The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c10.48

c10.48

In the final analysis, not even the knowledge of the self can be the pivotal moment, for then it would have to stand in the world and thereby lose its transcendent absoluteness. There is no mediation. There is only contradiction. There, in the contradictory tension between world-denying self-realization and worldly piety is the dynamic center. In the perplexity of contradiction, man must wrestle with the transcendent. The outcome remains uncertain. Man's quest for the transcendent is first and last a desperate leap into the unknown.