Yoga Vasistha (Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana)

21. Brihaspati said: - I told you my son, to forsake your all, and this all means the mind, which comprehends all things in it; it is by forsaking your mind that you can gain your perfect felicity, because the learned know the mind to be all in all, on account of its being the container of every thing in itself, and there being nothing, besides the ideas of them in our minds. 22. Vasishtha related: - Saying so, the lord of speech - Brihaspati flew hastily into the sky; and his son Kacha, strove henceforth to relinquish the thoughts and operations of his mind. 23. But as found it impossible to subdue his mind, as also to suppress its action and motion; he then recalled his father to his mind, and thought in himself to be got into his presence. 24. He considered in himself, the mind to be no part of his body, nor anything among the known categories in nature; It is quite aloof and apart from all, and therefore perfectly guiltless in itself, why should I then abandon so innocent and constant a companion of mine.

25. I shall therefore have recourse to my father, to learn how and why the mind is accounted as the greatest enemy of men. Learning this fully from him, I will forthwith forsake it from me, and purchase my felicity thereby. 26. Vasishtha related: - Having thought so, Kacha went upward to the upper sky, and meeting the lord of speech there, he bowed down to him, and did his homage with filial love and affection. 27. He then called him aside, and asked him to tell him the true nature and form of the mind, so that he could be enabled to detect it thereby, and forsake it accordingly from him. 28. Brihaspati answered: - The mind is known as the egoism of a man, by men acquainted with the mental science or psychology; the inward feeling of one's egoism, takes the name of his mind and no more. 29. Kacha rejoined and said: - O sire of unlimited understanding, that art the preceptor of thirty-three millions of gods; explain to me this intricate point of identity of the mind or intellect or egoism.

30. I see the difficulty both of forsaking his mind, as also of his forgetting his egoism or self-personality; and own also the impossibility of one's consummation, without his relinquishing both of these; tell me now, O thou greatest of yogi thinkers, how is it possible to get rid of them in any wise. 31. Brihaspati answered: - Why my son, the demolition of our egoism is as easy as the twinkling of our eyelids, and easier far than the crushing of flowers; and there is not the least pain in your rejecting this feeling. 32. Now hear my boy tell you how this is to be done in a trice, and how it is to be removed like long standing bias of ignorance, by the true knowledge of the nature of a thing. 33. There is no such thing in reality my son, as what you call your egoism or personality; it is an unreality appearing as reality, and a false chimera like the ghost of little boys. (Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark, thinking there are ghost and goblins lurking therein of Bacon's Essays).

34. Like the fallacy of water in the mirage, and the mistake of a serpent in the rope; and alike all other errors appearing as truths, the misconception of egoism is a mere delusion of the understanding. 35. As it is the delusion of our vision, that represents a couple of moons in the sky, and shows many things as their doubles; so it is the error of our understanding that presents to us our false egoism, instead of the one real and everlasting ego. 36. There is one real Ego alone, which is without beginning and end, and quite pellucid in itself; it is more transparent than the clear atmosphere, and an Intelligence that knows all things. (Pure omniscience). 37. He is always every where, as the light of all things and the life of all living beings; It is his essence only that spreads throughout all nature and shines in all her phenomena, as the same essence of water, displays itself in all the rolling surges and waves and moving bubbles in the sea.

38. Such being the case, tell me what is this special egoism of ours, and how and whence could a separate personality come to exist; where can you find dust to raise from water, or behold water to spring from fire. (Things of the same kind spring from the same source, and the product is never different from the original). 39. Shun my son your false belief of the difference of this one and that another, and thyself a quite another person (a tertium quid); and abstain to think thyself as a mean and contemptible being confined within the limits of space and time. (i.e. Know thyself as identic with the boundless and everlasting spirit and no other). 40. Know thyself (soul) as unbounded by space and time, and ever overspread all over in thy essential transparency, which is always the same in all seeming varieties, the one invariable, pure and simple Intellect.

41. Thyself (soul) is situated, in the fruits, flowers and leaves of all the trees on every side of thee; and abides in every thing like the pith and marrow for its subsistence, and as moisture for its growth. The pure intellect eternally inheres in every thing as its soul and essence, tell me then O Kacha, whence you derive the belief of your egoism and personal existence (as an embodied person).

A FANCIFUL BEING AND HIS OCCUPATION OF AIR DRAWN AND AIR BUILT ABODES. Argument: - Man likened to a fantastic being, his egoism a mere phantasm, and his repeated births and bodies compared to aerial castles. Vasishtha related: - Kacha the son of the divine preceptor Brihaspati, being thus advised by his venerable sire in the best kind of yoga meditation; began to muse in himself as one liberated from his personal entity, and lost and absorbed in essence of the sole and self-existent Deity. So says the sufi Sadi: - "Dui rachum badar kardam Eke binan Eke danam. &c." When I kept the duality of my personality out of my sight, I saw before me all blending in one, ineffable blaze of light. 2. Kacha remained quite freed from his egoism and meism, with the tranquillity of his mind, and cut off from all the ties of nature, and all apart from the bonds of worldly life. So I advise you, Ráma, to remain unchanged and unmoved amidst all the changes and movements of earthly bodies and vicissitudes of a mortal life.

3. Know all egoistic personality to total nihility, and never hesitate to remove yourself from this asylum of unreality, whose essence is as nothing at all as the horns of a hare whether you lay hold on it or lose your grasp of it (and as inextricable and inexplicable as the horns of a dilemma). 4. If it is impossible for your egoism to be a reality, why then talk of your birth and demise or your existence and inexistence; which is as it were planting a tree in the sky, of which you can neither reap the fruits or flowers. 5. After annihilation of your egoism there remains the sole ego, which is of the form of intellect only and not that of fickle mind; It is tranquil and without any desire, and extends through all existence; it is minuter and more subtile than the smallest atom, and is only the power of intellection and understanding. (i.e. the omniscience). 6. As the waves are raised upon the waters and the ornaments are made of gold; so our egoism springing from the original ego appears to be something different from it.

7. It is our ignorance or imperfect knowledge only that represents the visible world as a magic show, but the light of right knowledge, brings us to see the one and self-same Brahma in all forms of things. 8. Avoid your dubiety of the unity and duality (i.e. of the singleness of the prime cause, and variety of its products); but remain firm in your belief of that state, which lasts after the loss of both (i.e. the one and all the same). Be happy with this belief, and never trouble yourself with thinking any thing otherwise like the false man in the tale. 9. There is an inexplicable magic enveloping the whole, and this world is an impervious mass of theurgy or sorcery, which enwraps as thickly, as the autumnal mists obscure the firmament, and which is scattered by the light of good understanding. 10. Ráma said: - Sir, your learned lectures, like draughts of nectar, have given me entire satisfaction; and I am as refreshed by your cooling speeches, as the parching swallow is refrigerated by a shower of rain water. 11. I feel as cold within myself, as if I were anointed with heavenly ambrosia; and I think myself raised above all beings, in my possession of unequalled riches and greatness, by the grace of God.

12. I am never satiated to the fullness of my heart, at hearing the orations of thy mouth; and am like chakora or swallow that is never satiate with swallowing dewy moon-beams by night. 13. I confess to thee that I am never surfeited by drinking the sweet of thy speech, and the more I hearken to thee, the more am I disposed to learn from and listen to thee; for who is there so cloyed with the ambrosial honey, that he declines to taste the nectarine juice again? 14. Tell me sir, what do you mean by the false men of the tale; who thought the real entity as a nonentity, and look at the unreal world as a solar and solid reality. 15. Vasishtha related: - Now attend to me, Ráma, to relate unto you the story of the false and fanciful man; which is pleasant to hear, and quite ludicrous and laughable from first to last. 16. There lived once a man, like a magical machine somewhere; who lived like an idiot with the imbecility of his infantine simplicity, and was full of gross ignorance as a fool or block-head.

17. He was born somewhere in some remote region of the sky, and was doomed to wander in his etherial sphere, like a false apparition in the air, or a mirage in the sandy desert. (as a phantom or phantasmagoria). 18. There was no other person beside himself, and whatever else there was in that place, it was but his self or an exact likeness of itself. He saw naught but himself, and aught that he saw he thought to be but his self. 19. As he grew up to manhood in this lonely retreat, he pondered in himself saying: I am airy and belong to the aerial sphere; the air is my province, and I will therefore rule over this region as mine. 20. The air is my proprietory right, and therefore I must preserve it with all diligence, then with this thought he built an aerial house for his abode, in order to protect and rule his etherial dominion. 21. He placed his reliance inside that aerial castle, from where he could manage to rule his aerial domain, and lived quite content amidst the sphere of his airy habitation for a long time.

22. But in course of time his air built castle came to be dilapidated, and to be utterly destroyed at last; as the clouds of heaven are driven and blown away in autumn, and the waves of the sea are dispersed by the breeze, and sunken down in a calm. 23. He then cried out in sorrow, saying; O my air built mansion, why art thou broken down and blown away so soon; and, O my air drawn habitation, where art thou withdrawn from me. In this manner, he wailed in his excessive grief and said; Ah, now I see, that an aerial something must be reduced to an aerial nothing. 24. After lamenting in this manner for a long time, this simpleton dug a cave in the vacuity of the atmosphere; and continued to dwell in that hollow cavity, in order to look up to his aerial realm from below. Thus he remained quite content in the closed air of the cave for a long period of time. 25. In process of time his cell was wasted and washed away, and he became immerged in deep sorrow upon the immersion of his empty cave. 26. He then constructed a hollow pot, and took his residence in its open bowel, and adapted his living to its narrow limits.

27. Know that his brittle earthen pot also, was broken down in course of a short time; and he came to know the frailty of all his habitations, as an unfortunate man finds the fickleness of all the hopes and helps, which he fondly lays hold upon. 28. After the breaking of his pot, he got a tub for his residence (like the tub of Diogenes); and from there he surveyed the heavenly sphere; as any one beholds it from his particular habitation. 29. His tub also was broken down in course of time, by some wild animal; and thus he lost all his stays, as the darkness and the dews of night, are dispelled and sucked up by the solar light and heat. 30. After he had sorrowed in vain for the loss of his tub, he took his asylum in an enclosed cottage, with an open space in the midst, for his view of the upper skies. 31. The all devouring time, destroyed also that habitation of his; and scattered it all about, as the winds of heaven dispersed the dried leaves of trees, and left him to bewail the loss of his last retreat and flitting shelter.

