Reading section 65

16. The Intellect having such a family as its offspring, is expressed by the word _jíva_ (_zoa_) or the living soul, which became afterwards the arbor (or source) of all forms of beings, known under a variety of expressions and their significations. (_i.e._ The living god Brahmá became the cause of the formal world, from the _tanmátra_ elements produced by Brahma).

17. The fourteen kinds of living beings, which fill the cells in the bowels of all worlds, sprang afterwards from this living soul. (These include all vegetable and animal life and all such as increase in bulk and growth).

18. It was then, that the Intellect by a motion and inflation of itself, and at an instantaneous thought, became the element _tanmátra_ of touch and feeling (the air), which was yet without its name and action. (The Spirit breathed breathless. _Sruti_). This breath caused air, which expanded itself and filled all bodies, which are objects of touch and feeling.

19. The air, which is the seed (root) of the tree of tangibles, then developed itself into branches, composed of the (49) various kinds of winds, that are the causes of the breathings and motions of all beings.

20. Then the Intellect produced at pleasure and from its idea of light, the elemental essence of lustre, which received afterwards its different names (from the light of the sun and moon and the stars, as also from those of fire and lightning).

21. Then the sun, fire, lightning and others, which are the seeds (or roots) of the tree of light, caused the various colours of bodies that filled the world. (That light is the cause of colour, was known to the ancient Rishi).

22. It reflected on the want of fluidity, and produced the liquid body of waters, whose taste constitutes the element (_tanmátra_) of flavour.

23. The desire of the soul for different flavours (_rasas_), is the seed of the tree of taste, and it is by the relish of a variety of tastes, that the world is to go on in its course.

24. Then the self-willed Brahmá, wishing to produce the visible earth, caused the property of smell to appertain to it from his own element of it.

25. He made his elementary solidity, the seed or source of the tree of forms (morphology); as he made his own element of rotundity the substratum of the spherical world.

26. Those elements being all evolved from the Intellect, are again involved of themselves in it, as the bubbles of water rise and subside in itself.

27. In this manner, all those beings remain in their combined states, until their final dissolution into their simple and separate forms.

28. All those things, which are but forms and formations of pure Intellect, remain within the sphere of Divine Intelligence, as the germs of the big banian tree, reside in the forms of pollen and the seed.

29. These sprouted forth in time, and burst out into a hundred branches: and after having been concealed in an atom, became as big as they were to last for ever.

30. Such is the growth and multiplication of things by pervasion of the Intellect, until they are put to a stop by its contraction and when weakened in their bodies by its desertion, they droop down in the end.

31. Thus is this class of elementary _tanmátras_, produced in the Intellect out of its own volition, and are manifested in the form of formless minutiæ to sight.[12] (trasaranus).

32. These five-fold elements are verily the only seeds of all things in the world. They are the seeds of the primary momentum that was given to them (in the beginning). In our notions, they are the seeds of elementary bodies, but in their real nature, they are the increate ideal shapes of the Intellect replenishing the world.

CHAPTER XIII.

ON THE PRODUCTION OF THE SELF-BORN.

Vasishtha said:—

Ráma! When the Supreme Brahma remains in his resplendent and tranquil state (before creation), there is no essence of etherial light or heat or even darkness produced in the intellectual spirit. (But they lie hidden there as if buried in oblivion).

2. The _Sat_-God has the attribute of _Chetya_—intellectuality at first, and it is from the intellection (_Chetana_) of his intellectual part (_Chetyánsa_), that the epithet of mind (_Chitta_) is attributed to him. The faculties (_Sakti_) of his intellect (_Chit_), are called its intelligence (_Chetaná_).

3. The _Chit_ or intellect has then the attribute of the Living soul (_Jíva_), from its intelligence (_Chetaná_), and connection with the _chetya_ or intelligible objects in nature. It is next attributed with the title of _máyá_ or illusion, from the subjection of its _Chetya_ or cognizable objects only to itself—_Aham mátra_.

4. It has then the attribute of understanding (_buddhi_), from the excess of its egoism (_ahantá_), which is full with the purposes of its mind and the elements of sound &c. (_i.e._ with a desire for all sensible objects).

5. This (living, deluded and self reflecting) ego, is puffed up with thoughts of (possessing) all things, and looks upon the great arbour of the visible world (as the great garden for its pleasure and gain).

6. But the living souls, like so many evanescent objects seen in a dream, are made to rise and fall one after the other, in this great forest of the world surrounded by the skies.

7. But the world is (as continuous) as the grove of _Karajna_ plants, growing from unsown seeds; and its elementary bodies of the water, fire, earth and air, have no regard for any body; (that is living or dead).

8. The intellect which is the soul of the universe, creates afterwards the earth and all other things, as one remembering the objects of his dream (recalls them to his memory).

9. Wherever there is the germ of the world, it develops itself even at that place; the live elements are the five fold seed of the world, but the undecaying intellect is the seed of the quintuple (_pancha-bhúta_).

10. As is the seed so is its fruit; hence know the world to be a form and full of God; and the spacious firmament to be the reservoir of the quintuple elements in the beginning of creation.

11. The soul like the body, is composed of the powers of the Intellect, and does not subsist of itself; but being inflated by the same, it extends its bulk.

12. But the vacuous form of the intellect, which is seated in the spiritual body of the soul, cannot be composed of solid reality (as the primary elements of matter). This is not possible; hence nothing can come out from an impossibility.

