PANTHEISM.
or
DESCRIPTION OF THE WORLD AS FULL WITH THE SUPREME SOUL.
Argument.--Elucidation of the same subject, and further Instruction to
Ráma.
Válmíki relates:--Hearing this discourse of the sage, Ráma remained
sedate with the coma (sama) of his mind, his spirits were tranquil, and
his soul was full of rapture.
2. The whole audience also that was present at the place, being all
quiet, calm and silent (comatose-upasánta), the sage withheld his
speech for fear of disturbing their spiritual repose: (which converted
them to stock and stone).
3. The sage stopped from distilling the drops of his ambrosial speech
any more, after the hearts of the audience were lulled to rest by their
draughts, as the clouds cease to rain drops, having penetrated into the
hearts of ripened grains.
4. As Ráma (with the rest of the assembly) came to be rose from their
torpor after a while; the eloquent Vasishtha resumed his discourse in
elucidation of his former lecture. (On spirituality).
5. Vasishtha said:--Ráma! you are now fully awakened to light, and have
come to and obtained the knowledge of thyself; remain hence forward
fixed to the only true object, wherein you must rely your faith, and
never set your feet on the field of the false phenomenal world.
6. The wheel of the world is continually revolving round the centre of
desire, put a peg to its axis, and it will stop from turning about its
pole.
7. If you be slack to fasten the nave (nábhi) of your mind, by your
manly efforts (purushártha; it will be hard for you to stop the wheel
of the world, which runs faster as you slacken your mind.)
8. Exert your manly strength (courage), with the aid of your mental
powers and wisdom, stop the motion of your heart, which is the centre
of the wheeling course of the world.
9. Know, that everything is obtainable by means of manly exertion,
joined with good sense and good nature, and assisted by a knowledge
of the sástras; and whatever is not obtained by these, is to be had
nowhere by any other.
10. Relinquish your reliance on destiny which is a coinage of puerile
imagination; and by relying on your own exertions, govern your heart
and mind for your lasting good.
11. The unsubstantial mind which appears as a substantiality, has had
its rise since the creation of Brahmá; and taken a wrong and erroneous
course of its own. (The human understanding is frail from first to
beginning, it is a power, and no positive reality).
12. The unreal and erroneous mind, weaves and stretches out a
lengthening web of its equally unreal and false conceptions, which it
is led afterwards to mistake for the substantial world.
13. All these bodies that are seen to move about us, are the products
of the fancies and fond desires of the mind; and though these frail
and false bodies cease to exist forever, yet the mind and its wishes
are imperishable; and either show themselves in their reproduction
in various forms, or they become altogether extinct in their total
absorption in the supreme spirit. (The doctrine of eternal ideas, is
the source of their perpetual appearance in various forms about bodies).
14. The wise man must not understand the pain or pleasure of the soul
from the physiognomy of man, that a sorrowful and weeping countenance
is the indication of pain; and a clear (cheerful) and tearless face is
the sign of pleasure. (Because it is the mind which moulds the face in
any form it likes).
15. You see a man in two ways, the one with his body and the other in
his representation in a picture or statues, of these the former kind
is more frail than the latter; because the embodied man is beset
by troubles and diseases in his fading and mouldering, decaying and
dying body, whereby the other is not. (The frame of the living man, is
frailer than his dead resemblance).
16. The fleshy body is assuredly doomed to die, notwithstanding all our
efforts for its preservation; but a body in the portrait being taken
good care of, lasts for ages with its undiminished beauty.
17. As the living body is sure to die in despite of all your care for
it, the pictured body must be deemed far better, than the false and
fancied fleshy body, produced by will of the mind (sankalpa deha).
18. The quality and stability which abide in a pictured body, are not
to be found in the body of the mind; wherefore the living body of
flesh, is more insignificant than its semblance in a picture or statue.
19. Think now, O sinless Ráma, what reliance is there in this body
of flesh; which is a production of your long fostered desire, and a
creature of your brain (Your mind makes it seem as such).
