REMOVAL OF IGNORANCE.
Argument.--Ignorance and its bonds of Erroneous conceptions, and
reliance on temporal objects, and the ways of getting release from
them, by means of good understanding and right reasoning.
Vasishtha continued:--Therefore this world with all its moving and
unmoving beings is nothing (or no being at all). There is nothing that
has its real being or entity, except the one true _Ens_ that thou must
know. (all beings are not being except the one self-existing Being. So
says Sadi. All this is not being and thyself art the only being. _Haman
nestand anchi hastitue_, so also the sruti _Toam asi nányadasti_. _Tu
est nullum est_).
2. Seek him O Ráma! who is beyond our thought and imagination, and
comprises all entity and non-entity in himself, and cease to seek any
living being or any thing in existence. (In Him is all life and every
thing, that is or is not in Being and he is the source of life and
light).
3. I would not have my heart to be enticed and deceived by the false
attachments and affections of this world; all which are as delusive, as
our misconception of a snake in a rope. (All our earthly relations with
our relatives and properties, are deception that are soon detected by
our good sense and reason, and they vanish as soon as our mistake of
the snake in rope. Therefore let no worldly tie bind down thy heart to
this earth).
4. Ignorance of the soul is the cause of our error of conceiving the
distinctions of things; but the knowledge of the selfsame soul puts
an end to all distinctions of knowledge of the reality of things,
distinctive knowledge of existences--bheda jnána is erroneous; but
their generalization--abheda jnána leads to right reasoning.
5. They call it ignorance _avidyá_, when the intellect is vitiated
by its intellection of the intelligibles or chetyas, but the
intelligibles being left out, it comes to know the soul which is free
from all attributes.
6. The understanding only is the embodied soul _purusha_, which is lost
upon the loss of the understanding; but the soul is said to last as
long as there is understanding in the body, like the _ghatambare_ or
air in the pot lasts with the lasting of the pot, and vanishes upon the
loss or breaking of the vessel. (The soul lasts with the intellect in
the body, but flies away upon the intellect's desertion of it. This is
maintained by sruti).
7. The wandering intellect sees the soul to be wandering, and the
sedate understanding thinks, it to be stationary, as one perceives his
breath of life to be slow or quick, according as he sits still or runs
about. In this manner the bewildered understanding finds the soul to
be distracted also. (The temperament of the mind is attributed to the
soul, which is devoid of all modality).
8. The mind wraps the inward soul with the coverlet of its various
desires, as the silkworm twines the thin thread of its desires round
about itself; which its wants of reason prevent it from understanding.
(The word in the text is _bálavat_ boyishness, which is explained in
the gloss to mean _nirvivekatwa_ or want of reason, and applied to the
mind, means puerile foolishness).
9. Ráma said:--I see sir, that when our ignorance becomes too gross and
solid, it becomes as dull and solid as stone; but tell me O venerable
sir, how it becomes as a fixed tree or any other immovable substance.
10. Vasishtha replied:--The human intellect not having attained
its perfect state of mindlessness, wherein it may have its supreme
happiness and yet falling from its state of mindfulness, remains in the
midmost position of a living and immovable plant or of an insensible
material substance. (The middle state is called tatastha bháva, which
is neither one of perfect sensibility nor impassivity).
11. It is impossible for them to have their liberation, whose organs of
the eight senses lie as dormant and dumb and blind and inert in them
as in any dull and dirt matter: and if they have any perception, it is
that pain only. (The _puryastaka_ are the eight internal and external
organs of sense instead of the ten organs _casandria_. By dormancy
is meant their want of reason, and muteness and blindness express
respectively the want of their faculties of sensation and action,
inertness means here the want of mental action).
12. Ráma rejoined:--O sir, that best knowest the knowables! that the
intellect which remains as unshaken as a fixed tree, with its reliance
in the unity and without its knowledge of duality, approximates its
perfection and approaches very near to its liberation (contrary to what
thou sayest now, regarding impossibility of the dormant minds arriving
to its freedom).
13. Vasishtha replied: Ráma! we call that to be the perpetual
liberation of the soul, which follows persuasion of one common entity,
after its rational investigation into the natures of all other things
and their false appearances. (or else the blind torpidity of the
irrational yogi, amounts rather to his bondage to ignorance than the
liberation of his soul from it).
