CHAPTER 7 Meditation on God - Start to Finish
One morning in January-February, 1934, corresponding to the cyclical year Śrīmukha, when His Holiness went to offer His namaskāras to His Guru during the latter’s āhnika, the senior Jagadguru asked Him, “When performing various japas during your āhnika, you contemplate in accordance with the dhyāna-ślokas of the mantras chanted. Do you not?” His Holiness answered that He did. “How do you begin?” questioned the senior Jagadguru. His Holiness replied, “I take up the rosary and commence a japa, keeping my eyes partially or fully open. Simultaneously, I just imagine the form described in the dhyāna-śloka concerned as present in my chest in a red lotus with eight petals.” His Guru said, “Your mind does not wander when you contemplate. However, you are aware of your body and surroundings. Am I correct?” His Holiness answered in the affirmative. “Independent of the requirements of your āhnika, would you like to practice deep meditation on divine forms?” queried the senior Jagadguru. His Holiness expressed His keenness on doing so.
“I will tell you a simple method that will help you to start any meditation that you wish to do. During meditation, there is no need for you to use a rosary. Instead of straightaway picturing a devatā in your heart, first direct your gaze to the middle of your eyebrows. While doing so, you could chant a mantra, such as ‘om’.”
-The senior Jagadguru
Having instructed Him to sit down, His Guru told Him, “I will tell you a simple method that will help you to start any meditation that you wish to do. During meditation, there is no need for you to use a rosary. Instead of straightaway picturing a devatā in your heart, first direct your gaze to the middle of your eyebrows. While doing so, you could chant a mantra, such as ‘om’.” Demonstrating the method, the senior Jagadguru focused His eyes on the space between His brows and remained thus for a few moments. He then said, “Turning the eyes upwards can well be done with the eyelids partially closed. I have found this to be more convenient, but equally effective. You will experience a tingling sensation between the brows. After you mentally apprehend a light in that region for some time, picture the divine form that you wish to meditate on. Then focus on that form. You may, when you feel like it, use this method even in connection with the visualisation of a form during your usual japa.”
Goddess Śāradāmbā
Deciding to try out what the senior Jagadguru had taught Him, His Holiness went a little later to Goddess Śāradāmbā’s temple. There, He sat next to the sanctum, facing Her idol. As He looked at the idol, a jewel on the face glittered in the light of the oil lamps. From His position, it appeared bluish. When He shifted His face a little, it appeared green. After seeing the blue light for a short while, He half-closed His eyelids and directed His eyes towards the space between His brows. Simultaneously, He mentally chanted ‘om’ repeatedly in a slow, lengthened manner. In a matter of seconds, He could feel a tingling sensation between His brows. This gradually increased in intensity. He also began to see an attractive, blue disc of light. This resembled the light from the jewel on the Mother’s face. The main difference was that this was diffused. He then visualised a diminished version of Her idol emerging from the disc and occupying the lotus of His heart. The great clarity of the image in His heart and the readiness with which He had been able to visualise it pleasantly surprised Him. He focused on the form. His chanting of ‘om’ stopped.
Moments later, He opened His eyes. Actually, about half an hour had passed. During this time, He was unaware of the surroundings and His body. He realised that while it is perfectly possible to picture a form without adopting the procedure taught by His Guru, the method facilitates the visualisation of, and focus on, the form. Further, He understood that the light apprehended mentally can be related to the light seen before gazing at the space between the brows.
That evening, He went to the Kālabhairava Temple. After prostrating before the idol, He sat down facing east. He could see the clear blue sky in front of Him. He directed His eyes, with partially closed eyelids, to the middle of the brows. Simultaneously, He mentally chanted the Bālātripurasundarī-mantra. This time, following the onset of a tingling sensation, He beheld a luminous expanse of blue. He first visualised in His chest the heart-lotus, in bloom. He then imagined the form of Goddess Bālā described in the dhyāna-śloka condensing from the blue light and entering His heart. The form was clear. As for His japa, it automatically stopped. This time too, He lost awareness of His body and surroundings. He remained in meditation for about 45 minutes.
