| Author Quoted | Surendranath Dasgupta |
| Title Quoted | Introduction to Tantric Buddhism |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1968/11/28 |
| Imprint | Calcutta : [s.n.]. 1958 |
| Quotation | Surendranath Dasgupta on idealism: The Ahirbudhnya Samhita is a post-Upanishadic work from the Vaishnava school of thought which deals with time and Isvara. "Time is regarded as the element that combines the prakriti with the purushas." It is the instrument through which the spontaneous thought of Isvara acts. The power of God is not physical or mechanical; it is self-manifestation in thought movement that separates thought and object (mind substance) passing entirely into actuality without obstruction. It is creativity emerging in self-diremption from pure stillness, not as event but as pure consciousness. This self-diremption with power and object is time and all that is measured by time. The brahman perceived he would be many and thus he became many, in time. "Time is identified with the thought movement of God and is regarded as the first category of its inner movement, which is responsible not only for the creation of the cosmos but also of the colony of individual selves." It is without external cause. Individuals are pure insofar as they are "in God" but involved in moral struggle insofar as they are "outside him," cut off by extraneous limits, but they must purify themselves of separative root tendencies. Not, however, from matter. Matter and spirit are two necessary poles in the dialectic. |
| Quotation Source | The Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 7, 1967-1968.; Edited by Patrick Hart, O.C.S.O. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1998, p. 306 |
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