(7) Now the rational soul in man abounds in marvels, both of knowledge and power. By means of it he masters arts and sciences, can pass in a flash from earth to heaven and back again, can map out the skies and measure the distances between the stars. By it also he can draw the fish from the sea and the birds from the air, and can subdue to his service animals like the elephant, the camel, and the horse. His five senses are like five doors opening on the external world; but, more wonderful than this, his heart has a window which opens on the unseen world of spirits. In the state of sleep, when the avenues of the senses are closed, this window is opened and man receives impressions from the unseen world and sometimes fore-shadowings of the future. His heart is then like a mirror which reflects what is pictured in the Tablet of Fate. But, even in sleep, thoughts of worldly things dull this mirror, so that the impression it receives are not clear. After death, however, such thoughts vanish and things are seen in their naked reality, and the saying

(4) [He said:] c Having had enjoyment in this state of sleep, having traveled around and seen good and bad, he hastens again, according to the entrance and place of origin, back to the state of waking. The soul at death

(4) In the state of sleep going aloft and alow, A god, he makes many forms for himself— Now, as it were, enjoying pleasure with women, Now, as it were, laughing, and even beholding fearful sights.

(4) 'Having had enjoyment in this state of waking, having traveled around and seen good and evil, he hastens again. according to the entrance and place of origin, back to dreaming sleep. 1 8. As a great fish goes along both banks of a river, both the hither and the further, just so this person goes along both these conditions, the condition of sleeping and the condition of waking. The soul in deep, dreamless sleep

(4) 'The wise, when he knows that that by which he perceives all objects in sleep or in waking is the great omnipresent Self, grieves no more.'

(181) Even the gods envy those who are awakened and not forgetful, who are given to meditation, who are wise, and who delight in the repose of retirement (from the world).

(4) People see his pleasure-ground; Him no one sees at all. " Therefore one should not wake him suddenly," they say. Hard is the curing for a man to whom He does not return. Now some people say: " That is just his waking state, for whatever things he sees when awake, those too he sees when asleep." [This is not so, for] there [i.e. in sleep] the person Is self-illuminated/ [Janaka said:] < I will give you, noble Sir, a thousand [cows]. Declare what is higher than this, for my release [from trans- migration].'

(13) He regards a dying man simply as one who is going home. He sees others weep, and he naturally weeps too. "Besides, a man's personality is something of which he is subjectively conscious. It is impossible for him to say if he is really that which he is conscious of being. You dream you are a bird, and soar to heaven. You dream you are a fish, and dive into the ocean's depths. And you cannot tell whether the man now speaking is awake or in a dream. "A pleasurable sensation precedes the smile it evokes. The smile itself is not dependent upon a reminding nudge. unconscious of all changes, and you shall enter into the pure, the divine, the One." I Erh Tzŭ went to see Hsü Yu. The latter asked him, saying, "How has Yao benefited you?" "He bade me," replied the former, "practise charity and do my duty, and distinguish clearly between right and wrong." "Then what do you want here?" said Hsü Yu. "If Yao has already branded you with charity and duty, and cut off your nose with right and wrong, what do you do in this free-and-easy, care-for-nobody, topsy-turvy neighbourhood?" "Nevertheless," replied I Erh Tzŭ, "I should like to be on its confines." "If a man has lost his eyes," retorted Hsü Yu, "it is impossible for him to join in the appreciation of beauty. A man with a film over his eyes cannot tell a blue sacrificial robe from a yellow one."

(4) Verily, there are just two conditions of this person: the condition of being in this world and the condition of being in the other world. There is an intermediate third condition, namely, that of being in sleep. By standing in this inter- mediate condition one sees both those conditions, namely being in this world and being in the other world. Now whatever the approach is to the condition of being in the other world, by making that approach one sees the evils [of this world] and the joys [of yonder world]. The state of dreaming When one goes to sleep, he takes along the material (matra) of this all-containing world, himself tears it apart, himself builds it up, and dreams by his own brightness, by his own light. Then this person becomes self-illuminated.

(44) O now, when the Dream Bardo upon me is dawning! Abandoning the inordinate corpse-like sleeping of the sleep of stupidity, May the consciousness undistractedly be kept in its natural state; Grasping the [true nature of] dreams, [may I] train [myself] in the Clear Light of Miraculous Transformation: Acting not like the brutes in slothfulness, May the blending of the practicing of the sleep [state] and actual [or waking] experience be highly valued [by me].

(6) 'Having understood that the senses are distinct (from the Âtman), and that their rising and setting (their waking and sleeping) belongs to them in their distinct existence (and not to the Âtman), a wise man grieves no more.'

(12) 'The wise who, by means of meditation on his Self, recognises the Ancient, who is difficult to be seen, who has entered into the dark, who is hidden in the cave, who dwells in the abyss, as God, he indeed leaves joy and sorrow far behind.'

(6) He said to me: "Soon there will upward come What I await; and what thy thought is dreaming Must soon reveal itself unto thy sight." Aye to that truth which has the face of falsehood, A man should close his lips as far as may be, Because without his fault it causes shame; But here I cannot; and, Reader, by the notes Of this my Comedy to thee I swear, So may they not be void of lasting favour, Athwart that dense and darksome atmosphere I saw a figure swimming upward come, Marvellous unto every steadfast heart, Even as he returns who goeth down Sometimes to clear an anchor, which has grappled Reef, or aught else that in the sea is hidden, Who upward stretches, and draws in his feet.

