110. SAIVA BASIS OF ABHINAVA'S ÆSTHETICS 125

SAIVA BASIS OF ABHINAVA'S ÆSTHETICS 125

senses, which alcne are accepted by him to be asthetic. But he recognises the æsthetic object to be only a medium and not the object of æsthetic experience. For, æsthetic experience is not merely a mental picture of the obejcts of æsthetic senses, related to an empirical subject, who evaluates it in terms of pleasure and pain. A layman may be satisfied with pleasant sensation and may identify æsthetic experience with it, but a real æsthete will never recognise an object to be beautiful if it simply pleases the senses and does nothing more. A true æsthetic object does not simply stimulate the æsthetic senses. It primarily stimulates imagination, of course through senses. It simply presents only broad outline of a picture, which has to be completed in all necessary details by the imaginative power of the spectator. The second level of æsthetic experience, therefore, is imaginative. As the æsthete rises from the level of sense to that of imagination, his personality changes. He is concerned not with the sensibly present but with the imaginatively grasped. He has his being in a world, different from the gross. This world is his own creation. In it he meets with a dramatic personality, which is the focal point in the whole. He finds in it nothing to disapprove. It is the ideal realised. He, therefore, slowly and gradually identi- fies himself with it. His personality is substituted by that of the focus. He views everything as does the hero. He incipiently reacts to the situation exactly as does the hero. He looks upon the deeds of hero, in a variety of situation, as his own and derives the same satisfaction from them as does the hero. Thus, if the hero acts in strict accordance with a moral principle in a situation, that would tempt an ordinary person away from the right path, though it means great suffering and sacrifice