(1) 'Maghavat, this body is mortal and always held by death. It is the abode of that Self which is immortal and without body . When in the body (by thinking this body is I and I am this body) the Self is held by pleasure and pain. So long as he is in the body, he cannot get free from pleasure and pain. But when he is free of the body (when he knows himself different from the body), then neither pleasure nor pain touches him .

(40) Knowing that this body is (fragile) like a jar, and making this thought firm like a fortress, one should attack Mâra (the tempter) with the weapon of knowledge, one should watch him when conquered, and should never rest.

(4) On this point there is this verse: — When are liberated all The desires that lodge in one's heart, Then a mortal becomes immortal! Therein he reaches Brahma! As the slough of a snake lies on an ant-hill, dead, cast off, even so lies this body. But this incorporeal, immortal Life (prana) is Brahma indeed, is light indeed/ ' I will give you, noble Sir, a thousand [cows],' said Janaka, [king] of Videha.

(46) He who knows that this body is like froth, and has learnt that it is as unsubstantial as a mirage, will break the flower-pointed arrow of Mâra, and never see the king of death.

(3) Verily, O Gargi, if one pei forms sacrifices and worship and undergoes austerity in this world for many thousands of years, but without knowing that Imperishable, limited indeed is that [work] of his. Verily, 0 Gargi, he who departs from this world without knowing that Imperishable is pitiable But, O Gargi, he who departs from this world knowing that Imperishable is a Brahman.

(5) Then he should say: 'By the old age of the body, that (the ether, or Brahman within it) does not age; by the death of the body, that (the ether, or Brahman within it) is not killed. That (the Brahman) is the true Brahma-city (not the body ). In it all desires are contained. It is the Self, free from sin, free from old age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine. Now as here on earth people follow as they are commanded, and depend on the object which they are attached to, be it a country or a piece of land,

(3) 'This (body) indeed withers and dies when the living Self has left it; the living Self dies not. 'That which is that subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, Svetaketu, art it.' 'Please, Sir, inform me still more,' said the son. 'Be it so, my child,' the father replied.

(6) Ghora Âṅgirasa, after having communicated this (view of the sacrifice) to Krishna, the son of Devăkî --and he never thirsted again (after other knowledge)--said: 'Let a man, when his end approaches, take refuge with this Triad : "Thou art the imperishable," "Thou art the unchangeable," "Thou art the edge of Prâna."' On this subject there are two Rik verses (Rig-veda VIII, 6, 30):--

(18) O nobly-born, when such thought-forms emanate, be thou not afraid, nor terrified; the body which now thou possessest being a mental-body of [karmic] propensities, though slain and chopped [to bits], cannot die. Because thy body is, in reality, one of voidness, thou needest not fear. The [bodies of the] Lord of Death, too, are emanations from the radiances of thine own intellect; they are not constituted of matter; voidness cannot injure voidness. Beyond the emanations of thine own intellectual faculties, externally, the Peaceful and the Wrathful Ones, the Blood-Drinking Ones, the Various-Headed Ones, the rainbow lights, the terrifying forms of the lord of Death, exist not in reality: of this, there is no doubt. Thus, knowing this, all the fear and terror is self-dissipated; and, merging in the state of at-one- ment, Buddhahood is obtained.