SECTION CCXLVI

“Vyasa said, ’The Jiva-soul is endued with all those entities that are modifications of Prakriti.  These do not know the Soul but the Soul knows them all.  Like a good driver proceeding with the aid of strong, well-broken, and high-mettled steeds along the paths he selects, the Soul acts with the aid of these, called the senses, having the mind for their sixth.  The objects of the senses are superior to the senses themselves.  The mind is superior to those objects.  The understanding is superior to the mind.  The Soul, also called Mahat, is superior to the understanding.  Superior to Mahat is the Unmanifest (or Prakriti).  Superior to the Unmanifest is Brahma.  There is nothing Superior to Brahma.  That is the highest limit of excellence and the highest goal.  The Supreme Soul is concealed in every creature.  It is not displayed for ordinary men to behold.  Only Yogins with subtile vision behold the Supreme Soul with the aid of their keen and subtile understanding.  Merging the senses having the mind for their sixth and all the objects of the senses into the inner Soul by the aid of the Understanding, and reflecting upon the three states of consciousness, viz., the object thought, the act of thinking, and the thinker, and abstaining by contemplation from every kind of enjoyment, equipping his mind with the knowledge that he is Brahma’s self, laying aside at the same time all consciousness of puissance, and thereby making his soul perfectly tranquil, the Yogin obtains that to which immortality inheres.  That person, however, who happens to be the slave of all his senses and whose ideas of right and wrong have been confounded, already liable as he is to death, actually meets with death by such surrender of self to (the passions).[1036] Destroying all desires, one should merge the gross Understanding into one’s subtile Understanding.  Having thus merged the gross into the subtile Understanding, one is sure to become a second Kalanjara mountain.[1037] By purifying his heart, the Yogin transcends both righteousness and its reverse.  By purifying his heart and by living in his own true nature, he attains to the highest happiness.[1038] The indication of that purity of heart (of which I speak) is that one who has attained to experiences that state of unconsciousness (with respect of all one’s surroundings) which one experiences in dreamless slumber.  The Yogin who has attained to that state lives like the steady flame of a lamp that burns in a place where the atmosphere is perfectly still.  Becoming abstemious in diet, and having cleansed his heart, that Yogin who applies his Soul to the Soul succeeds in beholding the Soul in the Soul.[1039] This discourse, O son, intended for thy instruction, is the essence of all the Vedas.  The truths herein disclosed are incapable of being understood by the aid of inference alone or by that of mere study of the scriptures.  One must understand