like the roll of thunder dying- away in the distance, the minister
took up the answer ; for when the lower in rank can carry out
a work successfully, it is not right to trouble the higher.
^Listen, 0 beauteous maid of nimbus-size and hue !, as I ex-
pound the answer to thy question in a word. As thou thyself
well knowest, in thy paradoxes thou hast spoken of the
Supreme Self, the Parana-Atma, that shoreless Ocean of all
Consciousness, in which intelligences form and disappear in
countless numbers, like to vortices and whirlpools in the sea.
It-Self beholds It-Self ; Non-Else is there to do so. It is the
resting-place of all things contradictory, all Pairs of Opposites,
antagonists ever-lastingly. It moves and lapses not in Space
and Time and Motion ; for all space and time and motion are
themselves WtMn its Changeless Being. It has No Motive to
new act; all acts and motives are within Its Movelessness.
The mother with the babe hid cosily between her breasts needs
not to seek for it elsewhere. And if thou close and seal a bowl
and carry it a hundred yojanas, how canst thou say whether the
space enclosed within the bowl has travelled also all the hundred
yojanas or not ? The Consciousness of a Kalpa is a Kalpa; the
"Consciousness of a Moment is a Moment. Consciousness of
Far and Near is Far and Near. Apart from Consciousness
naught is ; within it are both Aught and Naught ; both Being
and Non-Being."
The minister ceased; whereon the Rakshasi : "So pleasing
is this talk to me, I would it were continued. Will then the
king please to prolong it further ?"
The king smiled and replied: "Let it be so ! Most wondrous
is that All-pervading Consciousness whose sole form and belief
is the Awareness of the Non-Being of This universe^^1); whose
one Eternal Thought and vow is ab-Nega-tion of these False-
(1) "I-This-Not"; see VTie Science of Peace and TJie Science of the
Belf, for detailed expo&ition of this Idea of the Eternal Ideation,