CHAPTER CLXXXXV. Lecture on the Enlightenment of Understanding.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
Argument:—Vasishtha’s commendation of Ráma’s knowledge, and his further questions for his trial and Ráma’s replies.
Vasishtha said:—Bravo Ráma! that you are awakened to light and enlightened in your understanding; and the words you have spoken, are calculated to destroy the darkness of ignorant minds, and rejoice the hearts of wise.
2. These phenomenals that ever appear so very bright to our sight, lose their gloss at our want of desire and disregard of them; it is the knowledge of this truth, that is attended with our peace and tranquility, and our liberation and inexcitability.
3. All these imaginary sights vanish from our view, at the suppression of our imagination of them; just as the want of ventilation in the winds, reduces them to the level of the one common, and calm still air.
4. The enlightened man remaining unmoved as a stone, or moving quietly in his conduct in life (i.e. who is ever unruffled in his disposition), is verily said to have his clear liberation.
5. Look at yogis like ourselves, O Ráma, that having attained this state of liberation, have been cleansed from all our iniquities; and are now set at quiet rest, even in the conduct of our worldly affairs.
6. Know the great gods Brahmá, Vishnu and others, to have been situated in this state of quiet and freedom, that they are remaining as pure intelligences, even while discharging the offices of their godship.
7. Do you, O Ráma, attain the enlightenment of holy sages, and remain as still as a stone like ourselves.
8. Ráma replied:—I see this world as a formless void, situated in the infinite vacuity of Brahma; it is an uncreated and unsubstantial nihility, and with all its visibility, it is an invisible nothing.
9. It is as the appearance of water in the mirage, and as a whirlpool in the ocean; its glare is as glitter ＜of＞ gold in the dust, and of sands in the sandy shores of seas in sunshine.
10. Vasishtha said:—Ráma! if you have become so enlightened and intelligent, then I will tell you more for the edification of your understanding; and put some questions for your answer to them, in order to remove my doubts regarding them.
11. Tell me, how can the world be a nullity, when it shines so very brightly all about and above our heads; and how can all these things, which are so resplendent to sight, and always perceptible to our senses.
12. Ráma replied:—The world was never created in the beginning, nor was anything ever produced at any time, it is therefore as nil as the offspring of an unprolific woman and a creation of our imagination only.
13. It is true that there is no result without its cause, or that nothing comes from nothing, but can be the cause of the world when it is a nullity, and a production of our error only.
14. The immutable and everlasting deity, cannot be the creator, without changing itself to a finite form; how can therefore be there a cause of this frail and finite form?
15. It is the unknown and nameless Brahma, that shows himself as the cause of the world, which having proceeded from him is his very self, nor does the word world bear any other sense at all (nor it can be made to bear any other sense).
16. The first intelligence named as the God Brahmá, rises from and abides for a little while, that unknown and nameless category of the universal spirit, as the conscious soul and having a spiritual body. (This is called the jívátmá or the living soul with a personal body of it).
17. It then comes to see on a sudden, the luminaries of the sun and moon and the heavenly hosts, rising in the infinity of the Divine Mind, and thinks a small moment as a long year as its reverie of a dream. (The Morning and evening of the creation of Brahmá, occupying many a year of mortals).
18. It then perceived the ideas of space and time, together with those of their divisions and motions also; and the whole universe appearing to its sight, in the vast immensity of vacuity: (of the Divine Mind).
19. Upon the completion of the false world in this manner, its false contriver the soi-disant Brahmá, was employed in wandering all over the world as his creation.
20. So the living soul of every body, being deluded by its mistaken conception of the world as a positive reality, traverses up and down and all about it, in its repeated wanderings amidst its false utopia.
21. And though the events of life, takes place according to the wishes of the soul; yet these are mere accidents of chance; and it is a mistake to think them as permanent result of fixed laws.
22. Because it is as wrong to suppose the substantiality of the world, and the permanency of the events; as to grant the birth of a child born of a barren woman, and the feeding of it with the powder of the pulverized air.
23. Nothing can be positively affirmed or denied, regarding the existence of the world; except that whatever it is, it is no other than the diffusion of the all pervasive spirit of the Eternal one.
24. The world is as clear as the transparent atmosphere, and as solid as the density of a rock; it is as mute and still as a stone, and quite indestructible in its nature.
25. The world is originally ideal, from the ideas of the eternal mind; and then it is spiritual, from the pervasion of the all pervading spirit of Virát; it is thus a mere void, appearing as a solid body to us.
26. Thus Brahma being the great vacuum and its fulness, where is any other thing as the world in it, the whole is a dead calm as quietus, and a void devoid of its beginning and end (i.e. a round sphere).
27. As the waves have been ever heaving and diving, in the bosom of the waters of the deep; and as the waves are not distinct from those waters, so the worlds rolling in the breast of the vacuous Brahma, are no other than the selfsame essence of Brahma himself.
28. The few that are versed in their superior or esoteric, as well as in the inferior or exoteric knowledge; live as long as they live and then dive at last in this Supreme, as drops of water mix into the sea.
29. The exoteric (or phenomenal) world, abides in the esoteric (or the noumenal) Brahma; and is of the same transcendent nature as the Divine Mind; for it is never possible for the gross, changeful and transitional nature, to subsist in the pure, unchanged and quiet state of the deity.
30. For who that knows the nature of dream as false, and that of mirage as a fallacy can ever believe them as realities; so any one that knows the visible Nature to be of the nature of Brahma, can ever take it for dull and gross material substance. (Nature being one with its God, is equally of a spiritual nature).
31. The enlightened sage, that has the esoteric knowledge of the world, and reflects it in its spiritual sense; cannot be misled to view it in its gross (material) light, as the holy man that tastes ambrosia, is never inclined to drink the impure liquor of wine.
32. He who remains in his Nirvána meditation, by reverting his view from the sight of the visibles, to the excogitation of his self; and represses his mind from the thoughts of thinkables, he is verily seated in the tranquility of Supreme spirit.
33. Vasishtha said:—If the visible creation is situated in Brahma—their cause and origin, as the germ or sprout of a plant is seated in its producing seed; how then can you ignore the substantiality or distinction of either of them from their originating source the seed or God (who is said in the sruti, as the seed of the arbor of the world,—sansáramahirúpavíja &c.).
34. Ráma replied:—The germ does seem to be seated or situated in the seed (as a separate or different substance); but as it is produced from the essence of the seed, it appears to be the same substance with itself. (Were it not so, the germ would become another plant than that of the seed).
35. If the world as it appears to us is inherent in Brahma, then it must be of the same essence and nature as Brahma; and these being eternal and imperishable in Brahma, needs have the world to be so also (and not of the seed and sprout, or the begetter and begotten).
36. We have neither seen nor ever heard, that any finite, formal or perishable, has ever proceeded from an infinite, formless and imperishable cause (therefore this world is not as it appears to us).
37. It is impossible for a formless thing, to remain in any form or other whatsoever; as it is never possible for an atom, to contain a mountain in its bosom.
38. It is the voice of an idiot only who says, that the stupendous world with its gigantic form, abides in the formless abyss of Brahma; as bright gems are contained in the hollow of a box or basket. (The basket has a base to support any thing, whereas the vacuity of Brahma has no basis at all).
39. It does not befit any body to say that, the transcendence and tranquility of God, supports the material and moving world upon it; nor that a corporeal body (the corpus mundi), is an imperishable thing (as the divine spirit).