20. This body of flesh is more contemptible than those ideal forms,
which our dreams and desires produce in our sleeping and waking
states; because the creature of a momentary desire, is never attended
with a long or lasting happiness or misery. (Because the products of
the variable will, are of short duration, and so are their pains and
pleasures also).
21. The bodies that are produced by our long desire, continue for
a longer time, and are subjected to a longer series of miseries in
this world. (So it is said, a "long life is a long term of woes and
calamities").
22. The body is a creature of our fancy, and is neither a reality or
unreality in itself; and yet are the ignorant people fondly attached to
it, for the prolongation of their misery only.
23. As the destruction of the portrait of a man, does no harm to his
person; and as the loss of a fancied city is no loss to the city,
so the loss of the much desired body of any one, is no loss to his
personality in any wise.
24. Again as the dis-appearance of the secondary moon (halo), is no
deprivation of the primary satellite (moon), and as the evanescence
of the visionary world, is no annihilation of the external world. (So
there is no loss of the soul, as the loss of the shadow, is no loss of
the substance).
25. As the dis-appearance of water in the sunny banks of rivers, is
no deprivation of the river's water; so the creations of fancy which
are not negative in their nature, cannot be destructive of what is
positive, nor any damage done to the machine of the body, can ever
injure the dis-embodied soul.
26. The body is a piece of work wrought by the architect of the mind,
in its dreaming somnambulation over the sleeping world; wherefore
its decoration or disfigurement, is of no essential advantage or
dis-advantage to inward soul.
27. There is no end of the Intellect in its extent, nor any motion of
the soul from its place; there is no change in the Divine spirit of
Brahma, nor do any of these decay with the decline of the body.
28. As the inner and smaller wheel, makes the outer and larger wheel to
turn about it, so the inner _annulus_ of the mind, sees in its delirium
spheres over spheres revolving in empty air.
29. The mind views by its primitive and causeless error, the constant
rotation of bodies both in the inside and out side of it; and some as
moving forward and others as falling down, and many as dropped below.
30. Seeing the rise and fall of these rotatory bodies, the wise man
must rely on the firmness of his mind, and not himself to be led away
by these rotations in repeated succession.
31. Fancy forms the body and it is error that makes the unreal appear
as real; but the formation of fancy, and the fabrications of untruth,
cannot have any truth or reality in them.
32. The unreal body appearing as real, is like the appearance of a
snake in a rope; and so are all the affairs of the world quite untrue
and false, and appearing as true for the time being.
33. Whatever is done by an insensible being, is never accounted as its
action (or doing); hence all what is done by the senseless bodies
(of man), is not recounted as done by it. (But by the impulse of the
actuating mind).
34. It is the will which is the active agent of its actions, and this
being so, neither the inactive body nor the unchanging soul is the
actor of any action. (The soul being the witness of the bodily actions
done by the impelling mind. gloss).
35. The inert body being without any effort, is never the doer of any
act, which is desired by its presiding soul; it is only a viewer of
the soul, which witnesses it also. (The body is attendant or dependant
to the soul, as the other is a resident in it, they are both devoid of
action, and unstained by those done by the will of the mind).
36. As the lamp burns unshaken and with its unflickering flame, in the
breathless air and in itself only; so doth the silent and steady soul
dwell as a witness, in all things and of all acts existing and going on
in the world. (So doth the human soul abide and inflame itself in the
body, unless it is shaken and moved by the airy mind).
37. As the celestial and luminous orb of the day, regulates the daily
works of the living world from his seat on high, so do you, O Ráma,
administer the affairs of thy state from thy elevated seat on the royal
throne.
38. The knowledge of one's entity or egoism, in the unsubstantial abode
of his body, is like the sight of a spirit by boys in the empty space
of a house or in empty air. (The substantiality of the unsubstantial
body, is as false as the corporeality of an incorporeal spirit).
39. Whence comes this unsubstantial egoism in the manner of an inane
ghost, and takes possession of the inner body under the name of the
mind, is what the learned are at a loss to explain.