32. He then built a hut in the form of a barn house in the field, and thence watched over his estate of the air, as farmers keep watch and take care of their granaries in the farms. 33. But the driving winds of the air, drove away and dispersed his hovel, as they do the gathering clouds of heaven; and the roofless man had once more to deplore at the loss of his last refuge. 34. Having thus lost all his abodes, in the pool and pot, in the cottage and hut; the aerial man was left to bemoan over his losses, in his empty abode of the air. 35. Being thus situated in his helpless state, the aerial man reflected upon the narrow confines of the abodes, which he had chosen for himself of his own accord; and thought on the multifarious pains and troubles, that he had repeatedly to undergo, in the erection and destruction of all his aerial castles by his own ignorance only.

THE PARABLE OF THE VAIN MAN CONTINUED. Argument. - Interpretation of the parable of the Aerial man. Ráma said: - Please sir, give me the interpretation of your parable of the false man, and tell me the allusion it bears to the fanciful man, whose business it was to watch the air or sky (and to make his new posts for that purpose). 2. Vasishtha replied: - Hear me, Ráma, now expound to you the meaning of my parable of the false man, and the allusion which it bears to every fanciful man in this world. 3. The man that I have represented to you, as a magical engine (máyá yantra), means the egoistic man, who is led by the magic of his egoism, to look upon the empty air of his personality as a real entity (and whose sole care it is to preserve its vital air as its only property). 4. The vault of the sky, which contains all these orbs of worlds; is but an infinite space of empty void, as it was ere this creation came into existence, and before it becomes manifest to view.

5. There is the spirit of the inscrutable and impersonal Brahma, immanent in this vacuity and becomes apparent in the personality of Brahmá, in the manner of the audible sound issuing out of the empty air, which is its receptacle and support. 6. It is from this also that there rises the subtle individual soul with the sense of its egoism, as the vibration of current winds springs from the motionless air; and then as it grows up in time in the same element, it comes to believe its having an individual soul and a personality of its own. 7. Thus the impersonal soul being imbibed with the idea of its personality, tries to preserve its egoism for ever; it enters into many bodies of different kinds, and creates new ones for its abode upon the loss of the former ones. 8. This egoistic soul, is called the false and magical man; because it is a false creation of unreality, and a production of vain ignorance and imagination. 9. The pit and the pot, and the cottage and the hut, represent the different bodies, the empty vacuity of which, supplies the egoistic soul with a temporary abode.

10. Now listen to me to relate to you the different names, under which our ignorant spirit passes in this world, and begins itself under one or other of these appellations. 11. It takes the various names of the living soul, the understanding, mind, the heart, and ignorance and nature also; and is known among men, by the words imagination, fancy and time, which are also applied to it. 12. In these and a thousand other names and forms, doth this vain egoism appear to us in this world; but all these powers and faculties are mere attributives of the true ego which is imperceptible to us. 13. The world is verily known to rest without its basis, in the extended and vacuous womb of the visible firmament; and the imaginary soul of the egoist is supposed to dwell in it, and feel all its pain and pleasure in vain. (But the sense of the unreality of the world, as also of one's personality, exempts from the sensations of pleasure and pain). 14. Therefore O Ráma, do not like the imaginary man in the fable, place any reliance in your false personality; nor subject yourself like the egoistic man, to the fancied pleasure and misery of this world.

15. Do not trouble yourself, like the erroneous man, with the vain care of preserving your vacuous soul; nor suffer like him the pain of your confinement in the hollow of the pit, pot and others. 16. How is it possible for any body, to preserve or confine the vacuous spirit in the narrow limit of a pot and the like; when it is more extended than the boundless sky, and more subtile and purer than the all pervading air. 17. The soul is supposed to dwell in the cavity of the human heart, and is thought to perish with the decay and destruction of the body; hence people are seen to lament at the loss of their frail bodies, as if it entailed the destruction of their indestructible soul. 18. As the destruction of the pot or any other hollow vessel, does not destroy the subtile air, which is contained in the same; so the dissolution of the body, does not dissolve the embodied and intangible soul. 19. Know Ráma, the nature of the soul, to be as that of the pure intellect; it is more subtile than the circumambient air, and minuter far than the minutest atom; it is a particle of our consciousness only, and indestructible as the all pervasive air, which is never to be nullified.

20. The soul is never born, nor does it die as any other thing at any place or time; it extends over the whole universe, as the universal soul of Brahma, which encompasses and comprehends all space, and manifests itself in all things. 21. Know this spirit as one entire unit, and the only real entity; it is always calm and quiet, and without its beginning, middle and end. Know it as beyond the positive and negative, and be happy with thy knowledge of its transcendental nature. 22. Now extricate your mind from the false cogitation of your egoism, which is the abode of all evils and dangers, and is an unstable thing depending on the life of a man; it is full of ignorance and vanity, and its own destruction and final perdition (in hell fire). Therefore get rid of your egoistic feeling, and rely only on the ultimate and optimum state of the one everlasting Deity.

SERMON ON DIVINE AND HOLY KNOWLEDGE. Argument: - Consideration of the Real and unreal, and of good and evil; Exhortation to the former and Dehortation from the latter. Vasishtha said: - The mind sprang at first from the supreme spirit of Brahma, and being possest of its power of thinking, it was situated in the Divine soul, and was styled as the Divine mind or intellect. 2. The fickle mind resides in the spirit of God as the feeling of fragrance abides in the cup of a flower; and as the fluctuating waves roll about in a river. Know, Ráma! the mind to radiate from its central point in Brahma, as the rays of the sun extend to the circumference of creation. 3. Men forget the reality of the invisible spirit of God, and view the unreal world as a reality; as deluded persons are apt to believe a serpent in a rope (as they do in magic play). 4. He who beholds the solar beams, without seeing the sun whence they proceed; views them in a different light than the light of the sun. (Whoso sees the world without its God, is an ungodly man, and sees a Godless world).

5. He who looks at the jewel without looking into the gold whereof it is made, is deluded by the finery of the jewellery, without knowing the value of the precious metal of which it is made. 6. He who looks at the sun together with his glory, or sees the sun-beams as not without the sun whence they proceed, verily beholds the unity of the sun with his light, and not his duality by viewing them separately. (The monotheism of vedánta comprises everything in the unity of the Divinity). 7. He who looks on the waves without seeing the sea, wherein they rise and fall, has only the knowledge of the turbulent billows disturbing his mind; and no idea of the calm waters underlying them (like the tranquil spirit of Brahma). 8. But who looks on the waves, without exception of the water of which they are composed; he sees the same water to be in common in all its swellings, and has the knowledge of its unity and commonalty in all its varieties. 9. In this manner, seeing the same gold in its transformation into sundry sorts of jewels; we have the knowledge of the common essence of gold in all of them, notwithstanding their formal distinctions to sight.

10. He who sees the flames only, and is unmindful of the fire which emits the flashes; is said to be ignorant of the material element, and conversant with its transient and evanescent flash only. 11. The phenomenal world presents its aspect in various forms and colours, as the multiform and variegated clouds in the sky; and whoso places his faith and reliance on their reality and stability, has his mind always busied with those changeful appearances. 12. He who views the flame as the same with its fire, has the knowledge of the fire only in his mind, and does not know the duality of the flame, as a thing distinct from its unity. 13. He who is freed from his knowledge of dualities, has his mind restricted to the one and sole unity; he has a great soul that has obtained the obtainable one, and is released from the trouble of diving into the depth of the duality and plurality of all visible objects.

14. Get rid of thy thoughts of the endless multiplicities and varieties of things, and keep thy mind fixed steadily within the cavity of thy pure intellect, and there employ it in the meditation of the supreme Intellect, in privation of the thoughts of all sensible objects. (This is the Buddhistic meditation of the soul only, by abstraction of the mind from all objects of sense). 15. When the silent soul forms in itself its effort of volition, then there rises in it the power of its versatile desires, like the force of the fluctuating winds rising from the bosom of the quiet air. 16. Then there rises the wilful mind from it, as a distinct and independent thing of itself, and thinks in itself as the undivided and universal Mind of the mundane world. 17. Whatever the volitive mind wills to do in this world, the same comes to take place immediately, agreeably to the type formed in its volition. 18. This mind passes under the various names of the living principle, the understanding, the egoism, the heart &c.; and becomes as minute as an animalcule and an aquatic mollusc, and as big as a mountain and fleeter than the swiftest winds.

19. It forms and sustains the world at its own will, and becomes the unity and plurality at its own option; it extends itself to infinity, and shows itself in the endless diversity of objects which fill its ample space. 20. The whole scenery of the universe, is nothing otherwise than a display of the eternal and infinite mind; it is neither a positive reality nor a negative unreality of itself, but appears to our view like the visionary appearance in a dream. 21. The phenomenal world is a display of the realm of the divine mind, in the same manner as the Utopia and Elysium, display the imaginary dominions formed in the minds of men; and as every man builds the airy castle of his mind. 22. As our knowledge of the existence of the world in the divine mind alone, serves to remove our fallacy of the entity of the visible world; so if we look into the phenomenal in its true light, it speedily vanishes into nothing.

23. When we do not consider the visibles in their true colour, but take them in their false colour as they present themselves to view; we find them to ramify themselves into a thousand shapes, as we see the same sea-water in its diversities of the various forms of foam and froth, of bubbles and billows, of waves and surges, and of tides and whirlpools. 24. As the sea bears its body of waters, so doth the mind show itself in the shape of its various faculties (which are in constant motion like the waves of water); the mental powers are always busy with their manifold functions under the influence of the supreme intellect, without affecting its tranquillity. (The movements of the mental powers, can never move the quiet intellect to action). 25. Yet the mind doth nothing otherwise of itself and apart from the dictates of the intellect, whether in its state of sleeping or waking, or in its bodily or mental actions. 26. Know that there is nothing anew, in whatever thou dost or seest or thinkest upon; all of which proceed from the inherent intellect which is displayed in all things, and in all the actions and thoughts of men.

