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The Path Becomes a Non-path
even the respiration stops. Between the moment of this cessation and that in which the kevalin abandons both his body and this world, the time is so brief that it permits the utterance of just five syllables.32 At this same moment the last stage of Sukla-dhyana occurs, which is called vyuparata-kriya-anivarti, the state of absolute, irreversible immobility.33 The explanation of this rupture is not far to seek: it is due, at one and the same time, to the extinction of the four nondestructive karmas and to the complete cessation of the three yogas, the very slight remaining bodily activity being the last to disappear.34 Simultaneously, leaving behind its audārika, taijasa and kārmaṇa bodies, the atman springs upwards and reaches the loftiest heights of the universe.35 This spontaneous leap upwards belongs, as we know, to its nature, so that, when nothing any longer impedes it, it discovers once again its own natural lightness and follows its own natural 36 movement.
b) Full Realisation
In this same leap upwards, as the atman ascends, all karmic dust and heaviness is shed, together with all forms of yoga, and the result is total purity; the atman is realised in its plenitude. Now everything is of the utmost simplicity, for a unity of being has been achieved. We should of course recall to mind that, at the moment of mokṣa and in the immediately following eternal state of the siddha, there is no increase of jñāna or the other perfections, for from the moment when
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32 Cf. DS IV, 23, 23-25; US XXIX, 72; YSas XI, 57; the syllables are: a, i, u, f, l.
33 Cf. TS IX, 39-40; cf. also DhyanSat 82; 89.
34 Cf. TS X, 2-4.
35
Ibid., X, 5; US XXIX, 73; YSas XI, 58. Re. the different bodies, cf. TS II, 36 and P 300 n. 59.
36 Cf. DravSam 2 (285); TS X, 6-8.
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