śrī viṣṇu bhujaṅga prayāta stotram

Fifteen verses in the bhujangaprayata metre, given in the colophon to Shankaracharya, and the first two are almost entirely negative. He is the fragment of consciousness, the pervader, spotless, admitting no alternative, without motion, without form, reached only through Om, past the qualities, unmanifest, one, the fourth state — salutation to him whom the supreme brahman knows. Then: pure, benign, peaceful, void of beginning and end, the life of the world, light itself, of the nature of bliss, not to be marked off by direction or place or time. Only later does a form appear, and it is granted rather than possessed: the shape he has shown to those devoted to him, which a man who has reined in the horses of his senses may hold in mind until he reaches the far shore.