27. Know all these to be contained in the immensity of Brahma, and besides whom there is nothing in existence; He abides in all things and categories, and remains as the essence of the inward consciousness of all. 28. It is the divine consciousness that exhibits the whole of the imaginary world, and it is the evolution of the consciousness, that takes the name of the universe with all its myriads of worlds. 29. Say how and whence rises your supposition of the difference of things from one another, and wherefore you take this thing as distinct from the other; when you will know that it is your consciousness alone that assumes these various forms, and represents itself to you under the various shapes and colours. (If therefore there is no other object of which you are conscious besides our consciousness itself (i.e. if there be nothing objective beside the subjective itself); then you have nothing to fear about the bondage of your soul to any object whatsoever; nor anything to care for your liberation from such bondage).

30. Ráma, relinquish at once the vanity of your egotism, together with all its concomitants of pride, self-esteem and others, and give up altogether your thoughts of bondage and liberation (proceeding from the belief of your objectivity and subjectivity); and remain quiet and self subdued in the continued discharge of your duties, like the holy Mahátmás of elevated souls and minds.

DESCRIPTION OF THE TRIPLE CONDUCT OF MEN. Argument. - Siva's interpretations of the three duties of action, Enjoyment and charity to his suppliant Bhringi. Vasishtha said: - Take my advise, Ráma, and strive to be an example or the greatest man in thy deeds, enjoyments, and bounty; and rely in thy unshaken endurance, by bidding defiance to all thy cares and fears. (i.e. Remain as a rock against all accidents of life). 2. Ráma asked: - Tell me sir, what is the deed that makes the greatest actor, and what is that thing which constitutes the highest enjoyments; tell me also what is the great bounty, which you advise me to practice. 3. These three virtues were explained long before by the God Siva, who holds the semi-circular disc of the crescent moon on his forehead; to the lord of the Bhringis, who was thereby released from all disease and disquiet. (Were the fair Bhringis the Fringis or Franks of modern times? If not, then who were this class of demigods?). 4. The God who has the horn of the moon as a crown on his head, used to hold his residence of yore, on a northern peak of the north polar mountain, together with all his family and attendants.

5. It happened that the mighty, but little knowing lord of the Bhringis, asked him one day, with his folded palms, and his body lowly bending down in suppliant mood before the godlike lord of Umá. (Umá is the same in sound and sense with Ushá the dawn, appearing from the eastern ridge of the northmost mountain). 6. Bhringi said: - Deign to explain to me, my lord, what I ask thee to tell for my knowledge; for thou knowest all things, and art the God of Gods. 7. Lord! I am overwhelmed in sorrow, to see the boisterous waves of this deep and dark world in which we have been buffeting for ever, without finding the calm and quiet harbour of truth. 8. Tell me, my lord, what is that certain truth and inward assurance, whereon we may rely with confidence, and whereby we may find our rest and repose in this our shattered mansion of this world. 9. The lord replied: - Place always your reliance in your unshaken patience, and neither care nor fear for anything else, and ever strive to be foremost in your action and passion and in your relinquishment of everything (passion and relinquishment here are used in the senses of passivity and liberality).

10. Bhringi rejoined: - Explain to me fully, my lord, what is meant by being the greatest in action and passion; and what are we to understand from the greatest liberality or abandonment of every thing here. 11. The lord replied: - He is said to be the greatest actor, who does his deeds as they occur to him, whether of goodness or of evil, without any fear or desire of fruition. (i.e. Who expects no reward of his acts of goodness, nor fears for the retribution of some heinous deed, which he could not avoid to do). 12. He who does his acts of goodness or otherwise, who gives vent to his hatred and affection and feels both pleasure and pain, without reference to any person or thing, and without the expectation of their consequences, is said to be the greatest actor in the theatre of this world. 13. He is said to act his part well, who does his business without any ado or anxiety, and maintains his taciturnity and purity of heart without any taint of egoism or envy.

14. He is said to act his part well, who does not trouble his mind with the thoughts of actions, that are accounted as auspicious or inauspicious, or deemed as righteous or unrighteous, according to common opinion. (i.e. Best is the man that relies on his own probity, and is not guided by public opinion). 15. He is said to perform well his part, who is not affected towards any person or thing, but witnesses all objects as a mere witness; and goes on doing his business, without his desiring or deep engagement in it. 16. He is the best actor of his part, who is devoid of care and delight, and continues in the same tone and tenor of his mind, and retains the clearness of his understanding at all times, without feeling any joy or sorrow at anything. 17. He does his duties best, who has the readiness of his wits at the fittest time of action; and sits unconcerned with it at other times, as a retired and silent sage or saint (i.e. discharge your business promptly, but be no slave to service).

18. He who does his works with unconcern and without assuming to himself the vanity of being the doer of it, is accounted as the best actor, that acts his part with his body, but keeps his mind quite unattached to it. 19. He is reckoned as the best actor, who is naturally quiet in his disposition and never loses the evenness of his temper; who does good to his friends and evil to his enemies; without taking them to his heart. 20. He is the greatest actor, who looks at his birth, life and death, and upon his rising and falling in the same light; and does not lose the equanimity of his mind under any circumstance whatever. 21. Again he is said to enjoy himself and his life the best, who neither envies anybody nor pines for any thing; but enjoys and acquiesces to whatever is allotted to his lot, with cool composure and submission of his mind. 22. He also is said to enjoy every thing well, who receives with his hands what his mind does not perceive; and acts with his body without being conscious of it and enjoys everything without taking it to his heart.

23. He is said to enjoy himself best, who looks on at the conduct and behaviour of mankind, as an unconcerned and indifferent spectator; and looks upon every thing without craving anything for himself. 24. He whose mind is not moved with pleasure or pain, nor elated with success and gain, nor dejected by his failure and loss; and who remains firm in all his terrible tribulations, is the man who is said to be in the perfect enjoyment of himself. 25. He is said to be in the best enjoyment of himself, who hails with an equal eye of complaisance his decay and demise, his danger and difficulty, his affluence and poverty, and looks on their returns and revolutions, with an eye of delight and cheerfulness. 26. He is called the man of greatest gratification, who sustains all the ups and downs of fortune with equal fortitude, as deep sea contains its boisterous waves in its fathomless depth. 27. He is said to have the highest gratifications who is possest of the virtues of contentment, equanimity and benevolence (lit. want of malice); and which always accompany his person, as the cooling beams cling to the disk of the moon.

28. He too is greatly gratified in himself, who tastes the sour and sweet, the bitter and pungent with equal zest; and relishes a savoury and an unsavoury dish with the same taste. 29. He who tastes the tasteful and juicy, as also the untasteful and dry food with equal zest, and beholds the pleasant as well as unpleasant things with equal delight, is the man that is ever gratified in himself. 30. He to whom salt and sugar are both alike, and to whom both saline as well as saccharine victuals are equally palatable; and who remains unaltered both in his happy and adverse circumstances; is the man who enjoys the best bliss of his life in this world. 31. He is in the enjoyment of his highest bliss, who makes no distinction of one kind of his food from another; and who yearns for nothing that he can hardly earn. (Happy is he, who does not itch beyond his reach). 32. He enjoys his life best, who braves his misfortune with calmness, and brooks his good fortune, his joyous days and better circumstances with moderation and coolness.

33. He is said to have abandoned his all, who has given up the thoughts of his life and death, of his pleasure and pain, and those of his merits and demerits at once from his mind. 34. He who has abandoned all his desires and exertions, and forsaken all his hopes and fears, and effaced all his determinations from the tablet of his mind, is said to have relinquished every thing in this world, and to have freed himself from all. 35. He who does not take to his mind the pains, which invade his body, mind and the senses, is said to have cast away from himself, all the troubles of his mortal state. (Because the mind only feels the bodily and sensuous pains, and its unfeelingness of them is its exemption from troubles). 36. He is accounted as the greatest giver (forsaker) of his all, who gives up the cares of his body and birth (life); and has abandoned the thoughts of acts, deemed to be proper or improper for himself. (These are the social, civil, ceremonial and religious acts, which are binding on worldly people). 37. He is said to have made his greatest sacrifice, who has sacrificed his mind and all his mental functions and endeavours, before the shrine of his self-abnegation.

38. He who has given up the sight of the visibles from his view, and does not allow the sensibles to obtrude upon his senses, is said to have renounced all and every thing from himself. 39. It was in this manner that the lord of gods Mahádeva, gave his instructions to the lord of the Bhringis; and it is by your acting according to these precepts, that you must, O Ráma! attain to the perfection of your self-abnegation. 40. Meditate always on the everlasting and immaculate spirit, that is without its beginning and end; which is wholly this entire immensity and has no part nor partner, nor representative nor representation of itself. By thinking in this way you become immaculate yourself, and come to be extinct in the self-same Brahma, where there is all peace and tranquillity. 41. Know one undecaying Brahma, as the soul and seed of all various works or productions that are proceeded from him. It is his immensity which spreads unopened throughout the whole existence; as it is the endless sky which comprehends and manifests all things in itself.

42. It is not possible for anything at all, whether of positive or potential existence, to subsist without and apart from this universal essence of all, rely secure with this firm belief in your mind, and be free from all fears in the world. 43. O most righteous Ráma, look always to the inner soul within thyself, and perform all thy outward actions with the outer members of thy body, by forsaking the sense of thy egoism and personality; and being thereby freed from all care and sorrow, thou shalt attain to thy supreme felicity.

MELTING DOWN OF THE MIND. Argument. - The Dissolation of the Mind and its Affections, as the only way for salvation of the soul. Ráma said: - O all-knowing sage please to tell me, what becomes of the essence of the soul after one's egoism is lost in his mind, and both of them are dissolved into nothing. 2. Vasishtha replied: - However great and predominant is one's egoism over himself, and how much so ever its concomitant evils of pride and ignorance, may overpower on man; yet they can never touch the pure essence of the soul, as the water of the lake can not come in contact with the lotus-leaf. 3. The purity of the soul appears vividly in the bright and placid countenance of a man, after his egoism and its accompanying faults are all melted down in his mortified mind. 4. All the ties of our passions and affections are cut asunder and fall off, upon breaking the string of our desires, our anger becomes weakened, and our ignorance wears out by degrees (our desire or greediness being the root of all evils). 5. Our cupidity is weakened and wearied, and our covetousness flies away far from us; our limbs become slackened, and our sorrows subside to rest.

