Dhyana (Meditation — Yoga Sutras)
Dhyana — the unbroken flow of meditative awareness — is the seventh limb: the natural deepening of Dharana when concentrated attention relaxes into effortless, continuous presence with its object.
Dhyana (from 'dhyai' — to contemplate, to think upon) is defined in sutra 3.2 as 'tatra pratyaya ekatanata' — the continuous, single-stretch of awareness toward the object of focus. The distinction from Dharana is experiential: in Dharana, the meditator is effortfully maintaining concentration against the pull of distraction. In Dhyana, the effort has been replaced by a natural, self-sustaining flow of attention that no longer requires constant reinforcement. The mind rests in its object the way a clear stream rests in its channel — not still, but flowing smoothly without turbulence. Many practitioners report that Dhyana arises spontaneously in established Dharana practice after sufficient training — the effortful concentration suddenly releases into effortless absorption. This transition is the gateway from the technical practice of meditation to the living experience of it.
The unbroken flow of the mind toward the object of focus is Dhyana.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's description of flow — 'effortless concentration, complete absorption in the activity at hand, loss of self-consciousness, distorted sense of time' — maps so precisely onto Patanjali's Dhyana that contemplative scholars routinely use flow research to explain the phenomenology of deep meditation.
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali