Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s34.2

v2.c26.s34.2

Mokṣa is a matter of direct realisation of something which is existent from eternity, though it is hidden from our view. When the limitations are removed, the soul is liberated. It remains where it is, what it is and eternally was, the first principle of all things. It is the peace that the world can never give, nor take away, the supreme and only blessedness. " That which is real in the absolute sense, immutable, eternal, all-penetrating like ākāśa, exempt from all change, all-satisfying, undivided, whose nature is to be its own light, in which neither good nor evil, nor effect, nor past nor present nor future has any place, this incorporeal is called liberation."[¹] When avidyā vanishes, the true soul stands self-revealed, even as gold shines when freed from the impurities which affected it, or as the stars shine in a cloudless night, when the day which overpowers them disappears.[²] The enfranchisement of man from all his self-wrought bondages, the glory which is utterly beyond all grasp of thought, the peace that is the very purpose of all our striving, lies nearer to us than our nearest consciousness. Śaṅkara shows us not a heaven which is apart from, a different order of experience from, earth, but the heaven which is all the time here, could we but see it. It is not something in an imagined future, a continuance of existence in a world to come after the present life is ended, but a state of identification with the real here and now.[³]