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Rasa-nispatti-vicāra in Abhinavagupta
1559 participation (tagastha) of the thoughts of others, which is proper to the direcet perception of the yogins; (c) and from the compact ekaghana-experience of one's own beatitude, which is proper to yogins of higher orders (this perception is immaculate, free from all impressions[uparāga), deriving from external things). Indeed, these three forms of cognition, being in due order (yathāyogam) subjected to the appearance of obstacles (practical desires, etc.), lacking evidence and at the mercy of the (adorned) object, are deprived of beauty (saundarya). Here, on the contrary, because of the absence (of sensations of pleasures, pain, etc.) as inhering exclusively in our own person, of an active participation in our own self (svātmánupraveśāt), of the absence [of the afore-mentioned sensations as inhering exclusively in other persons, and the immersion (āveśa) in the latent traces of our own sentiments of delight, etc., reawakened by the corresponding determinants, etc., which are generalized-because, I say, of all these causes, the appearance of obstacles is impossible. And all this has been said over and over again.”
In connection with the above passage Gnoli has, in ft. note, 4, pp. 82, explained the nature of mystical experience which differs from the aesthetic one. He observes. -“Mystical experience involves the annihilation of every pair of opposites; everything is re-absorbed in its dissolving fire. Sun and moon,night and day, beautiful and - ugly, etc. no longer exist in it. The limited “I” is completely absorbed into Siva or Bhairva, the adored object; everything vanishes from the field of consciousness. Aesthetic experience, on the other hand, requires the presence of the latent traces of delight, etc. (aroused by the operation of the determinants, etc.). In the aesthetic experience presupposes a pre-constituted knowledge on the part of the spectator, of the psychic reactions, etc., which are normally felt before a given situation. This knowledge is, in part, innate (it forms, that is, an integral part of human nature) and is, in part, acquired through the experience of one's own reactions and one's own observation of the reactions of others.
Aesthetic experience, Rasa, manifested by a poetical description of a beautiful woman, is, for example, coloured by the mental state of delight, which is aroused by the description itself. Such a mental state is supposed to pre-exist in the spectator in a latent state, in the form, that is, of samskāra or vāsanā. The Determinants which manifest aesthetic experience awaken, implicitaly and of necessity, these latent traces also.
The beauty, the pleasantness proper to the aesthetic experience are due to the colouring of these mental processes; cf. A.bh. I. p. 290, “laukikāt pratyayāt
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