40. Never enslave yourself, O wise Ráma! to this spectre of your
egoism, which like the _ignis fatuus_ leads you with limbo lake or
bog of hell. (The sense of one's personality is the cause of his
responsibility).
41. The mad and giddy mind, accompanied with its capricious desires
and whims, plays its foolish pranks in its abode of the body, like a
hideous demon dancing in a dreary desert.
42. The demoniac mind having made its way, into the hollow heart of
the human body; plays its fantastic parts in so odd a manner, that
wise men shut their eyes against the sight, and sit in their silent
contemplation of the secluded soul. (It is good to fly from the fields,
where fools make a prominent figure).
43. After the demon of the mind, is driven out of the abode of the
body, there is no more any fear for any one to dwell in it in peace; as
no body is afraid of living in a deserted and desolate city.
44. It is astonishing that men should place any reliance in their
bodies, and consider them as their own, when they had had thousands
of such bodies in their repeated births before, and when they were
invariably infested by the demon of the mind.
45. They that die in the grasp and under the clutches of the cannibal
of the mind, have their minds like those of the pisácha cannibals in
their future births, and never of any other kind of being. (The will
ever accompanies a man, in all his future states).
46. The body which is taken possession of by the demon of egoism,
is being consumed by the burning fires of the triple afflictions;
occurring from local, natural and accidental evils, and is not to be
relied upon as a safe and lasting abode of any body.
47. Do you therefore desist to dance your attendance on, and follow
the dictates of your egoism (or selfishness). Be of an extended and
elevated mind, and by forgetting your egotism in your magnanimity, rely
only on the supreme spirit.
48. Those hellish people that are seized and possessed by the devils
of Egotism, are blinded in their self-delusion and giddiness; and are
unbefriended by their fellows and friends, as they are unfriendly to
others in this world. (Egotism is explained in its double sense of
selfishness and pride, both of which are hated and shunned by men as
they hate and shun others).
49. Whatever action is done by one bewitched by egoism in his mind,
the same grows up as a poisonous plant, and produces the fatal fruit of
death. (The fruits are mutual quarrels, enmity and the like).
50. The ignorant man that is elated by his egoistic pride, is lost both
to his reason and patience; and one who is attached to the former by
his neglect of the latter, is to be known as approaching fast to his
perdition. (Pride goes before destruction).
51. The simpleton that is seized by the devil of Egoism, is made as
fuel to the fire of hell (where he is doomed to burn with ceaseless
torment).
52. When the snake of Egoism hisses hard in the hollow heart of the
tree of the body, it is sure to be cut down by the inexorable hand of
death, who fells the noxious tree like a wood cutter to the ground.
53. O Ráma! that are the greatest among the great, never look at the
demon of egoism, whether it may reside in your body or not; because the
very look of it, is sure to delude any one.
54. If you disregard deride or drive away the demon of egoism, from the
recess of your mind, there is no damage or danger, that it can ever
bring upon you in any wise.
55. Ráma! what though the demon of Egoism, may play all its freaks in
its abode of the body, it can in no way affect the soul which is quite
aloof of it. (Egoism contaminates the mind, and cannot touch the soul
that contemns it).
56. Egoism brings a great many evils, upon them that have their minds
vitiated by its influence, and it requires hundreds of years, to count
and recount their baneful effects.
57. Know Ráma, that it is the despotic power of egoism, that makes
men to groan under its thraldom, and incessantly uttering the piteous
exclamations, "Oh! we are dying and burning and such other bitter
cries."
58. The soul is ubiquitous and free to rove every where, without its
having any connection with the ego of any body; just as the ubiquity of
the all pervading sky, is unconnected with every thing in the world.
59. Whatever is done or taken in by the body, in its connection with
the airy thread of life; know Ráma, all this to be the doing of
egoism, which empties and impels the body to all its various actions.
60. Know thus quiescent soul impels also, to be the cause of all the
exertions of the mind or mental operations, as the inactive vacuum is
the material cause of the growth of trees. (_i.e._ the circumambient
air affords room for the expansion of the plant).
