Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 1.djvu/249

135 VIII PRAPATAKA, 7 KHANDA, 3-                   135

holding fuel in their hands, as is the custom for pupils approaching their master.

3. They dwelt there as pupils for thirty-two years. Then Pragapati asked them : ' For what purpose have you both dwelt here ?'

They replied : ' A saying of yours is being repeated, viz. "the Self which is 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, that it is which we must search out, that it is which we must try to understand. He who has searched out that Self and understands it, obtains all worlds and all desires.' Now we both have dwelt here because we wish for that Self'

Pragapati said to them : ' The person that is seen in the eye 1, that is the Self. This is what I have said. This is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman.'

They asked : ' Sir, he who is perceived in the water, and he who is perceived in a mirror, who is he?'

He replied : 'He himself indeed is seen in all these' 2

1 The commentator explains this rightly. Pragpati means by the person that is seen in the eye, the real agent of seeing, who is seen by sages only, even with their eyes shut. His pupils, however, misunderstand him. They think of the person that is seen, not of the person that sees (Yoga-sutras II, 6). The person seen in the eye is to them the small figure imaged in the eye, and they go on therefore to ask, whether the image in the water or in a mirror is not the Self.

2 The commentators are at great pains to explain that Pragapati told no falsehood. He meant by purusha the personal element in the highest sense, and it was not his fault that his pupils took purusha for man or body.

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