6. It is then that our afflictions fail to afflict as our joys cease to elate us; we have then a calm every where and a coldness in our heart. 7. Joy and grief now and then overcast his countenance, (as a cloud and sunbeam hide the face of the sky); but they cannot over shadow his soul, which is bright as eternal day. 8. The virtuous man becomes a favourite of the Gods, after his mind is melted down with its passions; and then there rises the calm evenness of his soul, resembling the cooling beams of the moon. 9. He bears a calm and quiet disposition, offending and opposing to none, and therefore loved and honored by everyone; he remains retired and assiduous to his task, and enjoys the serenity of his soul at all times. 10. Neither wealth nor poverty, nor prosperity or adversity, however opposite they are to one another; can ever affect or mislead or elate or depress the minds of the virtuous (who have already melted them down in themselves).

11. Accursed is the man that is drowned in his ignorance, and does not seek the salvation of his soul, which is easily obtainable by the light of reason, and which serves to save him from all the difficulties of this world. (Reliance in the immortality of the soul, supports a man amidst all earthly calamities). 12. He that wants to obtain his longed for felicity, by getting over the waves of his miserable transmigrations in the vast ocean of this world; must always inquire in himself as what am I, and what is this world and what am I to be afterwards; what means this short lived enjoyments here, and what are the fruitions of my future state. These inquiries are the best expedients towards the salvation of the soul.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN MANU AND IKSHAKU. Argument: - Manu's Exposition of the Inquiries what am I &c. to Ikshaku. Vasishtha said: - Know Ráma, that the renowned king Ikshaku was the first founder of your race; and learn O thou progeny of that monarch, the manner in which he obtained his liberation. 2. Once on a time when this monarch was reigning over his kingdom, he came to think upon the state of humanity in one of his solitary hours. 3. He thought in himself as to, what might be the cause of the decay, disease, and death, as also of the sorrow, pleasure and pain, and likewise of the errors to which all living beings are subject in this mortal world. 4. He pondered long upon these thoughts, but was unable to find out the cause he so earnestly sought, and happening to meet the sage Manu one day, coming to him from Brahmá-loka or the seat of Bráhmans, he proposed the same queries to him. 5. Having honoured the lord of creatures, as he took his seat in his court; he said to him to be excused for asking him some questions to which he was impelled by his impatience.

6. It is by thy favour sir, that I take the liberty of asking thee the question, regarding the origin of this creation, and the original state in which it was made. 7. Tell me, what is the number of these worlds, and who is the master and owner thereof; and when and by whom is it said to be created in the vedas. 8. Tell me, how I may be extricated from my doubts and erroneous opinions regarding this creation, and how I may be released from them like a bird from its net. 9. Manu replied: - I see O king, that you have after a long time come to exercise of your reasoning, as it is shown by your proposing to me so important a question as this. 10. All this that you see nothing real (they are merely phenomenal and unsubstantial); they resemble the fairy castles in the air, and the water in the mirage of sandy deserts. So also anything which is not seen in reality, is accounted nothing in existence. 11. The mind also which lies beyond the six senses, is reckoned as nothing in reality; but that which is indestructible, is the only thing that is said to exist, and is called the Tatsat the only being in reality.

12. All these visible worlds and successive creations, are but unsubstantial appearances in the mirror of that real substance. 13. The inherent powers of Brahma, evolve themselves as shining sparks of fire; and some of these assume the forms of the luminous worlds; while others appear in the shapes of living souls. 14. Others again take many other forms, which compose this universe; and there is nothing as bondage or liberation here, except that the undecaying Brahma is all in all; nor is there any unity or duality in nature, except the diversity displayed by the Divine Mind, from the essence of his own consciousness (samvid). 15. As it is the same water of the sea, which itself is in the various forms of its waves; so doth the Divine Intellect display itself in every thing, and there is nothing else beside this. Therefore leave aside your thoughts of bondage and liberation and rest, secure in this belief from the fears of the world. (This is pantheistic belief of one God in all).

CONTINUATION OF THE SAME. Argument: - Manu's answers to the other questions of Ikshaku as "Whence is this creation &c." Manu continued: - It is by the divine will, that the living souls of beings are evolved from the original intellect, (in which they are contained), as the waves rise from the main body of waters contained in the ocean. 2. These living souls, retain the tendencies of their prior states in former births, and are thereby led to move in their course of light or ignorance etc. in this world, and to accordingly subject either to happiness or misery, which is felt by the mind and never affects the soul itself. 3. The invisible soul is known in the knowable mind, which is actuated by it (the soul); as the invisible node of Rahu, becomes visible to us in the eclipse of the moon (which is affected by it): (so the mind acting under the impulse of the soul, becomes liable to pain or pleasure according to its desert). 4. Neither the preceptor of sástras nor the lectures of our spiritual preceptors, can show the supreme spirit before our sight; but it is our spirit which shows us the holy spirit, when our understanding rests in its own true essence (apart from its egoism and meism).

5. As travellers are seen to be journeying abroad with their minds, free from all attainment and aversion to any particular object or spot; so the self-liberated souls are found to sojourn in this world, quite unconcerned even with their bodies and the objects of their senses. 6. It is not for good and Godly men either to pamper or famish their bodies, or quicken or weaken their senses; but to allow them to be employed with their objects at their own option. 7. Be of an indifferent mind (udásina) with regard to your bodies and all external objects; and enjoy the cool composure of your soul, by betaking yourself entirely to your spirituality. 8. The knowledge that "I am an embodied being" is the cause of our bondage in this world; and therefore it is never to be entertained by them, that are seekers of their liberation. 9. But the firm conviction that "I am no other than an intellectual being, and as rarefied as the pure air"; is the only belief that is able to extricate our souls from their bondage in this world.

10. As the light of the sun pierces and shines, both within and without the surface of a clear sheet of water; so doth the light of the Holy spirit, penetrate and shine both inside and outside of the pure souls of men, as well as in everything else. 11. As it is the variety of formation, that makes the various kinds of ornaments out of the same substance of gold; so it is the various dispositions of the one soul, that makes the difference of things in the world. (The same soul exhibiting itself in sundry forms). 12. The world resembles the vast ocean, and all its created are like the waves upon its surface; they rise for a moment, only to be succumbed to the latent flame of their insatiable desires. 13. Know all the worlds to be absorbed in the vast ocean of the universal soul of God, as all things are devoured by death or time (Kála), and lie buried like the ocean itself in the insatiable womb of Agastya or Eternity. 14. Cease to consider the bodies of men as their souls, and to behold the visibles in a spiritual light; rely solely in thy spiritual self, and sit retired from all except alone with thyself.

15. Men are seen foolishly to wail for the loss of their souls, though lying within themselves; as a fond mother moans on missing her child, forgetful of its sleeping upon her lap. (We miss our souls though situated within ourselves). 16. Men bewail for themselves as lost upon the loss of their bodies, and exclaim as it saying "Oh I am dead and gone" and so on, not knowing that their souls are ever undecaying and imperishable. 17. As the fluctuation of water shows many forms upon its surface, so the will of God exhibits the forms of all things in the divine Intellect. (Just as the active principle of our imagination, represents endless varieties of scenes in the mirror of our minds). 18. Now king, keep the steadiness of your mind, repress thy imagination and the flights of thy fancy; call thy thoughts home and confine them to thyself; remain calm and cool and unperturbed amidst all perturbations, and go and rule thy realm with thy self possession.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. Argument. - On the Expansion of Divine Powers, and the Perfection of Human Soul. Manu resumed: - The Lord with his creative power exerts his active energy, and plays the part of a restless boy (in his formation of the worlds); and again by his power of re-absorption he engulphs all into himself, and remains in his lonesome solity. 2. As it is his volition that gives rise to his active energy for action, so it is his nolition that causes the cessation of his exertion, and the intromission of the whole creation in himself. 3. As the light of the luminous sun, moon and fire, and as the lustre of brilliant gems spread themselves on all sides; and as the leaves of trees put forth of themselves, and as the waters of a cataract scatter their liquid particles all about. 4. So it is the lustration of divine glory, which displays itself in the works of creation; which appears to be intolerable to the ignorant, who know not that it is the self-same god though appearing to be otherwise. 5. O! it is a wondrous illusion that has deluded the whole world, which does not perceive the divine spirit, that pervades every part of the universe.

6. He who looks on the world as a scenery painted in the tablet of the Divine Intellect, and remains unimpressible and undesirous of every thing, and quite content in his soul, has put an invulnerable armour upon himself (which no dart of error has the power to pierce). 7. How happy is he who having nothing, no wealth nor support, has yet his all by thinking himself as the all intelligent soul. 8. The idea that this is pleasurable and the other is painful, being the sole cause of all pains and anxiety, it is the consuming of these feelings by the fire of our indifference to them, that prevents the access of pain and affliction unto us. 9. Use, Oh King! the weapon of your restless anaesthesia (samádhi), and cut in twain the feeling of the agreeable and disagreeable, and pare asunder your sensation of love and hatred by the sword of your manly equanimity. 10. Clear the entangled jungle of ceremonious rites (karma kanda), by the tool of your disregard of the merit or demerit of acts (dharma adharma); and relying in the tenuity of your soul (as rarer than the rarefied air), shake off all sorrow and grief from you.

11. Knowing thy soul to be full of all worldly possessions, and driving all differences from thy mind, bind thyself solely to reason (viveka) and be free from all fabrications (kalpaná) of mankind; know the supreme bliss of the soul, and be as perfect and unfailing as itself, and being embodied in the intellectual mind, remain quite calm and transparent, and aloof from all the fears and cares of the world.

CONTINUATION OF THE SAME. ON THE SEVEN STAGES OF EDIFICATION. Argument: - The three stages of the seekers of Liberation, and the three others of the Liberated. Manu continued: - Enlightenment of the understanding by the study of the sástras and attendance on holy and wise men, is said to be the first stage of yoga by yogis. (These seven stages have been spoken of before in other words in the Utpatti-prakarana). 2. Discussion and reconsideration of what has been learnt before, is second stage of yoga; the third is the rumination of the same in one's self and is known under the name of nididhyásana or self-communion of meditation. The fourth is silent meditation in which one loses his desires and darkness in his presence before the light of God. (This is called the atmásakshyat kara also; and all these four stages are expressed in the vedic text. [Sanskrit: átmáváre svítavá mantabá nididhyásitava karttavasveti]). 3. The fifth stage is one of pure consciousness and felicity, wherein the living-liberated-devotee remains in his partly waking and partly sleeping state. (This is half hypnotism). 4. The sixth stage in one's consciousness of ineffable bliss, in which he is absorbed in a state of trance or sound sleep. (This is known as samádhi or hypnotism).

