Reading section 59

31. The twinkling stars now disappeared from the sky, as the flowers on the trees were blown away by the breeze, and strewn on the ground as the fallen stars of heaven.

32. The sun became visible to the eyes, which his rays had roused from their sleep, as the new-rising faculty of reason becomes conspicuous in the minds of enlightened great souls.

33. Fragments of clouds shining with solar gleams, spread a yellow mantle over the eastern hills, which were still decorated with strings of stars, pendant on the crests of their lofty heads (like strings of pearls suspended to the crowns of kings).

34. All the terrestrial and celestial congress assembled again at the royal hall, in the order and manner (of their meeting) of the day before, after the performance of their morning services. (Originally _prátastanáh_ matins or matutinal ceremonies).

35. The whole assemblage took their seats as on the previous day, and sat unmoved in their places, as a lotus-lake in its calmness after a storm.

SECTION II.

NATURE OF THE MIND.

36. Then Ráma addressed the most eloquent of sages Vasishtha, with his mellifluent words regarding the subject under investigation (the nature of the mind).

37. He said:—Tell me plainly, O venerable sir! about the form of the mind, which developed itself in all things of the universe, as they were offshoots of it (or manifestations of the mind).

38. Vasishtha replied:—Ráma! there is no form whatever of the mind, that may be seen by any body. It has nothing substantial besides its name as that of the formless and irremovable vacuity: (with which it is compared in its all-comprehensiveness, all-diffusiveness and all-pervasiveness).

39. The mind as an _ens_ or entity (sat), is not situated in the outer body (or any part of it), nor is it confined in the cavity of the inward heart or brain. But know it O Ráma, to be situated everywhere, as the all encompassing vacuum. (Being all-pervading and all-diffusive in its nature as vacuity itself).

40. This world is produced from it, and likens to the waters of the mirage. It manifests itself in the forms of its fleeting thoughts, which are as false as the appearance of secondary moons in the vapours.

41. The thinking principle is generally believed as something intermediate between the positive and negative, or real and unreal, you must know it as such and no other (_i.e._ neither material as the body, nor immaterial as the soul, but a faculty appertaining to the nature of both).

42. That which is the representative of all objects is called the mind: there is nothing besides to which the term mind is applicable.

43. Know volition to be the same as the mind, which is nothing different from the will, just as fluidity is the same with water, and as there is no difference between the air and its motion in the wind. (The inseparable property answering for its substance).

44. For wherever there is any will, there is that attribute of the mind also and nobody has ever taken the will and the mind for different things.

45. The representation of any object whether it is real or unreal is mind, and that is to be known as Brahma the great father of all.

46. The incorporeal soul in the body is called the mind, as having the sensuous knowledge or everlasting ideas of the corporeal world in itself. (_i.e._ The sentient and thinking soul is the same with mind).

47. The learned have given the several names of ignorance, intellect, mind, bondage, sin and darkness, to the visible appearance of creation.

48. The mind has no other image than that (of a receptacle and reflector of the ideas) of the visible world, which, I repeat to say, is no new creation (but a reflexion of the mind).

49. The visible world is situated in an atom of the great mind, in the same manner, as the germ of the lotus plant is contained within its seed.

50. The visible world is as innate in the all-knowing mind, as the light is inherent in the sun-beams, and velocity and fluidity are inborn in the winds and liquids.

51. But the visionary ideas of the visibles are as false and fleeting in the minds of their observers, as the form of a jewel in gold, and water in the mirage; and as wrong as the foundation of a castle in the air, and the view of a city in a dream.

SECTION III.

KAIVALYA OR MENTAL ABSTRACTION.

52. But as the phenomenals appear as no other than real to their observer, I will O Ráma! cleanse them now from thy mind as they do the soil from a mirror.

53. As the disappearance of an appearance makes the observer no observer of it, know such to be the state of the abstraction of the mind from whatever is real or unreal in the world. (This is called _Kevalíbháva_ or _non-chalance_ of all things).

54. This state being arrived, all the passions of the soul, and the desires of the mind, will be at rest, as torrents of rivers at the calm ensuing upon the stillness of the wind.

55. It is impossible that things having the forms of space, earth and air (_i.e._ material objects) will present the same features in the clear light (of induction), as they do to our open sight.

56. Thus when the observer comes to know the unreality of the phenomena of the three worlds, as well as of his own entity, it is then that his pure soul attains to the knowledge of _kaivalya_ or solity of divine existence.

