43a | CR Book XII, Chapter 4

Chaper 4 - Threefold withdrawal from sense objects

Many methods, besides these, are used to bring about an
emotional, volitional, and intellectual withdrawal from
sense-objects.

Emotionally, one views them with dread, disgust, con-
weariness, as burdens or chains. As tasteless after
first glimpses of the Beyond, as even distasteful com-
pared with the bliss of liberation. Their enjoyment as
positively harmful in that it is increasingly seen to
shut out an immeasurably greater satisfaction. Their
sight, sound etc. is found to obscure more than to reveal.

"The dogs have taken the children's meat." One dwells
on the contrast of the Beyond to this dreadful world,
until one breaks through to their final identity. "There
is nothing yonder that cannot be found here." As one, fur-
ther, accustoms oneself to disentangle sensory stimuli
from their, often hidden, emotional and personal associati-
ons, one places these sensory data into an emotional void,
and sees them almost as they are in themselves, - noth-
ing in them desirable or to be sought after.

In the spheres of the will, mortification counteracts
the seductive influence of sense objects. It often pro-
ceeds in two stages: In the first the deprivations are
regarded as self-imposed. In the second, when total dep-
rivation is being approached, as inflicted on a help-
less person. sense objects are repudiated in action. Ev-
erything associated with then is trampled underfoot. On-
ly by heroic union with their reality can we feel fully
the weight of suffering, ugliness, squalor, disease, and
tear down those emotional curtains which tend to con-
ceal from our sight the unsatisfactory nature of this
world, and prevent the full understanding of the four
Noble Truths. In mortification we achieve the poverty of
self which must precede its collapse, - poverty in goods,
in senses, in will (patience, obedience, humility). Isolation,
solitude, silence outrage the social instincts, increase
manifest anxiety, and, incidentally, destroy the social
factor in the appearance of sense objects, so that they
become more unreal, dreamlike, unfamiliar, strange and re-
mote. 'The continually stuffed body cannot see secret
things.' Fasting is the small price to pay for the experi-
ence of the arcana coelestia of the supra-sensory
world. Deliberately opposed in all its inclinations, the
self is killed in action. One dies to the world the
death which must precede rebirth, and initiation into
the sangha. A vast burden of dread drops off when the re-
of the flesh is conquered, when one gets more even with
everyone by reducing dividing previleges, when expiation,