And when he had spoken, the Blessed One said to the Evil One:
“Be happy. At the end of three months from this time the Blessed One will die.”
Thus did the Lord deliberately and consciously reject the rest of his possible sum of life. And there followed an earthquake and tremblings and thunders.
And Ananda returned in haste and said:
“Wonderful and marvellous is this earthquake, Lord, and what is its cause?”
And the Lord said:
“Of the eight causes of earthquake and tremblings, this is one—when an Awakened One,—He who has thus Attained, consciously and deliberately rejects the remainder of his life, then is the earth shaken.”
And, still speaking of the mastery of the Powers, the Lord continued:
“Now I call to mind, Ananda, how when I used to enter into an assembly of many hundred nobles with discourse of religion I would instruct and gladden them, and they would say,—‘Who may this be who thus speaks? A man or a God?’ And having taught and gladdened them, suddenly I would vanish away. But they knew me not even when I vanished away, and they would say in bewilderment, ‘Who may this be who has thus vanished away? A man, or a God?’ ”
And he spoke also of the eight stages of deliverance from errors of perception, passing beyond the apprehension of form through infinite space and infinite reason and finally beyond sensation and ideas, even into the eighth stage of deliverance.