In Sutra 2.20 it is written ‘The Seer is but the force of seeing itself, appearing to see or experience that which is presented as a cognitive principle.’ I understand this as if Purusha or the unchangeable soul has the ability to see through one’s mind. Therefore even the soul and the mind are separated entities, since the former perceives world through the latter, but is not one with it, showing the idea of radical dualism represented in Patanjali’s Sutras.
For the ultimate liberation the internalisation of the dualistic nature of the world is cruilcal. Everything around us that can be perceived is there for a single reason, which is to clearly show to a practitioner the distinction between the seer and the seen. ‘Clear, distinct, unimpaired discriminative knowledge is the means of liberation from this alliance.’ …show more content…
The fault is presumably in us, because of our ignorance. According to Isa-Upanishads IX., two extremes lead us to darkness, namely Avidya or ignorance and Vidya or knowledge. The later is usually a virtue but when cherishing it for mere intellectual pride, we fall into even greater darkness. Only when the higher consciousness is obtained one can feel united with all life, because the source of misery, the sense of diversity, is vanished. ‘He who sees all beings in the Self and the Self in all beings, he never turns away from the Self.’ Advaita Vedanta sees non-dual consciousness as the natural state but we have to be careful not tomix the term of oneness with sameness. Objects around us can have different appearances without being separate. For example, if I look at my hand my fingers appear to be different but they are all part of the same hand. This allegory tries to explain that objects regardless of their shape and appearance have the same source so that they are merely different expressions of a single non-dual
For the ultimate liberation the internalisation of the dualistic nature of the world is cruilcal. Everything around us that can be perceived is there for a single reason, which is to clearly show to a practitioner the distinction between the seer and the seen. ‘Clear, distinct, unimpaired discriminative knowledge is the means of liberation from this alliance.’ …show more content…
The fault is presumably in us, because of our ignorance. According to Isa-Upanishads IX., two extremes lead us to darkness, namely Avidya or ignorance and Vidya or knowledge. The later is usually a virtue but when cherishing it for mere intellectual pride, we fall into even greater darkness. Only when the higher consciousness is obtained one can feel united with all life, because the source of misery, the sense of diversity, is vanished. ‘He who sees all beings in the Self and the Self in all beings, he never turns away from the Self.’ Advaita Vedanta sees non-dual consciousness as the natural state but we have to be careful not tomix the term of oneness with sameness. Objects around us can have different appearances without being separate. For example, if I look at my hand my fingers appear to be different but they are all part of the same hand. This allegory tries to explain that objects regardless of their shape and appearance have the same source so that they are merely different expressions of a single non-dual