57. It is such a mind that reflects the image of God in itself as in a mirror; while all others are as blocks of stone, and incapable of receiving any reflexion at all.

58. After suppression of the sense of _ego_ and _tu_ (or both the subjective and objective knowledge), and the error of the reality of the outer world the beholder becomes abstracted and remains without vision of external things in his sitting posture.

59. Ráma rejoined:—If the perception of entity is not to be put down, nor an entity become a non-entity nor when I cannot view the visibles (which are the causes of our error), as non-entities;

60. Then tell me O Bráhman! how to uproot this disease of our eagerness for the visibles from the mind, which bewilders the understanding, and afflicts us with a train of troubles.

61. Vasishtha replied:—Now hear my advice, Ráma, for the suppression of this phantom of phenomenon, whereby it will surely die away and become utterly extinct.

62. Know Ráma, that nothing that is, can ever be destroyed or become extinct; and though you remove it, yet it will leave its seed or trace in the mind.

63. This seed is the memory of such things, which reopens the ideas of the visibles in the mind, expanding themselves in the fallacious notions of the forms of big worlds and skies, mountains and oceans.

64. These (wrong notions) called _doshas_ or faults and defects of understanding, are obstacles in the way to liberation; but they do not affect the sages who are found to be liberated.

65. Again if the world and all other things are real existences (as the Sánkhyas maintain): yet they cannot confer liberation on any one; because the visibles, whether they are situated within or without us are perishable themselves.

66. Learn therefore this dreadful proposition (solemn truth), which will be fully explained to you in the subsequent parts of this work. (Note:—A dreadful dogma it is to physicists and “_ádivádis_” or asserters of the _encipientes mundi_ or beginning of the world).

67. That all things appearing in the forms of vacuity, elementary bodies, the world, and _ego et tu_, are non-entities, and have no meanings in them.

68. Whatever is seen apparent before us, is no other but the supreme Brahma himself, and his undecaying and imperishable essence.

69. The plenitude of creation is an expansion of his plenum, and the quiet of the universe rests in his quietude. It is his _beom_ which is the substance of vacuum, and it is his immensity that is the substratum of the immense cosmos.

70. Nothing visible is real, and there is neither any spectator nor spectacle here. There is nothing as vacuity or solidity in nature, but all this is but a piece of extended Intelligence.

71. Ráma rejoined:—The adages relating the grinding of stones by the son of a barren woman, the horns of a hare, and the dancing of a hill with its extended arms;

72. And the oozing of oil from sand, the reading (of books) by dolls of marble, and the roaring of clouds in a painting, and such others are applicable to your words (of the reality of an unreal essence of God).

73. I see this world to be full of diseases, deaths and troubles, mountains, vacuities and other things, and how is it sir, that you tell me of their non-existence?

74. Tell me Sir, how you call this world to be unsubstantial, unproduced and inexistent, that I may be certain of this truth.

75. Vasishtha replied:—Know Ráma, that I am no inconsistent speaker, and hear me explain to you how the unreality appears as real, as the son of a barren woman has come to rumour.

76. All this was unproduced before, and did not exist in the beginning of creation. It comes to appearance from the mind like that of a city in a dream. (_i.e._ They are all but creations of the mind and fancy).

77. The mind also was not produced in the beginning of creation and was an unreality itself. Hear me tell you therefore, how we come to a notion of it.

78. This unreal mind spreads by itself the false and changing scenes of the visible world, just as we dream of changeful unrealities as true in a state of dreaming. (Here the dreaming philosopher sees dreams in his dream).

79. It then exerts its volition in the fabrication of the body and spreads far and wide the magic scene of the phenomenal world.

80. The mind by its potentiality of vacillation has many actions of its own, as those of expansion, saltation, and motion, of craving, roving, diving and seizing, and many other voluntary efforts (the causes of physical operations).

CHAPTER V.

ON THE ORIGINAL CAUSE. (MÚLA-KÁRANA).

Ráma said:—Tell me, O chief of the sages! what cause is it that leads to our misconception of the mind, how it is produced and what is the source of its illusion.

2. Tell me sir, in brief of the first production (of the mind), and then, O best of the eloquent, you may tell the rest, that is to be said on the subject.

3. Vasishtha replied:—Incident to the universal dissolution, when all things were reduced to nothing, this infinity of visible objects remained in a state of calm and quiet before their creation.

4. There was then the only great God in existence, who is increate and undecaying, who is the creator of all at all times, who is all in all, and supreme soul of all, and resembling the sun that never sets.