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100
KARMA - THE MECHANISM
SUTRAS
This obstruction of cognition does not manifest e.g. in form of a physical defect of our eyes or the corresponding nerves6. Karma that obstructs cognition prevents that a 'tendency towards an object' arises in our consciousness.
One example: We all experienced that while .reading a book we needed to go over one particular paragraph again and again because our attention kept drifting to some other subject. We wanted to read, but something obstructed our cognition and diverted our attention towards entirely different subjects. Though the words reached our eyes, they did not get through to our awareness. Something was closing the book to our attention, even though we didn't want to.
Cognition is nothing other than us becoming aware of unknown areas of our own consciousness. As long as we have no 'tendency towards these unknown regions' and no 'notion that something might exist there', we will feel no inclination to explore them. We simply are unaware that they exist in the first place.
The type of karma described in this sutra prevents us from perceiving entire parts of reality because it fundamentally blocks our cognition of it. The things and experiences we miss definitely exist, but never reach our consciousness.
This also explains why we will never gain complete understanding of this world by exploring only our material environment (as western science attempts to do).
Certainly - if we examine the partial environment that reaches our conscious perception, we may detect a wealth of details of this particular part, but cannot reach the abundant dimensions beyond the karmic frame of what we are able to cognize.
6 A defect of this kind would rather be triggered by the type of karma
that defines form and features of our body (nama karma). 7 see 'THE KEY TO THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE' sutra 5 - the plane of selec
tion - how we form the perception-patterns of our individual reality.
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