This paper proposes “epistemological function” as a comparative category for reading Sanskrit epic narrative and applies it to two well-known episodes: the Viśvarūpa of Bhagavad Gītā, Chapter XI, and the sustained portrait of Hanumān in the Sundarakāṇḍa of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa. Both, in different ways, address a single pedagogical difficulty: how a mode of consciousness that exceeds ordinary...
Every contemplative discipline begins because something in the practitioner requires cultivation. This paper asks what becomes of the practitioner's dependence on the cultivating instrument once cultivation succeeds. It proposes the Ceiling Theorem: a pathway of practice becomes a ceiling when the integration it has helped to cultivate grows increasingly contingent on the preservation of that...