CHAPTER CVI. Invalidation of the Doctrine of Cause and Effect.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
40. Know the world as the concrete counterpart, of the discrete attribute of the transcendent glory of God; and as the very reflexion of it, thus visibly exposed to the view of its beholders.
41. But there being in reality no duality whatever, in the unity of the Divinity; He is neither the reflector nor the reflexion himself; say who can ascertain what he is, or tell whether he is a being or not being, or a something or nothing.
42. Ráma rejoined:—If so it be as you say, that the Lord is neither the reflector nor reflexion, and neither the viewer nor the view (i.e. if he is neither the prototype nor its likeness, and neither the subjective nor objective); then say what is the difference between the cause and effect, what is the source of all these, and if they are unreal why do they appear as realities?
43. Vasishtha replied:—Whenever the Lord thinks on the manifestation of his intellect, He beholds the same at the very moment, and then becomes the subjective beholder of the objects of his own thought.
44. The intellectual vacuum itself assumes the form of the world, as the earth becomes a hill &c. by itself; but it never forgets itself for that form, as men do in their dream. Moreover there is no other cause to move it to action, except its own free will.
45. As a person changing his former state to a new one, retains his self consciousness in the interim, so the Divine Intellect retains its identity, in its transition from prior vacuum to its subsequent state of the plenum.
46. The thought of cause and effect, and the sense of the visible and invisible, proceed from errors of the mind and defects of vision; it is the erroneous imagination that frames these worlds, and nobody questions or upbraids himself for his error. The states of cause and effect, and those of the visible and invisible &c., are mere phantoms of error, rising before the sight of the living soul and proceeding from its ignorance, and then its imagination paints these as the world, and there is nobody that finds his error or blame himself for his blunder.
47. If there be another person, that is the cause, beholder and enjoyer of these (other than the Supreme One) then say what is that person, and what is the phenomenal, that is the point in question; or it is liable to reproof.
48. As the state of our sleep presents us only, an indiscernible vacuity of the Intellect (which watches alone over the sleeping world); how then is it possible to represent the One soul as many, without being blamed for it?
49. It is the self-existent soul alone, which presents the appearance of the world in the intellect; and it is the ignorance of this truth, which has led to the general belief of the creation of the world by Brahmá.
50. It is ignorance of this intellectual phenomenon, which has led mankind to many errors, under the different names of illusion or máyá, of ignorance or avidyá, of the phenomenal or drisya, and finally of the world or jagat.
51. The manifestation in the intellectual vacuum, takes possession of the mind like a phantom; which represents the unreal world as a reality before it, as the false phantom of ＜a＞ ghost, takes a firm hold on the mind of an infant.
52. Although the world is an unreality, yet we have a notion of it as something real in our empty intellect; and this is no other than the embodiment of a dream, which shows us the forms of hills and cities in empty air.
53. The intellect represents itself as a hill or a Rudra, or as a sea or as the God Virát himself; just ＜as＞ a man thinks in his dream, that he sees the hills and towns in his empty mind.
54. Nothing formal that has any form, can be the result of a formless cause (as God); hence the impossibility of the existence of the solid world, and of its formal causes of atomic elements, at the great annihilation both prior to creation, as also after its dissolution. It is therefore evident, that the world is ever existent in its ideal form only in the Divine Mind.
55. It is a mere uncaused existence, inherent in its vacuous state in the vacuous Mind; and what is called the world, is no more than an emptiness appertaining to the empty Intellect.
56. The minds of ignorant people are as glassy mirrors, receiving the dim and dull images of things set before their senses; but those of reasoning men are as clear microscopes, that spy the vivid light of the Divine Mind that shines through all. (This light is called Pratyagnánátma or the nooscopic appearance of Divine soul).
57. Therefore they are the best of men, who shun the sight of visible forms; and view the world in the light of intellectual vacuity; and remain as firm as rocks in the meditation of the steady Intellect, and place no faith or reliance on anything else.
58. The Intellect shows the revolution of the world in itself by its incessant act of airy intellection; as the sea displays its circuition throughout the watery world, by the continual rotation of its whirlpools.
59. As the figurative tree of our desire, produces and yields our wished for fruits in a moment, so the intellect presents every thing before us, that is thought of in an instant. (It is the subjective mind, that shows the objects of its thought within itself).
60. As the mind finds in itself, its wished-for gem and the fruit of its desire; in the same manner doth the internal soul, meet with its desired objects in its vacuous self in a minute.
61. As a man passing from one place to another, rests calmly in the interim; such is the state of the mind in the interval of its thoughts, when it sees neither the one nor another thing.
62. It is the reflection of the Intellect only, which shines clearly in variegated colours, within the cavity of its own sphere; and though devoid of any shape or colour, yet it exhibits itself like the vacuity of the sky, in the blueness of the firmament.
63. Nothing unlike can result from the vacuous Intellect, other than what is alike inane as itself; a material production requires a material cause, which is wanting in the Intellect; and therefore the created world is but a display of the Divine Mind, like the appearance of dreams before our sleeping minds.