69. The cognition and nescience of the world, are the causes of the bondage and liberation of the soul, and these again are productive of the transmigration and final emancipation of the animal spirit. It is by your indifference to them that you can avoid them both, do therefore as you may best choose for yourself. (Here are three things offered to view, namely, the desire of heaven and liberation, and the absence of all desires. [Sanskrit: svargakáma mokshakámau nishkámashchatra yah]). 70. What is lost at its disappearance (as our friends and properties), is neither worth seeking or searching after, nor sorrowing for when it is lost and gone from us. That which is gained of itself in our calm and quiet without any anxiety or assiduity on our part, is truly reckoned to be our best gain. (so says the Moha-Mudgura:--Be content with what offers of itself to thee. [Sanskrit: yatvabhase nijakarnmípáttam| bittam tena vinodaya chittam|]). 71. That which is no more than our knowledge of it (as the object of our senses and the objective world), is no right knowledge but mere fallacy; the true knowledge is that of the subjective consciousness, which is always to be attended to. 72. As the wave is the agitation of the water, so is this creation but an oscillation of the divine intellect; and this is the only difference between them, that the one is the production of the elements in nature, and the other is that of the divine will. 73. Again the undulation of waves occurs, in conjunction with the existing elements at certain spots and times; but the production of the world is wholly without the junction of the elemental bodies, which were not in existence at its creation. (It means to say, that the world is only an ideal formation of the divine mind). 74. The shining worlds shine with the light of the divine intellect, in which they are situated as the thoughts in its consciousness. It transcends the power of speech to define what it is, and yet it is expressed in the veda in the words that, "It is the supreme soul and perfect felicity" (Siva Parátmá). 75. Thus the world is the form of its consciousness in the divine intellect, and they are not different from one another, as words are never separable from their senses. It is said that the world is the undulation of the Divine spirit, and none but the ignorant inveigh against, by saying that the wave and water are two different things. (Kálidása in the commencement of Raghuvansa, uses the same simile of words and their meanings, to denote the intimate union of Párvatí and Siva, which is done to express the inseparability of the world with its maker; corresponding with the well known line of Pope: "whose body nature is, and God the soul"). CHAPTER LXIV. ON THE ATTAINMENT OF ATTENDANTSHIP ON THE GOD RUDRA. Argument:--The remainder of the former story; and the manner of becoming the attendant Rudras on Siva.