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BRAHMANISM ger and thirst, grief and delusion; the fruits, which are karına of differing sorts brought into effect by predispositions deriving from the remote and still remoter past. And he has to endure these fruits inasmuch as they are the productions of the karma that has begun to transform itself into the fruits of actual happenings, such karma not being checked by enlightening knowledge; nevertheless, though beholding these effects of karma taking place in his own life and in the world about, fundamentally he secs nothing whatsoever taking place, for they mean naught to him, they are inconsequcntial. Ile behaves like a man assisting at a magical performance [where the juggler, through various devices, creates the illusion of a conslagration or flood, or of wild animals about to assail the audience], knowing that all is a delusion of the senses wrought by the magic art. Even though he sees something, he does not consider it to be rcal." 188
Fundamentally, such a scer does not see what is happening, since he knows that there is nothing to be seen. The man liberated-while-alive perceives his individual frame to be at large in the seemingly real world, yet fundamentally sees neither his body nor his world, being aware that both are illusory, phenomenal tricks of the magic mirror of the mind. He experiences, as an indifferent witness, both his own personality and everything with which it comes in contact, never identifying himself with himself or with anything he scems to sce. “Though he has eyes, he is as one without eyes; though he has ears, he is as one without ears.” 187
"As has further been said," states the Vedāntasāra, "He who sees nothing in the waking state, as though in dreamless sleep; who, though perceiving duality, experiences it as nondual; who, though engaged in work, is inactive: that one, and no one else, knows the Self. This is the truth.'” 188
186 Vedantasāra 219. 187 1b. 220. 188 Upadeśasahasri 5; cited in Vedantasära 221.
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