61. It is owing to the presence of the soul, that the mind developes
itself in the form of the body and all its members; as it is the
presence of the light, that makes the room display its contained
objects to sight. (The soul is the light of the mind--nous the
container of infinite ideas).
62. Think now Ráma, on the relation between the ever unconnected
soul and mind, to resemble the irrelation subsisting between the
dis-connected earth and sky, and betwixt light and darkness and betwixt
the intellect and gross bodies.
63. Those that are ignorant of the soul, view the quiet mind as
such, after its motion and fluctuation are stopped by the restraint
of respiration--Pránáyáma. (This is the doctrine of the Sánkhya and
Buddhist, that view the becalmed and quiescent mind as the soul).
64. But the soul is self-luminous and ever lasting, omnipresent and
super-eminent, while the mind is deceptive and egoism. It is situated
in the heart with too much of its pride and vanity.
65. You are in reality the all-knowing soul, and not the ignorant and
deluded mind; therefore drive afar your delusive mind from the seat of
the soul, as they can never meet nor agree together.
66. Ráma! the mind has also like a demon, taken possession of the
empty house of the body, and has like an evil spirit, silenced and
overpowered upon the intangible soul in it.
67. Whatever thou art, remain but quiet in thyself, by driving away the
demon of thy mind from thee; because it robs thee of thy best treasure
of patience, and loads all kinds of evils upon thee. (_i.e._ the
impatient mind is the source of all evil).
68. The man that is seized by the voracious yaksha of his own mind,
has no change of his release from his grasp, either by the lessons of
the sástras or by the advice of his friends, relatives and preceptors.
(Greediness devours the greedy that desire to glut all things).
69. The man who has appeased the demon of his mind, is capable of being
released from its clutches, by means of the dictates of sástras, and
the admonitions of his friends, as it is possible to liberate a deer
from a shallow quagmire.
70. All things that are seen to be stored in this vacant city, of the
vacuous world, are all of them polluted by the lickerishness of the
mind, licking at them from inside the house of its body.
71. Say who is not afraid in this dreary wilderness of the world, which
is infested in every corner of it by the demoniac mind. (The rapacity
of the ambitious, converts the fair creation to a scene of horror).
72. There are some wise men in this city of the world, who enjoy the
abodes of their bodies in peace, having tranquilized the demon of their
minds in them. (A peaceful mind makes a peaceful abode).
73. Ráma! All the countries that we hear of in any part of the world,
are found to be full of senseless bodies, in which the giddy demon
of delusion are Raving (and Ranging) as the sepulchral grounds. (The
bodies of ignorant people, are as sepulchres of dead bodies. gloss).
74. Let people rely on their patience, and redeem their souls by their
own exertions; which are otherwise seen to be wandering about in the
forest of this world, like lost and stray boys: (that know not how to
return to their homes).
75. Men are wandering in this world, as herds of stags are roving in
burning deserts; but take care Ráma, never to live contented with a
grazing on the sapless grass, like a young and helpless deer.
76. Foolish men are seen to graze as young stags, in their pastures
amidst the wilderness of this world; but you Ráma must stir yourself to
kill the great Elephant of Ignorance, and pursue the leonine course of
subduing every thing in your way.
77. Do not allow yourself, O Ráma, to ramble about like other men, who
wander like senseless beasts in their native forests of the Jambudwípa.
78. Do not plunge yourself like the foolish buffets, in the bog of
your relatives and friends; it appears to you as a cold bath for a
while, but daubs you with its mud and mire afterwards. (The circle of
relatives may appear as a limpid lake at first; but dive in it, and you
will be daubed with its dirt afterwards).
79. Drive afar your desire of bodily enjoyments from you, and follow
the steps of respectable men; and having well considered thy sole
object of the soul (from the great sayings of the sástras), attend to
thyself or soul only. (Consider the objective soul in thy subjective
self).
80. It is not proper that you should plunge yourself, into a sea of
intolerable cares and troubles, for the sake of your impure and frail
body, which is but a trifle in comparison with the inestimable soul.
