(9) 'From him who perceives all and who knows all, whose brooding (penance) consists of knowledge, from him (the highest Brahman) is born that Brahman, name, form, and matter (food).'

(3) ' Yajnavalkya/ said he, * since everything here is food for death, who, pray, is that divinity for whom death is food? ' £ Death, verily, is a fire. It is the food of water (apas}. He overcomes (apa-jayati) a second death [who knows this].' 3

(12) For he who has not formed the wish to extirpate the passion of the soul, kills himself. But, as seems, ignorance is the starvation of the soul, and knowledge its sustenance.

(7) He who understands all and who knows all, he to whom all this glory in the world belongs, the Self, is placed in the ether, in the heavenly city of Brahman (the heart). He assumes the nature of mind, and becomes the guide of the body of the senses. He subsists in food, in close proximity to the heart. The wise who understand this, behold the Immortal which shines forth full of bliss.

(4) [Yajnavalkya continued ] ' This is that great, unborn Soul, who eats the food [which people eat], the giver of good. He finds good who knows this.

(15) In this very way we exist in this world, like fish. The adversary spies on us, lying in wait for us like a fisherman, wishing to seize us, rejoicing that he might swallow us. For he places many foods before our eyes (things) which belong to this world. He wishes to make us desire one of them and to taste only a little, so that he may seize us with his hidden poison and bring us out of freedom and take us into slavery. For whenever he catches us with a single food, it is indeed necessary for us to desire the rest. Finally, then, such things become the food of death.

(4) He from whom all works, all desires, all sweet odours and tastes proceed, who embraces all this, who never speaks and who is never surprised, he, my self within the heart, is that Brahman (n.) When I shall have departed from hence, I shall obtain him (that Self). He who has this faith has no doubt; thus said Sândilya , yea, thus he said.

(9) He said: 'Food (anna). For all these beings live when they partake of food. This is the deity belonging to the pratihâra. If, without knowing that deity, you had sung your hymns, your head would have fallen off, after you had been warned by me 1.'

(10) The Person is all this, sacrifice, penance, Brahman, the highest immortal; he who knows this hidden in the cave (of the heart), he, O friend, scatters the knot of ignorance here on earth.

(584) But if he were taken back again he would imagine, and truly imagine, that he was descending? No doubt. All that would arise out of his ignorance of the true upper and middle and lower regions? Yes. Then can you wonder that persons who are inexperienced in the truth, as they have wrong ideas about many other things, should also have wrong ideas about pleasure and pain and the intermediate state; so that when they are only being drawn towards the painful they feel pain and think the pain which they experience to be real, and in like manner, when drawn away from pain to the neutral or intermediate state, they firmly believe that they have reached the goal of satiety and pleasure; they, not knowing pleasure, err in contrasting pain with the absence of pain, which is like contrasting black with grey instead of white—can you wonder, I say, at this? No, indeed; I should be much more disposed to wonder at the opposite. Look at the matter thus:—Hunger, thirst, and the like, are inanitions of the bodily state? Yes. And ignorance and folly are inanitions of the soul? True. And food and wisdom are the corresponding satisfactions of either? Certainly. And is the satisfaction derived from that which has less or from that which has more existence the truer? Clearly, from that which has more. What classes of things have a greater share of pure existence in your judgment—those of which food and drink and condiments and all kinds of sustenance are examples, or the class which contains true opinion and knowledge and

(9) But we must as much as possible subject the soul to varied preparatory exercise, that it may become susceptible to the reception of knowledge. Do you not see how wax is softened and copper purified, in order to receive the stamp applied to it? Just as death is the separation of the soul from the body, so is knowledge as it were the rational death urging the spirit away, and separating it from the passions, and leading it on to the life of well-doing, that it may then say with confidence to God, "I live as Thou wishest." For he who makes it his purpose to please men cannot please God, since the multitude choose not what is profitable, but what is pleasant. But in pleasing God, one as a consequence gets the favour of the good among men. How, then, can what relates to meat, and drink, and amorous pleasure, be agreeable to such an one? since he views with suspicion even a word that produces pleasure, and a pleasant movement and act of the mind. "For no one can serve two masters, God and Mammon," it is said; meaning not simply money, but the resources arising from money bestowed on various pleasures. In reality, it is not possible for him who magnanimously and truly knows God, to serve antagonistic pleasures.

(16) A person in whom the desire for this knowledge has disappeared is like one who has lost his appetite for healthy food, or who prefers feeding on clay to eating bread. All bodily appetites perish at death with the organs they use, but the soul dies not, and retains whatever knowledge of God it possesses; nay increases it.

(1) He (the knower of the Self) knows that highest home of Brahman, in which all is contained and shines brightly. The wise who, without desiring happiness, worship that Person, transcend this seed, (they are not born again.)

(73) But it retaineth its seat in the kernel, which is the unctuosity or fatness, or the water of life, or the heaven; for it is the body of life, which the death cannot comprehend, and yet it riseth up in the death.

(15) There the Soul eats of all the Words of God; for the same are the Food of its Life; and it sings the paradisical i Songs of Praise concerning the pleasant Fruit in Paradise, which grows in the divine Virtue [or Power] of the divine Limbus, which is the Food of the kBody; for the Body eats of the Limbus, out of which it is, and the Soul eats of God and of his Word, out of which it is.

(1) He said: 'The person that is seen in the eye, that is the Self. This is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman . Even though they drop melted butter or water on him, it runs away on both sides .

(1) As, then, God is not circumscribed by place, neither is ever represented by the form of a living creature; so neither has He similar passions, nor has He wants like the creatures, so as to desire sacrifice, from hunger, by way of food. Those creatures which are affected by passion are all mortal. And it is useless to bring food to one who is not nourished.

(15) And when the Taste has tried it, and if it be good for the Essences of the Soul, then it gives it to the Feeling, which must try what Quality it is of, whether hot or cold, hard or soft, thick or thin, and then the Feeling a sends it into the Heart, [presenting it] before the Flash of the Life, and before the King of the Light of Life; and the Will of the Mind pierces further into that Thing, a great Depth, and sees what is therein, [considering] how much it will receive and take in of that Thing, and when it is enough, then the Will gives it to the Spirit of the Soul, viz. to the eternal Emperor, who brings it (with his strong and austere Might) out of the Heart, in the Sound upon the Tongue under the Roof of the Mouth, and there the Spirit distinguishes according to the Senses, as the Will has discovered [or manifested] it, and the Tongue distinguishes it in the Noise.

This world eats corpses, and everything eaten in this world also dies. Truth eats life, and no one nourished by [truth] will die. Jesus came from that realm and brought food from there, and he gave [life] to all who wanted it, that they might not die.

(1) He bethought himself: 'Verily, if I shall intend against him, I shall make the less food for myself.' With that speech, with that self he brought forth this whole world, whatsoever exists here: the Hymns (re) [i.e. the Rig- Veda], the Formulas (yajus) [i.e. the Yajur-Veda], the Chants (sdman) [i.e. the Sama-Veda], meters, sacrifices, men, cattle. Whatever he brought forth, that he began to eat. Verily, he eats ( Vad) everything: that is the adtti-oaiure of Aditi (the Infinite). He who knows thus the tf&fz-nature of Aditi, becomes an eater of everything here; everything becomes food for him.