Once, upon the sacred heights of Mount Meru, there dwelt in a mountain cave the illustrious Kaca, son of the preceptor of the gods. Through steadfast spiritual practice, he attained profound rest in the Self. Immersed in the nectar of true knowledge, his mind no longer found delight in the fragile body made of the five elements, nor in the fleeting world perceived through it. Disinterested in all but the essence of the Self, he saw nothing else, and, his voice faltering with realization, he uttered these words: “What should I do? Where could I go? What can I take up or abandon? For the entire universe is filled with the Self, just as the world is enveloped by the waters of the great deluge. Suffering is the Self, and happiness too; space is the Self, and so am I. All has arisen as the Self—by the Self I am lost, and hardship has vanished. Within and without, in all bodies, below, above, in every direction—the Self is here, the Self is there; nowhere is there anything apart from the Self. Truly, the Self is present everywhere, and all abides in the Self; all this is only the Self. Thus, I bow to the Self within myself. There is nothing where I am not; there is nothing not in me. What more could I desire? I simply become still. By the Self, in the Self, with a Self that is filled, I bow; by that, I become peaceful within—where else would I go? I am fire, I am wind, I am earth, I am space; whatever I am not, that does not exist—indeed, I am all, pervading everywhere. Endowed with the vast, fearsome fullness of water, earth, space, and sky, I stand complete, composed of all consciousness, like a single ocean.” Contemplating thus, in that golden mountain cave, Kaca then softly uttered the sacred syllable Om, letting it resound gradually, like the ringing of a bell. He knew that one should not contemplate the subtle, tender western half of Om, either within or without, in the supreme heart. With his mind purified of all subtle taints, and his breath merged continuously in the heart—clear as the autumn sky free from clouds—Kaca remained, steadfast as a mountain of stone. Reflecting further, he saw: “Apart from food, drink, and contact with women, there is nothing here; what great, auspicious, unfailing thing should one desire? How can the virtuous find delight in pleasures that satisfy only beasts, the ignorant, and the wicked? Those who place their trust in pleasures—miserable and fleeting in beginning, middle, and end—are fit only for the company of donkeys in hell. Here is hair, here is blood—this is the body of a woman; dogs find satisfaction in this, not humans. Clay is earth, wood is trees, the body is flesh, stone is mountain; below is ground, above is sky—what is truly novel here that brings happiness? All worldly experiences, following the senses, are unstable in the realm of discernment; they are grasped only for delusion. At the end of everything, even auspicious existence, impurity and suffering remain, just as soot remains from a flame. The actions of mind and the six senses are impermanent, arising and passing away; like a creeper cannot support a great serpent, they do not uphold the path of truth. With affection, one calls a mass of blood and flesh ‘my beloved daughter’; but what logic is there in clinging to a pile of bones named ‘my own body’? O Rama, all this is real and stable only for the satisfaction of the ignorant; for the wise, the world is unstable and unreal, and does not bring satisfaction. Even without being consumed, this world gives the stupor of poison; by abandoning attachment to it, one attains knowledge of the oneness of the Self. When the mind, taking the non-self as the self, comes to rest in that state, then this web of the world, made of unreality, arises. By the force of latent impressions, the mind of Brahman imagines a body; just as a wall coated with gold appears golden, so does the Self seem thus. O wise Brahman, having attained the state of the Creator, how does the mind gradually bring about the apparent solidity of this world? Rising from the womb-bed, the first child, born from the lotus, uttered the word ‘Brahma’; thus, he is called Brahmā. He established, for the mind—whose form is a web of imagination and whose shape is conceived—an abode for the fortune of imagination, in another realm. Then, he imagined first a radiant light, of great splendor, shining like a circle of blazing fire, turning all directions golden. It was filled with clusters of harsh fire-sparks, woven like constellations, its sky tinged like pale grass at the edges, adorned with golden forests. Its mass was a tangle of golden flames and blazing fire, adorned with wildly spreading, shining, golden earrings. Within that brilliant light, the mind, embodying itself in that form, imagined the sun, shaped like the Self. From that light, the sun arose, dwelling in the midst of a circle of flames, wearing blazing golden earrings. He bore a mass of flame-locks, exhaling and expanding fire, his limbs playing with flames, filling the entire sphere of the sky. Then Brahma, of great intellect, suddenly, by a flash of insight, fashioned those other particles of light into beautiful aerial vehicles. In an instant, he conceived them and saw them just as he had imagined; the wise one perceived the arising of these conceptions as one perceives groups of sounds. This, O mighty-armed one, is the process by which the self-born creates anew; each day and for each world, the gods and demons are conjured by his thought. He imagined time and its divisions, the stars and planets, rivers, oceans, islands, directions, mountains, and the earth itself.