Philosophies of India – Dr Heinrich Zimmer [edited by Joseph Campbell]

This anonymous diamond being is not at all what we were cherishing as our character and cultivating as our faculties, inclinations, virtues and ideals; for it transcends every horizon of unclarified and partly clarified consciousness.

It was enwrapped within the sheaths of the body and personality; yet the dark, turbid, thick gunas could not disclose its image.  Only the translucent essence of clarified sattva permits it to become visible – as through a glass or in a quiet pond.  And then, the moment it is recognised, its manifestation bestows an immediate knowledge that this is our true identity.

The life monad is remembered and greeted, even though it is distinct from everything, in this phenomenal composite of a body and psyche, which, under the delusion caused by our usual ignorance and undiscriminating consciousness we had crudely mistaken for the real and lasting essence of our being…..

This self luminous, abiding point amidst the whirlpool of the transient feelings, emotions, delusions and mirage like superimpositions – that inmost, basic nucleus of nature, crystalline, the very spark of being – stands brilliantly revealed and is known immediately as both the fundament and the pinnacle of existence