(29) He who has a mind to understand, let him understand.

(14) 'They perceive that highest indescribable pleasure, saying, This is that. How then can I understand it? Has it its own light, or does it reflect light?'

(101) Here observe the sense and meaning; if thou apprehendest it, then thou understandest the Deity aright, if not, then thou art yet blind in the spirit.

(333) You cannot receive understanding unless you know first that you possess . In everything there is again this sentence.

(9) 'That doctrine is not to be obtained by argument, but when it is declared by another, then, O dearest, it is easy to understand. Thou hast obtained it now; thou art truly a man of true resolve. May we have always an inquirer like thee!'

(3) [And] I reply: I long to learn the things that are, and comprehend their nature, and know God. This is, I said, what I desire to hear. He answered back to me: Hold in thy mind all thou wouldst know, and I will teach thee.

(10) These things should seem to thee, Asclepius, if thou dost understand them, true; but if thou dost not understand, things not to be believed. To understand is to believe, to not believe is not to understand. My word (logos) doth go before [thee] to the truth. But mighty is the mind, and when it hath been led by word up to a certain point, it hath the power to come before [thee] to the truth. And having thought o'er all these things, and found them consonant with those which have already been translated by the reason, it hath [e'en now] believed, and found its rest in that Fair Faith. To those, then, who by God['s good aid] do understand the things that have been said [by us] above, they're credible; but unto those who understand them not, incredible. Let so much, then, suffice on thought-and-sense.

(43) And understand by this that he who is in darkness will not be able to see anything unless he receives the light and recovers (his) sight by means of it. Examine yourself (to see) whether you wholly have the light, so that, if you ask about these things, you may understand how you will escape. For many are seeking in darkness, and they grope about, wishing to understand, since there is no light for them.

(6) Here is required most inward sense or perception to understand this; for the place where the light is generated in the heart alone comprehendeth it, the outward man does not comprehend it at all.

(1) The Hoopoe continued: 'After the valley of which I have spoken, there comes another - The Valley of Understanding, which has neither beginning nor end. No way is equal to this way, and the distance to be travelled to cross it is beyond reckoning.

'Understanding, for each traveller, is enduring; but knowledge is temporary. The soul, like the body, is in a state of progress or decline; and the Spiritual Way reveals itself only in the degree to which the traveller has overcome his faults and weaknesses, his sleep and his inertia, and each will approach nearer to his aim according to his effort. Even if a gnat were to fly with all its might could it equal the speed of the wind? There are different ways of crossing this Valley, and all birds do not fly alike. Understanding can be arrived at variously - some have found the Mihrab, others the idol. When the sun of understanding brightens this road each receives light according to his merit and he finds the degree assigned to him in the understanding of truth. When the mystery of the essence of beings reveals itself clearly to him

the furnace of this world becomes a garden of flowers. He who is striving will be able to see the almond in its hard shell. He will no longer be pre-occupied with himself, but will look up at the face of his friend. In each atom he will see the whole; he will ponder over thousands of bright secrets.

' But, how many have lost their way in this search for one who has found the mysteries! It is necessary to have a deep and lasting wish to become as we ought to be in order to cross this difficult valley. Once you have tasted the secrets you will have a real wish to understand them. But, whatever you may attain, never forget the words of the Koran, "Is there anything more?"

'As for you who are asleep I cannot commend you for this), why not put on mourning? You, who have not seen the beauty of your friend, get up and search! How long will you stay as you are, like a donkey without a halter! '

(3) Sense sees a man and transmits the impression to the understanding. What does the understanding say? It has nothing to say as yet; it accepts and waits; unless, rather, it questions within itself "Who is this?"- someone it has met before- and then, drawing on memory, says, "Socrates."

If it should go on to develop the impression received, it distinguishes various elements in what the representative faculty has set before it; supposing it to say "Socrates, if the man is good," then, while it has spoken upon information from the senses, its total pronouncement is its own; it contains within itself a standard of good.

But how does it thus contain the good within itself?

It is, itself, of the nature of the good and it has been strengthened still towards the perception of all that is good by the irradiation of the Intellectual-Principle upon it; for this pure phase of the soul welcomes to itself the images implanted from its prior.