(3) A lover, uneasy, troubled in his mind, and worn out with sighing, fell asleep on the mound of a grave. His mistress coming upon him and finding him asleep wrote a note and pinned it to his cloak. When he woke and read what she had written he groaned with anguish, for it said: 'O dumb man! rise up, and if you are a merchant, do business and get money; if you are an ascetic, wake at night and pray to God and be his slave. But if you are a lover, be ashamed of yourself. What has sleep to do with a lover's eyes? By day he measures the wind; at night his burning heart lights up his face with the brightness of the moon. As you are no such man, no longer boast of loving me. If a man can sleep elsewhere than in his shroud I may call him a lover - but, of himself.'

(23) Again he puts the same idea in these words: "No mortal is content and happy Nor is any born free from sorrow." And then again: " Alas, alas, how many are the chances of mortal calamity! How many forms it takes! None can tell the end." And further likewise: " Of what is mortal there is nothing which is happy without end."

(7) And as he is who dreams of his own harm, Who dreaming wishes it may be a dream, So that he craves what is, as if it were not; Such I became, not having power to speak, For to excuse myself I wished, and still Excused myself, and did not think I did it. "Less shame doth wash away a greater fault," The Master said, "than this of thine has been; Therefore thyself disburden of all sadness, And make account that I am aye beside thee, If e'er it come to pass that fortune bring thee Where there are people in a like dispute; For a base wish it is to wish to hear it."

(17) In the soul sleep a strange process occurs, namely, the preparation for the sloughing off of the lower sheaths of the soul, leaving it free to enter the life on the Astral Plane clad only in the garments of its highest stage of spiritual attainment reached by it. Each soul awakens on the Astral Plane prepared to dwell on the plane of its highest and best, leaving the rest behind it. It awakens on the plane in which the highest and best in itself is given a chance to develop and expand, and to make progress, for the soul may, and does, make great progress in these between-births sojourns on the Astral Plane.

(1) WONDERFULLY is a man’s affection varied in ghostly feeling of this nought when it is nowhere wrought. For at the first time that a soul looketh thereupon, it shall find all the special deeds of sin that ever he did since he was born, bodily or ghostly, privily or darkly painted thereupon. And howsoever that he turneth it about, evermore they will appear before his eyes; until the time be, that with much hard travail, many sore sighings, and many bitter weepings, he have in great part washed them away. Sometime in this travail him think that it is to look thereupon as on hell; for him think that he despaireth to win to perfection of ghostly rest out of that pain. Thus far inwards come many, but for greatness of pain that they feel and for lacking of comfort, they go back in beholding of bodily things: seeking fleshly comforts without, for lacking of ghostly they have not yet deserved, as they should if they had abided.

(43) The Will now standing thus in the dark Anxiety, it rgets another Will to fly out of the Anxiety again, and to generate the Light; and this other Will is the Mind, out of which proceed the Senses [or Thoughts] not to continue in the Anxiety: And the Will [appears,] discovers itself in the Essences of the Sourness, as in the fierce Hardness of Death; and the Glimpse [or Glance] breaks through the Essences of the sour Hardness, as a swift [or sudden] Flash, and sharpens itself in the sour Hardness, that it becomes [pale, white, or] glimmering like a Flash of Fire, and in its sudden Flight breaks the sour Darkness; and there stands the Hardness, and the harsh Sourness of Death like a broken turning Wheel, which with the Flash of the Breaking flies swiftly as a Thought; as also then the re-conceived Will (which is the Mind) appears so very suddenly. And seeing it cannot fly forward out of the Essences, it must go into the turning Wheel, (for it cannot get from that Place,) and so it breaks the Darkness. And when the Darkness is thus broken, [then] the sharp Glance discovers itself in the pleasant Joy without [or beyond] the Darkness in the Sharpness of the Will, viz. in the Mind, and finds itself habitable therein, from whence the Flash (or Glance) is terrified, and flies up with strong Might through the broken Essences out of the Heart, and would go out at the Mouth, and raises itself far from the Heart, and yet is held by the sour [or harsh] Fiat, and it then makes itself a several Region (viz. the Tongue) wherein then stands the Shriek [or the Crack] of the broken Essences. And seeing then it reflects [or recoils] back again into the Heart, as into its first Dwelling-house, and finds itself so very habitable and pleasant, because the Gates of the Darkness are broken, then it kindles itself so highly in the loving Will, by Reason of the Meekness, and goes no more like a stern [or fierce] Flash through all Essences, but [it] goes trembling with great Joy; and the Might of the Joy is now many hundred Times stronger, than first the Flash [or Glance] was, which yielded [or discovered] itself through the sour harsh Essences of the Death, and goes with strong Might out of the Heart into the Head, in the Will [or Purpose] to possess the heavenly Region.

(3) And turning to the pole which he had dragged, He drew it close beneath the widowed bough, And what was of it unto it left bound. In the same manner as our trees (when downward Falls the great light, with that together mingled Which after the celestial Lasca shines) Begin to swell, and then renew themselves, Each one with its own colour, ere the Sun Harness his steeds beneath another star: Less than of rose and more than violet A hue disclosing, was renewed the tree That had erewhile its boughs so desolate. I never heard, nor here below is sung, The hymn which afterward that people sang, Nor did I bear the melody throughout. Had I the power to paint how fell asleep Those eyes compassionless, of Syrinx hearing, Those eyes to which more watching cost so dear, Even as a painter who from model paints I would portray how I was lulled asleep; He may, who well can picture drowsihood. Therefore I pass to what time I awoke, And say a splendour rent from me the veil Of slumber, and a calling: "Rise, what dost thou?"