Mahasamadhi
As long as you are in the body, whatever liberation you attain, the body is a limitation. It is not complete liberation. When someone leaves their body in full awareness, then we call this Mahasamadhi because he or she has shed the body.
Mahasamadhi is a dimension where you transcend discrimination – not just experientially but also existentially. There is no such thing as you and the other. Right now, there is you and the other; it is a certain level of reality. In a samadhi state, you go beyond that discrimination and in your experience you are able to see the oneness of the existence.
Mahasamadhi means you not only see it that way, you have become that way totally – discrimination is finished. That means individual existence is finished. Who you are does not exist anymore. The life that is functioning as an individual life right now becomes absolutely universal or cosmic or boundless. To put it in traditional terms, you become one with God or one with everything.
When I say one with God, it does not mean going and joining someone somewhere. It is just that your individual bubble is over. To use an analogy, right now your existence is like a bubble. A bubble that is floating around is very real but if you burst it, where does the air inside the bubble go? It just becomes one with everything, isn’t it? It is completely dissolved. When we say one with everything, this is what it means. Nothing will be there. You will not be there. When we say mukti, it means you are free from existence. When I say you are free from existence, I am not talking about existence as a quantity which you are free from. You are free from your own existence – your existence is finished.
When we say mukti or nirvana or moksha, this is what it means – freedom from the very burden of existence. That’s ultimate freedom because as long as you exist, you are bound in one way or another. If you exist in a physical way, it is one kind of bondage. If you leave the physical body and exist in some other way, there is still another kind of bondage. Everything that exists is ruled by some law. Mukti means you have broken all laws and all laws can be broken only when you cease to exist.
Nirvana is a more appropriate word because nirvana means non-existence. When there is no existence, you are even free from freedom because freedom is also a certain bondage. So you are free from your very existence. All discrimination between what is you and what is not you is finished.
For someone to be able to do this – taking this life and throwing it out without injuring the body – it needs tremendous energy. Mahasamadhi is a state where one willfully drops the body. The cycle is over. There is no question of rebirth, it is complete dissolution. You can say this person is truly no more.
Life just shifts from one level to another. In reality there is no such thing as death. Death exists only to one who has no awareness about life. There is only life, life and life alone. But Mahasamadhi means the real end. This is the goal of every spiritual seeker. Ultimately, he wants to go beyond existence.
