Dhyana

[Guest guest]

Blessed Self, kaka_pramod<br><br>You are right.

Dhyana and Upasana are not the same things. But they are

closely related.<br><br>Upasana can be seen as a way of

understanding God, a way of worship or prayer, particularly for

imbuing oneself with divine virtues. Upasana can have

several stages but in each stage there is the duality of

the devotee and the object of devotion. There is

content.<br><br>As such, Upasana is an essential part of the

Self-Realization process. It is part of Svadhyaya and

Isvarapranidhana, two of the niyamas of Patanjali.<br><br>As the

devotee purifies himself or herself through practices

such as upasana, the mind becomes calmer and more

one-pointed, the attention is drawn inside. <br><br>Dhyana is

meditation, an internal, one-pointed mental focus or

connection with the divine. This connection becomes more and

more featureless. <br><br>As Dhyana deepens, the

devotee becomes so absorbed in the object of Dhyana that

there is a merger of the two, a complete identification

or union.<br><br>So Upasana is external, with

content and carries the desire of imbuing divine virtues.

Dhyana is internal with increasingly less content and is

increasingly desireless. Upasana is duality, albeit of a high

order. Dhyana is the process that ends in non-duality.

Upasana purifies and divinizes name and form. Dhyana

eliminates name and form.<br><br>Prajnanum Brahma - Brahman

is consciousness<br><br>Tat Twam Asi - That Thou

Art.<br><br><br>Omprem

[Guest guest]

The Sanskrit word dhyana, derived from the verbal

root dhyai ("to contemplate, meditate, think"), is the

most common designation both for the meditative state

of consciousness and the yogic techniques by which

it is induced. The Vedanta tradition also employs

the terms nididhyasana, which stems from the same

verbal root, upasana (literally "dwelling upon"), and

bhavana (literally "cultivating"). <br>The term dhyana is

widely used to refer to the contemplative process that

prepares the ground for the ecstatic state (samadhi),

though occasionally the term is also employed to signify

that superlative state of consciousness.