On both these occasions, the light mentally apprehended between the brows had semblance to that seen outside earlier. He decided to test whether He would mentally apprehend any light and, if so of what kind, if He were to begin His meditation in a dark place. Hence, He woke up that night at about two o’clock. In a seated posture, He directed His gaze to between the brows, while mentally chanting ‘om’. He promptly felt a tingling sensation there. In a few seconds, He could see a disc of blue light akin to what He had perceived in Śāradāmbā’s temple. He did not proceed further. He reasoned that one’s earlier experience can well serve as a basis for the apprehension of light between the brows. An extraneous light is not a requirement. He then lay down and went back to sleep.
Bālātripurasundarī
The next day, He examined whether He would necessarily apprehend a light of the colour seen before meditation. For this, He sat facing the evening sun and began His meditation. The light that made its appearance then was not orange, but blue. He understood that past experience can be an overriding factor. He assumed that a person may, on the first occasion, even see a colour that he expects to see and thereafter this experience can influence the succeeding ones. Over the next few days, He perceived not only a blue light but also a green one. The size, shape and intensity were not always the same. However, such differences did not affect His subsequent visualisation of a divine form and concentration on it.
In this period, He also reflected on the possible reasons why the new procedure facilitated concentration. He knew from experience and observing others that the eyes move not merely when one deliberately shifts one’s gaze but also involuntarily when one is looking at an object that is not minute and when one thinks. Prior to saṁnyāsa, He had noted that the eyeballs of even a person whose eyelids are closed and who is asleep may move, and quickly too. He conjectured that such movement is associated with dreams. It was only years later that He read that eye movements have been recorded by scientists in persons who are dreaming. He reasoned that as eye movement is associated with shifting of attention, arresting of eye movement by looking fixedly at the middle of the brows could help in arresting attention. The analogy that came to His mind was the checking of the mind through the control of breath.
When an ant or mosquito bites, one’s attention is drawn to the site of the bite. The rest of the body is momentarily ignored to a greater or lesser extent. Likewise, the tingling or slightly painful sensation arising between the brows could help in drawing attention away from the surroundings and the rest of the body. This was another reason that came to His mind.
One can comfortably do japa with the eyes open. However, it takes some practice to keep repeating a mantra mentally while talking to someone. This suggests that a verbal activity especially interferes with a concomitant verbal, rather than visual, activity. So mental chanting of a mantra while looking at the space between the brows ought not to disrupt the apprehension of a light there. However, it should impede one’s thinking about some conversations or mentally talking to oneself and thereby becoming distracted. Likewise, the apprehension of a light between the brows should act against one becoming distracted by recollecting or imagining some visual situations. He thought that in these two ways also, the procedure could favour meditation. At that time, He did not think of whether it is relevant that the ajñā-cakra is located in the region towards which the eyes are directed. In any case, as far as He was concerned, the primary reason for the effectiveness of the method in His case was that His Guru had, with blessings and grace, taught it to Him.
He started using this method every day prior to some of the mantra-japas performed by Him during the morning āhnika. He regularly resorted to it before commencing the japa of the Nārāyaṇa-aṣṭakṣarī. In the case of the other mantras, He used it before one mantra on one day and before another mantra on another day. The visualisation of the forms described in the dhyāna-ślokas concerned was facilitated by it. However, because, in keeping with traditional practice, He used a rosary when performing mantra-japas during His āhnika He did not focus on the forms with such intensity as to forget the body and the surroundings. Further, He ensured that there was not even a temporary pause in His chanting of the mantras.
His Holiness, in His infinite kindness, recounted the aforesaid details to me in June 1976, at Sringeri. On that occasion, I asked Him whether this procedure may be used to advantage by all practitioners of meditation. His Holiness said, “No. One may resort to it if one’s doing so is approved of by one’s Guru. Those for whom it is unsuited will not derive benefit from it. Moreover, they may even experience some negative effects, such as poorer meditation and headache.”
What follows was made known to me by Him in March 1981, at Sringeri.