5. One's resting in the fourth and succeeding stages, is called his liberation, and then the seventh stage is the state of an even and transparent light, in which the devotee loses his self consciousness. 6. The state above turya or fourth stage, is called nirvána or extinction in God; and the seventh stage of perfection relates to disembodied souls only and not to those of living beings. 7. The first three stages relate to the waking state of man, and the fourth stage concerns the sleeping state, in which the world appears in the manner of a dream. 8. The fifth stage is the stage of sound sleep, in which the soul is drowned in deep felicity; and the unconsciousness of one's self in the sixth stage, is also called his turya or fourth state: (because it is beyond the three states of waking, sleeping or dreaming and sound sleep [Sanskrit: jagatnidrasusuptáh]). 9. The seventh stage is still above the turya state of self-unconsciousness; and which is full of divine effulgence, whose excellence no words can express nor the mind can conceive. 10. In this state the mind being withdrawn from its functions, it is freed from all thoughts of the thinkables, and all its doubts and cares are drowned in the calm composure of its even temperament.

11. The mind that remains unmoved amidst its passions and enjoyments, and is unchanged in prosperity and adversity, and retains full possession of itself under all circumstances, becomes of this nature both in its embodied and disembodied states of life and death. 12. The man that does not think himself to be alive or dead, or to be a reality or otherwise; but always remains joyous in himself, is one who is verily called to be liberated in his life time. (The happy minded are accounted as liberated in life). 13. Whether engaged in business or retired from it, whether living with a family or leading a single life (i.e. whether leading a social or solitary mode of life), the man that thinks himself as naught but the intellect, and has nothing to fear or care or to be sorry for in this world, is reckoned as liberated in this life. 14. The man who thinks himself to be unconnected with any one, and to be free from disease, desire, and affections; and who believes himself to be a pure aerial substance of the divine intellect, has no cause to be sorry for anything.

15. He who knows himself to be without beginning and end, and decay and demise, and to be of the nature of pure intelligence; remains always quiet and composed in himself, and has no cause for sorrow at all. 16. He that deems himself to belong to that intellect, which dwells alike in the minute blade of grass, as well as in the infinite space of the sky, and in the luminous sun, moon and stars, and as also in the various races of beings, as men, Nágas and immortals; has no cause whatever for his sorrow. 17. Whoso knows the majesty of the divine intellect, to fill all the regions both above and below and on all sides of him, and reflects himself as a display of his endless diversity, how can he be sorry at all for his decay and decline. 18. The man that is bound to (or enslaved by his desire), is delighted to have the objects he seeks; but the very things tending to his pleasure by their gain, prove to be painful to his heart at their loss. (Hence the wise are never elated or dejected, at either gain or loss of temporal things, but are ever pleased and content with their spiritual souls only which they can never lose).

19. The presence or absence of some thing, is the cause of the pleasure or pain of men in general; but it is either the curtailment or want of desires that is practiced by the wise. (The diminishing of desires is practiced by yogis in the fourth and its two succeeding stages; but its utter annihilation occurs only in the seventh and last stage of yoga). 20. No act of ours nor its result (whether good or bad), conduces either to our joy or grief, which we do with unconcern or little desire or expectation of its reward. 21. Whatever act is done with ardent employment of the members of the body, and the application of the whole heart, mind and soul to it, such an act tends to bind a man; otherwise an indifferent action like a fried grain, does not germinate into any effect. 22. The thought that I am the doer and owner of a deed, overpowers all bodily exertions, and sprouts fourth with results, that are forever binding on the doer (i.e. an indifferent action may pass for nothing, but a conscious and meditated act is binding on the actor).

23. As the moon is cool with her cooling beams; and the sun is hot by his burning heat; so a man is either good or bad according as the work he does. 24. All acts which are done or left undone, are as fugacious as the flying cotton on cotton trees; they are easily put to flight by the breath of understanding (Jnána or wisdom). All the acts of men are lost by discontinuance of their practice (as in Jnána khanda). 25. The germ of knowledge growing in the mind, increases itself day by day, as the corn sown in good ground soon shoots forth into the paddy plant. 26. There is one universal soul, that sparkles through all things in the world, as it is the same translucent water, that glistens in lake and large oceans and seas. 27. Withhold sir, your notions of the varieties and multiplicities of things, and know these as parts of one undivided whole, which stretches through them as their essence and soul.

CONTINUATION OF THE SAME. Argument. - The causes of the Elevation and degradation of living being. Manu continued: - The soul is originally full of bliss by its nature, but being subject to ignorance, it fosters its vain desire for temporal enjoyment, whence it has the name of the living soul (which is subjected to misery). This corresponds with the scriptural doctrine, that man was originally made in the image of his Maker (i.e. full of bliss); but being tempted by delusion to taste the forbidden sweetness, became the mortal and miserable human soul. 2. But when the desire of pleasure, is lessened by the viveka or discriminative knowledge of man, he forsakes his nature of a living and mortal being, and his soul becomes one with the supreme spirit. (Man by his knowledge retrieves his godly nature). 3. Do not therefore allow your desire of earthly enjoyment, to draw your soul up and down to heaven and hell; as a bucket tied in its neck with a cord, is cast down and again lifted up from a well. 4. Those selfish folks who claim something as theirs from that of another, are grossly mistaken and led into error, and are destined like the dragging bucket to descend lower and lower. (The more niggardliness the more degradation or the more selfishness the greater baseness).

5. He who gets rid of his knowledge that, this is I and that is another, and that this is mine and that is the others, gradually rises higher and higher according to his greater disinterestedness. (Disinterestedness characterises an elevated mind). 6. Delay not to rely your dependance in your enlightened and elevated soul, stretching over and filling the whole space of the sky, end comprehending all the worlds in it. (This magnanimity is characteristic of the catholicity of Hindu religion). 7. When the human mind is thus elevated and expanded beyond all limits, it then approaches the divine mind, and is assimilated to it. (This extinction is called its nirvána). 8. Any one who has arrived to this state, may well think in himself to be able to effect whatever was done by the Gods Brahmá, Vishnu, Indra (by his intellectual body Varuna and others; who were of such elevated souls and minds). 9. Whatever acts are attributed to any of the Gods or other persons, is no more than the display of divine pleasure in that form. 10. Whoso is assimilated to the divine intellect, and has become deathless and unmindful of his mortal state, has a share of supreme felicity for his enjoyment, which bears no comparison: (unspeakable delight attends on the soul of the spiritualist).

11. Continue to think this world as neither a vacuum nor a plenum; nor a material or spiritual substance. It is neither an intellectual being, nor a quite insensible thing.[A] Again on the other hand, if you consider it as a hypostatic reality, you introduce in that case positive duality, beside the reality of one unity alone. So every other position being liable to objection, you must think it as neither the one nor the other, but as something incomprehensible, or reflexion of the Divine Mind. 12. By thinking in this way, you will have composure of your disposition, or else there is no separate place or time or condition for your liberation or salvation. 13. It is by the absence of our egoism and ignorance, that we get rid of our personal existence, and it is our contemplation of the nature of God, and his presence before us in our meditation (sákshat kára) of him, that constitutes our moksha or liberation.

14. It is the even delight and perpetual tranquillity of the soul, that constitutes our bliss and liberation; and these are to be obtained by means of calm and cool reasoning in the sense of sástras, avoiding all impatience and fickleness of our mind and temper, and the pleasure derived from our taste in poetry and light studies and trifling amusement. (It requires us to be free from the fluctuations of our desires and options of which there is no end).

THE SAME. MANU'S ADMONITION TO IKSHAKU. Argument. - On the Elevation of Humanity and its ultimate liberation. Manu continued: - Now the living liberated yogi, in whatever manner he is clad, and however well or ill fed he may be, and wherever he may sleep or lay down his humble head, he rests with the joy of his mind, and in a state of perfect ease and blissfulness, as if he were the greatest emperor of the world. (Hence the fakirs are called shah sahibs by people). 2. He breaks down all the bonds of his caste and creed, and the rites and restraints of his order by the battery of the sástra; and roves freed from the snare of society, as a lion breaking loose from his cage, and roaming rampant every where. (Here the sástra means the upanishads on the esoteric faith of spiritual freedom). 3. He has his mind abstracted from all sensible objects, and fixed on an object which no words can express (i.e. the unspeakable rapture of his mind); and he shines forth with a grace in his face, resembling the clearness of an autumnal sky.

4. He is always as deep and clear (i.e. grave in his mind and clear headed), as a large lake in a valley; and being rapt in holy and heavenly joy, he is always cheerful in himself, without his care for or want of anything else. 5. He is ever content in his mind without having anything for his dependance, or any expectation of the reward of his actions; and is neither addicted to any meritorious or unworthy acts, nor subject to joy or grief for aught of pleasure or pain. 6. As a piece of crystal does not receive or emit any other colour in its reflexion, excepting that of its pure whiteness; so the spiritualist is not imbued with the tinge of the effects of his actions. (i.e. The spiritualist does not benefit by the retribution of his acts). 7. He remains indifferent in human society, and is not affected either by the torture or subministration of his body; he deems his pain and pleasure as passing on his shadow, and never takes them to his heart, as they do not touch his intangible soul. (It was by virtue of this indifference, that the holy saints did not shrink under their persecutions and martyrdom).

8. Whether honoured or slighted by men, he neither praises nor is displeased with them; and remains himself either connected or unconnected with the customs and rules of society. 9. He hurts no body, nor is hurt by any; and may be free from the feelings of anger or affection, fear and joy (and other passions which are allotted to humanity). 10. No one can have the greatness of mind of his own nature, but it is possible for the author of nature, to raise the greatness of mind even in a boy. 11. Whether a man quits his body (dies) in a holy place, or in the house of a low chandála; or whether one dies at this moment (in youth), or many years afterwards (in old age). 12. He is released from his bondage to life, no sooner he comes to his knowledge of the soul and gets rid of his desires; because the error of his egoism is the cause of his bondage, and the wasting of it by his knowledge, is the means of his liberation.

