The Doctrine of Awakening - 4

The supreme form of knowledge is knowledge conforming to reality...

These things are expounded by the Accomplished One, after he himself has known them, after he himself has seen them.

It is knowledge manifested as in an unveiling - as if an eye, after undergoing an operation, were to reopen and see.

Vision conceived as "transparency" is the Buddhist ideal: "as one sees through limpid water, the sand, the gravel, and the color of pebbles, simply by reason of its transparency, so one who seeks the path of liberation must have just such a limpid mind."

He who cannot strenuously train himself, cannot achieve truth; through strenuous training (an ascetic) achieves truth: therefore strenuous training is the most important thing for the achieving of truth.

You are not life in yourself. You do not exist. You cannot say 'mine' of anything. You do not possess life - it it life that possesses you. You suffer it. And the possibility of immortal survival of this phantom 'I' at the dissolution of the body is only a mirage, since everything tells you that its correlation with this body is essential to you and a trauma, an indisposition, a fainting fit, or any kind of accident has a definite influence over all its faculties, however 'spiritual' and 'superior' they may be.

"There is, O disciples, an unborn, not become, not compounded, not constructed. If there were not this unborn, not become, not compounded, not constructed, no escape could be seen here from that which is born, become, compounde, constructed. But since there is an unborn, not become, not compounded, not constructed, so an escape is possible from what is born, become, compounded, constructed."

The supersensible eye sees the daemon wandering about until an opportunity for a new "combustion" presents itself on the occasion of the meeting of a man and a woman who may be suitable as its father and mother, that is to say, who may present it with a heredity in accordance with its cravings.

In the human compound there certainly exists a "daemon" that is the scat of a more than individual samsaric consciousness and to which there may also be attached memories, instincts, and causes of remote origin and this is the signification of the so-called alayavinnana, the "containing-consciousness" that receives all impressions both conscious and unconscious of a certain stock or current...

Only in cases of exceptional "descents," "fastidic" in nature, of beings who, having removed ignorance to a certain degree, are in their substance mainly composed of "illumination" (bodhi - this is the literal sense of the expression bodhisattva), is the "vehicle" they use in place of the antarabha va or entity of craving, a "celestial body" or "body of splendor" (tnsita-kaya). In these cases birth takes place without any dissolution of the continuity of consciousness; the individual is in perfect possession of himself, he is imperturbably and has vision; and for his nativity he has a choice of the place, the time, and the mother.

Heredity is considered here as something much vaster: as not only that which one inherits from one's ancestors, but also as that which comes from oneself and from antecedent identifications.

Returning to the symbolism of burning: if we wish to find the origin of the fire that burns with some particular log, it would be absurd to trace the origin of the log to the tree from which it came, and that to the forest to which it belonged, and so on - at the most we could only discover the quality of the fuel. The origin of the fire must, instead, be sought in the nature of the fire itself, not in that of the wood, by tracing the spark that lit the flame, and then the flame from which the spark came, and so on. Equally, the most essential and truly "direct" heredity of a being is not found in the genealogy of its earthly parents. For beings are heirs and sons of action and not of father and mother. Besides one's own heredity of body and soma, there is samaric heredity, and, finally, there is one's heredity that is the principle "from above" clouded by "ignorance."

By walking, by going-that is, along samsara - one does not find the end of the world. For it is in oneself. The world ends when the intoxications or manias, the asava, are destroyed.

Are you this? Can you identify yourself with this? Can you satisfy yourself in this? Is this all that you wish?

The noble being always ends by answering in the negative. And then the "revolution" occurs. The disciple leaves his home, renounces the world, and takes the ascetic path.

-Julius Evola, The Doctrine of Awakening