For about a fortnight prior to the senior Jagadguru teaching Him the method to initiate meditation, His Holiness had, in response to an inexplicable urge, been doing prolonged japa of the Bālātripurasundarī-mantra in the mornings. While engaged in such japa with His eyes open, He had, on some days, imagined Her form as remaining in His heart facing in the same direction as Himself. On others, He had imagined a bigger version of the same form as present in front of and facing Him. The special attention that He had been paying to Goddess Bālā-tripurasundarī’s mantra and form motivated Him to meditate on Her on His first engaging in meditation at the Kālabhairava Temple.
Initially, He meditated twice a day; in His room in the afternoon and at the Kālabhairava Temple in the evening. The idea of meditating just before or immediately after His morning āhnika and of going for His bath earlier than usual to facilitate this appealed to Him. However, He did not implement it for a couple of weeks. The reason was that He was not in a position then to predict or regulate the duration of His meditation. As He used to go after His morning āhnika to the senior Jagadguru’s presence to offer namaskāras, He did not want to take the risk of becoming delayed because of unintentionally meditating for too long.
With regard to the estimation and regulation of the duration of meditation, He reflected as follows:
“Once I lose awareness of the body and the surroundings and my mind locks on to the divine form, I have no awareness of the passage of time. So I am not in a position then to decide how long more I am to continue meditating. Even during deep sleep, I am unaware of the passage of time and am in no position to determine how long more to remain in that state. Yet, it is not as though the duration of my sleep is quite unpredictable. Further, it is not that I cannot, on my own, alter the time for which I normally sleep.
“Habit influences how long a person sleeps at night. Other factors being the same, he is likely to sleep at night for as many hours as he usually does. Moreover, if he has the habit of sleeping for half an hour every afternoon, he is likely to awaken on his own after a half-an-hour siesta. Presumably, if I were to regularly meditate for fixed periods in the mornings, afternoons and evenings, my mind will spontaneously emerge from deep meditation at the end of these periods. Just as one can choose to go back to sleep, I should be able to revert to a state of deep concentration. By doing so for some days, I should be able to increase the time after which my meditation tends to lighten.
“When, on some night, I decide before sleeping that I must get up at a particular time, I awaken at that time on my own notwithstanding my having slept much less that night than usual. In like manner, I should be able to influence the duration of a session of meditation by making a resolve about the duration before beginning to meditate.”
His experiences of the first two weeks accorded with this analysis. Confident that He could now estimate and regulate the duration of His meditation, He ceased to have any inhibition about having a session of deep meditation even before going for His Guru’s darśana. So He began to regularly meditate before starting His morning āhnika procedures; apart from this, He continued to meditate in the afternoon and evening, as before.
Before He became a saṁnyāsin, He had heard a person say, “I went to get my eyes tested. At some distance in front of me, there was a chart with letters of different sizes. I found that the letters in the bottom were hazy and unreadable. The doctor put a spectacle frame on me. I immediately felt that I could see the chart better and told him so. I was surprised when the doctor smilingly said that he was yet to put any lens into the frame.” A little later, for the fun of it, He had thought, “Let me try to imagine that there is a leaf in front of me on the road.” Having done so for a few seconds, He had told himself, with as much conviction as He could muster, “There is a leaf there that I am seeing.” This had somehow facilitated the visualisation.
Recalling all this that had happened some years earlier, before His saṁnyāsa, He reasoned as follows:
“It should be better to regard the form meditated upon in the heart as present there and visible like an external object rather than as something that one has to try to imagine and keep conceiving. God is indeed present in the heart of everyone and, though intrinsically formless, can manifest there with a form for the sake of His devotee. Mantras have the power to reveal their devatās. The dhyāna-ślokas describe the divine forms associated with the mantras. Sages have chanted mantras, meditated on the prescribed divine forms and thereby obtained, in due course, the direct vision of God in such forms. There is thus additional justification for one to feel, ‘God is indeed present in my heart in the scripturally-prescribed form in which I meditate on Him.’ Moreover, one would feel more drawn to a form deemed divine and real than to one regarded as fanciful.”
