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SANKHYA AND YOGA formerly supported the individual biography.24 This anonymous "diamond being” is not at all what we were cherishing as our character and cultivating as our faculties, inclinations, virtues, and ideals; for it transcends every horizon of unclarified and partly clarified consciousness. It was enwrapped within the sheaths of the body and personality; yet the dark, turbid, thick guņas could not disclose its image. Only the translucent essence of clarified sattva permits it to become visible-as through a glass, or in a quiet pond. And then, the moment it is recognized, its manifestation bestows an immediate knowledge that this is our true identity. The life-monad is remembered and greeted, even though it is distinct from everything in this phenomenal composite of a body and psyche, which, under the delusion caused by our usual ignorance and undiscriminating consciousness (avidyā), we had crudely mistaken for the real and lasting essence of our being.
“Discriminative insight" (viveka) is the enemy of avidyā and therefore the chief instrument to disentangle us from the force of the guņas. It cuts through tamas and rajas like a knife, opening the way to the realization that the core of our identity is separated by a wide gulf from the continuous ebb and flow of the tendencies that capture the attention of the usual individual and are everywhere regarded as pertaining, one way or another, to the Self. Through "discriminative insight" (viveka) an abiding state of supreme “isolation" (kaivalya) from the living-processes is discerned and attained. This state is an earthly counterpart of that of the transcendent monad itself-which is then disclosed to the inner consciousness of the absolutely quieted yogi, by virtue of its clear reflection in the translucent, unself-assertive sāttvic mirror of his mind. That self-luminous, abiding point amidst the whirlpool of the transient feelings, emotions, delusions, and miragelike superimpositions-that inmost, basic nucleus of nature, crystalline, the very spark of being-stands brilliantly revealed and is known immediately as both the fundament and the * Cf. supra, pp. 293-294, and footnotes 14 and 15.
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| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell |
| Publisher | Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd |
| Publication Year | 1953 |
| Total Pages | 709 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 34 MB |