36. I remained quite silent and calm in my mind, in my posture of Padmásana (or yoga meditation); and then rose from my seat at the expiration of a hundred years, after my acquirement of spiritual knowledge.
37. I sat in unwavering meditation, and was absorbed in a fit of hypnotism; I remained as quiet as the calm stillness of the air, and as immovable as a statue carved in relief upon the face of the sky.
38. At last I found out in my mind, what it had been long searching after in earnest; and at last the breath of my expectation returned into my nostrils. (Parting breath of longing returns with the longed for object).
39. The seed of knowledge which I had sown in the field of my mind, came to sprout forth of itself from the midst of it, after the lapse of a whole century.
40. My life or living soul, is now awakened to its intuitive knowledge (of truth); as a tree left withered by the dewy season, becomes revivified by the moisture of the renovating spring.
41. The hundred years which I passed in my meditation here, glided away as quickly as a single moment before me; because a long period of time appears a very short space, to one who is intensively intent upon a single object. (Whereas the succession of thoughts be an unchanging duration of the same moment to him who is fixed in his mind).
42. Now my outward senses had their expansion, from their contracted state (in my meditative mind); just as the withered arbors expand themselves into flowers and foliage, by the enlivening influence of the vernal season.
43. Then the vital airs filled the organs of my body, and restored my consciousness of their sensations; soon after I was seized upon by the demon of my egoism, accompanied by its consort of desire; and these began to move to and fro, just as the strong winds shake the sturdy oaks.
CHAPTER LVII.
On the Knowledge of the Known and Unknown.
Argument:—Difference of Egoism in wise and in common people, and Disappearance of visibles.