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Rasa-nişpatti-vicāra in Abhinavagupta
1587 causes supreme joy. Thus, the art-critics tried to give a new name and a new habitation to the ugly in life; “ugly", because of personal factors intervening. This 'vibhāvana’- process works like an alchemy, turning the gross into the etherial, into the divine. It transforms the material context into the spiritual, raises the gross to the level of art-experience, i.e. 'rasa'. This art-experience is made up of supreme bliss, and, to differentiate it from worldly experience, the art-critics have equalled it with the divine joy caused due to the realization of Brahman, the supreme spirit. They term it as, 'brahmā"svāda-sahodara”. The ordinary of our everyday life turns into 'extra-ordinary i.e. 'a-laukika' in art-context. Thus, by coining new terminology, the art-critics have mounted the art-experience on a pedestal, higher than ordinary, or worldly, free from local personal colouring of the work-a-day world. This art-experience is a process of, say, de-individualisation, wherein personal ego- or local likes and dislikes of a given enjoyer-melts away. The critics term this as, "sadharanīkarana", the process of de-individnulisation, wherein the lower ego melts away and yet the higher self of the enjoyer continues to exist : "ātmā na atyantam tiraskrtaḥ, na višeşatayā ullikhitaḥ”, as Abhinavagupta puts it. It is a state of consciousness where the limited ego-sense fades away, giving rise to a higher self, a super ego, so to say, the ‘ahamkāra', 'abhimana' as Bhoja would like to put it. Just as an individual soul, after attaining to yoga, rests in supreme bliss in the company of the paramātman, the Supreme Spirit, in the same way, the Sahrdayam a man of cultivated taste, who has attained to this state of Sādhāranīkarana, or de-individualisation, a state beyond personal mean calculations of profit and loss of selfish pursnits, undergoes art-experience. He is then called 'rasika'. -"rasikóyam, iti pravādaḥ”, says Bhoja.
It is in this state of art- experience, that the worldly feelings of 'mine' and yours', of grabbing the palatable and leaving the unprofitable, fade away like darkness at the advent of dawn. There is a complete transformation of the lower nature into the higher, spiritual nature. Of course, it is peri-passu with the period of the presentation of a given art form. It lasts till the performance lasts. When, say, the performance of a dramatic piece is over, or, when the reading of a classic such as "War and Peace" or "The Miserable" or "Brothers Karamazov" or "Gītāñjali” is over, this transformation evaporates. The enjoyer comes out of this experience like a yogin coming out of his state of meditation. The difference is that a yogin, after his experience of the Divine is a totally changed personality there after, which is not the case with the connoisseur, who enjoys only a short break, a limited stay in the realm of higher consciousness. Art serves the purpose of the Divine vision, 'divya
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