117. The god replied:—Hear me, O Brahman, that art best acquainted with the knowledge of Brahma; tell you about the best mode of worshipping the gods, and the performance of which is sure to set the worshipper free. (From the bonds of the world all at once).
118. Tell me first, O great armed Brahman, if you know at all who is that god, whom you make the object of your worship, if it be not the lotus-eyed Vishnu or the three-eyed Siva neither.
119. It is not the god born of the lotus Brahmá, nor he who is the lord of the thirteen classes of god—the great Indra himself; it is not the god of winds—Pavana, nor the god of fire, nor the regents of the sun and moon.
120. The Brahman (called an earthly god bhudeva) is no god at all, nor the king called the shadow of god, is any god likewise, neither I or thou—the ego and tu (or the subjective self and objective unself) are gods; nor the body or any embodied being, or the mind or any conception or creation of the mind is the true god also.
121. Neither Laxmí the goddess of fortune, nor Sarasvatí the goddess of intelligence are true goddesses, nor is there any one that may be called a god, except the one unfictitious god, who is without beginning and end, that is the true god. (The Viswasaratantra of Siva treats of the one infinite and eternal God).
122. How can a body measured by a form and its dimensions, or having a definite measure be the immeasurable deity! it is the inartificial and unlimited Intellect, that is known as the Siva or the felicitous one.
123. It is that which is meant by the word God—Deva—Deus, and that is the object of adoration; that is the only ens or on, est or Esteor Esten, out of which all other beings have proceeded, and in which they have their existence, and wherein they subsist with their formal parts.
124. Those unacquainted with the true nature of the felicitous Siva, worship the formal idols and images; as a weary traveller thinks the distance of a mile, to be as long as the length of a league.
125. It is possible to have the reward of one's adoration of the Rudras and other gods; but the reward of the meditation of the true God, is the unbounded felicity of the soul.
126. He who forsakes the reward of true felicity, for that of fictitious pleasures; is like one who quits a garden of mandara flower, and repairs to a furze of thorny karanja plants.