2. Ráma said:—I know what is meant by the reticence of speech, and the quietness of the organs, and the muteness of a block of wood; but tell me what is sleep like silence, which you well know by practice.
3. Vasishtha replied:—It is said to be of two kinds, by the mute like munis and the reserved sages of old; the practiced by the wood like statues of saints, and the other observed by those that are liberated in their life time (jívan mukta).
4. The wood like devotee is that austere ascetic, who is not meditative in his mind, and is firmly employed in the discharge of the rigorous rites of religion; he practises the painful restraints of his bodily organs, and remains speechless as a wooden statue.
5. The other kind of living liberated Yogi is one, who looks at the world ever as before (with his usual unconcern); who delights in his meditation of the soul, and passes as any ordinary man without any distinctive mark of his religious order or secular rank.
6. The condition of these two orders of saintly and holy men, which is the fixedness of their minds and sedateness of their souls, is what passes under the title of taciturnity and saintliness (mauna and muni) (who hold their tongue and their peace, and walk sub silentio and incognito on earth).
7. Thus the taciturn sages reckon four kinds of latitancy, which they style severally by the names of reservedness in speech, restriction of the organs, woodlike speechlessness and dead like silence as in one's sleep.
8. Oral silence consists in keeping one's mouth and lips close, and the closeness of the senses implies the keeping of the members of the body under strict control; the rigorous muteness means the abandonment of all efforts, and the sleepy silence is as silent as the grave.
9. There is a fifth kind of dead-like silence, which occurs in the austere ascetic in his state of insensibility; in the profound meditation of the dormant Yogi, and in the mental abstraction of the living liberated.
10. All the three prior states of reticence, occur in the austere devotee, and the sleepy or dead silence is what betakes the living liberated only.
11. Though speechlessness is called silence, yet it does not constitute pure reticence, in as much as the mute tongue may brood evil thoughts in the mind, which lead to the bondage of men.