SAMĀDHI. The Sanskrit term samādhi (from sam, "together," the intensifying particle ā, and the verbal root dha, "place, put") literally means "placing together." It hints at the merging of subject and object, the essential characteristic of the mystical state of unification to which it refers. It is most frequently rendered by ecstasy, but because of the emotive charge of that Greek loanword, the neologism enstasy—from the Greek for "standing in [oneself]"—was suggested (Eliade, 1969) and is gaining increasing acceptance.

The earliest mention of samādhi is in the Buddhist Pali canon, where it stands for "concentration." Buddhist authorities define it as "mental one-pointedness" (cittasya ekāgratā; see, e.g., Buddhaghosa's Aṭṭhasālinī 118). This is not, however, the sporadic concentration of the conventional mind, but the creative yogic process of abstracting attention from external objects and focusing it upon the inner environment...