CHAPTER CLXXXVI. Demonstration of all nature (and thing) as Brahma himself.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
Argument:—Elucidation of the sacred text that “all is Brahma”; and the equality of curse.
Válmíki said:—After Kunda-danta had finished his saying in the said manner, the venerable Vasishtha delivered his edifying speech on spiritual knowledge and said:
2. Whereas the elevated soul of this person, has found his rest in the paradise of spiritual philosophy; he will see the world like a globe in his hand, and glowing with the glory of the great God.
3. The phenomenal world is a false conception, it is verily the increate Brahma himself shining in this manner; this erroneous conception is the very Brahma, that is one and ever calm and undecaying.
4. Whatever thing appears any where, in any state, form or dimension; it is the very Deity, showing himself in that condition of his being, form and mode of extension.
5. This unborn or self-existent Deity, is ever auspicious, calm and quiet; he is undecaying, unperishing and immutable, and extends through all extent, as the extensive and endless space.
6. Whatever state of things he proposes in his all-knowing intellect, the same is disposed by him in a thousand ways, like the branching out of a plant in the rains.
7. The great mundane egg, is situated as a particle in the bosom of the great intellect of God; and this world of ours is a particle also, being comprised in a grain of our brains.
8. Know therefore, my good friend, thy intellectual sphere to be boundless, and without its beginning or end; and being absorbed in the meditation of thy personal extinction, do thou remain as quiet as thou art sitting, relying in thy unperturbed and imperishable soul.
9. Wherever there is anything in any state or condition in any part of the world, there you will find the presence of the divine spirit in its form of vacuity; and this without changing its nature of calm serenity, assumes to itself whatever form or figure it likes (or rather evolves them from within itself at its free will).
10. The spirit is itself both the view and its viewer; it is equally the mind and the body, and the subjective and objective alike; It is something and yet nothing at all, being the great Brahma or universal soul, that includes and extends throughout the whole.
11. The phenomenal is not to be supposed as a duality of, or any other than the self-same Brahma; but it is to be known as one and the same with the divine self, as the visible sky and its vacuity.
12. The visible is the invisible Brahma, and the transcendent One is manifest in this apparent whole (because the noumenon shows the phenomenon, as this exhibits the other): therefore it is neither quiescent nor in motion, and the formal is altogether formless.
13. Like dreams appearing to the understanding, do these visions present themselves to the view; the forms are all formless conceptions of the mind, and more intangible ideas of the brain.
14. As conscious beings come to be unconscious of themselves, in their dormant state of sleep; so have all these living and intelligent beings, become unconscious and ignorant of themselves and their souls, and turned to torpid trees that are lost to their sensibility.
15. But the intellect is capable to return to its sensibility, from its state of vegetable torpidity in time; as the dormant soul turns to see its dreams in sleep, and then to behold the vivid outer world after its wakening.
16. Until the living soul is liberated from its charm of self delusion, it is subjected to view its guileful reveries of elemental bodies, appearing as a chain of airy dreams, before the mind’s eye in sleep.
17. The mind gathers the dross of dullness about it, as the soul draws the sheath of sleep upon itself; this dullness or dimness of apprehension is not intrinsic in the mind, but an extraneous schesis contracted by it from without.
18. The intellect moulds the form of one, who is conversant with material and insensible things, into a motionless and torpid body; and it is the same intellect, which shapes the forms of others, that are conscious of their intellectual natures, into the bodies of rational and moving being. (The dull soul is degraded to the state of immovable things and rooted trees, but intelligent souls, are elevated to the rank of moving men and other locomotive animals).
19. But all these moving and unmoving beings, are but different modifications and aspects of the same intellect; as the nails and other parts of the human body, are but the multifarious modalities of the same person.
20. The order and nature of things has invariably continued the same, as they have been ordained by the Divine will ever since its first formation of the world; and because the creation is a transcript of its original mould in the Divine mind; it is as ideal as any working of imagination or a vision in dreaming, both in its states of being and not being.
21. But the intangible and quiescent Brahma, is ever calm and quiet in his nature; he is never permeated with the nature of things, nor is he assimilated with the order of nature.
22. He appears as the beginning and end of creation, or as the cause of its production and dissolution; but these are the mere dreams of the Divine intellect, which is always in its state of profound sleep and rest.
23. The world is ever existent in his spiritual nature, and without any beginning or end of himself; the beginning and end of creation, bear no relation with his self-existent and eternal nature.
24. There is no reality in the nature of the visible creation, or in its existence or dissolution; all these are no other than representations shown in the spirit of God, like figures described in a picture.
25. As a legion drawn in painting, does not differ from its model in the mind of the painter; so these tangible objects of creation, with all other endless varieties, are not different from their prototype in the mind of God.
26. Notwithstanding the want of any difference, between the noumenal and phenomenal worlds; yet the mind is prone to view the variance of its subjectivity and objectivity, as it is apt to differentiate its own doings and dreams, in the states of its sleep and ignorance. It is the profound sleep and insouciance of the soul, that cause its liberation from the view, as its sensibility serves to bind it the more to the bondage of the visibles.
27. It is the reflexion of the invisible soul, that exhibits the visible to view, just as the subtile sunbeam, displays a thousand solid bodies glaring in sight; and shows the different phases of creation and dissolution as in its visions in dreaming.
28. The dreaming state of the sleeping intellect is called its ideality, and the waking state of the self-conscious soul is termed its vitality, as in the instances of men and gods and other intellectual beings.
29. After passing from these, and knowing the unreality of both these imaginative and speculative states, the soul falls into its state of profound sleep or trance, which is believed as the state of liberation by those that are desirous of their emancipation.
30. Ráma said:—Tell me, O venerable sir, in what proportion doth the intellect abide in men, gods and demons respectively; how the soul reflects itself during the dormancy of the intellect in sleep, and in what manner does it contain the world within its bosom.
31. Vasishtha replied:—Know the intellect to abide alike in gods and demons, as well as in all men and women; it dwells also in imps and goblins, and in all beasts and birds, reptiles and insects, including the vegetables and all immovable things (within its ample sphere).
32. Its dimension is boundless and also as minute as an atom; and it stretches to the highest heaven, including thousands of worlds within itself.
33. The capacity that we have of knowing the regions beyond the solar sphere, and even of penetrating into the darkness of polar circles; is all the quality of our intellect, which extends all over the boundless space, and is perfectly pellucid in its form and nature.
34. So very great is the extent of the intellect, that it comprehends the whole universe in itself; and it is this act of his comprehension of the whole, that is called the mundane creation, which originates from it.
35. The intellect spreads all around like the current of a river, which glides all along over the ground both high and low, leaving some parts of it quite dry, and filling others with its waters. So doth the intellect supply some bodies with intelligence, while it forsakes others and leaves them in ignorance.
36. It is intelligence which constitutes the living soul of the body, which is otherwise said to be lifeless and insensible; it resides in all bodies like the air in empty pots, and becomes vivid in some and imperceptible in others as it likes.
37. It is its knowledge of the soul (i.e. the intellectual belief in its spiritual), that removes the error of its corporeity; while the ignorance of its spiritual nature, tends the more to foster the sense of its corporeality, like one’s erroneous conception of water in the mirage.
38. The mind is as minute as the minutest ray of sunbeams; and this is verily the living soul, which contains the whole world within it.
39. All this phenomenal world is the phenomenon of the mind, as it is displayed in its visionary dreams; and the same being the display of the living soul, there is no difference at all between the noumenal and the phenomenal.