14. A man is then only said to have reached to his state of solity
_kaivalya_, when he understands the community of all existence in the
unity, and forsakes his desire for this thing and that. (But is said
in sundry places of this work that the abandonment of the knowledge of
the subjective and as well as of the objective, which constitutes the
true liberation of the soul; which means the taking of the subject and
object of thought and all other duties in nature in one self-existent
unity and not to forget them all at once). (So says Sadi, when I turned
out duality from my door I came to knowledge of one in all).
15. One is then said to recline in Brahma who is inclined to his
spiritual Contemplation, after his investigation of divine knowledge in
the sástras, and his discussion on the subject in the company of the
learned doctors in divinity. (The unlearned religionist is either a
zealot or an _opiniatre--abhakta tatwa jnáni_).
16. One who is dormant in his mind and has the seed of his desire lying
latent in his heart, resembles an unmoving tree, bearing the vegetative
seed of future regenerations (transmigrations) within its bosom.
17. All those men are called blocks who liken the blocks of wood and
stone, and to be like brains who lack their brain work, and whose
desires are gone to the rack. These men possessing the property of
dulness as of dull matter, are subject to the pains of repeated births,
recurring like the repetends of their remaining desires. (The doctrine
of transmigration is, that the wish being father to the thought,
every one meets with his lot in his next birth, as it is thought
of or fostered by him in his present life. [Sanskrit: vásaná eva
pratyávrittikáranam]).
18. All stationary and immovable things, which are endowed with the
property of dull matter, are subject to repeated reproductions. (Owing
to the reproductive seed which is inborn in them, like the inbred
desire of living beings), though they may long continue in their
dormant state (like images of saints in their trance).
19. Know O pure hearted Ráma! the seed of desire is as inbred in the
breasts of plants, as the flowers are inborn in the seeds and the
earthenwares are contained in the clay. (The statue says, Aristotle
lies hid in the wood, and the gem in the stone, and require only the
chisel of the carver and statuary to bring them out).
20. The heart that contains the fruitful seed of desire in it, can
never have its rest or consummation even in its dormant state; but this
seed being burnt and fried to its unproductiveness (by means of divine
knowledge), it becomes productive of sanctity, though it may be in its
full activity.
21. The heart that preserves the slightest remnant of any desire in
it, it again filled with its full growth to luxuriance; as the little
remainder of fire or the enemy, and of a debt and disease, and also
of love and hatred, is enough to involve one in his ruin as a single
drop of poison kills a man. (This stanza occurs in Chánakyá's Excerpta
in another form, meaning to say that, "No wise man should leave their
relic, lest they grow as big as before" [Sanskrit: punasva bhavati
tasmádyasmát sesam na kárayet]).
22. He who has burnt away the seed of his desire from any thing,
and looks upon the world with an even eye of indifference, is said
to be perfectly liberated both in his embodied state in this earth,
as also in his disembodied or spiritual form of the next world, and
is no more subjected to any trouble: (Subjection to desire is deadly
pain and freedom from it is perfect bliss. Or as it is said:--Desire
is a disease and its want is ease. [Sanskrit: áshabhai param dukham
nairáshyam paramamsukham]. Again our hopes and fears in constant
strife, are both the bane of pig man life [Sanskrit: bhayáshá
jívapásháh] &c.)
23. The intellectual power which enveloped by the seed of mental
desire, supplies it with moisture for its germinating both in the forms
of animals and vegetables every where (_i.e._ The divine power which
inheres in the embryos of our desires, causes them to develope in their
various forms).
24. This inherent power resides in the manner of productive power in
the seeds of living beings, and in that of inertness in dull material
bodies. It is of the nature of hardness in all solid substances, and
that of tenuity in soft and liquid things. (_i.e._ The divine power
forms the particular properties of things, and causes them to grow and
remain in their own ways).
25. It exhibits the ash colour in ashes, and shows the particles in the
dust of the earth; it shows the sableness of all swarthy things, and
flashes in the whiteness of the glittering blade.
26. It is the spiritual power which assumes the communal form and
figure, in which it resides in the community of material things, as a
picture, a pot (ghata-pata) and the like. (The vanity of the unity is
expressed in the words of Veda "the one in many." [illegible Sanskrit])
27. It is in this manner that the divine spirit fills the whole
phenomenal world, in its universally common nature, as overspreading
cloud, fills the whole firmament in the rainy season.
28. I have thus expounded to you the true nature swarúpa--of the
unknown Almighty power, according to my best understanding, and as far
as it had been ascertained by the reasoning of the wise: that it fills
all and is not the all itself, and is the true entity appearing as no
entity at all.
