59. The word divine essence, means the mind devoid of its ignorance; and which like a fried seed is unable to reproduce the arbor of the world, and has no interruption in its meditation of God. 60. The mind that is devoid of ignorance, and freed from its desires, and is settled in its pure essence; comes to see in an instant, a full blaze of light filling the sphere of the firmament in which it rests and which absorbs it quite. 61. The mind is said to be its pure essence, which is insensible of itself, and settled in the supreme soul; it never relapses into the foulness of its nature, as the copper which is mixed with gold, never becomes dirty again. CHAPTER LXX. INTERROGATORIES OF VETÁLA. Arguments:--Conversation of a prince and a Vetála, and Dissipation of Error and manifestation of truth. Vasishtha resumed:--Life becomes no life (becomes immortal), and the mind turns to no mind, immerges in the soul; no sooner is the cloud of ignorance dispersed by the bright sun beams of right reason. This is the state which is termed _moksha_ or liberation (from error) by the wise. 2. The mind and its egoism and tuism (subjectivity and objectivity), appear as water in the mirage, but all these unrealities vanish away, no sooner we come to our right reason; 3. Attend now to the queries of a vetála, which I come to remember at present, concerning our erroneous and dreaming conception of the phenomenal world, and which will serve to example by the subject of our last lecture. 4. There lived a gigantic vetála in the vast wilderness of the Vindhya mountains, who happened to come out on an excursion to the adjoining districts in search of his prey of human beings. 5. He used to live before in the neighbourhood of a populous city, where he lived quite happy and well satisfied with the victims; which were daily offered to him by the good citizens. 6. He never killed a human being without some cause or harm, although he roved through the city, pinched by hunger and thirst. He walked in the ways of the honest and equitable men in the place. 7. It came to pass in course of time that he went out of the city, to reside in his woody retreat; where he never killed any man, except when pressed by excessive hunger, and when he thought it was equitable for him to do so. 8. He happened to meet there once a ruler of the land, strolling about in his nightly round; to whom he cried out in a loud and appalling voice. 9. The vetála exclaimed:--Where goest thou, O prince, said he, thou art now caught in the clutches of a hideous monster, thou art now a dead man, and hast become my ration of this day. 10. The ruler replied:--Beware, O nocturnal fiend! that I will break thy skull into a thousand pieces, if you will unjustly attempt to kill me by force at this spot, and make thy ration of me.