CHAPTER CLVIX. Wandering of Vipaschit.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
40. There is a reality (or entity of God) attached to every form of existence, and there is nothing which of itself is either an entity or nullity also.
41. O the great magic or illusion, which is overspread every where, and pervades over all nature in every form and at all times; and binds all beings in inextricable delusion.
42. The nature of the great God comprises the community of spirits in his spirit, and combines in itself all laws whether permissive or prohibitive acting in concert and eternal harmony.
43. It is his infinite power that has displayed the ignorance or Illusion, which spreads over all the three worlds from time with or without its beginning; and it is our delusion only, which depicts all things in their various forms to our view.
44. Or how could the creation that was once destroyed by the great deluge, come to resuscitate again; unless it were a réchauffé of the reminiscence of the past one, else the elementary bodies of air, fire and earth, could not possibly be produced from nothing.
45. Therefore the world is no other than a manifestation of the divine nature; and this is the verdict of the sástras, and the conviction of mankind from the very beginning of creation.
46. Things which admit of no sufficient proof for their material existence, are easily proved to exist, by their being considered under the light of the understanding.
47. Things of a subtile nature, which are imperceptible by the senses, are known in their essence by the understanding of the learned; hence the essence of Brahma is pure understanding, of which we are quite ignorant owing to our ignorance of the Intellect.
48. The world is obvious to us from its figure, as the air is evident by its vibration; hence no body is born or dies herein, (save that it appears to or disappears from our sight).
49. That I am living and the other is dead, are conceptions of our mind; hence death being but the total disappearance of the visible world from our view, it must be as pleasing to us as our sound sleep itself.
50. If it be the recognition of the visibles, which is called the life or revivification of man; then there are no such things in the world, as are commonly termed the life and death of beings.
51. At a time, the intellect appears a duality, and at other an unity, both are nothing but intellect.
52. It is the Intellection of the Divine Intellect, that infuses its intelligence into all minds; hence what is life without the intellect and the faculty of intellection.
53. The intellect being free from pain, there is no cause of complaint in any intellectual being; since the word world and all that it means to express, are but manifestations of vacuous intellect.
54. It is wrong to say, that the intellect is one thing and the body another; since the unity is the soul of all and pervades all multiformity; and as the waves and whirlpools are seen in the waters, so are all these bodies known to abide in the Supreme being.
55. The universal pervasion of divine essence, as that of the subtile air, is the cause of causes and the sole cause of all; hence the world is a subtile substance also, being but a reflexion of the Divine Intellect.
56. It is wonderful, how this subtile world appears as a solid body to us; it is only our conception of it as such that makes it appear so unto us; but conception is no substance at all, therefore the world has no substantiality in it.
57. It is the demon of error that reigns over us in its aerial form, deludes us to take the shadowy world for the substance; while in fact this creation of error is as nil and void, as the vacuous creation of the intellect. (i.e. The sensible world is as void and null as the ideal one).
58. Hence this nether world below and the etherial worlds above, are as void as the hyperphysical world of the Divine Intellect; and all these being but reflexions of the Divine mind, are exhibited in various ways.
59. The Intellect being a subtile entity, there is nothing as a solid substance anywhere; the phenomenals are all unsubstantial rarities, though they appear to us solidified realities.
60. The knowledge of the true verity and that of the unreality, are so blended together; that we must remain in mute silence like a block of wood or stone, to pronounce anything in the affirmative or negative about either.
61. The visible whole is the infinite Brahma, and this universe displays the majesty of the great God; and all these bodies are the various forms, exhibiting the infinite attributes of the deity.
62. In this manner, is the substance of the Divine Intellect displayed in itself; and it is the vacuous spirit of God, that manifests this unsubstantial world in its own vacuity.
63. The number of living beings, since the beginning of creation, is unlimited in every place; and of these there are many, that exist either in their corporeal or incorporeal forms.
64. There are other siddha and spiritual beings, abiding with their subtile natures and tenuous forms in the supreme Being; they live in groups in all elements, but never come to see one another of their own kind.
65. The exuberance of the visible world, being purely of aerial and vacuous form; they are never seen in their true and intellectual light, except when they appear to us in their aerial shapes in our dreams.
66. The world being well known, remains as it does in our inward conception of it, in the form of a hazy mist appearing to our sight at the end of night (i.e. dark and obscure).
67. It is a dark and indistinct maze, with nothing distinguishable in it when seen from a distance; it becomes clearer at a nearer view, and by keeping yourself afar you lose sight of it altogether.
68. As the particles of water fly off, and fall again into the sea; so do the atoms of intellect in all living beings, continually rise and subside, in the vast ocean of the Divine Mind. (So doth every thing proceed from and recede into the Divine Spirit).
69. This grandeur of creation is as the crowding throng of our dreams, which ere before lay slumbering; in the hollow space of the Divine Mind, therefore know these effusions of the divine Intellect, as calm and quiet as the unruffled spirit of God (that ever reposes in its calm felicity).
70. I have seen the infinite glories of creation, and have felt the various results of my deeds to no end; I have wandered in all quarters of the globe for ages; but I found no rest from the toils and troubles of the delusive world, except in the knowledge of my vanities of the world.