13. Again that which is changeable in its form, cannot have its sameness at all times: hence if the essence of the quintuple elements, be attributed to Brahma, from the idea of their being the quintessence of his spirit, there can be no immaterial and immutable Brahma.

14. Therefore know this quintuple to be the developed Brahma himself, as he evolved them in the beginning, and as he is their producer for the creation of the world.

15. Thus He being the prime cause of their production, there is nothing that is produced (without) him, and the world is no product of itself.

16. The unreal appears as real as a city seen in a dream, and as a castle built in air by our hopes: so we place the living soul in ourselves, which has its foundation in the vacuous spirit of God.

17. Thus the brilliant spirit, which is situated in the Divine Intellect, being no earthly or any other material substance, is styled the living soul, and remains in vacuum as a luminous body rising in the sky.

18. Hear now how this vacuous living soul, comes to be embodied in the human body, after its detachment as a spark from the totality of vital spirits, in the empty sphere of divine Intellect.

19. The soul thinks itself as “a minute particle of light” at first, and then it considers itself as growing in the sphere of its consciousness.

20. The unreal appearing as real, proves to be unreal at last; as the fictitious moon becomes a nullity afterwards; so the soul continues to view itself subjectively and objectively both as the viewer and the view.

21. Thus the single self becomes double as one sees his own death in a dream; and thus it waxes into bigness and thinks its vital spark as a star. (This is the form of the _lingadeha_ or sentient soul within the body).

22. As the soul goes on thinking itself the microcosm of the world (_Viswarúpa_), so it falsely thinks itself as such in reality, as it is expressed by the dictum “_Soham_” “so am I.”

23. By thinking himself as such, man comes to believe it as true, as one believes himself as a traveller in his dream. So by thinking the soul as a star, he views it so within himself.

24. By continued meditation of his soul as such, he loses his external sensations, and views this star in his cranium.

25. He sees the soul within him though it be without him; just as the mirror reflects the distant hill in itself; and the soul remains confined within him, as a body is confined in a well, and as a sound is shut up in the hollow of a cave.

26. The consciousness of our dreams and desires, is but a particle (attribute) of the living soul, whose real form is that of a star waking (keeping watch) within us. (Consciousness of external objects in our dream and desire, is compared to the reflection of outward images in a glass or bubble of water, and to the echo of a distant sound in a hollow cave).

27. Now this vacuous life, which is composed of the essences of the mind, understanding and knowledge, resides in the hollow sheath of the star. (The star is supposed to be the eye-sight and residence of life. Gloss).

28. It appears to me to take its flight to the sky, to see what is passing there (i.e. the manner in which the mental eye of the Yogi penetrates the regions of air). And then it enters the body by two holes, which have the names of the external organs (of sight) given them afterwards. (The whole sphere of air is thought to teem with life or living souls and spirits, which rove free in the air, until they are made to enter and pass out of the body by two unknown holes, whether of the nostrils or sockets or glottis, remains undefined and undetermined).

29. The organs by which the embodied living soul, is to see (external objects), are called the eyes-_netras_ (from their receiving (_nayana_) the light of the soul). That by which it is to feel, is styled the skin (_twak_ or touch); and those whereby it is to hear, are termed the ears (_srutis_ from _sru_ to hear, corresponding with _suna_ or _shunu_ in vernaculars and Persian).

30. The organ of smelling is the nose—_ghrána_ from its bearing the scent—_ghrána_ to the soul; and that of taste is named as tongue _rasaná_, for its conducting the _rasa_ taste or flavour to the spirit.

31. Then there is the breathing air (the air of breath or breath of life), which actuates the energies of the organs of action. It is this air which is the cause—of vision, and mover of the internal organs of the mind and thought.

32. This (vital breath) supports the embodied and all supporting soul (_átiváhika-dehátmá_) in the vacuity of the body, and fills and kindles it as the air does a spark of fire.

33. The word _Jíva_ or the living soul (_zoa_), is brought under a figurative sense, ‘to mean something real in the unreal body’. Hence Brahmá is said to be the life and soul of the unreal world.

34. The gross embodied soul, is of the form of vacuum like the mind and yet it imagines itself to reside in an _ovum_ in the body, as Brahmá is supposed to be seated in the mundane egg. (_i.e._ The soul loses its light airy shape and free range, by being confined in the body).

35. Some view the spirit of God as floating on the surface of the (ante-mundane) waters (in the form of _Náráyana_); and others view it in the person of the Lord of creatures (Brahmá); while there are others, who look at it as infused throughout the creation in the figure of _viráj_. These are called the subtile and gross bodies of the soul (_sthúla_ and _súkshma saríras_).

36. The soul or spirit is the spacious womb of productions, and the means of executing its own purposes, and of knowing the proper time and place, and the article and the manner of action (modus operandi).

37. The mind is the inventor of words, expressive of ideas (in the soul), and subjects itself to the arbitary sounds of its own invention. Hence God is erroneously said to be embodied in words (_sabda Brahma_ of Mimánsá philosophy) in this world of errors.

38. The unproduced and self-born Brahmá, that has risen of himself (and represents the mind), is as unreal as the soaring of a man in the sky in his dream.

39. This all supporting-embodied soul, is the prime Lord of creatures, who is said to have formed this illusory frame of the world.

40. But there was nothing formed or born in it (in reality); nor is there any substance to be found in the world. It is the same vacuous form of Brahma still, whose essence is known to extend as the infinite space itself.