13. He the living liberated man is to be honoured and praised, and to be bowed down to with veneration, and regarded with every attention, by every one who is desirous of his prosperity and elevation. (Because we honour ourselves by honouring the great). 14. No religious sacrifice nor wilful austerity, no charity nor pilgrimage, can lead us to that supremely holy state of human dignity; which is attainable by us only by our respectful attendance upon the godly, who have got rid of the troubles of the world. (Hence attendance on saints and at their holy shrines, is accounted as productive of our sanctity). 15. Vasishtha said: - The venerable sage Manu, having spoken in this manner, departed to the celestial abode of his sire Brahmá; and Ikshaku continued to act according to the precepts, which were delivered to him by the sacred seer.

ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE KNOWING AND UNKNOWING. Argument. - Theoretical and Practical Yogas and the practices of Aerial journey &c. Ráma said: - Tell me sir, that art most learned in spiritual knowledge, whether the living liberated man of this kind (as you have described) attains to any extraordinary power; (or remains neutral with his theoretical knowledge of yoga only). 2. Vasishtha replied: - The all-knowing sage, has sometimes a greater knowledge of one thing than another, and has his mind directed in one particular way than any other; but the learned seer of a contented mind, has his soul quite at rest in itself. 3. There are many that have by their consummate knowledge of particular mantras, tantras, and the virtues of certain minerals, attained the power of aerial flight &c.; but what is there that is extraordinary in these (when these powers are in constant practice in the flight of ordinary birds and flies?). 4. So the powers of self-expansion and contraction &c., have been acquired by others by their constant practice of the same, (anima, laghima and the like), which are disregarded by other seers in spiritual knowledge. 5. There is this difference of these knowing seers, from the bulk of idle practitioners in yoga, that they are content with their dispassionate mind, without placing any reliance in practice.

6. This is verily the sign of the unconspicuous seer in yoga, that he is always cool and calm in his mind, and freed from all the errors of the world; and in whom the traces of the passions of love and anger, sorrow and illusion and the mischances of life are scarcely visible.

THE STORY OF THE STAG AND THE HUNTSMAN. Argument. - Degradation of the divine soul of man to the state of the animal soul. Vasishtha said: - Know now that the Lord (Divine soul), stops to take upon itself of the nature of the living or animal soul, as a Brahman (by birth) assumes the character of a vile sudra for some mean purpose, by disregarding the purity of its original nature. (This is the degradation of the lordly and blissful soul, to the state of the sensitive animal soul, by reason of its meaner propensity). 2. There are two kinds of living beings, that come into existence in the beginning of the repeated creations; the one coming into existence without any causality, and are thence called to be causeless or uncaused (such as that is they are not made like pots and the like (ghatádi)), by means of the instrumental causality of the potters wheel, stick &c. 3. Thus the soul emanating from the Divine, is subjected to various transmigrations, and becomes many kinds of beings (in succession), according to its previous acts and propensities. (Thus it is the tendency of the soul towards good or evil, that is the cause of its rise and fall or elevation or degradation).

4. All beings emanate originally without any cause, from the source of the divine essence; and then their actions become the secondary cause of continuous transmigrations (until the end of the world). (All souls are bound to their revolutions in repeated births, until their final extinction in the deity on the last day of resurrection, or by their prior liberation by mukti or nirvána). 5. The personal acts of men, are the causes both of their happiness as well as misery; and again the will which is produced by the conscious knowledge of one's self, becomes the cause of the action (i.e. the will proceeding from one's consciousness of himself, is the cause of his action, which again becomes the cause of his pleasure or pain as its result). 6. Now this will or desire of any action or fruition, being likewise the cause of one's bondage to this world, it is to be got rid of for his liberation from it; and this what they call moksha, is no more than our release from the bond of our desire. (Every wish enchains the soul to earth, and drags it along to repeated birth).

7. Be therefore careful to make your choice of what is right and proper, from whatever is wrong and improper; and try betimes to contract your wishes within the narrowest scale. 8. Do not let yourself to be possessor or possest of any thing or person, but give up thinking on anything, beside what remains after the thoughts of all other things. (i.e. Think alone of thine and the supreme soul, which remains in the absence of everything else). 9. Anything to which the senses are addicted at all times, serves to bind the soul the more that it has its zest for the same; as also to unbind and release the mind in proportion to the distaste which it bears to it. (i.e. Love a thing to be enslaved to it, and hate the same to be saved from it). 10. If there is anything which is pleasing to thy soul, know the same as thy binding string to the earth; if on the contrary thou findest nothing to thy liking here, you are then freed from the trammels of all the trifles on earth.

11. Therefore let nothing whatever tempt or beguile thy mind, to anything existent in either the animate or inanimate kind; and regard everything from a mean straw to a great idol as unworthy of thy regard. 12. Think not thyself to be either the doer or giver, or eater or offerer, of whatsoever thou doest or givest, or eatest or offerest in thy holy oblations of the Gods; but art quite aloof from all thy bodily actions, owing to the immaterial nature of thy self or soul. 13. Concern not thyself with thy past acts, or thy cares for future, over which thou hast no command; but discharge well thy present duties, as they are and come to thy hand. 14. All the feelings and passions of men, as their appetites, desires and the rest, are strung together with their hearts; and therefore it is requisite to sever these heart strings with the weapon of a brave and strong heart (because the feelings are fostered in weak hearts and minds only). 15. Now break your sensuous mind by the power of your reasoning mind, and restrain its rage of running into errors; as they break the iron pegs by force of iron hammers (and remove one thing by another of the same kind - similia similibus curantur.)

16. So intelligent men rub out one dirt by another, and remove one poison by another poisonous substance; and so do soldiers oppose one steel by a weapon of the same metal. 17. All living beings have a triple form, composed of the subtile, solid and the imperceptible spiritual bodies; now lay hold and rely on the last, in utter disregard of the two former. 18. The solid or gross body, is composed of the hands, feet and other members and limbs; and subsist in this nether world upon its subsistence of food only. 19. The living being has an intrinsic body also, which is derived from within; and is composed of all its wishes in the world, and is known as the mental or intellectual part of the body. 20. Know the third form to be the transcendental or spiritual body, which assumes all forms, and is the simple intellectual soul; which is without its beginning or end, and without any alteration in its nature. 21. This is the pure turya state, wherein you must remain steadfast as in that of your living liberation; and reject the two others, in which you must place no reliance.

22. Ráma said: - I have understood the three definite states, of waking, dreaming, and sound sleep, as they have been defined to me; but the fourth state of turya is yet left undefined, and I beg you to explain it clearly unto me. 23. Vasishtha answered: - It is that state of the mind, in which the feelings of one's egoism and non-egoism, and those of his existence and inexistence are utterly drowned under a total impassibility; and the mind is settled in one invariable and uniform tenor of tranquillity and transparency. 24. It is that state in which the selfish feelings of mine and thine, are altogether wanting; and in which one remains as a mere witness and spectator of the affairs of life. This is the turya state of living liberation. (It is the state of a philosopher who lives to see and philosophise and mix with nothing). 25. This is neither the state of waking, owing to its want of any wish or concern, nor it is the state of sound sleep, which is one of perfect insensibility.

26. It is that calmness in which the wise man sees every thing, to be going on in the world; and it is like the state of insensibility of the ignorant, in which they perceive no stir in the course of the world. (The calmness of the wise like the dullness of others is their turya also). 27. The evenness of the mind after subsidence of every jot of its egotism in it, like the setting of the turbid waters underneath, is the turya state of the insouciance of the soul. 28. Hear me relate to you an instance on this subject, which will confer as clear a light to your enlightened mind, as that of all seeing Gods. 29. It happened once that a huntsman, roaming for his prey in some part of a forest, chanced to see a sage sitting silent in his solitude; and thinking it as something strange, he accosted him saying: - 30. Have you seen, O sage, a wounded stag flying before me this way, with an arrow fixed in its back? 31. The sage replied: - You ask me, where your stag has fled; but my friend, know that sages like ourselves and living in the forest, are as cool as blocks of stone (and insensible of every occurrence on earth).

32. We want that egoism which enables one, in conducting the transactions of the world; and know my friend, that it is the mind, which conducts all the actions of the senses. (All actions of the organs of senses being under the direction of the mind, as well as all sensible perceptions under its attention). 33. Know that the feeling of my egoism, has been long before dissolved in my mind; and I have no perception whatever of the three states of waking, dreaming and sound sleep. But I rest quiet in my fourth state of impossibility, wherein there is no vision of the visibles. 34. The huntsman heard these words of the sage, but being quite at a loss to comprehend its meaning, he departed to his own way without uttering a word. 35. I tell you therefore, O Ráma, there is no other state beyond the fourth or turya quietism; it is that unalterable impassivity of the mind, which is not to be found in any other. 36. The waking, dreaming and sound sleep, are the three palpable conditions of the mind; and these are respectively the dark, quiet and insensible states, in which the mind is situated in this world.

37. The waking state presents us the dark complexion of the mind, for its susceptibility of all the passions and evils of life; and the sleeping state shows us its quiet aspect, for want of its cares and anxieties. 38. The state of sound sleep is one of insensibility, and the state beyond these three bears the feature of death in it. Yet this dead like figure possesses the principle of life in it, which is diligently preserved by yogis from harm and decay. 39. Now Ráma, the soul which remains in its quiet rest, after its renunciation of all desire, is said by sages to be in the coma or cool calmness of itself, and the liberated state of the holy and devout yogi on earth.

THE MEANS OF ATTAINING THE STEADINESS OF THE TURYA STATE. Argument. - The means of attaining stability on Insouciance. Vasishtha resumed: - Know Ráma, that the conclusion which is arrived at in all works on spiritual philosophy, is the negation of every thing except the entity of the supreme soul; and that there is no principle of ignorance (avidyá) nor that of delusion (máyá), as a secondary agent under one quiescent Brahma, who is ever without a second. 2. The spirit of the Lord is always calm, with the serene brightness of the divine Intellect in itself; it is full of its omnipotence, and is attributed with the appellation of Brahma. 3. The Divine Spirit is ascertained by some as the formless vacuum itself, and by others as omniscience, and is called as the Lord God by most people in the world. 4. Do you avoid all these, O sinless Ráma, and remain quite silent in yourself, and be extinct in the divine essence, by restraining the actions of your heart and mind and by the tranquillity of your soul. 5. Have a quiet soul in yourself, and remain as a deaf and dumb man in your outward appearance; look always within yourself, and be full with the Divine Spirit.

