(The vast fig-tree, indeed, shows in one of its groves, a natural excavation about the size of a man.)
"And I nourished me with flowers and fruits, observing the precepts so rigidly that not even a dog ever beheld me eat.
"Inasmuch as existence originates from corruption, corruption from desire, desire from sensation, sensation from contact, I have ever avoided all action, all contact, and perpetually—motionless as the stela of a tomb, exhaling my breath from my two nostrils, fixing my eyes upon my nose, and contemplating the ether in my mind, the world in my members, the moon in my heart—I dreamed of the essence of the great Soul whence continually escape the principles of life, even as sparks escape from fire.
"Thus at last I found the supreme Soul in all beings, and all beings in the supreme Soul; and I have been able to make mine own soul all my senses.
"I receive knowledge directly from heaven, like the bird Tchataka, who quenches his thirst from falling rain only.
"Even by so much as things are known to me, things no longer exist.
"For me now there is no more hope, no more anguish, there is neither happiness nor virtue, nor day nor night, nor Thou nor I—absolutely nothing!
"My awful austerities have made me superior to the Powers. A single contraction of my thought would suffice to kill a hundred sons of kings, to dethrone gods, to overturn the world."
(He utters all these things in a monotonous voice.