are its flights of steps, and phlegm is its froth.  Gifts are its pearl-banks.  The lakes of blood are its corals.  Loud laughter constitutes its roars.  Diverse sciences are its impassability.  Tears are its brine.  Renunciation of company constitutes the high refuge (of those that seek to cross it).  Children and spouses are its unnumbered leeches.  Friends and kinsmen are the cities and towns on its shores.  Abstention from injury, and Truth, are its boundary line.  Death is its storm-wave.  The knowledge of Vedanta is its island (capable of affording refuge to those that are tossed upon its waters).  Acts of compassion towards all creatures constitute its life-buoys,[1588] and Emancipation is the priceless commodity offered to those voyaging on its waters in search of merchandise.  Like its substantive prototype with its equine head disgorging flames of fire, this ocean too has its fiery terrors.  Having transcended the liability, that is so difficult to transcend, of dwelling within the gross body, the Sankhyas enter into pure space.[1589] Surya then bears, with his rays, those righteous men that are practicers of the Sankhya doctrines.  Like the fibres of the lotus-stalk conveying water to the flower into which they all converge.  Surya, drinking all things from the universe, conveys them unto those good and wise men.[1590] There attachments all destroyed, possessed of energy, endued with wealth of penances, and crowned with success, these Yatis, O Bharata, are born by that wind which is subtile, cooling, fragrant, and delicious to the touch, O Bharata!  In fact, that wind which is the best of the seven winds, and which blows in regions of great felicity, conveys them, O son of Kunti, to that which is the highest end in space.[1591] Then space into which they are carried, O monarch, conveys them to the highest end of Rajas.[1592] Rajas then bear them to the highest end of Sattwa.  Sattwa then bears them, O thou of pure soul, to the Supreme and puissant Narayana.  The puissant and pure-souled Narayana at last, through himself, bears them to the Supreme Soul.  Having reached the Supreme Soul, those stainless persons who have (by that time) become the body of (what is called).  That attain to immortality, and they have never afterwards to return from that position.  O King!  That is the highest end, O son of Pritha, which is attained by those high-souled men who have transcended the influence of all pairs of opposites.’”

Yudhishthira said, ’O sinless one, have those persons of firm vows after they have attained to that excellent position which is fraught with puissance and felicity, any recollection of their lives including birth and death?  It behoveth thee to tell me properly what the truth is in respect, O thou of Kuru’s race.  I do not think it proper to question any one else than thee!  Observing the scriptures bearing upon Emancipation, I find this great fault in the subject (for certain scriptures on the topic declare that consciousness disappears in the emancipate state,