35. Whenever a good speaker wishes to deliver an eloquent speech, whether it be a long or short one, or relate to some abstruse or spiritual subject (he must satisfy himself first).

36. The ego being the counterpart or privation of all representation, is inexpressible by representative sounds and words; and being beyond the predicaments of number and other categories, is not predicable by any of them or other fiction of fancy. It is the totality of all, as light is composed of innumerable particles of ray.

37. It is not right, O Ráma, that one who has known the truth (the gnostic), should give an imperfect or defective answer to a question (proposed to him). But what can he do, when no language is perfect or free from defect, as you know it well.

38. It is right, O Ráma, that I who know the truth, should declare it as it is to my pupils; and the knower of abstract truth is known to remain as mute as a block of wood, and the soundness of whose mind is hard to sound. (So says the Persian mystic:—He who has known the unknowable, has become unknown to himself and others).

39. It is want of self-cogitation that causes one to speak, (i.e. unsoundness of thought sounds in high sounding words); but they hold their silence who know the Supreme excellence; and this is the best answer that is given thy inquiry into this truth.

40. Every man, O Ráma, speaks of himself as he is (or thinks himself to be); but I am only my conscious self, which is unspeakable in its nature, and appertains to the unbespeakable one.

41. How can that thing admit the application of a definite term to give it expression, which is inexpressible by words (and beyond our conception); I cannot therefore express the inexpressible by words. I have already said, all are but fictitious signs: (representative of our certain ideas).

42. Ráma rejoined:—You sir, that disregard every thing that is expressed by words, and regard these as imperfect and defective symbols of their originals; must tell me now, what you mean by your “privation of representation” and what you are yourself.[[1]]

43. Vasishtha replied:—It being so (that there no determinate person expressed by the word egoism); hear me to tell you now, O Ráma, that art the best among the enquirers of truth, what thou art and what am I in truth, and what is world in reality.

44. This Ego, my boy, is the empty intellect and imperishable in its nature; it is neither conceivable nor knowable, and is beyond all imagination.