NATURE OF THE LIVING SOUL.
Argument. The mind and its operations, the subjective and objective,
and lastly the Divine Intellect.
Vasishtha continued:—The Mind sprang at first from the supreme cause
of all; this mind is the active soul which resides in the supreme soul
(the Ens entium).
2. The mind hangs in doubt between what is and what is not, and what is
right and what is wrong. It forgets the past like the scent of a
fleeting odor by its wilful negligence. (Unmindfulness is the cause of
forgetfulness).
3. Yet there is no difference between these seeming contraries; because
the dualities of Brahma and the soul, the mind and máyá, the agent and
act, and the phenomenal and noumenal worlds, all blend together in the
unity of God. (All seeming differences converge in unvarying Mind).
4. There is but one Universal soul displaying its Intellect as a vast
ocean, and extending its consciousness as a sea of unlimited extent.
(These extend to all beings in the universe).
5. What is true and real shines forth amidst all that is untrue and
unreal; so does the subjective essence of the mind subsist amidst all
its airy and fleeting dreams in sleep. And thus the world is both true
and untrue as regards its subsistence in God and its external phenomena.
(The substance is real but the appearance is false).
6. The erroneous conception either of the reality or unreality of the
outer world, does not spring in the mind, which is conscious of its
operations only, and of no outward phenomena. This conception is like
the deception of a magic show, and is concomitant with all sensuous
minds.
7. It is the long habit of thinking the unreal world as real, that makes
it appear as such, to the unthinking, as a protracted sleep makes its
visionary scenes appear as true to the dreaming soul. It is the want of
reflection, that causes us to mistake a man in a block of wood.
8. Want of spiritual light misleads the mind from its rationality, and
makes it take its false imaginations for true; as children are impressed
with a belief of ghosts in shadows, through their fear and want of true
knowledge.
9. The mind is inclined of its own tendency, to assign a living soul
(and also a body) to the Divine Spirit; which is devoid of appellation,
form or figure, and is beyond our comprehension; (and is styled the
Incomprehensible).
10. Knowledge of the living state (personality), leads to that of Egoism
which is the cause of intellection. This again introduces the sensations
and finally the sensible body. (Ego is the subject of thoughts).
11. This bondage of the soul in body, necessitates a heaven and hell for
want of its liberation and then the acts of the body, become the seeds
of our endless transmigrations in this world.
12. As there is no difference between the soul, intellect and life, so
there is no duality in the living soul and intellect, nor in the body
and its acts, which are inseparable from each other.
13. Acts are the causes of bodies, and the body is not the mind; the
mind is one with egoism, and the ego is the living soul. The living soul
is one with the Divine Intellect and this soul is all and the lord God
of all.