CHAPTER II.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
39. He who meditates on the infinite mind, and sees all forms of things as ectypes of the universal soul; and who views the world absorbed in himself; is never misled by the erroneous conception of the living principle.
40. The partial view of a distinct mind and a living principle, serves but to mislead a man (to the knowledge of erroneous particulars); all which vanish away, at the sight of the rising sun of the one universal soul.
41. Want of the partial view of the mind, gives the full view of one undivided soul; which consumes the particulars, as the vivid fire burns away the dry leaves of trees, and as the sacrificial fire consumes the oblations of ghee or clarified butter.
42. Those men of great souls, who have known the supreme one, and are self-liberated in their lifetime; have their minds without their essences, and which are therefore called asatwas or nonentities. (These minds, says the gloss, are as the watermarks on the sand, after a channel is dried up (or its waters have receded); meaning that the mind remains in its print but not in its substance).
43. The body of the living liberated man, has a mind employed in its duties, but freed from its desires; such minds are not chittas or active agents, but mere sattwas or passive objects. They are no more self-volitive free agents, but are acted upon by their paramount duties. (Free will is responsible for its acts, but compulsion has no responsibility).
44. They that know the truth, are mindless and unmindful of everything save their duty; they rove about at pleasure and discharge their duties by rote and practice, in order any object to gain.
45. They are calm and cold with all their actions and in all their dealings; they have the members of their bodies and their senses under full control, and know no desire nor duality.
46. The saint having his sight fixed upon his inner soul, sees the world burnt down as straws by the fire of his intellect; and finds his erroneous conceptions of the mind, to fly far away from it, like flitting flies from a conflagration.
47. The mind which is purified by reason, is called the sattwa as said above, and does not give rise to error; as the fried paddy seed, is not productive of the plant (The sattwa mind is spiritless and dead in itself).
48. The word Sattwa means the contrary of Chitta, which latter is used in lexicons to mean the mind, that has the quality of being reborn on account of its actions and desires. (The chitta is defined as the living seed of the mind, and productive of acts and future regenerations, which the Sattwa or deadened mind cannot do).
49. You have to attain the attainable Sattwa or torpid state of your mind, and to have the seed of your active mind or chitta, singed by the blaze of your spiritual mind or sattwa.
50. The minds of the learned, which are lighted by reason, are melted down at once to liquidity; but those of the ignorant which are hardened by their worldly desires, will not yield to the force of fire and steel; but continue still to sprout up as the grass, the more they are mowed and put on fire. (The over-growing grass in the fields, though set on fire, will grow again from their unburnt roots, and became as rank as before).
51. Brahma is vast expanse, and such being the vastness of the universe too there is no difference between them; and the intellect of Brahma is as full as the fulness of his essence.
52. The Divine Intellect contains the three worlds, as the pepper has its pungency within itself. Therefore the triple world is not a distinct thing from Brahma, and its existence and inexistence (i.e., its creation and dissolution), are mere fictions of human mind. (It is ever existent in the eternal mind).
53. It is the use of popular language, to speak of existence and non-existence as different things; but they are never so in reality to the right understanding. Since whatever is or is not in being, is ever present in the Divine Mind.
53a. This being a vacuity, contains all things in their vacuous state (which is neither the state of sensible existence, nor that of intellectual inexistence either). God as the Absolute, Eternal, and Spiritual substance, is as void as Thought. (The universe is a thought in the mind of God, and existence is thought and activity in the Divine Mind. Aristotle).
54. If you disbelieve in the intellectual, you can have no belief in your spirituality also; then why fear to die for fear of future retribution, when you leave your body behind to turn to dust. Tell me Ráma! how can you imagine the existence of the world in absence of the intellectual principle. (There can be no material world, without the immaterial mind; nor can you think of it, if you have no mind in you).
55. But if you find by the reasoning of your mind, all things to be mere intellections of the intellect at all times; then say why do you rely on the substantiality of your body.
56. Remember Ráma, your pellucid intellectual and spiritual form, which has no limit nor part of it, but is an unlimited and undivided whole; and mistake not yourself for a limited being by forgetting your true nature.
57. Thinking yourself as such, take all the discreet parts of the universe as forming one concrete whole; and this is the substantial intellect of Brahma.
58. Thou abidest in the womb of thy intellect, and art neither this nor that nor any of the many discrete things interspersed in the universe. Thou art as thou art and last as the End and Nil in thy obvious and yet thy hidden appearances.
59. Thou art contained under no particular category, nor is there any predicable which may be predicated of thee. Yet thou art the substance of every predicament in thy form of the solid, ponderous and calm intellect; and I salute thee in that form of thine.
60. Thou art without beginning and end, and abidest with thy body of solid intellect, amidst the crystal sphere of thy creation, and shining as the pure and transparent sky. Thou art calm and quiet, and yet displayest the wondrous world, as the seed vessel shows the wooden of vegetation.