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Kalidas Bhattacarya
from it Even positive concentration on a state (or anything whatsoever) is not possible till one withdraws from its surroundings Spiritual introspection not only withdraws from the surroundings, it seeks to withdraw even from what is left over. Withdrawal here is from the latter's presentedness, from it as an object, and the result is its liquidation into subjectivity, its reduction to the subjective act of withdrawal itself and pur pas su the understanding of it as symbolic construction In spiritual introspection, the so called reference to the mental state is thus self liquidating, nullifying the content, dialectically enough, as soon as it is said to be held to Not that there is no reference, but the reference is ever vanishing As ever vanısbing, it claims to be, at the ideal stage of perfection, really no reference at all and is, during the period of vanishing, a sort of free reference, resisting, as it does, any kind of compulsive entanglement 10 it Its free reference to the object-here to mental states--18 the same thing as its withdrawal from that, only symbolically interpreted in a forwardlooking language. Spiritual introspection is never compelled to refer to any object.
There is, of course, an alternative here The alternative is mere withdrawl. bare transcendence. without any positing of positive subjectivity, such transcendence being neither positive nor negative. Not positive because no subjectivity is posited, and not negative for the following reason.
Though it is said that the presentedness, ie the objec tivity of mental states, is negated, what is really negated here is only the genuineness, the ultimacy, of objectivity, not that objectivity as after all there, so that what is intended is not so much negation as viewing from outside. | This is a new characteristic feature of spiritual introspection not
touched before 2 In Patanjala Yoga it is called nuradha, taking place at a higher level
of citra than where ekagra takes place the conscious samadhi at this higher level is wholly negative, called asomprajnata, as distinct from the sam prajnata at the ekagra level Nirodha has, by some, been called asparsa-joga, Some, agar, call it a pranidhana-yoga.