6. Discharge the duties of your waking state, as if you are doing them in your sound sleep; forsake every thing in your inward mind, and do whatever comes to thee outwardly, without taking any into thy heart. 7. The essence of the mind is only for one's misery, as its want is for his highest felicity; therefore the mind must be drowned in the intelligent soul, by destroying the action of the mental powers altogether. 8. Remain as cold as a stone, at the sight of anything, which is either delightsome or disgusting to thee; and by this means learn to subdue everything in the world under thy control. 9. The objective is neither for our pleasure or pain, nor is it the intermediate state of the two; therefore it is by diligent attention to the subjective, that we can attain the end of all our misery. (Live to thyself alone and unmindful of all others, in order to be completely blest). 10. He who has known the supreme soul, has found within himself a delight; resembling the cooling beams of the full bright moon; and being possest of the full knowledge of the essence of all things in the three worlds, performs his parts in a manner as he did not attend to them.

DESCRIPTION OF THE SPIRITUAL STATE. Argument: - The seven stages of yoga Meditation, and the true state of spirituality. Ráma said: - Tell me sir, the practices of the seven stages of yoga; and the characteristics of yogis in every stage. 2. Vasishtha related: - Know Ráma, mankind to be divided into two classes of the zealous and resigned (i.e. the active and the inactive); the one expectant of heavenly reward, and the other inclined to supreme felicity. Know now their different characters as follows: - 3. Those that are addicted to enjoyments, think the quietude of nirvána as nothing to their purpose, and give preference to worldliness above the final bliss of others; and he that acts his part on this sense, is styled an active and energetic man. 4. Such a man of the world bears his resemblance to a tortoise, which though it has its neck well hid in its shell, still stretches it out to drink the salt water of the sea it inhabits; until after many births, he gets a better life for his salvation (as when the tortoise is removed to a lake of fresh water).

5. But he who reflects on the nothingness of the world, and the uselessness of his situation in it; such a man does not allow himself to be carried on, by the current of his old and rotatory course of duties here in day after day. 6. And he who reflects in himself, after being released from the burden of his business, on the delight of his rest after labour, he is the man who is said to repose in his quiescence. 7. When a man comes to reconnoitre in himself, how he shall become dispassionate, and get over the boisterous ocean of the world; such a man is said to have come to his good and right sense, and to stand on the way to his tolerance. 8. He who has an unfeelingness in his heart, of the very many thoughts that daily rise in his mind; and manages his gravest and greatest concerns, without being much concerned about them in his mind; each a man is said to taste the delight of his stayedness day by day. 9. He who condemns the rustic amusements and mean employments of men; and instead of taking up the faults and failings of others for his merry talk, employs himself to meritorious acts.

10. Whose mind, is engaged in agreeable tasks and unpainsome acts; who is afraid of sin, and disdains all pleasures and bodily enjoyments. 11. Whose discourses are full of love and tenderness, and appropriate without any harshness; and whose speeches are suitable to the time and place in which they are delivered. 12. Such a man is said to stand on the first step of yoga, when he makes it his duty to attend the society of the good and great, whom he learns to imitate in his thoughts, words, and actions. 13. He collects also the work on divine learning from every where, and reads with attention and diligence; he then considers their contexts, and lays hold on the tenets, which serve to save him from this sinful world. 14. Such a man is said to have come upon the (first) stage of yoga, or else he is a hypocrite who assumes the guise of a yogi for his own interest only. The yogi then comes to the next step of yoga, which is styled the stage of investigation - Vichára. 15. He then hears from the mouths of the best pandits, the explanations of the srutis and smritis, the rules of good conduct, and the manner of meditation and conduct of yoga practice.

16. He then learns the divisions of categories and distinction of things, together with the difference between actions that are to be done or avoided; all which being heard from the mouth of an adept in yoga, will facilitate his course through the other stages, in like manner as the master of a house enters with facility into every apartment of his dwelling. (The guidance of a guru or spiritual guide, is essential to the practice of yoga). 17. He wears off his outer habit of pride and vanity, his jealousy and avarice, and the other passions which formed as it were an outer garment of his person, as a snake casts off his slough from him. 18. Having thus purified his mind (from the vile passions), he attends to the service of his spiritual preceptors and holy persons, and makes himself acquainted with the mysteries of religion. (This is the second stage of yoga, which is one of moral discipline and search after truth). 19. He then enters into the third stage of unsociality or avoidance of all company, which he finds to be as agreeable to him as a bed of flowers. (Lit.: a bedstead be strewn with flowers).

20. Here he learns to fix his mind to its steadiness, according to the dictates of the sástras; and passes his time in talking on spiritual subjects, in society of hermits and devotees. 21. He sits also with the dispassionate Vairágis, and religious recluses sanyásis who are disgusted with the world; and relying on the firm rock of his faith, he wears out his long life with ease. 22. He passes his moral life with cheerful delight of his loneliness, and pleasing tranquillity of his mind in his woodland retreat and wanderings. 23. By study of holy books and performance of religious acts, he gets a clear view of things, as it generally attends upon the virtuous lives of men. 24. The sensible man who has arrived to the third stage of his yoga practice, perceives in himself two kinds of his unconnectedness with the world, as you will now hear from me. 25. Now this disconnection of one with all others is of two sorts, one of which is his ordinary disassociation with all persons and things, and the other is his absolute unconnection with every thing including himself. (i.e. One's entire irrelation with both the subjective and objective).

26. The ordinary unconnection is the sense of one's being neither the subject or object of his action, nor of his being the slayer of or slain by anybody; but that all accidents are incidental to his prior acts (of past lives), and all dependant to the dispensations of Providence. 27. It is the conviction that, I have no control over my happiness or misery or pain or pleasure; and that all prosperity and adversity, employment and privation, and health and disease, ever betide me of their own accord. 28. All union is for its disunion, and all gain is for its loss; so the health and disease and pain and pleasure come by turns, and there is nothing which is not succeeded by its reverse. Because time with its open jaws, is ever ready to devour all things. 29. The negative idea of inexistence, which is produced in the mind, from our want of reliance in the reality of things; is the very sense which is conveyed by the phrase of our ordinary unconnection with all things. 30. With this sort of the disunion of every thing in the mind, and our union with the society of high minded men; and disassociation with the vile and unrighteous, and association with spiritual knowledge: -

31. These joined with the continual exertion of our manliness in our habitual practice of these virtues, one assuredly arrives to the certain knowledge of what he seeks (i.e. his god), as clearly as he sees a globe set in his hands. 32. The knowledge of the supreme author of creation, sitting beyond the ocean of the universe, and watching over its concerns; impresses us with the belief, that it is not I but God that does every thing in the world, and that there is nothing that is done here by me, but by the great God Himself. 33. Having left aside the thought of one's self agency on any act, whoso sits quiet silent and tranquil in himself, such a one is said to be absolutely unconnected with every thing in the world. 34. He that does not reside within or without anything, nor dwells above or beneath any object; who is not situated in the sky, or in any side or part of the all surrounding air and space; who is not in anything or in nothing, and neither in gross matter nor in the sensible spirit.

35. Who is present and manifest in every thing, without being expressed in any; and who pervades all things like the clear firmament, who is without beginning and end and birth and death. Whoso seeks this Lord of all, is said to be set in the best part of this stage. 36. Contentment is as sweet fragrance in the mind, and virtuous acts are as handsome as the leaves of a flower; the heart string is as stalk beset by the thorns of cares and anxieties, and thralls with the gusts of dangers and difficulties. 37. The flower of inward discrimination, is expanded like the lotus-bud, by the sun-beams of reason, and produces the fruit of resignation in the garden of the third stage of yoga-practice. 38. As it is by association with holy men, and by means of the assemblage of virtuous acts, that one arrives on a sudden to the first stage of yoga: - 39. So is this first step to be preserved with care, and grown up like a tender sprout, with the watering of reasoning at its root (in order to lead it to the succeeding steps or stages).

40. The yoga practitioner like a good gardener, must foster the rising plant of spiritual knowledge, by the daily application of reasoning to every part of it. (The parts of the plant of spirituality, are its dispassionateness, unworldliness and the like, which require to be reared up by proper reasoning). 41. This stage being well managed, and all its parts being properly performed, introduces the succeeding stages (all of which depend on the first as their basis). 42. Now the better state of the third stage, as it has been already described, is one of all desires and arrogations in the mind of the yogi. 43. Ráma said: - Now tell me sir, what is the way of the salvation of an ignorant man, of one of a base birth, and addicted to baseness himself; who has never associated with the yogis, nor received any spiritual instruction. 44. Who has never ascended on any of the first, second or succeeding stages of yoga, and is dead in the like state of ignorance in which he was born.

45. Vasishtha replied: - The ignorant man that has never attained to any of the states of yoga in his whole life, is carried by the current of his transmigration to rove in a hundred births, until he happens by some chance or other, to get some glimpse of spiritual light in any one of them. 46. Or it may be that one happens to be dissatisfied with the world, by his association with holy men; and the resignation which springs thereby, becomes the ground of one of the stages of his yoga. 47. By this means, the man is saved from this miserable world; because it is the united voice of all the sástras, that an embodied being is released from death, no sooner he has passed through any one stage of yoga (or union with his maker). 48. The performance of a part only of some of the stages of yoga, is enough for the remission of past sins; and for conducting the expurgated person to the celestial abode in a heavenly car. (The wicked man turning from his wickedness, and doing what is right and saveth his soul). 49. He enjoys the Parnassian groves of Sumeru in company with his beloved, when the weight of his righteous acts, outweighs those of unrighteousness.

50. The yogi, released from the trap of his temporal enjoyments, and has passed his allotted period; expires in due time, to be reborn in the houses of yogis and rich men, or in the private mansions of learned, good and virtuous people. 51. Being thus born, he betakes himself to the habitual practice of the yoga of his former birth; and has the wisdom to begin at once at the stage to which he was practiced, and which was left unfinished before (hence arises the difference in the capacities of youth). 52. These three stages, Ráma, are designated the waking state; because the yogi retains in them his perception of the differences of things, as a waking man perceives the visible to differ from one another. 53. Men employed in yoga acquire a venerable dignity (in their very appearance), which induce the ignorant to wish for their liberation also (in order to attain to the same rank). 54. He is reckoned a venerable man, who is employed in all honorable deeds, and refrains from what is dishonourable, who is steadfast in the discharge of all his social duties, whether they are of the ordinary kind or occasional ones.

