VASISHTHA related:—Kacha the son of the divine preceptor Brihaspati, being thus advised by his venerable sire in the best kind of yoga meditation; began to muse in himself as one liberated from his personal entity, and lost and absorbed in essence of the sole and self-existent Deity. So says the sufi Sadi:—"Dui rachum badar kardam Eke binan Eke danam. &c." When I kept the duality of my personality out of my sight, I saw before me all blending in one, ineffable blaze of light.
2. Kacha remained quite freed from his egoism and meism, with the tranquillity of his mind, and cut off from all the ties of nature, and all apart from the bonds of worldly life. So I advise you, Ráma, to remain unchanged and unmoved amidst all the changes and movements of earthly bodies and vicissitudes of a mortal life.
3. Know all egoistic personality to total nihility, and never hesitate to remove yourself from this asylum of unreality, whose essence is as nothing at all as the horns of a hare whether you lay hold on it or lose your grasp of it (and as inextricable and inexplicable as the horns of a dilemma).
4. If it is impossible for your egoism to be a reality, why then talk of your birth and demise or your existence and inexistence; which is as it were planting a tree in the sky, of which you can neither reap the fruits or flowers.
5. After annihilation of your egoism there remains the sole ego, which is of the form of intellect only and not that of fickle mind; It is tranquil and without any desire, and extends through all existence; it is minuter and more subtile than the smallest atom, and is only the power of intellection and understanding. (i.e. the omniscience).
6. As the waves are raised upon the waters and the ornaments are made of gold; so our egoism springing from the original ego appears to be something different from it.
7. It is our ignorance or imperfect knowledge only that represents the visible world as a magic show, but the light of right knowledge, brings us to see the one and self-same Brahma in all forms of things.
8. Avoid your dubiety of the unity and duality (i.e. of the singleness of the prime cause, and variety of its products); but remain firm in your belief of that state, which lasts after the loss of both (i.e. the one and all the same). Be happy with this belief, and never trouble yourself with thinking any thing otherwise like the false man in the tale.
9. There is an inexplicable magic enveloping the whole, and this world is an impervious mass of theurgy or sorcery, which enwraps as thickly, as the autumnal mists obscure the firmament, and which is scattered by the light of good understanding.
10. Ráma said:—Sir, your learned lectures, like draughts of nectar, have given me entire satisfaction; and I am as refreshed by your cooling speeches, as the parching swallow is refrigerated by a shower of rain water.