40. Every man, O Ráma, speaks of himself as he is (or thinks himself to be); but I am only my conscious self, which is unspeakable in its nature, and appertains to the unbespeakable one. 41. How can that thing admit the application of a definite term to give it expression, which is inexpressible by words (and beyond our conception); I cannot therefore express the inexpressible by words. I have already said, all are but fictitious signs: (representative of our certain ideas). 42. Ráma rejoined:—You sir, that disregard every thing that is expressed by words, and regard these as imperfect and defective symbols of their originals; must tell me now, what you mean by your “privation of representation” and what you are yourself.[1] 43. Vasishtha replied:—It being so (that there no determinate person expressed by the word egoism); hear me to tell you now, O Ráma, that art the best among the enquirers of truth, what thou art and what am I in truth, and what is world in reality. 44. This Ego, my boy, is the empty intellect and imperishable in its nature; it is neither conceivable nor knowable, and is beyond all imagination. 45. I am the clear air of the intellect, and so art thou the empty sky also; the whole world is an entire vacuity, and there is nothing else except an everlasting and infinite vacuum (beom) every where. 46. The soul is identic with pure knowledge, it is free from sensational knowledge, and beyond the conscious knowledge of others. I cannot call it anything otherwise than the self or soul. 47. Yet it is the fashion of disputants in order to maintain their own ground, or for the salvation of their pupils to multiply the egoism of the one soul, and to distribute it into a thousand branches. 48. When a living soul remains calm and quiet notwithstanding the management of its worldly affairs; and is as motionless as a living carcass, it is said to have attained its perfect state. 49. This state of perfection consists in refraining from external exercise and devotion, and persistence in continual meditation; feeling no sensation of pain or pleasure, and being unconscious of one’s self-existence, and the co-existence of all others besides. 50. Freedom from egoism and the consciousness of all other existence, brings on the idea of a total inexistence and emptiness, which is altogether beyond thought and meditation. (For none can think of a nothing). All attempt to grasp a nullity, is as vain as a blind man’s desire to see a picture. 51. The posture of sitting unmoved as a stone, at the shocks and turn backs (or drakes and ducks) of fortune; is verily the state of _nirvána_ or deathless coma of a sensible being. (The figures of saints are as unmoved as statues). 52. This state of saintly anaesthesia is not marked by others, nor perceived by the saint himself; because the knowing sage shuns the society of men in disgust, and is enlightened with his spiritual knowledge within himself.