Having thought on these lines, He adopted two means to facilitate His viewing the form meditated upon as realistic and divine. He sought to see the form as emerging from the light apprehended by Him on His directing His gaze to between the brows. Even when He initiated His practice of meditation at Śāradāmbā’s temple, He deliberately visualised a small version of Her idol as manifesting from the blue disc of light that He perceived between His brows. Another practice He resorted to was to deem that His eyes were looking inwards and perceiving the form as it emanated from the light and as it entered and abided in the lotus of His heart. He incorporated this in His meditation on the day following the one on which His Guru instructed Him about meditation.
God is indeed present in the heart of everyone and, though intrinsically formless, can manifest there with a form for the sake of His devotee. Mantras have the power to reveal their devatās. The dhyāna-ślokas describe the divine forms associated with the mantras. Sages have chanted mantras, meditated on the prescribed divine forms and thereby obtained, in due course, the direct vision of God in such forms.
- His Holiness
After meditating at the Kālabhairava Temple in the evenings for over a month, He started doing so on the top of a nearby hill. The Malahānikareśvara Temple, situated atop a hill in the town of Sringeri, lay due west and could be seen from there. On the day He first went there to meditate, it was about half an hour before sunset. As He sat down facing west, He thought, “I have been meditating on Narasiṁha as shining just by His own lustre. I could try to see Him today in the light of the setting sun.” He started by first focusing on Lord Narasiṁha as usual. He then pictured the Lord graciously curtailing His brightness. Lord Narasiṁha then resembled the moon seen through a thin cloud. After this, He visualised Lord Narasiṁha being bathed in the orange glow of sunset. The meditation went on smoothly and lasted an hour. This experience led Him to understand that at the commencement of deep meditation, the luminosity of the divine form focused upon and the intensity and colour of the background lighting, if any, can be comfortably adjusted. He confirmed this in His subsequent sessions of meditation.
A few days later, after perusing a text, He reflected, “At any instant, the portion of the page that I focus on appears far clearer than the portion distant from it. While meditating, I seek to apprehend a divine form as if I were seeing it with my eyes. So the portion towards which my attention is particularly directed, such as the face, is presumably clearer to me than a portion that is removed from it.” In the next session of meditation, He found that such was actually the case. It was not as though any portion was unclear; only, a portion was clearer. When He tried to remedy the situation by simply trying to see every part of the form equally clearly, He experienced difficulty in doing so. He, therefore, completed that session by meditating as He usually did.
He subsequently thought as follows:
“Rather than forcefully attempt to grasp the complete form with uniform clarity, let me expand the particularly clear zone in stages. To facilitate this, I could rid myself of the notion that during meditation my vision is subject to the same limitations as when perceiving an external object. Next, I could increase the intensity of my concentration. This should enhance the clarity of the other portions of the form.”
Over the next three sessions, by implementing what He had planned, He learnt to see the entire divine form in the heart with total clarity.
It then occurred to Him, “I have so far been meditating only on a devatā’s full form. I can now try to meditate not just on the complete form but also on parts of it, such as the feet. This should be straightforward because I am already used to thinking of just Narasiṁha’s feet when I wash them while mentally worshipping Him every day.”
The next time He meditated, He first visualised Narasiṁha as He normally did. He then focused exclusively on His feet. Promptly, they occupied the entire range of His vision. As He had already learnt to see the full form with uniform clarity, seeing the feet in the same manner required no special effort. Though He saw just the feet, He did not forget that they were a part of Narasiṁha. Towards the end of His meditation, He again visualised Narasiṁha’s full form. Subsequent to this session of meditation, He sometimes meditated on parts of a devatā’s form too. However, whenever He chose to do so, He always started and ended with the complete form.
On all these days, He had been meditating only on the forms of Bālā and Lakṣmī-Narasiṁha and that too in keeping with the dhyāna-ślokas of their mantras. This was because He felt that it would be inadvisable for Him to take up other divine forms till He had acquired proficiency in meditation by repeatedly concentrating on these two. He was sure that when His preparations were adequate, God would, in some way, make this known to him. He received such a sign soon.
