In plain words
At such a time, however many hardships come, these are all clouds. Thinking, “They only drift away; they do not stay,” we must keep our aim settled firmly on divinity. To cultivate such one-pointedness, our forebears handed down the path called dhyāna. We must also inquire where this dhyāna stands among the eight limbs of yoga. Among yama, niyama, āsana, prāṇāyāma, pratyāhāra, dhāraṇā, dhyāna, samādhi: it is the place before samādhi. It belongs to the seventh place. All the japa, tapas, yāga and yajña we do today are for cultivating the power of dhāraṇā. When we sing bhajans looking at a form, this is only a way of developing our power of dhāraṇā. So all the karmas done in the world are for cultivating the power of dhāraṇā.
Just as a man who means to build a house first gathers cement, bricks, sand, earth and stones, all of it, so before dhyāna we must gather japa, tapas, yajña, yāga and the rest, all of them. After all these have been done, it goes on merging into the oneness called dhyāna. Sitting without moving is not dhyāna. Sitting in padmāsana with the gaze fixed on the tip of the nose is not dhyāna. Standing still like a corpse is not dhyāna. To fix your feeling on God: that alone is dhyāna. Unless you fix the nature of that mind on God, however you may sit, all this is only useless. It is fruitless. This very thing is in the Bhagavad Gītā: ‘ananyāścintayantomāṃ e janāḥ paryupāsate, teṣāṃ nityābhiyuktānāṃ yogakṣemaṃ vahāmyahaṃ’; for one who is fixed in this way, He Himself looks after his welfare. Today we sit in dhyāna, at least, as though with great steadiness and with great strength and power. But our citta wanders off into other paths. The day our mind merges in God through dhyāna, only then does samādhi come about. So the state of samādhi is nothing but divinity that is oneness. This is the feeling of the one Ātma. This is beyond the guṇas; this is beyond Īśvaratva, which is pure sāttvic. Īśvaratva too is joined with pure sattva; it is not beyond it. That is, what shows itself in sattva guṇa and is reflected there is the Īśvara principle. Here, what does Īśvaratva mean? Īśvaratva is the very form of aiśvarya; Īśvara is He whose form is all aiśvarya; so all aiśvarya means that worldly aiśvarya, too, is within Īśvaratva. So this too is bound up with a guṇa. The principle beyond these guṇas is the principle of the Ātma. To rise to such a high level we must everywhere, in our sādhanas, in our karmas, in our daily duties, train ourselves in the effort to see the principle of the Ātma in all things. By fixing our gaze in this way within Īśvaratva, within the principle of the Ātma, how will the turns of saṃsāra go, how will its eight kinds of hardship go: you need not worry over this. That is, all things, all beings, all kinds of strength and power, all forms of aiśvarya too, have come forth from Īśvaratva, from the principle of the Ātma; so if we develop that feeling, differences and distinctions will not … the mind in the least; only when we develop such equality, such oneness, does the principle of the Ātma too become ours in some measure.