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SUTRAS
THE NATURE OF KARMIC BONDS
99
While the previous sutra (6) describes what blocks access to knowledge (jnana), the present sutra explains what prevents us from gaining insiglit (darshana) and comprehending knowledge we well have access to. These two types of karma operate on entirely different levels.
The way we gain insight, cognition, understanding - 'darshana' - is a highly delicate experience that happens before the actual perception-process (avagraha) even starts.
Perception (avagraha) is the first conscious recognition of an object after it came in contact with our sense-organs. Yet perception is not our very first connection with the perceived object. It is preceded by an experience - darshana - that arises at that moment when our senses come in contact with an object for the first time, but do not react to this sensation yet.
At that point in time darshana decides whether a 'tendency towards an object' will arise in the first place. Here a selection-process happens that allows only a few of the billions of stimuli that are constantly presented to our senses and mind to get through to our consciousness. Here - on this deeply fundamental level - it is determined whether a stimulus will develop into perception and possibly become an insight later. darshana is influenced by all the concepts, patterns and condition
we installed between reality and our consciousness. This filter permits contact with only those events and objects that resonate in our consciousness. Everything else might well exist and might even meet our senses, but because of this filter will never reach our perception and is thereby closed out to our consciousness.5
Karma that obstructs cognition - darshana - therefore does not block perception, but prevents on a far more fundamental level that THE VERY BASIS for perception can be formed in the first place.
5 'THE KEY TO THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE' (Chapter 1 of the Tattvar
thasutra) deals extensively with the mechanism of darsliana (the gaining of insight).
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