217 In the Chandogya text, rasa is both the source of the tree's life and also derived from the tree as soma^ a divine drink by which beings participate in divinity and fullness of existence.3 In the Saddharma text, ekarasa is only the source of the tree's growth; the tree does not produce it. It is the non-discriminating Water, the revelation of the Buddha doctrine, in which beings participate to different degrees 5 while it is itself wholly undifferentiated. The Chinese translation of the word Sangha^ the Buddhist community, is I-uei-ho-ho "one-rasa (taste) harmony." The "Greatest trees" are those beings that achieve final enlightenment and "destory existence." The power of enlightenment is miraculous, "magical" (SP 5,33,41). This perhpas leads to a late development of the concept of rasa as magical source of enlightenment in certain cults, part Buddhist and part Shaivite, which illustrate its final severance from the cosmic tree and its identification with moon-nectaro This is found in the teaching of Natha Siddhas of Northeast India, derived from the Rasayana school in which Hinduism, Buddhism and the popular Taoism meet. To the early Sahajiyas, rasa was a spontaneous bliss of pure consciousness rising in the mind when by yoga techniques rajas and lamas subside and saliva emerges. All limitation of the mind is removed, and it expands to a limitless extent.0 In later Rasayana teaching rasa becomes a chemical substance, mercury, which, as it transforms base metal into gold, so it makes all creatures immortal. In the teaching of the Natha Siddhas, however, it becomes soma again; it is called amrta^ the quintessence of "the visible^ nectar oozing from the moon.' To check its flow is to deceive kata^ time, and become immortal It is called not ekarasa^bxit maharasa. The yogic regulation of the maharasa is the center of yogic practice in this culte Its aim is to "transubstantiate" the body, making it eternal. NOTES L, G, Van Der Leeuv, Religion in Essence and Manifestation (New York: 1963), 1:55-58 2. M, Mop[er-Williams, Sanskrit English Dictionary (Oxford: 1960), p. 299; also the Petersburg Lexicon^ 1:1079. 3o Prakrit Text Society 25 (London: 1964), p, 258. 4. W. E. Soothill and L. Hodous, Chinese Dictionary of Buddhist Terms (London: 1937), pp, 252b, 328b. 5. Cf. RV 1. 164 20: ^the two birds on the same tree, one eating the fruit, the other watching it eat«" This fruit is soma^ according to Viennot, pp. 26-27- 6. Bhikshu Sangharakshita, A Survey of Buddhism (Bangalore: 1957), p» 116; Shashibhusan Dasgupta, Obscure Religious Cults (Calcutta; 1946), p. 175.