Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c16.166

c16.166

**Progress from Concrete to Abstract.** The principle involved in the differentiation of these stages is that the progress of psychic life is from the more concrete modes of experience to its subtle forms and ways.¹ In *Vitarka* and *Vichāra*, for instance, the Mind is concerned with objects and actions, their causes, properties, and implications. In the third stage of *Ānanda*, there remains simply a feeling of bliss, an objectless emotion, while, in the last stage called *Asmitā*, only the sense of selfhood persists. When this sense also ceases, the Samādhi is called *Asaṁprajñāta* as distinguished from its previous state called *Saṁprajñāta Samādhi*.