Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
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

Page 396

UPANIŞAD
Real Self, which is to be finally known, is announced as that indescribable "fourth" portion of the Self, which is beyond the sphere of the Lord of the field of dreamless sleep, i.e., beyond the Beginning and End of beings.
7. What is known as the fourth portion-neither inward- nor outward-turned consciousness, nor the two together; not an undifferentiated mass of dormant omniscience; neither knowing nor unknowing-because invisible, ineffable, intangible, devoid of characteristics, inconceivable, undefinable, its sole essence being the assurance of its own Self (eka-ātma-pratyaya-sāram); the coming to peaceful rest of all differentiated, relative existence (prapañca-upaśamam); utterly quiet (Santam); peaceful-blissful (śivam); without-a-second (advaitam): -this is Atman, the Self, which is to be realized.
The four portions dissolved into each other as the process of discernment moved from one to the next; nevertheless, all four together constitute the whole of the "four-footed," "four-square," gradated, sole existence, which is the Self. Each quarter is on an equal footing, somehow, with the others (just as the Kali Yuga, the worst of the four ages of the world, is no less a part of the cycle of time than the best, the holy Krta Yuga-shorter in length and of less perfect form, indeed, yet an equally indispensable portion of the cycle). During the course of the spiritual adventure inward, the emphasis shifts from the outer world to the inner, and finally from the manifest to the unmanifest, and there is a prodigious increase in the powers gained; nevertheless, the inferior, as well as the superior, states remain as constituents of the totality. They are, as Sankara pictures it, "like the four feet of
a cow."
The self-transforming change of emphasis becomes a wellknown and controllable experience for the skilled practitioner of yoga. He can make the states come and go, their spheres appear versal form" as Vişņu, the omniscient regent of the macrocosm, the source, support, and end of all beings.
375