48. So you too are liberated for life, for your having an unpassionate and unprejudiced mind, and may manage to conduct yourself with your tolerant spirit, like the patient earth, stone and moveless metals. 49. There are two kinds of liberation for living beings, viz.: one in their present life and body, and the other after separation of life from the body, both of which admit of some varieties as you will bear afterwards. 50. First of all the peace of mind, from its unconcernedness with everything is termed its liberation; and it is possible to be had by the sinless man either in this life or in the next. 51. Lessening of affections is fraught with the bliss of solity (Kaivalya), and it is possible to become impassible both in the embodied as will as disembodied states of life. 52. He who lives in perfect apathy and without his affection for any body, is called the living liberated man; but the life which is bound by its affections is said to be in bondage, or else it is free as air. 53. It is possible to obtain liberation, by means of diligent inquiry and reasoning; or else it is as difficult to come to it, as it is hard for a lame man to leap over a hole, though as small as the footmark of a cow-_goshpada_. 54. For know, O Ráma of great soul, that the soul should not be cast into misery by your neglect of it, or by subjecting it through ignorance to its affection for others. (_i.e._ Be master of yourself and not bound to others). 55. He who relies on his patience, and employs his mind, and cogitates upon the supreme soul in his own soul, for the attainment of his consummation; finds the deep abyss of the world, as a small chink in his vast comprehension. 56. The high station to which Buddha had attained by his patience, and from which the Arhata prince fell to scepticism by his impatience; and that _summum bonum_ which is reached at by great minds, is the fruit of the tree of diligent inquiry, which like the Kalpa arbor, yields all what is desired of it. CHAPTER LXXVI. THE WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OCEAN. Argument. The world likened to the ocean, and the women to its waves. The means of passing over it, and the delight when it is got over. Vasishtha continued:—These worlds which have sprung from Brahmá the creator, are upheld by ignorance, and become extinct before right reason. (_i.e._ Their materiality melts away before the light of true philosophy). 2. The worlds are vortices of water, and whirlpools in the ocean of Brahmá. They are as numerous as the particles of light, and as innumerable as the motes that fly in the sunbeams. 3. It is the imperfect knowledge of the world that is the cause of its existence (or makes it appear as an entity); but full knowledge of it makes it vanish into nothing. (These are the two opposite systems of materialism and immaterialism).