CHAPTER LXXI. A Discourse on the Body, Mind and Soul.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
40. As water seeks the lowest level for its reservoir; so it is the mind, which the soul makes the receptacle of its knowledge. (i.e. The soul receives and deposits all its knowledge from and in the mind).
41. The knowledge of the reality or unreality of the world, which is reflected upon the internal organ of the mind; is all the working of the conscious soul, as light is the production of solar rays.
42. This internal organ (of the mind), is regarded as the actual cause of all (under the title of Hiranyagarbha); while the soul which is the prime cause of causes, is regarded as no cause at all, owing to its transcendent nature (and this called the supreme Brahma; (or the soul), that remains intact from all causality).
43. Men of great minds, have given the appellation of fallacy, misjudgement and ignorance to this internal or causal mind; which is the source of the creation of worlds. (But all of these, are mere fabrications of the imaginative mind).
44. It is error and want of full investigation; that make us mistake the mind for a distinct entity; it is the seed of all our ignorance, which casts us in darkness from the sunlight of reason.
45. It is by means of the true knowledge of the soul, Ráma! that the mind becomes a nihility, as the darkness becomes a zero before the light of the lamp.
46. It is ignorance (of true knowledge), that mistakes the mind for the cause of creation, and recognizes it under its various denominations; such as of jíva (zeus) or the living soul, the internal organ, the mind, the thinking principle and the thought (as they are stated in the Utpatti prakarana of this work).
47. Ráma said:—Tell me sir, why are so many different appellations, heaped upon the only one thing of the mind, and deliver me from the confusion, which is caused by them in my mind.
48. Vasishtha answered:—All these are but the various modes of the single substance of the soul, whose intellect displays these modalities; as the same substance of water, displays itself into the variety of its waves.
49. The soul is a fluctuating principle, which inheres in all its modifications; as the fluidity of water, is inherent in the undulatory waves of the sea.
50. The supreme soul is sometimes without its vibration, and remains stationary in all immovable things; as the water which presents its fluidity in the loose billows, shows also its inelasticity in the liquids which are at rest (as in water pots and bottles).
51. Hence the stones and other immovable substances, remain at rest with their inherent spirit; but men and all animated nature, are as the foaming froths of the distilled liquor of the universal soul.
52. The almighty power resides in all bodies, with the inertia of his spirit; which is known as the insensibility, dullness or ignorance of inert bodies.
53. The infinite soul being involved in that ignorance, takes the name of the living or animal soul; which is confined as an elephant, in the prison house of the delusion of this world.
54. It is called jíva or living from its animation, and also as the ego from its egoism; it is termed the understanding from its power of discernment, and as the mind from its will or volition.
55. It is called dull nature from its natural dullness, and also as body from its being embodied with many elementary principles; it is inert in its natural state, and sensible also from the essence of the soul imbrued in it.
56. The spiritual substance which lies between the inert and active principles, is called the mind; and it passes under various designations, according to its different faculties and functions.
57. This is the quiddity of the animating soul jíva, as given in the Brihadáranyaka and other upanishads; and there are many other definitions of it to be found, in the other works of Vedánta.
58. But the unvedántic paralogists, have invented many other words over and above these, to designate the animal soul; and have thereby misled the ignorant to false beliefs, tending to their bewilderment only.
59. Know thus, O long armed Ráma! this animating soul to be the cause of creation, and not the dull and dumb body, which has not the power of moving itself, without being moved by some spiritual force.
60. It happens many times, that the destruction (or ablation) of either the container or contained, causes the annihilation of both; so it is the case with the receptacle of the body and its content the soul, that the removal of the one leads to the dissolution of both. (But this means their decomposition and not their destruction, as neither of these is destroyed at once).
61. The moisture of a leaf when dried, is neither wasted nor lost in air; but subducted from it to reside in the rays of the all sucking sun.
62. So the body being wasted, there is no waste of the embodied soul; which is borne to live in banishment from its former abode, and reside in the region of empty air or in the reservoir of the universal spirit.
63. He who falls into the error of thinking himself as lost at the loss of his body, is like a baby, which is snatched away by a fairy from the breast of its mother.
64. He who is thought to have his utter extinction, is said to rise again (by the resurrection of his soul); it is the abeyance of the mind which is called utter extinction and liberation of the soul.
65. A person being dead, is said to be lost—nashta; but this is entirely false and untrue; as one who being long absent from his country returns to it again; so the dead man revisits the earth, in his repeated transmigrations.
66. Here men are borne away like straws and sticks by the current of death, to the vast ocean of eternity; and having disappeared as fruits from their nature, soil and season, appear in others and in other scenes.
67. Living beings bounden to their desires, are led from one body to another in endless succession; as monkeys quit the decayed trees of the forest, in search of others elsewhere.
68. They leave them again when they are worn out, and repair to others at distant times and climes.
69. Living beings are hourly seen to be moving about, and led away by their insatiate desires from place to place; as restless infants are rocked and carried by their cunning nurses.
70. Bound by the rope of desire, to the decayed trees of their infirm bodies, men are seen to drag their lives of labour, in search of their livings in this valley of misery.
71. Men though grown old and decrepit and loaded with misery, and though they are shattered in their bodies at the last stage of their life; are still dragged about by the inborn desires of their hearts, to be cast into hell pits (both while alive and after their death).
72. Válmíki said:—As the sage had said thus far, the sun sank down and bade the day to observe its evening rites. The assembly broke with mutual salutations, and all of them proceeded to their evening ablutions, until they met again after dispersion of the gloom of night, by the rising rays of the orient sun.