CHAPTER XVIII. LIVING LIBERATION OR TRUE FELICITY OF MAN IN THIS LIFE.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
40. If thou art to be born no more, after thy past and present births (i.e. if there be no further transmigration of thy soul), then thou hast no cause for sorrow, being extinct thyself in the Supreme Spirit.
41. Therefore there is no cause of sorrow, in aught that occurs according to the course of nature; but rather be joyous in pursuing the duties of thy present life (for want of thy knowledge of thy past and future states).
42. But do not indulge the excess of thy joy or grief, but preserve thy equanimity everywhere; by knowing the Supreme Spirit to pervade in all places.
43. Know thyself to be the form of the infinite spirit, and stretching wide like the extended vacuum; and that thou art the pure eternal light, and the focus of full effulgence.
44. Know thy eternal and invisible soul, to be distinct from all worldly substances; and to be a particle of that universal soul, which dwells in and stretches through the hearts of all bodies; and is like the unseen thread, running through the holes and connecting the links of a necklace (or like the string in the beads of a rosary). (This connecting soul is denominated the Sútrátmá, which fills, bounds, connects and equals all).
45. That the continuation of the world, is caused by the reproduction of what has been before, is what you learn from the unlearned; and not so from the learned (who know the world to be nothing). Know this and not that, and be happy in this life.
46. The course of the world and this life, is ever tending to decay and disease. It is ignorance that represents them to be progressing to perfection. But you who are intelligent, knowest their real natures (of frailty and unreality).
47. What else can be the nature of error but falsehood, and what may the state of sleep be, but dream and drowsiness? (So is this world a mistaken existence, and this life a mere dream of unreal appearance, which so vividly shines before you).
48. Whom do you call your good friend, and whom do you say your great enemy? They all belong to the Sole One, and proceed alike from the Divine will.
49. Everything is frail and fickle, and has its rise and fall from and into the Supreme Spirit; it likens the wave of the sea, rising and falling from and into the same water.
50. The worlds are rolling upward and going down again, like the axis and spokes of a wheel. (The rotations of the planets in their circuits above and below the sun).
51. The celestials sometimes fall into hell, and the infernals are sometimes raised to heaven; animals of one kind are regenerated in another form, and the people of one continent and island are reborn in another (as men are led from one country and climate to another, and settle there).
52. The opulent are reduced to indigence, and the indigent are raised to affluence; and all beings are seen to be rising and falling in a hundred ways.
53. Who has seen the wheel of fortune, to move on slowly in one straight forward course for ever, and not tumbling in its ups and downs, nor turning to this side and that in its winding and uneven route. Fixedness of fortune is a fiction, as that of finding the frost in fire.
54. Those that are called great fortunes, and their components and appendages as also many good friends and relations; are all seen to fly away in a few days of this transient life.
55. The thought of something as one’s own and another’s, and of this and that as mine, thine, his or others’, are as false as the appearance of double suns and moons in the sky.
56. That this is a friend and this other a foe, and that this is myself and that one is another, are all but false conceptions of your mind, and must be wiped off from it (since the whole is but the one Ego).
57. Make it thy pleasure however to mix with the blinded populace, and those that are lost to reason; and deal with them in thy usual unaltered way. (Mix with the thoughtless mob, but think with the thoughtful wise. So says Sadi: I learnt morals from the immoral, adabaz bedabanamokhtam).
58. Conduct thyself in such a manner in thy journey through this world, that thou mayst not sink under the burden of thy cares of it.
59. When thou comest to thy reason, to lay down thy earthly cares and desires; then shalt thou have that composure of thy mind, which will exonerate thee from all thy duties and dealings in life.
60. It is the part of lowminded men, to reckon one as a friend and another as no friend; but noble minded men do not observe such distinctions between man and man. (Lit. Their minds are not clouded by the mist of distinction).
61. There is nothing wherein I am not (or where there is not the Ego); and nothing which is not mine (i.e. beyond the Ego: the learned who have considered it well, make no difference of persons in their minds).
62. The intellects of the wise, are as clear as the spacious firmament, and there is no rising nor setting of their intellectual light, which views everything as serenely as in the serenity of the atmosphere and as plainly as the plain surface of the earth.
63. Know Ráma! all created beings, are friendly and useful to you, and there is no body nor any in the world, wherewith you are not related in some way on your part. (No body is a unit himself, but forms a part of the universal whole).
64. It is erroneous to look ＜on＞ any one as a friend or foe, among the various orders of created beings in the universe; which in reality may be serviceable to you, however unfriendly they may appear at first.