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BRAHMANISM
duality of the perceiver and thing perceived, the subject and object, the beholding inner sense and the beheld Self; and b) nirvikalpa, asamprajñāta, which is nondual absorption, absolutely devoid of any consciousness of a distinction between the perceiver and the thing perceived.
In samadhi of the first type, the mental process, or oscillating vitality of consciousness (citta-vṛtti), assumes the form of Brahman, the One-without-a-second, just as in the ordinary waking state it assumes the form of objects apprehended by the sense faculties, 17 and so comes to rest in Brahman; yet it remains conscious of itself, aware of its own activity and attainment of the presence, as well as of the blissful contact and union. Having assumed the form of Brahman by virtue of its protean force of transformation, it yet feels itself to be distinct from its object; the chasm between the two remains, while the subject enjoys the supreme ecstasy of a beatific vision. Numerous elated lyrical utterances of the Vedantic school express the rapture of this moment. "I am that," we read, for example, "the true nature of which is to be the impassive witness, the paramount being, comparable to the formless, pure, intangible ether that pervades the universe, shining forth and revealing itself: at once the Unborn, the One, the Imperishable, the Untainted and the All-pervading, Without-a-second, the Forever-free-and-released." 174 By the very form of the sentence-the I identifying itself with the That-a line is drawn here between the subject and all the nouns of the extended predicate. What we find expressed is an exquisite consciousness of the union of the two; a fully conscious state of absorption founded on an ecstatic identification of two entities that are still felt to be distinct.
Nirvikalpa samādhi, on the other hand, absorption without self-consciousness, is a mergence of the mental activity (cittavrtti) in the Self, to such a degree, or in such a way, that the dis
173 Cf. supra, pp. 284-285. 174 Upadesasahasri 73.
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