29. It is our want of the sight of this invisible spiritual power, that
leads us to erroneous conception of the entity of the external world,
but a slight sight of this almighty Ens, removes all our pains in this
scene of vanity.
30. It is our dimsightedness of Almighty power, which is styled our
blindness or ignorance [Sanskrit: avidyá] by the wise. It is this
ignorance which give rise to the belief of the existence of the world,
and thereby produces all our errors and misery.
31. Who is so freed from this ignorance and beholds the glorious light
of God full in his view; he finds his darkness disappear from his
sight, as the icicles of night melt away at the appearance of solar
light.
32. The ignorance of a man flies off like his dream, after he wakes
from his sleep, and wishes to recall his past vision of the night.
33. Again when a man betakes himself to ponder well the properties of
the object before him, his ignorance flies away from before his face,
as darkness flies at the approach of light.
34. As darkness recedes from a man, that advances to explore into it
with a lamp in his hand, and as butter is melted down by application of
heat, so is one's ignorance dispelled and dissolved by application of
the light and the rise of reason.
35. As one pursuing after darkness sees a lighted torch in his hand,
sees but a blaze of light before, and no shadow of darkness about him;
so the inquirer after truth perceives the light of truth, shining to
his face and no vestige of untruth left behind him.
36. In this manner doth ignorance (Avidyá) fly away and disappear at
the sight of the light of reason; and although an unreal nothing, she
appears as something real, wherever there is the want of reason. (Hence
all unreasoning men are the most ignorant).
37. As the great mass of thick darkness, disappears into nothing at the
advance of light; it is in the same manner that the substantiality of
gross ignorance, is dissolved into unsubstantiality at the advancement
of knowledge. (so the advancement of inductive science, has put flight
the dogmatic doctrines of old).
38. Unless one condescends to examine in a thing, it is impossible for
him to distinguish it from another (as the shell from silver and rope
for the snake); but upon his due examination of it, he comes to detect
the fallacy of his prejudgment (as those of the silver and snake in the
shell and the rope).
39. He who stoops to consider whether the flesh or blood or bones of
his bodily frame, constitutes his personality, will at once perceive
that he is none of these, and all these are distinct from himself. (The
personality of a man consisting in his soul, and not in any part or
whole of his body).
40. And as nothing belonging to the person makes the persons, but
something beyond it that forms one's personality; so nothing in the
world from its first to last is that spirit, but some thing which has
neither its beginning nor end, is the eternal and infinite spirit. (The
same is the universal soul).
41. Thus ignorance being got over there remains nothing whatever,
except the one eternal soul which is the adorable Brahma and
substantial whole.
42. The unreality of ignorance is evident from the negative term of
negation and ignoring of its essentiality, and requires no other proof
to disprove its essence; as the relish of a thing is best proved by the
tongue and no other organ of sense. (The term Avidyá signifying the
want of _vidyá_--knowledge and existence [Sanskrit: vidyámánatá]).
43. There is no ignorance nor inexistence except the intelligence
and existence of God, who pervade over all visible and invisible
natures, which are attributed with the appellations of existence
and inexistence. (The whole being God (to Pan--the All) there is no
existence or inexistence without Him).
44. So far about Avidyá, which is not the knowledge but ignorance of
Brahma; and it is the dispersion of this ignorance which brings us to
the knowledge of God.
45. The belief of this, that and all other things in the world, are
distant and distinct from Brahma, is what is called _Avidyá_ or
ignorance of him; but the belief that all things visible in the world,
is the manifestation of omnipresence, causes the removal of ignorance,
by presenting us to the presence of God.
NOTE TO CHAPTER X.
The following lines of the English poet, will be found fully to
illustrate the divine attribute of omnipresence in the pantheistic
_doctrine_ of Vedánta and Vasishtha, as shown in this chapter _et
passen_.
All are but parts, of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and
God the soul; That, changed through all, and yet in all the same; Great
in the earth, as in the etherial frame; Warms in the sun, refreshes
in the breeze; Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees; Lives
through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided,
operates unspent; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part. As
full as perfect, in a pair as heart: As full as perfect, in vile man
that mourns, As in the rapt seraph, that adores and burns; To him no
high, now, no great, no small; He fills, he bounds, connects and equals
all.
Pope's Mortal Essays I. IX.