*" with reference to the body (*dehātmabodha*) has melted away and the Higher Self is realized. He henceforth passes all his time in meditation.