15. O sage, that art acquainted with the sole unity, in the one uniform tenor of thy soul and mind, thou art thereby set above the reach of the miseries attending his frail life, as the pure crystal is clear of the shade and dross of all worldly things. CHAPTER XXXXI. VANITY OF WORLD AND WORLDLY THINGS. Argument.--Refutation of Received Doctrines. Vasishtha asked:--What is called the god Siva, and is meant by supreme Brahma; and what is the meaning of soul, and what is its difference from the supreme soul? 2. That the _tat sat_--_Id. est_ is the true entity, and all else is non entity; what is vacuum that is nothing, and what is philosophy that knows everything. Explain to me these differences, for thou lord! knowest them all. 3. The god replied:--There exist a _sat ens_, which is without beginning and end; and without any appearance, or reflexion of its own; and this entity appears as a non entity, owing to its imperceptibility by the senses. 4. Vasishtha rejoined--If this entity, lord! is not perceptible by the organs of sense, and unknowable by the understanding, how then, O Isána! is it to be known at all. 5. The god replied:--The man that desires his salvation, and yet sticks to his ignorance, is a sage by name only; and such men are subjected to greater ignorance, by the sástras they are guided by. 6. Let one ignorance removes another, as washerman cleanses one dirt by another. (_i.e._ Let the erroneous and mutually discordant theories of the sástras, refute the errors of one another). 7. When the error of ignorance, are removed by the opposition to each other; it is then that the soul appears of itself to view as a matter of course. 8. As a child daubs his fingers by rubbing one piece of coat against another (so is a man darkened the more by the tenets of contradictory sástras); but gets them cleansed by washing off his hands from both of them. 9. As they examine both sides of a question in a learned discussion, and the truth comes out from amidst them both, so the knowledge of the soul, appears from midst of the mist of ignorance. 10. When the soul perceives the soul, and scans it by itself; and as it comes to know it in itself, it is said to get rid of its ignorance, which is then said to be utterly destroyed. 11. The paths of learning and the lectures of a preceptor, are not the proper means to the knowledge of the soul, until one comes to know the unity of this thing by his own intuition. 12. All the preceptors of sástras, place the soul amidst the bodily senses; but Brahmá is situated beyond the senses, and is known after subjection of sensible organs. So the thing which is obtainable in absence of something, is never to be had in the presence of that thing (such is the antipathy of the soul and senses against one another).