33. It is hard to have a fixed (nirúdha) and unalterable (nirvikalpa) meditation (samádhi), when the sight of the visible world is present before our bodily and mental vision. Even the fourth stage of insensible samádhi called the turíya, in the state of sound sleep (susupti), is soon succeeded by one’s self-consciousness and external intelligence.
34. On rising from this state of deep meditation, one finds himself as roused from his sound sleep, in order to view the world full of all its woes and imperfections opening wide before him. (Compare, “I wake to a sea of troubles, how happy they who wake no more”. Young).
35. What then, O Ráma! is the good of this transient bliss which one attains by his temporary abstraction (Dhyána), when he has to fall again to his sense of the sufferings to which the world is subject as a vale of tears. (Compare, “When the cock crew I wept &c.” Young’s Night Thoughts).
36. But if one can attain to a state of unalterable abstraction of his thoughts from all worldly objects, as he has in his state of sound sleep (susupti), he is then said to have reached the highest pitch of his holiness on earth. (For it is the entire oblivion of the world that is necessary for our spiritual perfection, as it is said, “forget the present for the future”).
37. No body has ever earned aught of reality in the scene of unreal vanities; for whenever his thoughts come in contact with any outward thing, he finds it inseparable from the blemishes of existence. (“Vanity of vanities, the world is vanity”. Ecclesiastes.)
38. Should any body (in the practice of the fixedness of his attention), fix his sight for a while on a stone, by forcibly withdrawing it from visible objects, he is sure to be carried away afterwards by the visibles pressing upon his sight.
39. It is well known to all that an unflinching meditation, having even the firmness of a rock, can have no durability, in the practice of the Yogi owing to his worldly propensities.
40. Even the nirúdha or steadfast meditation which has attained the fixedness of a rock, cannot advance one step towards the attainment of that tranquillity which has no bounds to it. (i.e. The everlasting bliss of liberation or moksha).
41. Thus the sight of phenomena being altogether irrepressible, it is a foolish supposition of its being suppressed by practices of Jap-tap or prayers and austerities and the like acts of devotion.
42. The idea of the phenomena (drisyadhi), is as inherent in the mind of the spectator of the visible world, as the seeds of the lotus flower are contained in the inner cells of the pericarp.