Book Title: Search For Absolute In Neo Vedanta
Author(s): George B Burch
Publisher: George B Burch

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Page 50
________________ 660 BURCH (1 324), where samadhi can only be described as "the activity of changeless self-reproduction" (1 225, 258). This is absolute activity, will, freedom, or subject-the opposite of passivity, knowledge, truth, or object. Freedom in the sense of indeterminism is considered in the paper (date unknown) "Reality of the Future.” The future is contingent and undetermined, not what will be but what can be, inferred as what will be if nothing interferes (II 273). It is real to us in two ways-by will and by faith, which are antithetical attitudes (II 274). Faith can be reduced to ideal willing, or will to faith that "my will is coming," but neither reduction is justified (II 277). When the objective means seem unpredictable, faith lets us believe that the end will come nevertheless. But if will does not give place to faith, it may persist as a demonic (asurika) aspiration to make history by exploiting objects as means, as in hypnotism (II 278). Will and faith are alternative attitudes toward the undetermined, and their dualism cannot be overcome (II 274). Absolute Feeling The process of feeling which leads to the Absolute as Value is discussed in two essays, "Artistic Enjoyment" and "The Beautiful and the Ugly," written in 1925 and published together in Studies in Philosophy under the title “The Concept of Rasa.” Rasa (flavor) means either aesthetic enjoyment or that which is aesthetically enjoyed (1 349). The first of the two essays develops the dialectic of feeling on four levels. (1) Primary feeling is direct feeling of an object, enjoying it. The contrast of subject and object characteristic of knowing and willing is obscured. The subject affects the object and is affected by it. The object appears not as mere fact but as having a value, while the subject feels attracted into the object rather than detached from it (I 350). This confused unity has alternative directions: in the objective, selffeeling lapses and object alone is perceived with its value; in the subjective, object becomes indefinite while subject retains its feeling attitude (1 355) and absorbs the object (I 356). (2) Sympathetic feeling is feeling of feeling. Its object is another person's feeling. Sympathy is not a duplicate of the other person's feeling. In sympathizing with a child enjoying his toy I am not interested in the toy but in his enjoyment. "Sympathy with joy is also joy but it is freer than the primary joy." I do not lose the sense of distinction between my feeling and the child's as he loses the distinc

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