Key Takeaways
- Yogis discovered through systematic inner exploration that you are not your body or your mind.
- Samyama, the yogic practice of deep identification, is the fastest way to assimilate the qualities of anything or anyone.
- All human desires, emotions, and drives originate from identification with the self.
- Conscious identification with an elevated or divine being is central to both yoga and Christian mysticism.
- Unconscious identification with parents, partners, and cultural figures shapes our qualities without our awareness.
- You can begin practising conscious identification right now, no advanced meditation required.
For thousands of years, yogis sat in caves and forests and systematically explored their inner world. What they discovered is this: the body and the mind are separate things. You can connect to them, and you can also disconnect from them.
A lot of Jnana yoga is about exactly this disconnect. In India, a teacher would walk into class and say: “You feel your body? I am not the body. You listen to your mind? I am not the mind.” As you say it to yourself, you gradually start to feel it.
There are many methods for this disconnection from identifying with the body and mind. From Maharishi, from Nisargadatta Maharaj, from Vivekananda and Ramakrishna, all point toward the same recognition. In Raja Yoga, what Patanjali teaches goes further.
The Principle of Samyama
After disidentifying with the body and mind, you identify with something else. And when you identify with something, you become that thing. The self, or what Patanjali calls Purusha, assimilates tremendously the energy of whatever it identifies with.
When done correctly, this is called Samyama. It is a combination of dharana; perfect concentration, dhyana; perfect meditation, and Samadhi; where you unite with the object of meditation completely. As Patanjali defines it, when the flow of attention becomes continuous to an object without interruption, you unite with that object, and through that you touch the entire universe.
Samyama is higher than Samadhi, and for most people completely inaccessible in its full form. But here is why it is still relevant: even partial identification works. Even if you cannot reach total dharana, total dhyana, and Samadhi, you can partially identify with something elevated and divine. Identification is the fastest way to assimilate a quality from anyone or anything.
The third chapter of Patanjali is almost entirely about this. You do Samyama with the sun, and you get certain paranormal knowledge. You do Samyama with your own throat, and you overcome hunger and thirst. You fuse with an object, and you simply know. No doubt, you just know. You fuse with a being, even through a picture or a video, and that knowledge comes through.
The Story of Muktananda and Nityananda
Muktananda was a wandering monk for many years, with a lot of practice and strength already in him. When he met Nityananda, he recognised something. He said: This is it. This is the ultimate realisation, a real Siddha. And so he sat in front of Nityananda from morning ‘til evening, day in and day out. Nityananda would take his bath at three in the morning and then sit quietly for the whole day. Muktananda would sit quietly in front of him and just identify. He would forget that he was Muktananda and become Nityananda.
At a certain moment, Nityananda gave him his grace, and Muktananda was liberated. Later, they gave lectures at the same time from different locations, and disciples moving between them would notice that they were speaking about the same things with the same movements, without any prior arrangement.
When Muktananda went to the West, he was a complete nobody. Yet he built around 150 centres in a year and a half, roughly three centres a week. People would meet him and say: take my house, make an ashram. That impact came from the immense occult power he carried through identification with his guru.
Identification in Christianity
This is what Patanjali recommends in Sutra 37: totally identify with a divine being. It was done in Christianity just as much. St. Francis, St. Gemma, and Padre Pio identified so completely with Christ that they manifested the stigmata. The most widely read Christian text over the centuries, after the Bible itself, is the Imitation of Christ. It is basically Samyama. It is identification with Christ, and it worked. These people could raise the dead, heal diseases, perform what looked like miracles, because they identified.
Saint Paul said: “Not I who lives, but Jesus lives in me.” That is what gave Paul the power to do what he did. Vivekananda became Ramakrishna in the same way. That is what it is about.
The Unconscious Identification We Already Do
There is another side to all this: the unconscious identification that we do constantly. First, with our parents. Someone might say: I am annoying like my father; I am aggressive like my mother. We absorb a lot through unconscious identification. This happens with cultural figures too. When someone deeply absorbs a public figure who, whatever their fame or talent, carries inner chaos or unresolved struggles, those qualities quietly enter the field. The absorption is real, even when unconscious.
But this is also good news. Because we already know how to identify. We all do it. So how do we identify with Christ, with Ramakrishna, with any elevated being? The same way we identified with our parents, with our closest friends, with our partner. Check how you did it unconsciously and do it consciously. That is enough. We already have the model.
How to Begin
Take a being who embodies what you wish to become: a saint, a teacher, a liberated master. Disidentify, as much as you can, from your ordinary sense of self. Then, identify with that being. Not as an idea. Do it the way a child absorbs a parent.
Somebody spent part of a long retreat watching videos of Papaji. She did not understand English and could not follow the words at all. She simply watched, again and again, and identified with the quality of his being. She reached very elevated states. For a period, that was a central part of her sadhana. The understanding came through direct assimilation, not through the mind.
You have a Godly model. Disidentify from who you think you are. Identify with that. The body, the aura, the thoughts and the emotions will gradually become similar to the model. And you do not need to wait until you are perfect in concentration to begin. You can start right away.
This article was transcribed and edited by Tony from the following video:
