Religion:Anubhava

In Hindu thought, Anubhava or (Sanskrit: अनुभव) refers to personal knowledge or aesthetic experience.

Etymology

The term or (Sanskrit) is a compound of:

• अनु : 'after', 'afterwards', 'later on', 'in consequence of', 'being indicated by';
• भ(भु)व : 'causing', 'delighting' or 'experiencing'.

has a wide range of possible translations:

• अनुभव – 'direct perception or cognition', 'knowledge derived from personal observation or experiment, 'notion', 'apprehension', 'the impression on the mind not derived from memory', 'one of the kinds of knowledge', 'experience', 'understanding', 'result', 'consequence';
• अनुभवसिद्ध – 'established by experience'.

Several related words express the mental state which can be communicated to others or represented (अभिनय – 'acting'), either verbally or physically or emotionally, in one or different contexts:

• भाव : 'feeling', 'emotion', 'sentiment', 'temperament', 'mood';
• विभाव : 'any condition which produces or develops a particular state of body or mind';
• अनुभाव : 'greatness', 'dignity', 'firm opinion or determination', 'an external manifestation or indication of a feeling by appropriate looks, gestures etc., called by some ensuant';
• अनुभू : to enjoy, taste, experience or suffer;
• अनुभूति : 'realization', self-realization'.

are not causes, but aesthetic experiences and important ingredients of Rasa. is not a sense-experience.

Religion

Direct cognition

refers to poetic, narrative or ritual experience, enjoyment, relish or delight resulting, for the devotee or the seeker after truth, in the ecstatic experience of the divine; it is a means to understand during one’s own life-time the true nature of one’s own self which is the real nature of the Atman by experiencing the sublime delight of the unity with the Supreme Self.

Cognition is said to be of two kinds – smrti ('reproductive') which is other than re-cognitive perception requiring disposition, and ('productive') which involves a kind of awareness not derived from disposition alone. The difference between the waking state and the dreaming state becomes known through ('perception').

Advaita Vedanta

The sage of the Mundaka Upanishad declares:

स यो ह् वै तत्परमं ब्रह्म वेद ब्रह्मैव भवति – "Verily he becomes Brahman, who knows Brahman. " – (Mundaka Upanishad III.ii.9)

This is so because Brahman is of the nature of experience () and to have the of Brahman is to become Brahman, thus this revelation, a moment ago non-existing, is realized as existing eternally. is , and is realization of the identity of the individual self and Brahman, which experience does not depend on any process, neither produced by any process nor as an effect to any cause and is the highest state of development.

With regard to the origination of things, Badarayana declares:

जन्माद्यस्य यतः "That (is Brahman) from which (are derived) the birth etc., of this (universe)." - (Brahma Sutras I.i.2)

Shankara holds to be a pramana, an independent source of knowledge which is provided by contemplation (nididhyasana). In his commentary on this sutra Shankara explains that a thing cannot be simultaneously judged to be existent and non-existent for the valid knowledge of the true nature of a thing does not depend on human notions and यतः () ('that from which') in this "is not meant to present an inference but speaks of a cause that is by nature eternal, pure, free and intrinsically omniscient" (which has to be experienced and felt). The realization of the Supreme Word (śabda), which is truth and reality, happens intuitively (a stage of pratibha), and resembles Shankara’s concept of .

Padmapada (fl. 8th century), a student of Shankara, in his , expounding Prabhākara’s view, explains that knowledge is i.e. the immediate experience, the resultant-cognition gained through valid means of knowledge when the subject and the object manifest and the self of the knower is known indirectly as "I". And, according to Abhinavagupta, the very continuous and proper remembrance of the mantra (of a ritual) is the attainment of the condition in which the devout upāsaka as a routine has the continuous and direct ('experience') of the Self as no different from himself.

Swami Dayananda notes that has a more specific meaning than its conventional meaning of "experience", namely "direct knowledge". Dayananda explains that interpreting as "experience" may lead to a misunderstanding of Advaita Vedanta, and a mistaken rejection of the study of the scriptures as mere intellectual understanding. Stressing the meaning of as knowledge, Saraswati argues that liberation comes from knowledge, not from mere experience. Saraswati points out that "the experience of the self ... can never come because consciousness is ever-present, in and through each and every experience."

Neo-Vedanta

According to Vivekananda, is the ground and source of all religious traditions, the infallible source of liberating knowledge, and the ultimate source of spiritual knowledge; however, he happens to distinguish between internal and external experience, between knowledge gained through words heard and own experience which he finds are not similar in nature and import. According to Reza Shah-Kazemi anubhava is the immediate experience through which the transcendence of the Supreme Self beyond all limitations becomes known as one’s own self, then one realizes the real nature of one’s own self.

Saiva Siddhanta

Thayumanavar, the 18th-century Tamil Saiva Siddhanta saint, the one who gains delights in the unitive experience () which is deep and intuitive, and the culmination of all experimental states of Vedanta; it is the .

Waking and dreaming

In the waking state and in the dreaming state, (संवेदन) ('perception', 'act of perceiving or feeling', 'cognitive awareness') is two-folds – i) 'knowledge' and its ii) 'object'; in deep sleep state and turiya state, which states are not different from knowledge, ('experiencing awareness') is consciousness alone; the enlightened soul does not ever lose this experiencing awareness which event () occurs no sooner the object is perceived and its existence is registered.

(अनुभावः) and Indian aesthetics

In poetry, prose and drama, emotions are indirectly communicated to the readers and audience via portrayal of certain aspects of emotion’s conditions and causes ( consisting of and ), exterior manifestations or consequences ( which is , or ) and concomitant accompanying emotions () which method is called ('relish') or and involves diction (), rhetoric () and oblique expression (), and is the finished product of sentiment (). is emotion.

Mystic poetry is known as . Bendre, who started the cultural movement , considers mystic experience as an extension of , and leads to – -> -> -> . In his poem, as a poetic composition is seen the transformation of into and back to .

There are eight different and distinct or 'sentiments' – 'erotic', 'comic', 'pathetic', 'furious', 'heroic', 'terrible', 'odious', and 'marvellous', to which is also added . Bharata states that is the soul of poetry. The vedic meaning of is 'liquid' or 'flavour'; for Shankara, signifies the intrinsic and spiritual non-material bliss. Natya Shastra (St.109) explains that is produced from a combination of determinants (), consequents or histrionic representations () and any of the thirty-three transitory states (), according to which text, 'love', 'mirth', 'sorrow', 'anger', 'energy', 'terror', 'disgust' and 'astonishment' are the eight dominant states or ; 'paralysis', 'perspiration', 'horripilation', 'change of voice', 'trembling', 'change of colour', 'weeping' and 'fainting' are the eight temperamental states or , and emphasizes on histrionic representation or of the presented by the characters developed by the playwright. Abhinavagupta states that , also a , leads to moksha, for it is the very experience of pure consciousness; also means 'pure consciousness' and also means the experience arising from pure consciousness. is an experience of pure consciousness brought about by the aesthetic contents, impressions and stimuli for the mind, the intellect and the emotions; causes a specific emotional state to cause an (effect) which is defined as means of histrionic representation. The experience of is the experience of the different levels of perception corresponding to the different transitory mental states, the , for example, are involuntary and uncontrollable physical responses produced from certain mental states. Bhatta Lolatta states that is intensified located in the character () and the actor () by virtue of the power of identification.