CHAPTER XXXII
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
39. The body becomes a dead corpse, after the mind has fled from it in the air; and it remains as an empty house, after its occupant has departed from it.
40. The all pervading intellect, becomes by its power of intellection both the living soul as well as the mind; and after passing from its embodied form (of puryashtaka), it assumes its spiritual (átiváhika) nature afterwards.
41. It fosters in its bosom the quintessence (pancha tan mátram) of the subtile elemental mind, which assumes a grosser form afterwards, as the thoughts of things appear in dream.
42. Then as the intensity of its thoughts, makes the unreal world and all its unrealities, appear as real before it, it comes to forget and forsake its spiritual nature, and transform itself to a gross body.
43. It thinks by mistake the unreal body as substantial, and believes the unreal as real and the real as unreal. (i.e. It takes the unreal material as real; and the real spiritual as nothing).
44. It is but a particle of the all pervading Intellect, that makes the living soul, which reflects itself afterwards in the form of the intelligent mind. (The understanding is a partial reflection of the Intellect. Gloss). The mind then ascends on the vehicle of the octuple body, and surveys the phenomenal world as a sober reality. (i.e. The senses of the body, represent the universe as real).
45. The intellect is the prime mobile power, that gives force to the octuple material (puryashtaka) body to move itself; and the action of the breath in the heart which is called life, resembles the spiritual force of a ghost raising an inert body. (The power of spirits entering and moving inert bodies, forms a firm belief in India).
46. When the aerial mind flies into the vacuous air, after the material frame is weakened and worn out; then the lifeless body remains as a block of wood or stone, and is called a dead mass by those that are living.
47. As the living soul forgets its spiritual nature, and becomes decayed in course of time and according to the frail nature of material things; so it fades and falls away in the manner of the withered leaves of trees.
48. When the vital power forsakes the body, and the action of the pericardium is stopped; the breath of life becomes extinct, and the animated being is said to die away.
49. As all beings that are born and have come to life, fade away in time like all created things in the world; so do human bodies also fade and fall away in time, like the withered leaves of trees.
50. The bodies of all embodied beings, are equally doomed to be born and die also in their time; as the leaves of trees, are seen to be incessantly growing and falling off at all seasons; why then should we lament at the loss of what is surely to be lost.
51. Look at these chains of living bodies, which are indiscriminately and incessantly rising and falling like bubbles and billows, in the vast ocean of the divine Intellect, and there is no difference of any one of them from another; why then should the wise make any distinction between objects that are equally frail in their nature, and proceed from and return to the same source.
52. The all-pervading intellect reflects itself only in the mind of man, and no where else; as it is the mirror only that receives the reflexions of objects, and no other opaque substance besides.
53. The acts and fates of men are all imprinted in the spacious and clear page of the Divine intellect, and yet are all embodied beings loud in their cries and complaints against the decrees of Heaven which is owing to their ignorance, and tending to their bitter grief and vain lamentation.