ON THE UNITY AND UNIVERSALITY OF BRAHMA.
Argument.--Showing the identity of Brahma with the Mind, Living Soul,
the body and the world and all things and extirpation of all dualisms,
by the establishment of one universality.
Vasishtha continued:--As the countless waves, which are continually
rising and falling in the Sea, are no other than its water assuming
temporary forms to view; so the intellect exhibits the forms of endless
worlds heaving in itself; and know, O sinless Ráma! this intellect
to be thy very self or soul. (All personal souls are selfsame with
the impersonal Self; because it is in the power of both the finite
and infinite souls to produce and reduce the appearance of the worlds
in them, which proves them beyond any doubt as the Chidátmá or the
Intellectual soul).
2. Say thou that hast the intellectual soul, what relation doth thy
immaterial soul bear to the material world, and being freed from thy
earthly cares, how canst thou entertain any earthly desire or affection
in it. (The spiritual soul has no concern with the material world).
3. It is the Intellect which manifests itself in the forms of living
soul or jíva, mind and its desires, and the world and all things; say
then what else can it be, to which all these properties are to be
attributed (if not to the eternal intellect).
4. The intellect of the Supreme Spirit, is as a profound sea with its
huge surges; and yet, O Ráma! it is as calm and cool as thy soul, and
as bright and clear, as the transparent firmament.
5. As the heat is not separate from fire, and the fragrance not apart
from the flower; and as blackness is inseparable from collyrium, and
whiteness from the ice; and as sweet is inborn in the sugarcane, so is
intellection inherent in, and unseparated from the intellect.
6. As the light is nothing distinct from the sun-beams, so is
intellection no other than the intellect itself; and as the waves are
no way distinct from the water; so the universe is in no ways different
or disjoined from the nature of the intellect, which contains the
universe. (The noumenon contains the phenomenon, and become manifest as
the world).
7. The ideas are not apart from the intellect, nor is the ego distinct
from the idea of it; the mind is not different from the ego, nor is the
living soul any other than the mind.
8. The senses are not separate from the mind, and the body is not
unconnected with the senses; the world is the same as the body, and
there is nothing apart from the world. (The body is the microcosm of
the cosmos [Sanskrit: shuddhabrahmánanda]).
9. Thus the great sphere of universe, is no other than the unbounded
sphere of intellect; and they are nothing now done or made, or ever
created before (for whatever there is or comes to pass, continues
forever in the presence of the intellect).
10. Our knowledge of every thing, is but our reminiscence of the same;
and this is to continue for evermore, in the manner of all partial
spaces, being contained in infinity, without distinction of their
particular localities. (All spaces of place occupied by bodies, are
contained in the infinite and unoccupied vacuity of Mind).
11. As all spaces are contained in the endless vacuity, so the vastness
of Brahma is contained in the immensity of Brahma; and as truth resides
in verity, so in this plenum contained, is the plenitude of Divine
mind. (Here Brahma the great means by figure of metonymy, the Brahmánda
or vastness of his creation).
12. Seeing the forms of outward things, the intelligent man never takes
them to his mind; it is the ignorant only, that set their minds to the
worthless things of this world.
13. They are glad to long after what they approve of, for their trouble
only in this world; but he who takes these things as nothing, remains
free from the pleasure and pain of having or not having them. (So said
the wise Socrates:--How many things are here, which I do not want).
14. The apparent difference of the world and the soul of the world, is
as false in reality, as the meaning of the words sky and skies, which
though taken in their singular and plural senses, still denote the same
uniform vacuity. (So the one soul is viewed as many in appearance only).
15. He who remains with the internal purity of his vacant mind,
although he observes the customary differences of external things,
remains yet as unaffected by the feelings of pain and pleasure, as the
insensible block of wood and stone (with his stoical indifference in
joy and grief).
16. He who sees his blood-thirsty enemy in the light of a true friend,
is the person that sees rightly into the nature of things. (Because the
killers of our lives, are the givers of our immortality).
17. As the river uproots the big trees on both its sides, by its
rapid currents and deluge; so doth the dispassionate man destroys the
feelings of his joy and grief to their very roots.
18. The sage that knows not the nature of the passions and affections,
and does not guard himself from their impulse and emotions, is unworthy
of the veneration, which awaits upon the character of saints and sages.
19. He who has not the sense of his egoism, and whose mind is not
attached to this world; saves his soul from death and confinement,
after his departure from this world. (There is a similar text in the
Bhagavadgítá, and it is hard to say which is the original one and which
is the copy).
20. The belief in one's personality, is as false as one's faith in
an unreality, which does not exist; and this wrong notion of its
existence, is removed only by one's knowledge of the error, and his
riddance from it.
21. He who has extinguished the ardent desire of his mind, like
the flame of an oilless lamp; and who remains unshaken under all
circumstances, stands as the image of a mighty conqueror of his enemies
in painting or statue.
22. O Ráma! that man is said to be truly liberated, who is unmoved
under all circumstances, and has nothing to gain or lose in his
prosperity or adversity, nor any thing to elate or depress him in
either state.