53. Therefore you must not remain as the ignorant, but rise above them by raising your mind to wisdom; and this is to be done, by calling the manly powers to your aid; and then by overcoming your dullness to suppress the whole band of your rising desires, and next by breaking the strong fetters and prison-house of this world, to devote your attention to your improvement in spiritual knowledge. (These steps are described very diffusely in the gloss for the practice of the devotee).
CHAPTER L.
Description of the Seven kinds of Living Beings.
Argument:—The septuple orders of living creatures, according to the degrees of the tenacity and laxity of their desires. (As mentioned in the preceding Chapter).
Vasishtha added:—These bodies of living beings, that are seen to fill the ten sides of this world; and consisting of the different tribes of men, Nágas, Suras, Gandharvas, mountaineers and others.
2. Of these some are sleeping wakers (waking sleepers), and others are waking in their imaginations only, and hence called imaginative wakers; some are only wakeful, while there be others who have been waking all along.
3. Many are found to be strictly wakeful, and many also as waking sleepers both by day and night; there be some animals that are slightly wakeful, and these constitute the seven classes of living beings (inhabiting this world).
4. Ráma said:—Tell me sir, the difference of the seven species of living beings for my satisfaction; which appear to me to be as different as the waters of the seven seas.
5. Vasishtha replied:—There have been some men in some former age and parts of the world, who are known to have been long sleepers with their living bodies. (Such were the seven sleepers of kehef mentioned in Sádi’s Gulistan).
6. The dream that they see, is the dream of the existence of the world; and those who dream this dream are living men, and denominated as waking sleepers or day dreamers.
7. Sometimes a sleeping man, sees a dream rising of itself before him, by reason of some prior action or desire of the same kind arising in the mind; such is the uncalled for appearance of anything or property unto us; and it is therefore that we are denominated as dreaming men. (The story of Lílá related before, will serve as an elucidation of this kind).