58. It is by association with good people that we can gain wisdom, which resembles a tree yielding the fruits both of enjoyment and liberation (_i.e._, both of worldly and future good). 59. There are four guards said to keep watch at the gate of Liberation, namely: peace, judgment, contentment and the society of the good. 60. All these or three or two of them are to be attended with care, because they shall open to you the door leading to the abode of liberation. 61. Or at last one of them is to be resorted to with diligence and even at the expense of one’s life; because by securing one of these a man can reconcile and gain all the four (to his favour). 62. The wise man is the receptacle of all _Sástras_ and _Srutis_, of all knowledge and austerity, and is a gem on earth, as the sun is the receptacle of light (and gem of heaven). 63. The dull understanding of the senseless man becomes as stiff as a (motionless) block, and like the frozen water becoming as hard as stone. 64. Your good nature and good qualities, O Ráma! and the counsels of the learned in the _Sástras_, have made you sit here with a heart blooming like lotus at the rising sun. 65. Your lifted ears to hear these wise lectures, have enabled you to repress your thoughts; as the music of the lute attracts the mind of the deer. 66. Now secure, O Ráma! the treasures of peace and good nature by your practice of indifference of which there is no decay. 67. Your knowledge of the attainment of liberation will be increased by your attending to the Sástras and the society of good men, as also by your practice of austerity and self subjection. 68. You must know that, it is the study of divine knowledge with a clear understanding, that is a sure remedy against ignorance. 69. Know this world to be a poisonous plant and seat of dangers. It infects the ignorant at all times, unless one will take the pains to dispel his darkness. 70. Avarice accompanied by ignorance moves within the heart in a serpentine course, and expands and contracts it by turns like the bellows of a blacksmith. 71. The true light of things dawns only in the minds of the wise, as the gentle moon appears to sight only in the clear and cloudless sky. 72. He is truly called a man who can judge (the truth) by the major and minor propositions, whose mind is expanded and fraught with brilliant ingenuity. 73. Ráma! the clear wisdom of your mind, makes you shine as the full moon dispelling the darkness of the cloudless sky by her cooling and translucent beams. CHAPTER XII. GREATNESS OF TRUE KNOWLEDGE. Vasishtha said:— Ráma! I honor you as one of a perfect mind. You know what to ask, and understand what is spoken to you. I will therefore go on speaking respectfully to you. 2. Be still to attend to knowledge by keeping your mind fixed in yourself, and being freed from pride and passions, incline yourself to pure truth.