But why may we not distinguish this understanding phase as Intellectual-Principle and take soul to consist of the later phases from the sensitive downwards?

Because all the activities mentioned are within the scope of a reasoning faculty, and reasoning is characteristically the function of soul.

Why not, however, absolve the question by assigning self-cognisance to this phase?

Because we have allotted to soul the function of dealing- in thought and in multiform action- with the external, and we hold that observation of self and of the content of self must belong to Intellectual-Principle.

If any one says, "Still; what precludes the reasoning soul from observing its own content by some special faculty?" he is no longer posting a principle of understanding or of reasoning but, simply, bringing in the Intellectual-Principle unalloyed.

But what precludes the Intellectual-Principle from being present, unalloyed, within the soul? Nothing, we admit; but are we entitled therefore to think of it as a phase of soul?

We cannot describe it as belonging to the soul though we do describe it as our Intellectual-Principle, something distinct from the understanding, advanced above it, and yet ours even though we cannot include it among soul-phases: it is ours and not ours; and therefore we use it sometimes and sometimes not, whereas we always have use of the understanding; the Intellectual-Principle is ours when we act by it, not ours when we neglect it.

But what is this acting by it? Does it mean that we become the Intellectual-Principle so that our utterance is the utterance of the Intellectual-Principle, or that we represent it?

We are not the Intellectual-Principle; we represent it in virtue of that highest reasoning faculty which draws upon it.

Still; we perceive by means of the perceptive faculty and are, ourselves, the percipients: may we not say the same of the intellective act?

No: our reasoning is our own; we ourselves think the thoughts that occupy the understanding- for this is actually the We- but the operation of the Intellectual-Principle enters from above us as that of the sensitive faculty from below; the We is the soul at its highest, the mid-point between two powers, between the sensitive principle, inferior to us, and the intellectual principle superior. We think of the perceptive act as integral to ourselves because our sense-perception is uninterrupted; we hesitate as to the Intellectual-Principle both because we are not always occupied with it and because it exists apart, not a principle inclining to us but one to which we incline when we choose to look upwards.

The sensitive principle is our scout; the Intellectual-Principle our King.

(2) For where there is a duality (dvaita), as it were (iva\ there one sees another; there one smells another; there one hears another; there one speaks to another; there one thinks of another; there one understands another. Where, verily, everything has become just one's own self, then whereby and whom would one smell? then whereby and whom would one see? then whereby and whom would one hear? then whereby and to whom would one speak? then whereby and on whom would one think? then whereby and forth whom would one understand? Whereby would one under- stand him by whom one understands this All? Lo, whereby would one understand the understander? '

(166) It is not proper to understand that Intelligible One with vehemence, but with the extended flame of far reaching Mind, measuring all things except that Intelligible. But it is requisite to understand this; for if thou inclinest thy Mind thou wilt understand it, not earnestly; but it is becoming to bring with thee a pure and enquiring sense, to extend the void mind of thy Soul to the Intelligible, that thou mayest learn the Intelligible, because it subsisteth beyond Mind.

(2) But if perception does not go by impression, what is the process?

The mind affirms something not contained within it: this is precisely the characteristic of a power- not to accept impression but, within its allotted sphere, to act.

Besides, the very condition of the mind being able to exercise discrimination upon what it is to see and hear is not, of course, that these objects be equally impressions made upon it; on the contrary, there must be no impressions, nothing to which the mind is passive; there can be only acts of that in which the objects become known.

Our tendency is to think of any of the faculties as unable to know its appropriate object by its own uncompelled act; to us it seems to submit to its environment rather than simply to perceive it, though in reality it is the master, not the victim.

As with sight, so with hearing. It is the air which takes the impression, a kind of articulated stroke which may be compared to letters traced upon it by the object causing the sound; but it belongs to the faculty, and the soul-essence, to read the imprints thus appearing before it, as they reach the point at which they become matter of its knowledge.

In taste and smell also we distinguish between the impressions received and the sensations and judgements; these last are mental acts, and belong to an order apart from the experiences upon which they are exercised.

The knowing of the things belonging to the Intellectual is not in any such degree attended by impact or impression: they come forward, on the contrary, as from within, unlike the sense-objects known as from without: they have more emphatically the character of acts; they are acts in the stricter sense, for their origin is in the soul, and every concept of this Intellectual order is the soul about its Act.

