Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/431

Rh the head, on the earth, and towards the sky; the prayers and invocation of the sun; the inhaling of water by one nostril, and exhaling it by the other; and a whole host of rules for the most insignificant acts of life. In truth, probably not one in ten thousand of the people attempts to fulfil these sacred laws. All that is aimed at is to perform so much as will secure them from sinking in a succeeding birth to a lower grade of being. Others, who are too careless of the future to be influenced even by this motive, merely comply so far as to satisfy the demands of public opinion and avoid the charge of want of decency.

Some, among the Hindus, rising in their aspirations above the low strivings of the mass, aim at one leap to pass from present existence to some heaven of the gods, or even to that final blessedness which is attained by absorption into the divine Spirit. Such are known as Sanyasees or Yogees. Forsaking the natural courses of life, they devote themselves to the attainment of a consciousness that God is all things, and, that aside from God, the universe exists not; that in all space there is but one existence, and that one the supreme Brahm. Thus, ceasing to have a separate existence,