Square 36: Clarity of consciousness (swatch)

Square 36 in Leela is Clarity of consciousness, swatch in Sanskrit. It is the transparency that follows purgatory: the fog of the intellect lifts and is replaced by clear inner feeling. It is the last square of the fourth row, Attaining Balance, and the passage to the fifth row, and it is a plain square with no arrow or snake.

What square 36 means

Johari describes Clarity of consciousness as transparency after purgatory. The fog of intellect, the endless weighing and arguing of the mind, is replaced by clear inner feeling. This is not cleverness. It is the simple seeing that comes once one has accepted the consequences of one's actions and no longer needs to defend or explain them. Johari places it at the end of the heart row, where feeling has been refined by balance, fragrance and taste.

Swatch, often written svaccha, means clear, transparent or pure, like clean water through which the bottom can be seen. The image fits: consciousness here is not filled with new content but emptied of murk. What was always there becomes visible, and the player knows what he feels and what he needs to do without long deliberation. Nothing new has to be added for clarity to come; something only has to settle.

The square closes the heart row of Anahata, the heart chakra of air, and Johari calls it the transition to the fifth row. Its place right after Purgatory carries the teaching: honesty about one's actions is followed by lightness. Clarity is not the reward for being perfect but the natural result of no longer hiding from oneself.

On the board

Clarity of consciousness is a plain square at the end of row 4, with no arrow or snake beginning or ending here. Players reach it by an ordinary throw from any square between Good tendencies (30) and Purgatory (35). Because rows alternate direction, 36 sits directly below True awareness (37), and a throw of 1 lands there, on an arrow that rises to the Plane of bliss at 66. A 5 reaches the Human plane at 41.

The Bhagavad Gita and this square

Its verse is Gita 18.73, where at the end Arjuna says that his delusion is gone, his memory restored, his doubts ended; when ignorance is dispelled, knowledge shines like the sun. The Mahabharata episode is Sanjaya's divine sight, the gift of seeing the whole battlefield clearly from afar.

At the end Arjuna says: my delusion is gone, my memory restored, my doubts ended. When ignorance is dispelled, knowledge shines like the sun.

Gita 18.73 · Sanjaya's divine sight

Questions to reflect on

• What has become clear?
• What do I know in my heart that my mind keeps arguing with?
• What is the next simple step this clarity points to?