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NYAYA-VAISEȘIKA
265 delusion (moha). Our aim should be to free ourselves from the tyranny of this wrong conviction by realizing the true nature of the self. This initial folly of moha or mithyā-jñāna is not a mere lack of right knowledge but positive error or wrong knowledge.2 It may be represented as two-fold: (i) mistaking things that are not really of the self as belonging to it, viz. manas, body and so forth; and (ii) mistaking the non-essential or accidental features of the self such as knowledge, pain and pleasure arising through association with its empirical vesture, for its essential features. Neither separation from the former nor the elimination of the latter can affect the integrity of the self; but man commonly loses sight of this fact and feels that with their deficiency is bound up that of himself. In one word, there is nothing which the self can or has to obtain for itself; and it is the knowledge of this truth that is the immediate means of release.3 But if it is successfully to dispel the delusion, it should be ripened into direct intuition through constant meditation. Mere reasoned conviction is of no avail. Thus the acquisition of right knowledge and the practice of yoga constitute the chief features of the discipline directly leading to release. The way of securing the saving knowledge is as follows: (1) Formal study of philosophy which is to be carried on under a competent teacher who can properly instruct us; and (2) reflection upon what has been thus learnt with a view to get conviction for oneself about it. These two stages secure mediate knowledge or knowledge by description' as we might say. Then follows (3) meditation upon the true nature of the self. It leads to direct experience of the truth which will banish ignorance at once. A person who has such experience, it is supposed, will reach the final goal of life (apayarga) as soon as he is dissociated from the physical body at death.
In thus conceiving of the goal of life, the Nyāya-Vaiseșika NS. IV. i. 3-8; NM. PP. 500-1. • Na tattva-jñānasya anutpatti-matram: NSB. IV. ii. 1. 3 NS. I. i. 1. 4 NSB. IV. ii. 38 and 47-9. These correspond to Sravana, manana and nididhyāsana of the Upanişads and are so termed in the Nyayakandali, p. 282.
