CHAPTER LXVII. Lecture on Truth.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
Argument. Nature of the Active and Living Soul (Jíva) and its Sensations.
Ráma said:—Leaving the mind please tell me more about the nature of the living soul; what relation it bears to the Supreme soul, how it sprang from the same and what is its essence.
2. Vasishtha replied:—Know Brahma is omnipresent, and the Lord of all at all times; He manifests himself in whatever attribute he assumes to himself at his free will. Ex arbitrio suo.
3. The attribute which the universal soul assumes to itself in the form of perception (chétana), is known by the term living soul, which possesses the power of volition in itself.
4. There are two causal principles combined with the living soul, namely: its predestination resulting from its prior acts and volitions; and its later free will which branch forth severally into the various causes of birth, death and subsistence of beings.
5. Ráma said:—Such being the case, tell me, O thou greatest of sages, what this predestination means and what are these acts, and how they become the causal agents of subsequent events.
6. Vasishtha replied:—The intellect (chit) is possest of its own nature of the properties of oscillation and rest, like the vacillation and stillness of the winds in the air. Its agitation is the cause of its action, otherwise it is calm and quiet as a dead lock—quietus itself.
7. Its oscillation appears in the fluctuation of the mind, and its calmness in the want of mental activity and exertions; as in the nonchalance of Yoga quietism.
8. The vibrations of the intellect lead to its continual transmigrations; and its quietness settles it in the state of the immovable Brahma. The oscillation of the intellect is known to be the cause of the living state and all its actions.
(The moving force of the mind is the animism of Stahl, and its rest is the quietus of Plato).
9. This vibrative intellect is the thinking Soul, and is known as the living agent of actions; and the primary seed of the universe. (This is the anima mundi or moving force of the world,—the doctrine of Stahl).
10. This secondary soul then assumes a luminous form according to the light of its intellect, and afterwards becomes multifarious at its will, and by means of the pulsations of the primary intellect all over the creation. (This luminous form is represented by the red body of Brahma and the red clay of which Adam was formed. (It was the All—to pan of Pantheism, and the Principium hylarchicum or first principle of Henry Moore)).
11. The pulsative intellect or soul, having passed through many transformations (or transmigrations), is at last freed from its motion and migration. And there are some souls which pass into a thousand births and forms, while there are others which obtain their liberation in a single birth (by means of their Yoga meditation or unification with God, which is the final aim of Platonism and of the Chinese Laosin).
12. So also the human soul being of its own nature prone to assume its dualism of the motive intellect, becomes by itself the cause of its transmigration and sufferings, as also of its transient bliss or misery in heaven or hell. (There is no rest for the restless soul, until it rests in the bosom of the all-tranquil and Universal soul).
13. As the same gold is changed to the forms of bracelets and other things, and as the same gross matter appears in the different forms of wood and stone; so the uniform soul of God appears as multiform according to his various modes and attributes. (The soul modifies itself into many forms of activity and passivity).
14. It is the fallacy of the human mind, that views the forms as realities, and causes one to think his soul which is freed from birth and form, to be born, living and dead, as a man sees a city to rise and fall in his delirium. (The appearances and forms of things are objective and false fabrications of the intellect).
15. The varying intellect erroneously conceives its unreal egoism and meitatem as realities, from its ignorance of its unity with the unchangeable reality of God, and also from its felicity of enjoyments peculiar to its varied state. (The भोगाशा or desire of fruition is the cause of the revolution of the soul in endless states of beings).
16. As Lavana the King of Mathura, falsely deemed himself as a Chandála, so the intellect thinks on its own different states of existence and that of the world (from its desire of enjoying its pleasures which are deeply rooted in itself).
17. All this world is the phantom of an erroneous imagination, O Ráma! it is no more than the swelling of the waters of the deep. (The world is the expansion of the self-same soul and its evolution is the volition of Brahma).
18. The intellect is ever busied with the intellection of its own intelligences, and the innate principles of its action; in the same manner as the sea is seen to swell with its waters moving in waves of themselves. (The continuation of the intellect in the association of its preconceived ideas, is carried on by law of continuity).
19. The intellect is as the water in the wide expanse of Brahma; its inflation raises the waving thoughts in the mind, resembling the bubbles of water, and produces the revolutions of living souls like eddies in the sea of this world.
20. Know thy soul, O gentle Ráma! as a phenomenon of the all pervading Brahma, who is both the subject and object of his consciousness, and who has posited in thee a particle of himself, like the breath of a mighty lion.
