"Brahmin of the banks of the Nile, what sayest thou?"
Flames start out on every side through the partings of the beams; and the gymnosophist resumes:
"Like a rhinoceros, I am plunged in solitude. I dwelt in the tree that was behind me."
In fact, the large fig-tree presents in its flutings a natural excavation of the shape of a man.
"And I fed myself on flowers and fruits with such an observance of precepts that not even a dog has seen me eat.
"As existence proceeds from corruption, corruption from desire, desire from sensation, and sensation from contact, I have avoided every kind of action, every kind of contact, and—without stirring any more than the pillar of a tombstone—exhaling my breath through my two nostrils, fixing my glances upon my nose; and, observing the ether in my spirit, the world in my limbs, the moon in my heart, I pondered on the essence of the great soul, whence continually escape, like sparks of fire, the principles of life. I have, at last, grasped the supreme soul in all beings, all beings in the supreme soul; and I have succeeded in making my soul penetrate the place into which my senses used to penetrate.
"I receive knowledge directly from Heaven, like the bird Tchataka, who quenches his thirst only in the droppings of the rain. From the very fact of my having knowledge of things, things no longer exist. For me now there is no hope and no anguish, no goodness, no virtue, neither day nor night, neither thou nor I—absolutely nothing.
"My frightful austerities have made me superior to the Powers. A contraction of my brain can kill a hundred kings' sons, dethrone gods, overrun the world."
He utters all this in a monotonous voice. The leaves all around him are withered. The rats fly over the ground.
He slowly lowers his eyes towards the flames, which are rising, then adds: