Reading section 60

5. He whom language fails to describe, and who is known to the liberated alone; who is termed the soul by fiction only, and not by his real nature (which is unknowable).

6. Who is the prime Male of Sánkhya philosophers and the Brahma of Vedánta followers; who is the Intelligence of gnostics and who is wholly pure and apart from all (personalities).

7. Who is known as vacuum by vacuists, who is the enlightener of solar light, who is truth itself, and the power of speech and thought and vision, and all action and passion for ever.

8. Who though ever existent everywhere appears as inexistent to the world, and though situated in all bodies, seems to be far from them. He is the enlightener of our understanding as the solar light (of the world).

9. From whom the gods Vishnu and others are produced as solar rays from the sun; and from whom infinite worlds have come into existence like bubbles of the sea.

10. Unto whom these multitudes of visible creations return as the waters of the earth to the sea, and who like a lamp enlightens the souls and bodies (of all immaterial and material beings).

11. Who is present alike in heaven as in earth and the nether worlds; and who abides equally in all bodies whether of the mineral, vegetable or animal creation. He resides alike in each particle of dust as in the high and huge mountain ranges; and rides as swift on the wings of winds, as he sleeps in the depths of the main.

12. He who appoints the eight internal and external organs (Paryashtakas) of sense and action to their several functions; and who has made the dull and dumb creatures as inert as stones, and as mute as they are sitting in their meditative mood.

13. He who has filled the skies with vacuity and the rocks with solidity; who has dissolved the waters to fluidity, and concentrated all light and heat in the sun.

14. He who has spread these wonderful scenes of the world, as the clouds sprinkle the charming showers of rain; both as endless and incessant, as they are charming and dulcet to sight.

15. He who causes the appearance and disappearance of worlds in the sphere of his infinity like waves in the ocean; and in whom these phenomena rise and set like the running sands in the desert.

16. His spirit the indestructible soul, resides as the germ of decay and destruction in the interior (vitals) of animals. It is as minute as to lie hid in the body, and as magnified as to fill all existence.

17. His nature (Prakriti) spreads herself like a magic creeper (_máyá latá_) all over the space of vacuity, and produces the fair fruit in the form of the mundane egg (_Brahmánda_); while the outward organs of bodies, resembling the branches of this plant, keep dancing about the stem (the intelligent soul), shaken by the breeze of life which is everfleeting.

18. It is He, that shines as the gem of intelligence in the heart of the human body; and it is he from whom, the luminous orbs constituting the universe, continually derive their lustre.

19. It is that colossus of intelligence, which like a cloud sheds ambrosial draughts of delight to soothe our souls, and showers forth innumerable beings as rain drops on all sides. It bursts into incessant flashes showing the prospects of repeated creations which are as (momentary as) flashes of lightenings.

20. It is his wondrous light which displays the worlds to our wondering sight; and it is from his entity that both what is real and unreal, have derived their reality and unreality.

21. It is the insensible and ungodly soul, that turns to the attractions of others against its purpose; while the tranquil soul rests in itself (as in the spirit of God).

22. He who transcends all existences, and by whom all existent beings are bound to their destined actions in their proper times and places, and also to their free actions and motions and exertions of all kinds.

23. It is he who from his personality of pure consciousness, became of the form of vacuum (pervading all nature), and then by means of his vacuous mind and empty thoughts filled it with substances, wherein his soul was to reside, and whereon his spirit had to preside.

24. Having thus made the infinite hosts of worlds in the immense sphere of the universe, he is yet neither the agent of any action nor the author of any act in it; but remains ever the same as the sole one alone, in his unchangeable and unimpairing state of self-consciousness, and without any fluctuation, evolution or inhesion of himself, as he is quite unconcerned with the world.

CHAPTER VI.

ADMONITION FOR ATTEMPT TO LIBERATION.

_Mumukshu Pratyopadesa._

Vasishtha said:—It is by the knowledge of this transcendent supreme spirit and God of gods, that one may become an adept (in divine service), and not by the rigour of religious austerities and practices. (Proficiency by theoretic knowledge).

2. Here nothing is needed than the culture and practice of divine knowledge, and thereby the truth being known, one views the errors of the world, as a satiate traveller looks at a mirage in a clear light.

3. He (God) is not far from nor too near us, nor is he obtainable by what he is not (as the adoration of images and ceremonial acts). He is the image of light and felicity, and is perceivable in ourselves.

4. Here austerities and charities, religious vows and observances, are of no good whatever. It is the calm quietude of one’s own nature only that is serviceable to him in his services to God.

5. Fondness for the society of the righteous and devotedness to the study of good books, are the best means of divine knowledge; while ritual services and practices, serve only to strengthen the snare of our in-born delusions, which true knowledge alone can sever.

6. No sooner one has known this inward light of his as the very God, than he gets rid of his miseries, and becomes liberated in this his living state.

7. Ráma said:—Having known the Self in himself, one is no more exposed to the evils of life and even to death itself.

8. But say how is this great God of gods to be attained from such great distance (as we are placed from him), and what rigorous austerities and amount of pains are necessary for it.

