by others, this point of time is like thick darkness, and difficult to be made out by the mind of any person still deluded. But even such a one should not despair nor say: 'I shall never be able to penetrate beyond conception, or take as the object of my thought the name and form which I had in my last birth, at the moment of death,' but he should again and again enter the trance which leads to the higher powers, and each time he rises from the trance, he should again intend his mind upon that point of time.
"Just as a strong man in cutting down a mighty tree to be used as the peaked roof of a pagoda, if the edge of his axe be turned in lopping off the branches and twigs, will not despair of cutting down the tree, but will go to an iron-worker's shop, have his axe sharpened, return, and go on with his cutting; and if the edge of his axe be turned a second time, he will a second time have it sharpened, and return, and go on with his cutting; and since nothing that he chopped once needs to be chopped