Whether, in this self-vision, the soul is a duality and views itself as from the outside- while seeing the Intellectual-Principal as a unity, and itself with the Intellectual-Principle as a unity- this question is investigated elsewhere.

(4) But it belongs to him who has sought, to find; and to him to seek, who thinks previously that he does not know. Hence drawn by desire to the discovery of what is good, he seeks thoughtfully, without love of strife or glory, asking, answering, and besides considering the statements made. For it is incumbent, in applying ourselves not only to the divine Scriptures, but also to common notions, to institute investigations, the discovery ceasing at some useful end.

(3) The mind, verily, is an apprehender. It is seized by desire as an over-apprehender, for by the mind one desires desires.

(24) The next question is whether perception is concerned only with need.

The soul, isolated, has no sense-perception; sensations go with the body; sensation itself therefore must occur by means of the body to which the sensations are due; it must be something brought about by association with the body.

Thus either sensation occurs in a soul compelled to follow upon bodily states- since every graver bodily experience reaches at last to soul- or sensation is a device by which a cause is dealt with before it becomes so great as actually to injure us or even before it has begun to make contact.

At this, sense-impressions would aim at utility. They may serve also to knowledge, but that could be service only to some being not living in knowledge but stupefied as the result of a disaster, and the victim of a Lethe calling for constant reminding: they would be useless to any being free from either need or forgetfulness. This This reflection enlarges the enquiry: it is no longer a question of earth alone, but of the whole star-system, all the heavens, the kosmos entire. For it would follow that, in the sphere of things not exempt from modification, sense-perception would occur in every part having relation to any other part: in a whole, however- having relation only to itself, immune, universally self-directed and self-possessing- what perception could there be?

Granted that the percipient must act through an organ and that this organ must be different from the object perceived, then the universe, as an All, can have no organ distinct from object: it can have self-awareness, as we have; but sense-perception, the constant attendant of another order, it cannot have.

Our own apprehension of any bodily condition apart from the normal is the sense of something intruding from without: but besides this, we have the apprehension of one member by another; why then should not the All, by means of what is stationary in it, perceive that region of itself which is in movement, that is to say the earth and the earth's content?

Things of earth are certainly affected by what passes in other regions of the All; what, then, need prevent the All from having, in some appropriate way, the perception of those changes? In addition to that self-contemplating vision vested in its stationary part, may it not have a seeing power like that of an eye able to announce to the All-Soul what has passed before it? Even granted that it is entirely unaffected by its lower, why, still, should it not see like an eye, ensouled as it is, all lightsome?

Still: "eyes were not necessary to it," we read. If this meant simply that nothing is left to be seen outside of the All, still there is the inner content, and there can be nothing to prevent it seeing what constitutes itself: if the meaning is that such self-vision could serve to no use, we may think that it has vision not as a main intention for vision's sake but as a necessary concomitant of its characteristic nature; it is difficult to conceive why such a body should be incapable of seeing.

(8) 'But he who has understanding, who is mindful and always pure, reaches indeed that place, from whence he is not born again.'

(4) For where there is a duality, as it were, there one sees another; there one smells another; there one tastes another; there one speaks to another; there one hears another; theie one thinks of another; there one touches another; there one understands another. But where everything has become just one's own self, then whereby and whom would one see? then whereby and whom would one smell? then whereby and whom would one taste? then whereby and to whom would one speak? then whereby and whom would one hear? then whereby and of whom would one think? then whereby and whom would one touch? then whereby and whom would one understand? whereby would one understand him by means of whom one understands this All? That Soul (Atman) is not this, it is not that (neti, neti). It is unseizable, for it can not be seized; indestructible, for it can not be destroyed; unattached, for it does not attach itself; is unbound, does not tremble, is not injured. Lo, whereby would one understand the understander? Thus you have the instruction told to you, Maitreyl. Such, lo, indeed, is immortality.' After speaking thus, Yajnavalkya departed, 1 La

(82) And those who understand it shall not sleep, But shall listen with the ear that they may learn this wisdom, And it shall please those that eat thereof better than good food.