9. Vasishtha replied:—He is to be known by means of your manly exertions (in knowledge and faith), and by the aid of a clear understanding and right reasoning, and never by the practice of austerities and ablutions, nor by acts attended with bodily pain of any kind. (Hence the mistake of _Hatha yoga_).

10. For know, O Ráma! all your austerities and charities, your painstaking and mortification are of no efficacy, unless you wholly renounce your passions and enmity, your anger and pride, your selfishness and your envy and jealousy.

11. For whoever is liberal of any money which he has earned by defrauding others, and with a heart full of vile passions, the merit of such liberality accrues to the rightful owner of the property and not to its professed donor.

12. And whoever observes any vow or rite with a mind actuated by passions, he passes for a hypocrite and reaps no benefit of his acts.

13. Therefore try your manly exertions in securing the best remedies of good precepts and good company, for putting down the diseases and disturbances of the world.

14. No other course of action except that of the exertion of one’s manliness, is conducive to the allaying of all the miseries and troubles of this life.

15. Now learn the nature of this manliness for your attainment to wisdom, and annihilation of the maladies of passions and affections and animosity of your nature.

16. True manliness consists in your continuance in an honest calling conformable with the law and good usage of your country; and in a contented mind which shrinks from smelling the enjoyments of life.

17. It consists in the exertion of one’s energies to the utmost of his power, without bearing any murmur or grief in his soul; and in one’s devotedness to the society of the good and perusal of good works and Sástras.

18. He is styled the truly brave who is quite content with what he gets, and spurns at what is unlawful for him to take; who is attached to good company, and ready at the study of unblamable works.

19. And they who are of great minds, and have known their own natures and those of all others by their right reasoning, are honoured by the gods Brahmá, Vishnu, Indra and Siva.

20. He who is called a righteous man by the majority of the good people of the place, is to be resorted to with all diligence as the best and most upright of men.

21. Those religious works are said to compose the best Sástra, which treat chiefly of Spiritual knowledge; and one who constantly meditates on them, is surely liberated (from the bonds of this world).

22. It is by means of right discrimination derived from the keeping of good company and study of holy works, that our understanding is cleared of its ignorance, as dirty water is purified by _Kata_ seeds, and as the minds of men are expurgated by the Yoga philosophy.

CHAPTER VII.

RECOGNITION OF THE NIHILITY OF THE PHENOMENAL WORLD.

(_Drisyásattá Pratijnánam_).

Ráma said:—

Tell me, O Bráhman! where is this God situated and how can I know him, of whom you spoke all this, and whose knowledge you said, leads to our liberation.

2. Vasishtha replied:—This God of whom I spoke, is not at a distance from us. He is situated in these our bodies, and is known to be of the form of mere Intellect (_chinmátra_) to us. So says Fichte: The Infinite Reason (chit) alone exists in himself—the finite in him. Lewis vol. II. p. 563.

3. He is all in all, though all this world is not the omnipresent Himself. He is one alone and is not termed the all that is visible (to us). So Fichte: God is infinite and embraces the finite, but the finite can not encompass the Infinite. Lewis vol. II. p. 573.

4. It is this Intellect which is in Siva, that wears the cusp of the moon in his crest; the same is in Vishnu that rides on his eagle Garuda, and in Brahmá that is born of the lotus. The sun also is a particle of this Intellect (but they are not the self-same Intellect themselves).

5. Ráma rejoined:—So it is; and even boys say this also, that if the whole world is mere Intelligence (_chetana mátrakam_); then why call it by another name (as the world), and what is the use of giving admonition of it to anybody (when every one is full of intelligence).

6. Vasishtha replied:—If you have known the mere Intellect (_Chinmátram_), to be the same with the intelligent world (_chetana viswa_), you have then known nothing for getting rid of this world.

7. The world is verily intelligent, O Ráma (with the mundane soul); but the animal soul (_Jíva_) is called _pasu_ or brutish observer of things pasyati, on account of its looking after sensual gratifications only as brutes, and giving rise only to the fears of disease, decay and death (from its love of itself, and care for self-preservation).

8. The animal soul (_Jíva_), though an incorporeal substance, is an ignorant thing and subject to pain and sorrow. The mind _manas_ also, though it is capable of intelligence—_chetaníyam_, has become the root of all evils. (_i.e._ With its power of intellection and nature of intelligence (_chetanam_), it is yet ever inclined to the wrong side by itself).

9. Intellectual liberation (_chetya mukta_) from thoughts of the world, is one state (of the soul), and unintelligent gazing (_unmukhatá_) at it, is another. He who knows the better of these two the states of the soul, has no cause of sorrow (_i.e._ the rational from the irrational soul).

10. He who has seen the all surpassing Supreme Being, has his heartstrings all cut asunder, and the doubts of his mind all driven away. The sequences of his acts are washed away (and leave no fear of his transmigration).

11. The longing after perceptibles (_Chetyas_) does not cease, unless the perception of the visibles is effaced from the mind.