56. Some are famed for their learning, and others as students of law and divinity; some are as princes and others their priests, while there are some as ignorant as blocks and stones.
57. Some are adepts in their exorcism of amulets and collyrium, and others skilled in their sorcery with the sword, rod and magic wand; some are practiced in their aerial journey, and others in other arts and some in nothing as the ignorant pariahs.
58. There are many that are employed in their ceremonial observances, and others that have abandoned their rituals altogether; some are as fanatics in their conduct, and others that indulge themselves in their peregrinations and vagrancy.
59. The soul (that you wanted to know), is not the body nor its senses or powers; it is neither the mind nor the mental faculties, nor the feelings and passions of the heart. The soul is the Intellect which is ever awake, and never sleeps nor dies.
60. It is never broken nor consumed, nor soiled nor dried up (by the death or burning of the body); it is immortal and omnipresent, ever steady and immovable, infinite and eternal.
61. The man who has his soul, thus awakened and enlightened in himself; is never contaminated by anything (pure or impure), in whatever state or wherever he may happen to remain.
62. Whether a man goes down to hell or ascends to heaven, or traverses through all the regions of air, or is crushed to death or pounded to dust; the immortal and undecaying Intellect which abides in him, never dies with his body, nor suffers any change with its change; but remains quite as quiet as the still air, which is the increate Deity itself.
CHAPTER CIII.
Proof of the Unity of the Deity Amidst the Variety
of Creation.
Argument:—The Unity, Eternity and tranquility of the Intellect, and the preference of this sástra to others.
Vasishtha continued:—The Intellect which is without its beginning and end, and is the ineffable light and its reflection, and shines for ever serenely bright, is never destroyed or extinguished in any wise.