INCARNATION OF THE LIVING SOUL OR JÍVA.
Argument. The Mind is the cause of all its creations.
The Sol continued:—Therefore I say, my lord! that the mind like time,
is indestructible of its nature, and the inavertible imprecation of the
sage, could not alter its tenor.
2. Therefore it is not right for thee, O great Brahmá! to destroy the
ideal fabric of the air-drawn world of the sons of Indu, because it is
improper for great souls, to put a check to the fancies of others (but
rather to let every one to delight in his own hobby horse and romantic
visions).
3. What thing is there, O lord of lords! that is wanting in thee in this
universe of so many worlds, that should make thy great soul, to pine for
the air built worlds of Indu’s sons? (It is not for noble minds to pine
for the greatness of others, nor repine at the loss which they may
sustain).
4. The mind is verily the maker of worlds, and is known as the prime
Male—Purusha (the Demiurgus or Protogonus). Hence the mind that is fixed
to its purpose, is not to be shaken from it by the power of any
imprecation or by virtue of any drug or medicine, or even by any kind of
chastisement.
5. The mind which is the image of every body, is not destructible as the
body, but remains forever fixed to its purpose. Let therefore the
Aindavas continue in their ideal act of creation, (as so many Brahmás
themselves).
6. Thou lord that hast made these creatures, remain firm in thy place,
and behold the infinite space which is spread out before thee, and
commensurate with the ample scope of thy understanding, in the triple
spheres of thy intellect and mind, and the vast vacuity of the firmament.
(_i.e._ The infinitude of the etherial vacuum is co-extensive with the
amplitude of Brahmá’s mind, and the plenitude of creations).
7. These three fold infinities of etherial, mental and intellectual
spaces, are but reflexions of the infinite vacuity of divine intellect,
and supply thee, O Brahmá, with ample space for thy creation of as many
worlds at thy will.
8. Therefore thou art at liberty to create _ad libitum_, whatever thou
likest and think not that the sons of Indu, have robbed thee of
anything; when thou hast the power to create everything.
9. Brahmá said:—After the sun had spoken to me in this manner,
concerning the Aindava and other worlds, I reflected awhile on what he
said, and then answered him saying:—
10. Well hast thou said, O sun, for I see the ample space of air lying
open before me; I see also my spacious mind and the vast comprehension
of my intellect, I will therefore go on with my work of creation
forever.
11. I will immediately think about multitudes of material productions,
whereof O sun! I ordain thee as my first Manu or progeny, to produce all
these for me. (The sun light was the first work of creation, and the
measure of all created beings, by his days and nights or mornings and
evenings).
12. Now produce all things as thou wilt, and according to my behest, at
which the refulgent sun readily complied to my request.
13. Then this great luminary stood confest with his bipartite body of
light and heat; with the first of which he shone as the sun in the midst
of heaven.
14. With the other property of the heat of his body, he became my Manu
or agent in the nether worlds. (The solar heat or calor, is the cause of
growth upon earth).
15. And here he produced all things as I bade him do, in the course of
the revolutions of his seasons.
16. Thus have I related to you, O sagely Vasishtha! all about the nature
and acts of the mind, and omnipotence of the great soul; which infuses
its might in the mind in its acts of creation and production.
17. Whatever reflexion is represented in the mind, the same is
manifested in a visible form, and becomes compact and stands confest
before it. (The ideal becomes visible or the noumenal is exprest in the
phenomenal).
18. Look at the extraordinary power of the mind, which raised the
ordinary Aindava Brahmans to the rank of Brahmá, by means of their
conception of the same in themselves.
19. As the living souls of the Aindavas, were incorporated with Brahmá,
by their intense thought of him in them (or by their mental absorption
of themselves in him); so also have we attained to Brahmáhood, by
means of our mental conception of that spiritual light and supreme
intellect in ourselves. (So in our daily ritual,अहं ब्रह्म नचान्यस्मि, ब्रह्मैवास्मिन शौकभाक् ।
सच्चिदानन्दरूपोऽहं, नित्यमुक्त स्वभाववन् ॥
20. The mind is full of its innate ideas, and the figure that lays a
firm hold of it, the same appears exprest without it in a visible shape;
or else there is no material substance beside one’s own mind. (This is
the doctrine of conceptionalists, that all outward objects are but
representations of our inborn ideas, in opposition to the belief of
sensationalists, that the internal notions are reflections of our
external sensations).
21. The mind is the wonderful attribute of the soul, and bears in itself
many other properties like the inborn pungency of the pepper. (These
inborn properties are the memory, imagination and other faculties of the
mind).
22. These properties appear also as the mind, and are called its
hyperphysical or mental faculties; while it is downright mistake on the
part of some to understand them as belonging to the body. (The sánkhya
materialists understand the internal faculties as products of the body
and matter).
23. The self same mind is termed also the living principle—Jíva (Zoa),
when it is combined with its purer desires; and is to be known after all
to be bodiless and unknown in its nature. (The life being combined with
gross desires, assumes the body for its enjoyment of them, but loosened
from its fetters, it resumes its purer nature. Hence the future
spiritual life, is free from grosser wishes).
24. There is no body as myself or any other person in this world, except
this wondrous and self-existent mind; which like the sons of Indu,
assumes the false conception of being real Brahmás themselves.
25. As the Aindavas were Brahmás in their minds, so my mind makes me a
Brahmá also; it is the mind that makes one such and such, according to
the conception that he entertains of himself. (We are in reality
nothing, but what our minds inform us to be).
26. It is only by a conceit of my mind, that I think myself situated as
a Brahmá in this place; otherwise all these material bodies, are known
to be as unreal, as the vacuity of the soul wherein they abide.
