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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
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cured I feel pleasure. This pleasurable consciousness consists of an ‘‘excitation”’ or feeling, and a contrast thought-consciousness that I am no longer feeling the pain of the boil. Now the man who has attained Bliss, though having had a boil on his leg, will feel, when cured, that his state of tranquillity had neither been disturbed, when the boil was, nor regained when it was cured. He feels that he passed through a pain-pleasure universe with which he really has no connection or which can neither disturb nor heighten the tranquil or blissful state which flows on without ceasing. This state of Bliss is free from both inclinations and excitement involved in pleasure or this pain.

There is a positive and a negative aspect in Bliss-consciousness. The negative aspect is the absence of pleasure-pain consciousness; the positive one is the transcendental state of a superior calm including within itself the consciousness of a great expansion and that of