The History of Buddhist Thought c25.44

c25.44

As Dr. Schayer says, the normal means for attaining the mystic end is the methodically exercised practice of Yoga. In the long-prepared ecstasy the saint has beheld and grasped the all-unity, and although he awakes again to normal life, i.e. is again brought back to the distinction of subject and object, perceives colours, sounds, etc., feels feelings, and thinks thoughts, yet his consciousness of reality is fundamentally transformed by his post-ecstatic retrospection, just in this sense that now everything actual appears empty and unreal, dreamlike and illusory.¹