48. When I rest in silence in that soul within myself, which is beyond the knowables, and is self-same with my consciousness itself; I find also all my desires and passions, together with my vitality and sensibility, to be quite defunct in me.
CHAPTER LXXXIV.
The Mental or Imaginary World of the Sage.
Argument. Hybernation of the Sage in a subterraneous cell, and the revery of his dominion over aerial spirits.
Vasishtha continued:—The Sage Vítahavya having thus reflected in his mind, renounced all his worldly desires, and sat in his hypnotic trance in a cave of the Vindhyan mountains.
2. His body became motionless and devoid of its pulsations, and his soul shot forth with its intellectual delight; then with his calm and quiet mind, he sat in his devotion, as the still ocean in its calmness.
3. His heart was cold and his breathings were stopped; and he remained as an extinguished fire, after its burning flame had consumed the fuel.
4. His mind being withdrawn from all sensible objects, and intensely fixed in the object of his meditation; his eye-sight was closed under the slight pulsations of his eyelids.
5. His slight and acute eye-sight was fixed on the top of his nose, and had the appearance of the half opening bud of the lotus. (The lotus is the usual simile of the eye, and the opening bud of the half opened eye).
6. The erect structure of the head and neck and body of the meditative sage, gave him the appearance of a statue hewn upon a rock (in bas relief).
7. Sitting in this posture with his close attention to the supreme soul in the Vindhyan Cave; he passed there the period of thrice three hundred years as half a moment (close attention shortens the course of time, for want of the succession of thoughts by which time is reckoned).