Embodie d As cent, Medit ati on, and Yogic Suicide 93 entire monologue between the editor s reinsertion of his

person (which had not been mentioned since the frame narrative at MU 2.339) at MU 6.29 to the penultimate chapter of the text s sixth book is a late, in this case, third-century CE interpolation. For what we see in the final chapter of the book (6.38) is a nearly verbatim reprising of the language of MU 6.28, with both passages pointedly referring to the casing (kosa) of brahman with its four layers of net. What is intriguing about the editor s cut-andpaste operation is that the spatial referents of the brahman, enclosed in its casing of nets, appear to be situated at opposite ends of the microcosmmacrocosm continuum, the one infinitesimal (6.28) and the other infinite (6.38). Apart from the KU, the probable source of this ambiguity (or redundancy) is the ChU, which, as we have noted, appears to have inspired the MU s redactors on several points. The ChU, commenting on a famous passage from ?V 10.90.3, proclaims, [c]oncerning that which is [called] brahman, it is indeed this space here, that is [the space] outside of a person (puru?a). Now, this space that is outside of a person is indeed the space that is inside of a person. This space that is inside of a person is i ndeed the space that is inside the heart. It is a plenitude that has not turned outward (a pravartin) . . . Far above this world, the celestial glow that shines on the back of the cosmos [and] the back of everything [in the cosmos], in the highest of the highest worl ds is this very glow that is inside a person . . . This self of mine inside the heart is indeed smaller than a grain of rice, a barleycorn, a mustard-seed, a millet-grain, or e ven a kernel of millet. This self of mine inside the heart is greater than the earth, greater than midspace, greater than the celestial realm, greater than these worlds.40 The solution that the final chapters of the MU sixth book propose, in their expansion on this ChU passage, establishes (or is reflective of) the paradigm for the metaphysical categories and models of visionary ascent that recur across every one of the major sectarian traditions of later classical Hinduism. It therefore behooves us to consider these chapters in some detail. The text of MU 6.28 immediately precedes the return to Sakayanya s direct discourse, which introduces the following chapter ( after Sakayanya had said this . . . he said . . . ). In it, we find a dramatic account of the yogic practitioner s storming of the abode of brahman in the space within the heart, perhaps the earliest witness to what would become a perennial theme of later yoga literature.41 In spite of the fact that the metaphors are mixed, the passage is a powerful one, opening with an aphorism from an unnamed source: Someone has said: The supreme abode, which is bliss, is a casing whose contours are the space within the heart. 42 To gain access to this inner abode, the practitioner, advancing