55. He who acts according to customary usage, and the ordinances of sástras; who act conscientiously and according to his position; and thus dispenses all his affairs in the world, is verily called a venerable man. 56. The venerableness of yogis germinates in the first stage, it blossoms in the second, and becomes fruitful in the third stage of yoga. 57. The venerable yogi dying in state of yoga, comes first to enjoy the fruition of good desires for a long time (in his next birth); and then becomes a yogi again (for the completion of his yoga). 58. The practice of the parts enjoyed in the three first stages of yoga, serves to destroy at first the ignorance of the yogi, and then sheds the light of true knowledge in his mind, as brightly as the beams of full-moon illume the sky at night. 59. He who devotes his mind to yoga, with his undivided attention from first to last, and sees all things in one even and same light, is said to have arrived to the fourth stage of yoga.

60. As the mistake of duality disappears from sight, and the knowledge of unity shines supremely bright; the yogi is said in this state to have reached the fourth stage of yoga, when he sees the world as a vision in his dream. 61. The first three stages, are represented as the waking state of the yogi; but the fourth is said to be the state of his dreaming, when the visibles disappear from his sight; as the dispersed clouds of autumn gradually vanish from sight, and as the scenes in a dream recede to nothingness. 62. They are said to be in the fifth stage, who have their minds lying dormant in them, and insensible of their bodily sensations. This is called the sleeping state or hypnotism of yoga meditation. 63. In this state there is an utter stop of feelings, of the endless varieties of things and their different species, in the mind of the yogi, who relies in his consciousness of an undivided unity only; and whose sense of a duality is entirely melted down and lost in the cheerfulness of his wakeful mind. 64. The fifth stage is likewise a state of sound sleep, when the yogi loses all his external perceptions, and sits quiet with his internal vision within himself.

65. The continued sedateness of his posture, gives him the appearance of his dormancy, and the yogi continues in this position, the practice of the mortification of all his desires. 66. This step leads gradually to the sixth stage, which is a state of insensibility both of the existence and inexistence of things as also of one's egoism and non-egoism (of his own entity and non-entity). 67. The yogi remains unmindful of everything, and quite unconscious of the unity or duality, and by being freed from every scruple and suspicion in his mind, he arrives to the dignity of living liberation. (This tetrastich is based on the sruti which says, [Sanskrit: bhidyate hadayagranyi, chidyate svvammshyayah tasmindvashte parávare]). 68. The yogi of this sort though yet inextinct or living, is said to be extinct or dead to his sensibility; he sits as a pictured lamp which emits no flame, and remains with a vacant heart and mind like an empty cloud hanging in the empty air. 69. He is full within and without him, with and amidst the fulness of divine ecstasy, like a full pot in a sea; and possest of some higher power, yet he appears as worthless on the outside.

70. After passing his sixth grade, the yogi is led to the seventh stage; which is styled a state of disembodied liberation, from its purely spiritual nature. 71. It is a state of quietude which is unapproachable (i.e. inexpressible) by words, and extends beyond the limits of this earth; it is said to resemble the state of Siva by some, and that of Brahmá by others. (The two views of the Tántrikas and Vedántists). 72. By some it is said to be the state of the androgyne deity, or the indiscriminate of the male and female powers; while others have given many other denominations to it, according to their respective fancies. (The other systems have different appellations to designate this state). 73. The seventh is the state of the eternal and incomprehensible God, and which no words can express nor explain in any way. Thus Ráma, have I mentioned to you the seven stages of yoga (each branding the other in its perfections). 74. By practice of these perfections, one evades the miseries of this world; and it is by subjection of the indomitably elephantine senses, that one can arrive to these perfections. 75. Hear me relate to you Ráma, of a furious elephant, which with its protruded tusks, was ever ready to attack others.

76. And as this elephant was about to kill many men, unless it could be killed by some one of them; so are the senses of men like ferocious elephants of destruction to them. 77. Hence every man becomes victorious in all the stages of yoga, who has the valour of destroying this elephant of its sensuality the very first step of it. 78. Ráma said: - Tell me sir, who is this victorious hero in the field of battle, and what is the nature of this elephant that is his enemy, and what are these grounds of combat where he encounters him, and the manner how he foils and kills this great foe of his. 79. Vasishtha replied: - Ráma! it is our concupiscence which has the gigantic figure of this elephant, and which roams at random in the forest of our bodies, and sports in the demonstrations of all our passions and feelings. 80. It hides itself in the covert of our hearts, and has our acts for its great tusks; its fury is our ardent desire of anything, and our great ambition is its huge body. 81. All the scenes on earth are the fields for its battle, where men are often foiled in their pursuit of any.

82. The elephant of concupiscence kills members of miserly and covetous men, in the state of their wish or desire, or exertions and effort, or longing and hankering after anything. 83. In this manner does this fierce greediness, lurk in the sheath of human breast under the said several names, and it is only our forbearance from those desires, that serves as the great weapon of their destruction. 84. This ubiquious desire of our possession of everything in the world, is conquered by reflection on the ubiquity of the soul in all of them; and that the unity of my soul, stretches over and grasps all things that I covet. 85. He is doomed to suffer under the colic pain of this venomous avarice, who minds to continue in this world, in the manner as it goes on with the rest of mankind. 86. It is the mitigation of the smart poison of avarice, that is our highest wisdom, and it is our liberation, when the calm and cooling countenance of inappetency appears to our sight. 87. Words of advice stick to the sapient mind, as drops of oil adhere on glass mirror; and that our indifference to the world is the only preventive of its thorns, and is the best advice to the wise.

88. It is as advisable to destroy a desire by the weapon of indifference, no sooner it rises in the breast, as it is proper to root out the sprout of a poisonous plant, before it spreads itself on the ground. 89. The concupiscent soul, is never freed from its miserliness; while the mere effort of one's indifference, makes it set quiet in itself (without cringing at others). 90. It is by your carelessness about everything, and by your lying down as supine as a dead carcass, that you can kill your desire by the weapon of your indifference, as they catch and kill fishes with hooks (by sitting silent beside some pond or lake). 91. Let this be mine or that I may have it, is what is called desire by the wise; and the want of every desire for wealth &c., is called resignation by them. 92. Know that the remembrance of some thing, is alike the desire of having the same in one's possession again; and it includes both what was enjoyed before or next.

93. O high minded Ráma, you must learn to remain as a block in your mind, by forgetting whatever you think of or otherwise; all of which must be buried in oblivion, for your estrangement from the world. (Retire, the world shut out, imagination's airy wing repress - Young). 94. Who will not lift up his arms, and have his hairs standing at their end, to hear and reflect in himself that, want of desire is the summum bonum of every one's desire. (Desire of nothing is the most desirable thing, is a paralogism in logic). 95. It is by sitting quite silent and quiet, that one attains to the state of his supreme felicity, a state before which the sovereignty of the world seems as a straw. 96. As a traveller traverses on foot through many regions, in order to reach to his destination, so the yogi passes through all his ordinary acts, to reach his goal of final bliss. 97. What is the good of using many words, when it can be expressed in a few; that our desire is our strongest bondage, and its want our complete liberation.

98. Now Ráma, rest quiet in your joy, with knowing that all this creation is full of the increate, everlasting, undecaying and tranquil spirit of God; and sit quiet and delighted in yourself with viewing the visibles in their spiritual sense. 99. Know that it is the ignoring of every thing and the quiet posture of the yogi, which is called as yoga by the spiritual; and continue to discharge your duties even in your yoga state, until you get rid of them by the privation of your desires. 100. It is also the unconsciousness of one's self, which is likewise styled yoga by the wise; and it consists of the entire absorption of one's self in the supreme, by wasting away his mind and all its operations. 101. Again this self absorption is the conceiving of one's self, as he is the all pervasive spirit of Siva, which is increate, self-conscious and ever benevolent to all. This conception of one's self is tantamount to his renunciation of every thing besides himself.

102. He who has the sense of his egoism and meism (i.e. that this is I and these are mine), is never released from the miseries of life; it is the negation of this sensation that produces our liberation, and therefore it is at the option of every body, to do either this or that for his bondage or salvation.

ADMONITION TO BHARADWÁJA. Argument: - Relation of the Quietude of Ráma, and the Queries of Bharadwája; with further description of states of waking and others, and of the ultimate turíya condition of the fourth stage of yoga. Bharadwája asked: - Válmíki saying: - Tell me sir, what did Ráma do after hearing the lecture of the sage; whether he with his enlightened understanding put any other question, or remained in his ecstatic quietude with his full knowledge of yoga and the supreme soul. 2. And what did next that supremely blest yogi (Vasishtha) do, who is adored by all and honoured even by Gods; who is a personification of pure understanding, and free from the state of birth and death; who is fraught with every good quality and kindly disposed for ever to the welfare and preservation of the peoples in all the three worlds. 3. Válmíki replied: - After hearing the lecture of Vasishtha, combining the essence of the vedánta philosophy, the lotus-eyed Ráma became perfectly acquainted with the full knowledge of yoga. 4. He felt the failing of his bodily strength, and the falling of the members of his body, he stared with his glaring eyes, and his clear intellect was shrouded under a cloud. He awoke in a moment from his entranced state, and felt a flood of rapturous joy within himself.

5. He forgot the fashion of putting his questions, and hearing their answers; his mind was full with the ambrosial draught of delight, and the hairs of his body stood up like prickles in his horripilation. 6. An inexpressibly ineffable light overspreads his intellect with its unusual glare; which cast the bright prospects of the eight dignities of yoga into utter shade. (The eight dignities - (ashta-siddhis) are so many perfections arrived at by practice of yoga). 7. In this way did Ráma attain the supereminent state of Siva, in which he sat sedate without uttering a word. 8. Bharadwája said: - Oh! how much I wonder at such a high dignity, which Ráma had attained; and how much I regret at the impossibility of its attainment, by a dull and ignorant sinner as myself. 9. Tell me, O great sage, how it may be possible for me to attain to that stage of perfection, which it is impossible for the gods Brahmá and others to arrive at any time; and tell me likewise, how I may get over the unfordable ocean of earthly troubles.