Kṛṣṇa
One evening, without any premeditation or effort on His part, the form of Kṛṣṇa emerged from the light that He apprehended between His brows and entered His heart. Clad in a yellow vestment, He wore the vaijayantī garland. Peacock feathers adorned His crest and flowers His ears. He held a flute to His lips and was breathtakingly attractive. His Holiness felt, “The charming form would be even more attractive, if it were bigger.” So He promptly imagined that Kṛṣṇa’s feet rested not in a lotus in the chest but in one at the level of His navel. Then He pictured the Lord’s body as expanding till Kṛṣṇa’s crest was at the level of His neck. As the intensity of His concentration increased, He beheld Kṛṣṇa’s complete form with uniformly great clarity and with much joy. The form of Kṛṣṇa that had spontaneously appeared tallied with that described in the Bhāgavata-purāṇa as follows: “With peacock feathers forming a head ornament, karṇikāra flowers on His ears and wearing a golden yellow vestment and the vaijayantī garland, He (Kṛṣṇa), whose body is like that of an excellent dancer and whose glories are sung by the throng of cowherds, entered Vṛndāvana, made lovely by His footprints, while filling the openings of His flute with the nectar of His lips.” The next morning, He spontaneously beheld a form of Viṣṇu as a child lying on a fig-leaf emerging from the light seen between the brows and occupying His heart-lotus. This form corresponded to that described in a verse of the Bālamukunda-aṣṭaka as follows: “I call to mind the child Mukunda (Viṣṇu) who is lying in the concavity of a fig-leaf, putting His lotus-like foot into His lovely mouth by means of His beautiful hand.” Picturing the Lord as a child filled Him with the feeling of vātsalya (parental love). That afternoon too, a divine form manifested without any volition on His part. It was that of Viṣṇu with eight, rather than four, arms. The Lord displayed in His four right hands the sudarśana-cakra, a rosary, the kaumodakī mace and the symbol of granting fearlessness. In His four left hands were the pāñcajanya conch, the śārṅga bow, the nandaka sword and the symbol of granting boons. He was adorned with various ornaments, such as a diadem, armlets and bracelets, and wore a garland.
For some time, His Holiness found Himself mentally chanting the Nārāyaṇa-aṣṭākṣarī. Thereafter, His mind locked on to just the form. By the time He regained some awareness of His body, over an hour had passed. Even after He got up, He continued to see the form in His heart. That evening, He meditated on this form itself. The next morning, as He started His meditation, He found this form, which He had been perceiving since the previous day, replaced by one in which the Lord held just a rosary. The Lord’s visage was extremely calm and He radiated peace. His Holiness continued to apprehend the new form in His heart even after His meditation ended.
Child Mukunda
Viṣṇu with eight arms
That afternoon, at the start of His meditation, the form underwent a change and He now saw Lord Viṣṇu not merely without weapons but also without ornaments, such as a diadem. His evening meditation began with His focusing on this form. Abruptly, His attention was drawn to just the Lord’s smiling face. Up to almost the close of the hour-long session, His focus was exclusively on the Lord’s face. Till He completed His bath the next morning, He could see in His heart, the Lord as bereft of ornaments and weapons and holding just a rosary. The form then vanished.
When He reported His experiences with the forms of Viṣṇu to His Guru, the latter said nothing. However, a little later, the senior Jagadguru sent Him a copy of the Viṣṇu-purāṇa with an empty sheet of paper kept in it to draw attention to a portion of the text. In the portion specified by His Guru, His Holiness found verses describing the very forms that He had seen and advising meditation on them in the same order in which He had done. The meaning of those verses is, “The yogin should, O king, concentrate his mind thoroughly on the Lord, as adorned with a diadem, garland, armlets, bracelets and the like, as having in His (eight) hands, the śārṅga (bow), conch, mace, sword, discus, rosary and the signs of granting boons and fearlessness and as wearing rings of gems in His fingers, till his attention becomes steady there. Success is to be understood as achieved when this thought does not leave the mind even when walking, standing or engaging in some activity of choice. Thereafter, the wise man should contemplate the form of the Lord as tranquil, with a rosary, and bereft of a conch, mace, discus, śārṅga and so on. After that focus becomes as firm as before, he should think of God as devoid of adornments, such as the diadem and armlets. Next, the wise man should fix his mind on a prominent part of the Lord.”
