Breaking free

Was recapitulating Schopenhauer's essay "On the Pure subject of knowing". Found it to be pertinent to quote some excerpts


"....the state required for pure objectivity of perception has in part permanent conditions in the perfection of the brain and of the physiological quality generally favourable to its activity...Let us not think here of alcoholic drinks or of opium; on the contrary, what is required is a peaceful night's sleep, a cold bath, and everything that furnishes brain-activity with an unforced ascendancy by a calming down of the blood circulation and of the passionate nature. It is especially these natural means of promoting cerebral nervous activity which have the effect of making the object more and more detached from the subject and which finally produce that state of pure objectivity of perception. Such a state eliminates the will from consciousness. Thus pure will-less knowledge is reached by the consciousness of other things being raised to so high a potential that the consciousness of our own selves vanishes. For we apprehend the world purely objectively, only when we no longer know that we belong to it; and all things appear the more beautiful, the more we are conscious merely of them, and the less we are conscious of ourselves.

Now as all suffering proceeds from the will that constitutes the real self, all possibility of suffering is abolished simultaneously with the withdrawal of this side of consciousness. In this way, the state of pure objectivity of perception becomes one that makes us feel positively happy - basis of aesthetic enjoyment. On the other hand, as soon as the consciousness of one's own self, and thus subjectivity, again obtains the ascendancy a degree of discomfort or disquiet appears...."



My footnotes:
All these constitute the profoundest truth that has it's basic form in many ideals, especially, Bhagavad Gita, Tibetan book of the Dead etc. Aldous huxley in his brilliant observations and experiments on effect of Psychedelics along with Dr Osmond, Dr Leary et al, has re-iterated the above. Only from such a standpoint, i believe, can a clear conception of "Love" be made. In any other state, it is just material wish-wash stained by pseudo moralistic ideas.