Professor Sen Gupta, on the "Four Buddhist Jnanas": "It is again stated that the process of contemplation of `emptiness' and of the negation of self-hood leads to a sense of joy. Both of these concepts, `emptiness' (Sunyata) and the negation of self-hood (nairatmya), however, seem to signify the same type of transformation of consciousness, the growth of a plane of non-relational experience of the nirvikalpa stage. The stage of `emptiness' as defined above is said to develop through the practice of Pratyahara, with withdrawal of the senses from the objects. Man's mind loses in this way its contact with things outside: desires no longer fixate upon things that fulfil them; mind, so far as its operations can be observed from outside, is asleep. In earlier Buddhism, in which the discipline of the Yoga was generally followed, we find mention of pleasant emotions: `When, aloof from sensuous ideas, aloof from evil ideas, he enters into and abides in "First Jnana," wherein attention is applied and sustained, which is born of solitude and filled with zest and pleasant emotion.' In the `Second Jnana,' again, there is an `inward tranquillizing of the mind self-contained and uplifted from the working of attention' and there arises `zest and pleasurable emotion.' In the `Third Jnana' likewise the individual is said to `experience' in the body that pleasure of which the Aryans speak. `It is only in the last stage that man goes beyond joy and sorrow.'"
-- Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity > Chapter 3 : The States of Consciousness > # 175
