Author Description

Description: This book is primarily intended to be an Investigation into the Meaning and Religious significance of the important Vedic term dhi, which has been variously and often inadequately translated. The author has tried to determine its central meaning or semantic nucleus from which the various contextual connotations were derived. This central meaning is vision, not only in the literal Sense (faculty of seeing), but in the Vedic Texts mainly in the sense of mental vision, supranormal Vision establishing the contact with the transcendent sphere or World of the divine powers from which the poets obtained their inspiration and their insight into the Higher supersensuous Truth and reality which they endeavoured to express and formulate in their poems. The author elaborately describes the relevant processes and the activity of the poets (chapters II-IX) and adds chapters on related subjects, e.g., the heart as the organ of these mental processes, poetical inspiration in post-Vedic literature, contemplation and meditation, the Buddhist ideas on vision, as well as the term pratibha flash of intuition.