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VEDANTA
reality of the Inner Self. Whatever can be said about this essence must, by nature, come into collision with the cogitations of the mind (manas) and the intuitions of the understanding (buddhi). Wild words, therefore, and figures that break beyond the powers of the imagination are the means by which the saint tells of the reality beyond the reach of words.
"In what is night for all transient beings the yogi in perfect control of himself is awake. And that in which the other beings feel awake is night for the saint who really sees."
"197
The truth about what the sage, "the mute one" (muni), really sees can be expressed only by a monotony of paradoxical, pompous utterances, defying reason, challenging logic, and shocking normal consciousness out of its complacency. These are intended, on the one hand, to rouse the individual from the false security of his non-awareness in māyā, where he sits gratified by himself and his reasonable mind, and on the other hand, as directed to the initiate well on his way to the goal of the transcendent Self (the true adept of Vedanta), to serve as forecasts of the state that he is striving to attain. These illogical, grandiloquent expressions are intended, in his case, to shape and sharpen consciousness by pressing it toward the pure, translucent spirituality of the Self. They cleanse the ready spirit of the fault of reason (which always flatters itself with its quick perception of contradictions) and thus heal the wound of the knowledge of good and evil, subject and object, true and false-those imperfections of intellectualism, which are the natural effects of the usual compound of sattva and rajas.108
"I am free from passion and similar taints. Suffering, a body, and the other limiting peculiarities are not with me. I am the
197 Bhagavad Gită 2. 69.
198 Inasmuch as the intellectual attitude, the joy of reasoning, amounts to a passion among intellectuals-philosophers, scientists, writers, etc.-the truth in them is always bent. For a discussion of sattva and rajas, cf. supra, pp. 295-297, 398-402.
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