27. The unsullied mind approximates the Divine, by its constant
meditation of the same; but being vitiated by the variety of its
desires, it becomes the living being, which at last turns to animal life
and the living body. (This is called the incarnation of the living soul
or the materialization of the spirit).
28. The intelligent body shines as any of the luminous orbs in the world
of the Aindavas, it is brilliant with the intelligent soul, like the
appearance of a visionary creation of the mind. (The body is a creature
of the mind like a figure in its dream).
29. All things are the productions of the mind and reflexions of itself,
like the two moons in the sky, the one being but a reflexion of the
other; and as the concepts of the Aindava worlds.
30. There is nothing as real or unreal, nor a personality as I or thou
or any other; the real and unreal are both alike, unless it be the
conception which makes something appear as a reality which has otherwise
no reality of itself.
31. Know the mind to both active and inert (_i.e._ both as spirit and
matter). It is vast owing to the vastness of its desires, and is lively
on account of its spiritual nature of the great God; but becomes inert
by its incorporation with material objects.
32. The conception of phenomenals as real, cannot make them real, any
more than the appearance of a golden bracelet, can make it gold, or the
phenomenals appearing in Brahmá, can identify themselves with Brahmá
himself.
33. Brahma being all in all, the inert also are said to be intelligent,
or else all beings from ourselves down to blocks, are neither inert nor
intelligent. (Because nothing exists besides Brahma, wherefore what
exists not, can be neither one nor the other).
34. It is said that the lifeless blocks, are without intelligence and
perception; but every thing that bears a like relation to another, has
its perception also like the other. (Hence all things being equally
related to Brahma, are equally sentient also in their natures).[7]
35. Know everything to be sentient that has its perception or
sensitivity; wherefore all things are possest of their perceptivity, by
the like relation (sádrisya-sambandha) of themselves with the supreme
soul.
36. The terms inert and sensitive are therefore meaningless, in their
application to things subsisting in the same divine spirit; and it is
like attributing fruits and flowers to the arbors of a barren land. The
barren waste refers to the vacuum of the divine mind, and its arbours to
its unsubstantial ideas, which are neither inert nor sentient like the
fruits or flowers of those trees.
37. The notion or thought, which is formed by and is an act of the
intellect, is called the mind; of these the portion of the intellect or
intellectual part, is the active principle, but the thought or mental
part is quite inert.
38. The intellectual part consists of the operation of intellection, but
the thoughts or thinkables (chetyas), which are the acts of the chit or
intellect are known to be inert; and these are viewed by the living soul
in the erroneous light of the world, (rising and sitting before it like
the sceneries of a phantasmagoria).
39. The nature of the intellect—chit is a pure unity, but the
mind—_chitta_ which is situated in the same, and thence called
_chit—stha_ or posited in the intellect, is a _réchauffé_ or dualism of
itself, and this appears in the form of a duality of the world.
40. Thus it is by intellection of itself as the other form, that the
noumenal assumes the shape of the phenomenal world; and being
indivisible in itself, it wanders through the labyrinth of errors with
its other part of the mind.
41. There is no error in the unity of the intellect, nor is the soul
liable to error, unless it is deluded by its belief of pluralities. The
intellect is as full as the ocean, with all its thoughts rising and
sitting in it as its endless waves.[8]
42. That which you call the mental part of the intellect, is full of
error and ignorance; and it is the ignorance of the intellectual part,
that produces the errors of egoism and personality.
43. There is no error of egoism or personality in the transcendental
category of the divine soul; because it is the integrity of all
consciousness, as the sea is the aggregate of all its waves and waters.
44. The belief of egoism rises as any other thought of the mind, and is
as inborn in it as the water in the mirage, which does not exist really
in it.
45. The term ego is inapplicable to the pure and simple internal soul;
which being vitiated by the gross idea of its concupiscence, takes the
name of ego, as the thickened coldness is called by the name of frost.
46. It is the pure substance of the intellect which forms the ideas of
gross bodies, as one dreams of his death in his sleep. The all-pervading
intelligence which is the all inherent and omnipotent soul, produces all
forms in itself, and of which there is no end until they are reduced to
unity.
47. The mind manifests various appearances in the forms of things, and
being of a pure etherial form, it assumes various shapes by its
intellectual or spiritual body.
48. Let the learned abstain from the thoughts of the threefold forms of
the pure intellectual, spiritual and corporeal bodies, and reflect on
them as the reflexions of the divine intellect in his own mind.
49. The mind being cleansed of its darkness like the mirror of its dirt,
shows the golden hue of spiritual light, which is replete with real
felicity, and by far more blissful than what this earthly clod of body
can ever yield.
50. We should cleanse the mind which exists for ever, rather than the
body which is transient and non-existent; and as unreal as the trees in
the air, of which no one takes any notice.
51. Those who are employed in the purification of their bodies, under
the impression that the body also is called the _átmá_ or soul (in some
sástra); are the atheistic _chárvakas_, who are as silly goats among
men.
52. Whatever one thinks inwardly in himself, he is verily transformed to
its likeness, as in the instance of the Aindava Bráhmans, and of Indra
and Ahalya cited before.
53. Whatever is represented in the mirror of the mind, the same appears
in the figure of the body also. But as neither this body nor the egoism
of any one, is lasting for ever, it is right to forsake our desires.
54. It is natural for every body to think himself as an embodied being,
and to be subject to death (while in reality it is the soul that makes
the man, who is immortal owing to the immortality of the soul). It is as
a boy thinks himself to be possessed of a demon of his own imagination,
until he gets rid of his false apprehension by the aid of reasoning.