Bhusunda continued:--All things being thus unstable, unprofitable and unpleasant to man, there is one reality only in the view of the wise, which is beyond all error and imperishable, and which though present in all things and all places, transcends the knowledge of all. 2. This essence is the soul or self, and its meditation is the remover of all sorrow and affliction. It is also the destroyer of the erroneous vision of the world, which has passed every man, and biased his understanding by his long habit of thinking this phantom of his dream as a sober reality. 3. Spiritual contemplation dawns in the clear atmosphere of the unpolluted mind, and traverses amidst its whole area like the solar light, and it destroys the darkness of all sorrows and erroneous thought which over spreads it. 4. Divine meditation being unaccompanied by any desire or selfish view, penetrates like the moon-beams through the darkness of the night of ignorance. 5. This spiritual light is easily obtainable by Sages like you, and too difficult to be retained (dháraná) by brutes like ourselves. Because it is beyond all imaginable resemblance, and is known by the ravished Sages as the transcendent light. 6. How can a man of common understanding come to the knowledge of that thing, which is an associate to the clear understanding of the meditative Sage only. 7. There is a little resemblance of this spiritual light, with the intellectual light of philosophers, whose minds are enlightened by the cooling moon-beams of philosophy, as those of the inspired saints are illumed with spiritual light. 8. Among the associates of spiritual knowledge, there is one particularly friendly to me, which alleviates all my sorrows, and advances my prosperity, and this relates to the investigation of the vital breath which is the cause of life. 9. Vasishtha said: After speaking in this manner the Sagely bird Bhusunda held his silence, when I calmly joined my rejoinder, and adduced my question to him by way of amusement, though I was full well acquainted with the subject. 10. I addressed him saying, O thou long living bird, and remover of all my doubts, tell me truly, my good friend, what you mean by meditation of the vital breath (which you say to be the cause of vitality). 11. Bhusunda replied: You sir, who are learned in the knowledge of Vedánta, and sure remover of all doubts in spiritual science, are now by way of joke only, putting this question to me who am but a brute bird and an ignorant crow. 12. Or it may be to sound my shallow knowledge of the subject, and to instruct me the rest in which I am imperfect, that you like to have my answer to the question, wherein I can lay no objection (as no body is unprepared to know more and better of a subject). 13. Hear me, tell you some thing relating to cogitation of vital breath, which has the cause of Bhusunda's longevity and the giver of Bhusunda's spiritual knowledge.