You see the first step in the steps leading to
Samadhi, in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Sarvitarka Samadhi, consists in realizing that one is normally, one is commonly, looking at one’s problems from one’s personal bias. And therefore one is not really able to understand one’s problems. One is only seeing them from a certain angle.
And consequently the first step in meditation consists in extending your consciousness. And a practical way of doing it is to try to see if you can project your consciousness into the consciousness of another person, or rather if you can imagine what it would be to be another person. But then that’s only a first step because you’re still caught up in the personal perspective of that person.
So try and get into the consciousness of a person who is close to you and see how the same situations that you’re involved with in that person are seen differently from the vantage point of that person.
Now there are two steps here. One is: I see that person through his/her eyes. So that would be, I see the situation that I see in a certain way. I see it differently now, the way it looks through the eyes of that person.
Now the second step: I see myself through the eyes of that person. I see myself through the eyes of that person. So that is going to widen your self-image to elude the subjective bias of your self-image. And it does not mean that the opinion of the other person about you is better than your own. They are both partial. But if you include that of more and more people then you get a many-faceted outlook which approaches more and more to reality.
So you can discover yourself mirrored in another person, and the other person mirrored in you, and then more and more people mirroring each other until you reach what the Sufis call Aina Khana, which means the Palace of Mirrors.
And I hope that you feel a kind of relief from the constraint of your self-image which is limiting. At last. I’m beginning to know myself. At last. And I’m beginning to know others through my knowing myself through them.
