306 SKETCH OF THE 



Bakhtawar, a religious mendicant, entitled the Smiisdr, the essence of 

 emptiness, the purport of which is to shew that all notions of man and 

 God are fallacies, and that nothing, is : a few passages from this book will 

 convey an idea of the tenets of the sect. 



" Whatever I behold is Vacuity. Theism and Atheism — Maya and 

 Brahm — all is false, all is error — the globe itself, and the egg of Brahma, 

 the seven Divipas and nine Khandas, heaven and earth, the sun and moon, 

 Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, Kurma and Sesha, the Guru and his pupil, 

 the individual and the species, the temple and the god, the observance of 

 ceremonial rites, and the muttering of prayers, all is emptiness. Speech, 

 hearing and discussion are emptiness, and substance itself is no more." 



" Let every one meditate upon himself, nor make known his self- 

 communion to another — let him be the worshipper and the worship, nor 

 talk of a difference between this and that — look into yourself and not into 

 another, for in yourself that other will be found — there is no other but 

 myself, and I talk of another from ignorance. In the same way as I see 

 my face in a glass, I see myself in others, but it is error to think 

 that what I see is not my face, but that of another— whatever you see 

 is but yourself, and father and mother are non-entities ; you are the 

 infant and the old man, the wise man and the fool, the male and the 

 female : it is you who are drowned in the stream, you who pass over, you 

 are the killer, and the slain, the slayer and the eater, you are the king and 

 the subject. You seize yourself and let go, you sleep, and you wake, 

 you dance for yourself, you play and sing for yourself. You are the 

 sensualist and the ascetic, the sick man and the strong — in short, what- 

 ever you see, that is you, as bubbles, surf, and billows are all but water." 



" When we are visited in sleep by visions, we think in our sleep that 

 those visions are realities — we wake, and find them falsehoods, and they 



