39. The world is a stage presenting many acts and scenes; and they only play their parts well, who are excited neither by its passions and feelings. 40. Those that are indifferent in their views, have their quietude amidst all the occurrences of life; and those that have known the True One, remain only to witness the course of nature. 41. The knowers of God do their acts, without thinking themselves their actors; just as the lamps of night witness the objects around, without their consciousness of the same. 42. The wise witness the objects as they are reflected in the mirror of their minds, just as the looking glass and gems receive the images of things. 43. Now my boy, rub out all thy wishes and the vestiges of thy remembrance from thy mind, and view the image of the serene spirit of God in thy inmost soul. Learn to live like the great sages with the sight of thy spiritual light, and by effacing all false impressions from thy mind. CHAPTER XXI. REPRESSION OF DESIRES BY MEANS OF YOGA-MEDITATION. Argument. Desires are the shackles of the soul, and release from them leading to its liberation. Vasishtha continued:—Pávana being admonished by Punya in the said manner, became as enlightened in his intellect, as the landscape at the dawn of day. 2. They continued henceforward to abide in that forest, with the perfection of their spiritual knowledge, and they wandered about in the woods to their hearts content. 3. After a long time they had both their extinction, and rested in their disembodied state of _nirvána_; as the oilless lamp wastes away of itself. 4. Thus is the end of the great boast of men, of having large trains and numberless friends in their embodied states of lifetime, of which alas! they carry nothing with them to their afterlife, nor leave anything behind, which they can properly call as theirs. 5. The best means of our release from the multifarious objects of our desire, is the utter suppression of our appetites, rather than the fostering of them. 6. It is the hankering after objects, that augment our appetite, as our thinking on something increases our thoughts about it. Just so as the fire is emblazoned by supply of the fuel, and extinguished by its want. 7. Now rise O Ráma! and remain aloft as in thy aerial car, by getting loose of your worldly desires; and looking pitifully on the miseries of grovelling mortals from above. 8. This is the divine state known as the position of Brahma, which looks from above with unconcerned serenity upon all. By gaining this state, the ignorant also are freed from misery. 9. One walking with reason as his companion, and having his good understanding for his consort, is not liable to fall into the dangerous trap-doors, which lie hid in his way through life. 10. Being bereft of all properties, and destitute of friends, one has no other help to lift him up in his adversity, beside his own patience and reliance in God.