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is positively subjective, without any reference to object (II 73). It is not distinguished from its unthought, unmeant, and unmeanable content (though the latter may, in the objective attitude, be distinguished from it), for the content is recognized as mere symbolizing, not really its content at all (II 74). "Feeling does not mean anything but itself” (II 75). It is freedom first from actual and finally from all possible thought (II 77). In the subjective attitude, up to the stage of thought, object appears alien to subject, but in feeling the subject is free from all meant content, which is reduced to mere symbolism. It is free, but not yet freedom itself (II 88). The feeling of not having a feeling, awareness of wanting a feeling, leads to introspection, complete dissociation from felt being, the pure knowing function (II 79), freedom itself, though still as a distinct individual (II 88). Introspection, defined in general as "the distinguishing of the presentation of an object from the object" (II 66), acquires a deeper connotation, in the case of feeling, as awareness of feeling being distinct in itself, not from anything (II 80). Introspection involves not merely conscious absence of meaning but conscious impossibility of meaning, pure subjectivity, not meant "even as unmeanable," since it presents no problem in meaning (II 83). It is the I, the self, selfrevealing. To the speaker I means actual introspection, but to the hearer I means a possible introspection (II 84). The latter awareness is a mode of self-consciousness which goes beyond actual introspection. Awareness of a possibly intuited subjectivity beyond that actually intuited indicates the possibility of subjective illusion comparable to objective illusion and governed by the same law that consciousness of the subjective is consciousness of the false. Awareness of a subjective mode as beyond introspective appropriation suggests an introspection that is not appropriative, that rejects the distinct I and all distinction as illusory. This ultimate mode of subjectivity, eliminating the exclusive I, having no even subjective fact distinct from itself, is the absolute self (II 87).52
At each step of this anagogic path53 the subjective attitude appears as a demand for freedom from the illusory (II 54). Elaboration of these stages of freedom suggests the possibility"of realising the subject as absolute freedom, of retracting the felt positive freedom towards the object into pure intuition of the self” (II 33). At its final stage
52 The Atman of traditional Vedanta, contrasted with the individual self siva.
53 The whole scheme is summarized in the last chapter, which may therefore be read as a summary of the book-but a sutra-like summary intelligible only as a reminder of what has already been studied in detail.