21. The intellect with its consciousness, constitutes the living soul, and that with the will forms the mind; its knowing power is the understanding, and its retentiveness is called its memory: its subjectivity of selfishness is styled egoism, and its error is called máyá or delusion. (Consciousness is perception qua mens de presenti suo statu admonitur. The living soul is psyche or animus. The intellect is the mover of the will. The intellectus est prior voluntate, non enimést voluntas &c. The understanding has the power to acquire knowledge, and memory has the power of retention &c.).
22. The mind by its imagination stretches out this world, which is as false as the phantom of Utopia—Gandharva-nagaram or an air drawn city.
23. The objective knowledge of the world in the mind, is as false as the appearance of chains of pearls in the sky, and as the visionary scenes in a dream. (The objective is the feigned fabrication of the mind, and therefore unreal).
24. The soul which is ever pure and self sufficient in its nature, and remains in its own state of tranquility; is not perceived by the perverted mind dwelling on its delusive dreams.
25. The objective world is referred to waking—Jágrat, because it is perceived in the waking state of the soul; and the subjective mind is allied to sleep—swapna, because the mind is active during the sleeping and dreaming states. The ego is related to deep sleep—sushupta, when we are unconscious of ourselves, and the fourth or pure Intellect—turíya or turya, is the trance or hybernation of the soul.
26. That which is above these four conditions, is the state of ultimate bliss, ecstasis; and it is by reliance on that supremely pure essence of God, that one is exempted from all his causes of grief and sorrow (in his ecstatic delight).
27. Everything is displayed in Him and all things are absorbed in Him also; this world is neither a reality here or there; it presents only the false appearance of strings of pearls in the sky. (Sensible forms are empty appearances, and are only believed as real by materialists).
28. And yet God is said to be the cause and substratum, of all these unobstructed phantoms rising to the view, as the empty air is said to be the receptacle of the rising trees. Thus the uncausal God is said to be the cause of this uncaused world, which only exists in our illusive conceptions, and presents itself to our delusive sensations of it.
29. As a polished piece of iron gets the reflexion of a grosser piece, so do our finer or inner sensations take the representations of the gross forms of their particular objects (though the senses and sensible objects are both untrue, as mere delusive and delusions).
30. These sensations are conveyed to the mind, and thence again to the living soul and intellect, in the same manner as the roots supply the sap to the stem, and thence to the branches, and lastly to the fruits of trees. (i.e. The Divine Intellect is the last receptacle of the impressions of the senses).
31. As the seed produces the fruit, and the same contains the seed in itself; so the intellect producing the mind and its thoughts can not get rid of them; but is contained in, and reproduced by them in successive transmigrations.
32. There is some difference however in the simile of the insensible seed and tree; with the sensible intellect and mind (which are freed from reproduction by their attainment of liberation); but the thoughts of the creator and creation like the seed and tree, are reproductive of one another without end. (Because the thought of the creator accompanies that of the creation, and so the viceversa; owing to the unbroken chain and interminable concatenation of the ideas of causality and its effect).
33. But there is this difference between the insensible seed and sensible intellect, that the former is continually productive of one another, while the latter ceases in its process upon its attainment of liberation; yet the ideas of the creator and creation are reproductive of each other adinfinitum.
34. Yet our understanding shows it as clearly—as the sun light sets forth the forms and colours of objects to view; that there is one eternal God of truth, who is of the form of intellectual light, which shows the forms of all things, that proceed from Him (as the colours of objects originate from the solar light, and are shown again by the same to our optical vision).
35. As the ground which is dug presents a hollow, so the reasoning of every system of sound philosophy establishes the existence of the transcendental void as the cause of all. (An unknown first cause without any attribute, is the unanimous conclusion, arrived at every rational system of Philosophy. See Kusumánjali. Here Vasishtha establishes his vacuous rather than a personal cause).
36. As a prismatic crystal represents various colours in its prisms, without being tinged by the same; so the transparent essence of Brahma shows the groups of worlds in its hollow bosom without its connection with them. (This variety of vision is caused by our optical deception).
37. The universal soul is the source, and not the substance of all these vast masses of worlds; just as the seed is the embryo, and not the matter of the trees and plants and their fruits and flowers that grow from the same. (The to on is the only principle called God, all other objects are but phenomenal modifications of his essence).
38. Ráma said:—Oh how wonderful is this world, which presents its unreality as a reality in all its endless forms unto us; and though situated in the Divine self, appears to be quite apart from it. O how it makes its minuteness seem so very immense to us. (What are these worlds but as particles subsisting in the divine essence, when they are compared with the immensity of the Divine spirit and mind—the finite with the Infinite).