Book Title: World of Philosophy
Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
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CITTASUDDHI AND JIVANMUKTI
- DR. B.R. SHANTHA KUMARI
Although we all live in the same "setting", the physical phenomenal world, we differ in our views about it, our standpoints of understanding, and the meaning we ascribe to experience. For example, the world is real (vastavi) to an ignorant person, a paradox (anirvacaniya) to a logician, and illusory (mithya) to a seer. These fundamental differences in the response of individuals is due to difference in the mental "set" or the limiting adjunct - the mind (antahkarana) - through which the world is perceived, and which possesses different degrees of purity in different individuals.
According to Advaita - a metaphysics of experience, whose claims are made with reference to experience (anubhava) and not the impossibilities or the possibilities of reason (yukti) - the greater the mental - purity (citta-suddhi), the easier it is to apprehend the Self. Advaita provides concepts for analyzing human experience and physical phenomena, and unfolds a new relation between "facts" and experience.
Advaita upholds that every act of cognition or "mental-episode" is a blend of two aspects (1) the not-this (anidam, asmad) which is the invariable pure consciousness constituting the subjective aspect, and (2) the this (idam, yusmad) which is the variable objective aspect. By inquiry through the method of agreement in presence and agreement in absence (anvayavyatireka), pure consciousness must be isolated from the cognitive-episode for intuiting the Self.
For inquiry to be fruitful, latent impressions (vasanas) which generate mental modifications and inhibit inquiry must be incapacitated and eliminated for attaining Self-realization. The mind then becomes no mind (amanas). In this way, the obliteration of latent impressions (vasanaksaya) and destruction of the mind (manonasa) result in intuition of the Self.
In the mind of an individual, there are two states as the forerunner of all religious pursuits. They are an awareness of misery and finitude, and a deep yearning to overcome it. Therefore, the mind not only experiences misery but also strives consciously to free itself permanently from the trauma it undergoes. Since in Self-realization an irrevocable transformation takes place in the mental attitude of the individual towards (wo) men and matter, and the "lived world", the paper examines the phenomenon of transformation from the standpoints of the science of psychology and the philosophy of Advaita, keeping in view the fact that neither psychology nor philosophy can account for transformation because Self-realization is a transformative experience which transcends both psychology and philosophy. These can only give a general description of what happens in transformation for the when,
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