Samapatti & Knowing without Mind: Explanation by Vedanta

Abstract

Sampatti is a state of consciousness without or beyond the mind. In earlier articles, Sampatti experience was explained based on the philosophy of Patanjali written in Yoga Sutras dealing with Consciousness and mind.  By getting into the Sampatti state one of the authors of this article (Oliver) could heal physical and psychological afflictions of some people and animals. The experiences of the healer and the healed subjects in such Sampatti sessions are ‘anomalies’ and make one wonder whether consciousness is what we usually think it is. In this article, we analyze some of the questions about consciousness, which arise because of the anomalous nature of Sampatti experiences of both the healer/seer and the subjects. In the analysis, we use an analogy between a living being (with a body and mind) and a computer (with hardware and stored software) to describe some fundamental concepts common to different branches of Vedanta. We find that the Sampatti experiences are consistent with and can be explained by Vedanta in general, as well as by the Yoga philosophy of Patanjali.