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Rasa-nispatti-vicāra in Abhinavagupta
1543 determinations pereived as exclusively one's own or exclusively those of another; (c) the fact of being at the mercy of our own sensations of pleasure etc.; (d) the defective state of the means of perception; (e) the lack of evidence; (f) the lack of some prominant factor; (g) and the presence of doubt.
The first blemish is caused by inapt presentation on the part of the poets. He presents something which creates lack of conviction on the part of the sāmājika, who cannot establish contact between his consciousness, including his intelligence and common-sense, with things presented by the writer. The enjoyer feels that all that is presented is just non-sense, which cannot be believed. It is impossibe to enjoy art when you just cannot establish any relationship whatsoever with the thing presented. So, this is the first obstacle. It is like "prathamagrāse maksikā-pātaḥ.” No question of rasa-experience can ever arise in such a condition.
The second obstacle concerns people of undevelopped sensitivity, or art-sense. Majority of viewers are like this. When something is presented through art-medium, you have not to take it as something coloured by particularity, time, space etc. In that case you are likely to be either prejudiced against or unduly attached to something presented. If you take the things presented through art medium as connected or disconnected either, personally with you, or with somebody else, enemy, friend or a neutral person, then your responses to art are bound to get coloured. You would like to accept and possess whatever is favourable and would like to reject and hate that which is unfavourable to you in any respect. The precondition of art-experience is that you should be a qualified sensitive soul, -vimalapratibhāna-śāli- sāmājika-; a sa-hrdaya who can grow beyond limited ego and personal likes and dislikes. If things are taken as connected with individnals, or belonging to this or that time and place, they are likely to thwart genuine artappeal and hence rasa-experience also. This obstacle squarely rests with the enjoyer who cannot cut through the limitations of his nature and grow into a higher I-ness.
The third obstacle is of a subtler type. Given that you have a capacity to link yourself with universal ego, i.e. to outgrow your limited ego, given that you are a man of cultivated taste and anything low or less noble does not touch you. This means you are qualified for the highest aesthetic experience. But then, you are a human being. Something has happened to you in your personal life and surrounding which has disturbed your balance of equanimity. You are, at worldly level, taken away by the force of some event and this results in your apathy towards everything around you including art-performance. Your personal pleasure or pain
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