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VIII PRAPÂTHAKA, 1 KHANDA, 1.
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(fire, water, earth), he becomes five, he becomes seven, he becomes nine; then again he is called the eleventh, and hundred and ten and one thousand and twenty[1]."

'When the intellectual aliment has been purified, the whole nature becomes purified. When the whole nature has been purified, the memory becomes firm. And when the memory (of the Highest Self) remains firm, then all the ties (which bind us to a belief in anything but the Self) are loosened.

'The venerable Sanatkumâra showed to Nârada, after his faults had been rubbed out, the other side of darkness. They call Sanatkumâra Skanda, yea, Skanda they call him.'


EIGHTH PRAPÂTHAKA.

First Khanda[2].

1. Harih, Om. There is this city of Brahman (the body), and in it the palace, the small lotus (of


  1. This too is meant as a verse. The commentary says that the various numbers are intended to show the endless variety of form on the Self after creation. Cf. Mait Up. V, 2.
  2. The eighth Prapâthaka seems to form a kind of appendix to the Upanishad. The highest point that can be reached by speculation had been reached in the seventh Prapâthaka, the identity of our self and of everything else with the Highest Self. This speculative effort, however, is too much for ordinary people. They cannot conceive the Sat or Brahman as out of space and time, as free from all qualities, and in order to help them, they are taught to adore the Brahman, as it appears in space and time, an object endowed with certain qualities, living in nature and in the human heart. The Highest Brahman, besides which there is nothing, and which can neither be reached as an object, nor be considered as