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VI PRAPATHAKA, 20.
319
this Yoga, he beholds the gold-coloured maker, the lord, the person, Brahman, the cause, then the sage, leaving behind good and evil, makes everything (breath, organs of sense, body, &c.) to be one in the Highest Indestructible (in the pratyagâtman or Brahman). And thus it is said:
"As birds and deer do not approach a burning mountain, so sins never approach those who know Brahman.
19. And thus it is said elsewhere: When he who knows has, while he is still Prâna (breath), restrained his mind, and placed all objects of the senses far away from himself, then let him remain without any conceptions. And because the living person, called Prâna (breath), has been produced here on earth from that which is not Prâna (the thinking Self), therefore let this Prâna merge the Prâna (himself) in what is called the fourth? And thus it is said:
What is without thought, though placed in the centre of thought, what cannot be thought, the hidden, the highest-let a man merge his thought there: then will this living being (linga) be without attachment?'
20. And thus it has been said elsewhere: There is the superior fixed attention (dhârana) for him, viz. if he presses the tip of the tongue down the palate and restrains voice, mind, and breath, he sees
1 The fourth stage is meant for the thinking Self, the earlier stages being waking, slumbering, and sleep.
3 Professor Cowell offers two renderings of this difficult passage: *This which is called prâna, i.e. the individual soul as characterised by the subtil body, will thus no longer appear in its separate individuality from the absence of any conscious subject; or, this subtil body bearing the name of intellect will thus become void of all objects.'
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