Unitive life (Christianity)

This state is one of the aims and achievements of various yoga practices. Unitive life is the term used in Christian terminology. It is a state of waking consciousness in which thinking and action are not disjointed. When thinking is necessarily involved in action, concentration and attentiveness follow everything undertaken, including even such physiological activities as eating and drinking. But when thinking is not necessary for action, the mind is relaxed or disengaged, and lapses into a condition of harmony and equipoise. The person begins to live in the living present, and to be free of wishful thinking, brooding over the past or worrying about the future. It is a state characterized by self-confidence and self-reliance in action, but non-attachment and relaxation after work is over; most particularly, there is no lingering possessiveness about the results of one's work.

In addition, there is freedom from anxiety and other mental tensions - a freedom which extends even to a loss of philosophical inquisitiveness. Yet metaphysical problems seem to dissolve into a larger perspective, and the mind is not impelled to speculation. The relinquishing of ego values make the appreciation of other values almost spontaneous, and the fresh eye with which the world is viewed opens up whole ranges of aesthetic appreciation hitherto unknown.

This state therefore constitutes an inner environment in which the integration of the personality can take place. There results a natural, warm, loving and spontaneous attitude of openness to life and to others, without fear or condemnation.