incessantly and illimitably desired, the sphere of the Supreme Spirit (Vaikuṇṭha) is attained. Thus Yámuna says: Attainable by the final and absolute devotion of faith in one internally purified by both (works and knowledge); that is, in one whose internal organ is rectified by the devotion of works and knowledge. In anticipation of the inquiry, But what absolute is to be desired to be known? the definition is given (in the second aphorism). From which the genesis, and so forth, of this. The genesis, and so forth, the creation (emanation), sustentation, and retractation (of the universe). The purport of the aphorism is that the emanation, sustentation, and retractation of this universe, inconceivably multiform in its structure, and interspersed with souls, from Brahmá to a tuft of grass, of determinate place, time, and fruition, is from this same universal Lord, whose essence is contrary to all qualities which should be escaped from, of illimitable excellences, such as indefeasible volition, and of innumerable auspicious attributes, omniscient, and omnipotent. In anticipation of the further inquiry, What proof is there of an absolute of this nature? It is stated that the system of institutes itself is the evidence (in the third aphorism): Because it has its source from the system. To have its source from the system is to be that whereof the cause or evidence is the system. The system, then, is the source (or evidence) of the absolute, as being the cause of knowing the self, which is the cause of knowing the absolute. Nor is the suspicion possible that the absolute may be reached by some other form of evidence. For perception can have no conversancy about the absolute since it is supersensible. Nor can inference, for the illation, the ocean, and the rest, must have a maker, because it is an effect like a water-pot, is worth about as much as a rotten pumpkin. It is evinced that it is such texts as, Whence also these elements, that prove the existence of the absolute thus described.