The Lord with rosary
Without ornaments
After these experiences, He did not deliberately limit His meditation, as He had done earlier, to just the forms of Bālā and Narasiṁha. He started meditating on other divine forms too. For example, He focused on Śiva as seated with Pārvatī, as Ardhanārīśvara, as Dakṣināmūrti and as Naṭarāja; on Viṣṇu with four hands bearing the sudarśana-cakra, pāñcajanya conch, kaumodakī mace and a lotus; on Rāma; and on Gaṇapati.
His Holiness focused on Śiva as seated with Pārvatī, as Ardhanārīśvara, as Dakṣināmūrti and as Naṭarāja; on Viṣṇu with four hands bearing the sudarśana-cakra, pāñcajanya conch, kaumodakī mace and a lotus; on Rāma; and on Gaṇapati.
He found that short mantras such as ‘om’ are more convenient to chant mentally while directing the eyes to between the brows than long ones like the Śrīvidyā. The length of a mantra hardly made any difference after His conceiving a divine form. Hence, He often commenced His meditation with the mental chant of ‘om’ and then switched to the mantra of the devatā meditated upon. The chanting of the mantra occasionally persisted till the end of a session of meditation but generally it automatically stopped after a short while and, thereafter, only the form remained.
Whenever He did not go in the evening for meditation to the Kālabhairava Temple or to the nearby hill, such as during the Śaṅkara-jayantī celebrations and cāturmāsya, He largely compensated by meditating more in the mornings and afternoons. It was during the cāturmāsya of the cyclical year Bhava, that is, in the period 26th July to 23rd September, 1934, that He gained proficiency in readily setting, at the time of beginning to visualise a form, the level of His concentration. For instance, He could adjust the intensity of His focus to block out the sound of a loud peal of thunder or to allow it to be heard but not the sound of rain or a not-so-loud peal of thunder. If He felt like chanting a mantra throughout a session of meditation, He pegged the intensity of concentration on the form at a lower level than otherwise. He did not, however, normally curtail the depth of His meditation.
He had heard people say that their minds wander when they perform japa or when they try to meditate on a form. From the time He began meditating, He had not experienced this difficulty. To appreciate the problem of mental wandering, He once experimented, during the said cāturmāsya, with progressively lowering the level of His concentration on the form. He found that when the concentration fell to a level far below that during His normal meditation, His mind started to wander a little to extraneous sounds. By deliberately keeping the intensity of focus low enough to allow some distractions, He determined, during a couple of sessions, over a dozen aids to deal with the disturbances. Chanting the mantra with greater vigour, temporarily holding the breath and stressing the importance of meditation were some of them.
Months passed. Sometime in the period April-July, 1935, that is, sometime after the commencement of the cyclical year Yuva and before the cāturmāsya of that year, one morning, when He was about to visualise the form of Lakṣmī-nṛsiṁha, the form of Goddess Bālā made its appearance. He meditated on Her. That afternoon, He felt a strong urge to meditate upon Her as remaining in front of and facing Him and did so. It was months since He had focused on Her in this fashion. After the session, He thought, “Today, God is explicitly determining the form I am to meditate upon just as He had done nearly a year ago when He had caused me to focus on Kṛṣṇa with the flute, child Mukunda and Viṣṇu with eight arms.” He somehow felt sure that the evening session would be extraordinary.
When He commenced His evening meditation at the Kālabhairava Temple, in response to a powerful urge, He thought of Bālā in the same way as He had done in the afternoon. While He was focusing as usual on the full form of the Goddess, His mind suddenly locked on to Her feet. He had always been seeing Her form clearly. However, the experience of that day was extraordinary. He vividly beheld the Goddess’s feet; the sense of reality of the vision was intense and left no room for doubts. This was His first experience of savikalpa-samādhi. During this samādhi, He almost totally forgot Himself and that He was meditating; Goddess Bālā’s feet alone manifested.
