SECTION CCIII

“Manu said, ’The mind united with the senses, recollects after a long time the impressions of the objects received in the past.  When the senses are all suspended (in respect of their functions),[675] the Supreme (the Soul), in the form of the Understanding, exists in its own true nature.  When the Soul (at such a time) does not in the least regard all those objects of the senses in respect of their simultaneity or the reverse in point of time but mustering them from all directions holds them before it together, it necessarily happens that he wanders among all things that are incongruous.  He is, therefore, the (silent) Witness.  Hence the Soul encased in body is something having a distinct and independent existence.[676] There is Rajas, there is Tamas, and there is Sattwa, the third.  There are again three states of the understanding, viz., waking, dreaming, and sound sleep.  The Soul has knowledge of the pleasures and pains, which are all contradictory, of those states, and which partake of the nature of the threefold attributes first mentioned.[677] The Soul enters the senses like the wind entering the fire in a piece of wood.[678] One cannot behold the form of the Soul by one’s eye, nor can the sense of touch, amongst the senses, apprehend it.  The Soul is not, again, an object of apprehension by the ear.  It may, however, be seen by the aid of the Srutis and the instructions of the wise.  As regards the senses, that particular sense which apprehends it loses upon such apprehension its existence as a sense.[679] The senses cannot themselves apprehend their respective forms by themselves.  The Soul is omniscient (inasmuch as it apprehends both the knower and the known).  It beholds all things.  Being omniscient, it is the Soul that beholds the senses (without, as already said, the senses being able to apprehend it).  Nobody has seen the other side of the Himavat mountains, nor the reverse of the moon’s disc.  Yet it cannot be said that these do not exist.  Similarly, though never apprehended by the senses, yet nobody can say that the Soul, which dwells in all creatures, which is subtile, and which has knowledge for its essence, does not exist.  People see the world reflected on the moon’s disc in the form of spots.  Though seeing, they do not know that it is the world that is so reflected there.  Even such is the knowledge of the Soul.  That knowledge must come of itself.  The Soul depends upon the Soul itself.  Men of wisdom, reflecting on the formlessness of visible objects before birth and after destruction, behold by the aid of intelligence, the formlessness of objects that have apparent forms, So also although the Sun’s motion cannot be seen, yet persons, by watching its rising and setting, conclude that the sun has motion.[680] Similarly, those who are endued with wisdom and learning behold the Soul by the aid of the lamp of intelligence, though it is at a great distance from them, and seek