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BRAHMANISM
simply lack of insight, a merely negative principle, but also a positive power (śakti) 189 which projects or brings forth the illusion of the world and the five sheaths. In its negative function nescience hides the Self, "just as a small patch of cloud conceals the sun"; 140 but in its positive capacity it gives rise to the manifold of the cosmos-overwhelming all our faculties of judgment, stirring our senses and mental powers, rousing our passions of desire and loathing, fear, fulfillment, and despair, causing suffering, and fascinating our bewildered, fatuous consciousness with transient nothings of delight.
As in the Sankhya, so i nthe Vedānta, only knowledge (vidya) effects release (mokṣa) from the sheaths and bondages of nescience, and moreover this knowledge is not something to be obtained but is already present within, as the core and support of our existence. The water is only screened by the sedge; it is always there and always clear and pure; we do not have to change it, but only to remove the obstruction. Or, as in the story of the King's Son,141 release is but the realization of our actual nature. This realization can be attained through critical thought, as in the Sankhya, through the mind-amplifying practices of Yoga (applied here to illusionistic monism, as in the Yoga-sutras to the dualistic view), or through any of the other "ways" of the orthodox tradition, but in the end, when found, it amounts to a miracle of Self-recollection-whereupon the apparent creation of the world is immediately undone and the sheathing structures of the body and soul are swept away.
The practice, however, of orthodox moral virtues is meanwhile insisted upon as a preparatory discipline to the final exercise of breaking through. Good works, even such as are merely
139 Sakti, from the verbal root fak; "to be able or potent to do something"; cf. supra, pp. 77-78, and Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, p. 25.
140 Vedantasära 52.
141 Cf. supra, pp. 308-310.
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