35. It is proper also for intelligent persons, to be in diligent search after the passionless and unselfish men wherever they may be found; and particularly to find out and reverence such of them, as are possessed with the knowledge of the soul, and are kindly disposed to impart their spiritual knowledge to others. 36. The acquisition of such a holy sage, takes away one half of one’s temporal and spiritual ignorance; by setting him on the first and best step of divine knowledge. (The subsequent stages of yoga, are based upon the initiatory step or stage). 37. Thus half of one’s spiritual gloom being dispelled by association with the holy; the remaining two fourths are removed, by religious learning and one’s own faith and devotion. 38. Whenever any desire of any enjoyment whatever, is carefully suppressed in one’s self by his own endeavour; it is called his self-exertion, which destroys one fourth of spiritual ignorance. 39. So it is the society of the holy, the study of Sástras and one’s own exertion, which tend to take away one’s sins, and it is done by each of these singly or all of these conjointly, either by degrees or at once and at the same time. 40. Whatever there remains either as something or nothing at all, upon the total extinction of ignorance, the same is said to be the transcendent and nameless or unspeakable something or nothing (owing to its being beyond all conception). 41. This is verily the real Brahma, the undestroyed, infinite and eternal one; and which being but a manifestation of the unsubstantial will, is understood as an inexistent blank likewise. By knowing the measureless, immeasurable and unerring being, do you rely in your own nihility of nirvána, and be free from all fear and sorrow. (He who thinks himself as nothing, has no care or fear for anything). CHAPTER XIII. ANECDOTE OF INDRA, AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE ATOMIC WORLD. Argument:—The acts of Delusion, and Deception of senses, and Indra’s Vision of the World in an Atom. Bhusunda Said:—The universe which contains the totality of existence, and appears as a wide extended sphere; is not in need of any pre-existent place or time as recipients of its substance just as the etherial light (of the twilight), requires no prop or pillar in the heavens for its support. (The simultaneity of the seeming containers—time and space, and their apparent contents—the wide world and the broad light, disproves the priority of the receptacles with regard to their occupants, as it is commonly understood to be. So the verse:—Here there is no container or contained, nothing first or last; But all is one that fills and contains this all. Gloss).