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THE HINDRANCES
One can "burn the seeds" of future individual ignorant cxistences "in the fire of asceticism." The sceds have been accumulated and stored as a result of actions, both voluntary and involuntary, during this and former cxistcnces; is not demolished they will sprout into new growths of entanglement, yielding the fruits of still another destiny of delusory performances and rewards. By means of Yoga, however, the human being, congenitally impaired though he is in mind and character, can acquire a sublime, refined understanding, which then opens for him the way to release and enlightenment. Cleansed of the whirling dust of passion that normally bedims the inner atmosphere, as well as of the dulling weight of darkness that besets all phenomenal existence, the material of nature and its innate vital force (prakrti) becomes entirely sattva: calm, transparent, a mirror unobscured by film, a lake without a ripple, luminous in its crystalline repose. The impairments (klesa) having been removed, which normally break and blacken out the view, illumination unfolds automatically to the mind, and the living consciousness realizes that it is identical with light.
Thus the yogic "reduction diet" systematically starves the personality to death. It gives no quarter to that naïve cgotism which is generally regarded as the healthy selfishness of creatures, the force that enables men and animals, as well as plants, to survive and succeed in the struggle for existence. It is a "reduction diet" that eradicates even the basic, unconscious plant and animal tendencies of our biological character. And the benefit is that when all this rajas and tamas has been destroyed and sattva alone remains-isolated, pure, and rendered sit to reflect the true nature of our undistorted being-a nucleus (puruṣa) comes to view that is detached from the realm of the guņas and distinct from all that once seemed to constitute the personality: a sublime inhabitant and onlooker, transcending the spheres of the former consciousunconscious system, aloofly unconcerned with the tendencies that
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