Food that is dedicated to the Lord and to guests tends to immortality; otherwise, the food is useless. So, too, food that is cooked for one's own sake is said to be one's death. He, too, among men, who eats by himself becomes wholly sinful in this world. And he, too, who eats daily without the prescribed consecration of the food to the fire of life, remains a mortal. (20)

He alone, in the world, is the giver who offers food to the famished mendicant that comes to his house. To such an one there is plenty of food for sacrifice, and he becomes one that has no enemy. He, on the other hand, who does not offer food even to the friend that has constantly served him with attachment for the sake of food, is not a

friend. From such a miser one should be anxious to turn away, as it were, out of disregard. (21)

The manifestation and the dissolution of the universe have, for their respective cause, the ignorance or the knowledge of the self, and are applicable to all beings from the creator (hiranya-garbha) downwards,--so do the Vedas declare. When the self is realised, the universe is sacrificed [**] into Brahman, and, when the self is not realised, this Brahman is again sacrificed [**] into the universe, in the same way as the (illusory) silver disappears into the mother-of-pearl and the real substance (the

mother-of-pearl) into the (illusory) silver owing Ito the non-recognition of each of them in turn. (22)

Then was not non-entity, that being absolutely non-existent like the sky-flower; nor was then any entity that could divide. But something then was, different from these two. Then was not the universe as it (now) exists in its phenomenal condition; and yet it already existed differently, as the (illusory) silver already exists in the mother-of-pearl. Nor was then the primordial (cosmic) substance (virat) sprung from ether. For, what is there, like unto the water produced by magic, that can veil the unconditioned self? [**] (23)

If there was no bondage in the shape of origin and dissolution, neither was there liberation; just as there is neither night nor day in the sun, for, it is only a limitation of vision. The One, motionless and unconditioned, then became, by its own power of illusion (maya), that which is known as the maker (kartri) [**]. And there was naught else than that. That alone, veiled by the unborn [*+], became the individual soul. (24)

In the beginning was darkness, [**] as an entity. Thus veiled by darkness, naught could then be seen, like the water that is contained-in milk. The birth of this universe, consisting of name and form, was by virtue of the will of the Creator desiring to create,--this will being induced by the actions (karma-bhih) of a continuous (anugata) universe constantly inspired by minds that are also continuous in a germinal form. (25)