Note * — Chapter V

Men who, to acquire fancied merit, put themselves to various tortures; some holding up an arm till it withers, or clenching a hand till its nails grow into the flesh. † Union—that is absorption into the Divine nature, which leaves no individual sense of existence. "When by thousands of meritorious acts through a great many successive births, a man becomes perfectly holy, he becomes one with the Supreme Being, just as a drop becomes one with the ocean by falling into it."—Rev. Ishuree Dás's "Domestic Manners and Customs."