12. [Dreamless] sleep is a halting of [finite] understanding, dreaming and waking are the rise thereof; how can these three exist in me, who am the Witness of them and infinite of knowledge?

13. I am the one who knows the beings of sixfold change, and myself changeless; were it not so, I should be altogether incapable of observing their changes.

14. For a changing thing goes again and again through birth and dissolution in this and that form; how can it be an observer of these [changes]?

15. Nor can any one behold his own birth and destruction; for these are [respectively] the last and first moments of antecedent and subsequent non-being.

16. How can the not-Light touch the Self which is Light itself, and by whose light alone are caused the words, "I give not light"?

17. Nevertheless there is apparent in the sky

of Thought a certain mist which subsists on the lack of reflection and ends with the rise of the sun of reflection.

18. In this long-drawn dream of which our world is made, and which arises from the great slumber of Self-ignorance, there appear Heaven, Salvation, and the other phantoms.

19. This distinction between unconscious and conscious being is imaginarily imposed on me, the conscious being, like the distinction between moving and motionless figures in a picture on a level wall.

20. Even my Witnesshood is unreal, is but a colouring reflected from the objects of thought; it merely suggests the billowless ocean of Thought.

21. I, the ocean of ambrosia, decay not because phantom bubbles arise; I, the mountain of crystal, am not flushed by the play of dream-fashioned evening clouds.

22. Being is my very essence, not a property, like ether's being; for as there is no Being save me, no class-concept [of Being] can be allowed.

23. Knowledge is my very essence, not a quality; if it were a quality, [Soul] would be if intelligible not-Self, and if unintelligible non-being.

24. Bliss am I, which is naught else [but me]; were it aught else, it would not be bliss; for if not subordinate to me, it would not be agreeable, and if subordinate, it could not be of itself agreeable.

25. No real thing forsooth can ever be of diverse essences; thus I am without inward distinction, void of the differences arising from the world.

26. By the words "That art thou" is indicated a Power of single essence, pure by the absence of the variety [consisting in] the transcendence [of

the Supreme] and the distinction [of individual souls].

27. I am the Power self-authoritative and absolute, in which are stilled the phantom figures of the world and separate souls, of disciples and masters.

28. May this "Nectar of Monism" of the poet Lakshmidhara, gathered from the autumnal lotuses of poesy, be drunk by the scholar-bees.

Footnotes

^101:1 See above, section 4.