Mahaṛṣi Patañjali has aphorised in his Yogasūtras: “Dhāraṇā (fixation) is the binding of the mind to one place. Dhyāna (meditation) is the continuance there of the presented idea. The same (dhyāna) when shining forth as the intended object alone and devoid, as it were, of its own nature, is samādhi.” Explaining the scriptural position about the term savikalpa-samādhi, His Holiness has said, “As the name implies, savikalpa-samādhi is samādhi with vikalpa. Vikalpa here refers to the triad of the concentrator, concentration and the object of concentration. In this samādhi, while the object of concentration manifests clearly and steadily, an awareness of the form, ‘I am meditating’ is almost, but not totally, absent. The awareness of the distinction of the concentrator, concentration and the object of concentration is thus not fully obliterated.”
After remaining for one and a half hours in savikalpa-samādhi with His mind locked on to Goddess Bālā, He regained awareness of the body and opened His eyes. He could literally see Her in front of Him within the temple. He reached out and touched Her feet with His hands. A few moments later, She disappeared.
The experience of that day was extraordinary. His Holiness vividly beheld the Goddess’s feet; the sense of reality of the vision was intense and left no room for doubts. This was His first experience of savikalpa-samādhi. During this samādhi, He almost totally forgot Himself and that He was meditating; Goddess Bālā’s feet alone manifested.
His next four savikalpa-samādhis had, without any premeditation on His part, Lakṣmī-Nṛsiṁha, Kṛṣṇa with a flute, child Mukunda and Viṣṇu with eight arms as the objects of focus. It may be recalled that these forms had much earlier manifested spontaneously, in this order. After these five savikalpa-samādhis, which occurred before the cāturmāsya of the year Yuva, He was easily able to attain savikalpa-samādhi with any form of His choice as the object.
One morning, His Holiness thought of just testing whether He could experience savikalpa-samādhi even while lying down. So when doing śavāsana (in the course of which one lies flat on one’s back), He pictured His heart-lotus as facing upwards rather than towards His head and then visualised Lakṣmī-nṛsiṁha as seated in it. Thus, while He lay supine, Lakṣmī-nṛsiṁha was seen as seated with His back vertical. His Holiness concentrated on the divine form and quickly went into savikalpa-samādhi. The next day, while performing śavāsana, He conceived of the heart-lotus and Narasiṁha’s back as being in line with His body, as usual, but to avoid any sense of oddity, He deliberately ignored His supine position. He kept in mind only the position of Narasiṁha relative to His own head. In moments, He was in savikalpa-samādhi. These two experiences convinced Him that, if necessary, such as in times of illness, He could become absorbed in savikalpa-samādhi on a divine form even while lying down.
A few days later, He thought, “While I am in samādhi, my back and neck remain erect. It is likely that even if I were to enjoy samādhi while in śīrṣāsana (wherein one stands on one’s head), my back and neck will remain in a line.” He performed śīrṣāsana near a wall to arrest a fall, if it occurred during meditation. He then visualised Narasiṁha as seated normally in an upward-facing lotus in His chest and attained savikalpa-samādhi. When He regained awareness of the body after some time, He found that He remained in śīrṣāsana exactly as before. On the next day, without any precaution to cater for a fall, He performed the śīrṣāsana. He then deliberately ignored His being inverted and meditated on Narasiṁha as seated in His heart-lotus with the Lord’s head towards His own, as usual. In moments, He was in savikalpa-samādhi. He did not bother to go into samādhi in śīrṣāsana in the future.
His Holiness reported His experiences with meditation to His Guru on several occasions. The senior Jagadguru expressed His satisfaction and approval. About meditation on the Supreme as possessed of attributes such as form, His Holiness has pointed out, in the light of the scriptures, that it is a very great purifier, a means to obtain the special grace of God and enables one to focus on and realize the Supreme Brahman, which is intrinsically devoid of all attributes.