81. The body which is the production of one thing (_i.e._ the product
of past deeds), and is possessed by another (_i.e._ the demon of
egoism); which puts another one (_i.e._ the mind) to the pain of its
supportance, and affords its enjoyment to a fourth one (_i.e._ the
living soul), as a complicate machinery of many powers to the ignorant.
(The human frame is a mechanism of the body and mind, its egoism and
living principle).
82. As solidity is the only property of the stone, so the soul has the
single property of its entity alone; and its existence being common in
all objects, it is impossible for any thing else to subsist beside it.
(The soul being the only _ens_, it is of its nature the all in all; the
minds etc. being but its attributes).
83. As thickness is the property of stone, so are the mind and others
but properties of the soul; and there being nothing which is distinct
from the common entity of the soul, it is impossible for any thing to
have a separate existence.
84. As density relates to the stone, and dimension bears its relation
to the pot; so the mind and other are not distinct from one common
existence of the soul: (which pervades and constitutes the whole).
85. Hear now of another view of spiritual light, for dispelling the
darkness of delusion; as it was revealed to me of yore, in a cavern of
mount Kailása. (The former seat of my devotion).
86. There is a mountain peak, bright as the collected mass of
moon-beams, and penetrating the vault of heaven, where the god with the
semi-circular moon on his fore-head, delivered this doctrine to me for
appeasing the miseries of the world.
87. This mountain peak is famed by the name of Kailása, on which the
god Hara--the consort of Gouri, wearing the crescent moon on his head,
holds his residence.
88. It was to worship this great god, that I had once dwelt on that
mountain long ago; and constructed my hermit-cell on the bank of the
holy stream of Ganges. (Which ran down by its side).
89. I remained there in the practice of ascetic austereties, for the
performance of my holy devotion; and was beset by bodies of adepts,
dis-coursing on subjects of the sacred sástras.
90. I made baskets for filling them with flowers for my worship, and
for keeping the collection of my books in them; and was employed in
such other sacred tasks, in the forest groves of the Kailása mountain.
91. While thus I had been passing my time, in discharging the
austereties of my devotion; it happened to turn out once on the eighth
day of the dark side of the moon of the month of _srávana_.
92. And after its evening twilight was over, and the sun light had
faded in the face of the four quarters of the sky, that all objects
became invisible to sight, and stood rapt in their saint like silence.
93. It was then after half of the first watch of the night had fled
away, there spread a thick darkness over the groves and wood lands,
and required a sharp sword to sever it. (Asich' hedyá tami-srá-tenebra
ensis encesibelia).
94. My intense meditation was broken at this instant, and my trance
gave way to the sight of outward objects, which I kept looking upon
for sometime; when I observed a flaming fire suddenly rising in the
forest to my view.
95. It was as bright as a big white cloud, and as brilliant as the
shining orb of the moon; It illumed the groves on all sides, and struck
with amazement at the vision.
96. As I viewed it by the sight of my understanding, or the mental
vision which was glowing in my mind; I came to see the god Siva with
the crescent of the moon on his fore-head, standing on the table land
and manifest to view.
97. With his hand clasping the hand of Gaurí, he was led on ward by his
brace attendant Nandí walking before him; when I after informing my
pupils about it, proceeded forward with the due honorarium in my hand.
98. Led by the sight, I came to the presence of the god with a gladsome
mind; and then I offered handfuls of flowers to the three eyed-god from
a distance, in token of my reverence to him.
99. After giving the honor (Arghya), which was worthy of him, I bowed
down before the god, and accosted him; when he cast his kind look upon
me, from his moon-bright and clear sighted eyes.
100. Being blest by his benign look, which took away all my pain and
sin from me; I did my homage to the god that was seated on the flowery
level land, and viewed the three worlds lying open before him.
101. Then advancing forward, I offered unto him the honorarium, flowers
and water that I had with me, and scattered before him heaps of mandára
flowers, that grew there abouts.
102. I then worshipped the god with repeated obeisances and various
eulogiums; and next adored the goddess Gaurí with the same kind of
homage together with her attendant goddesses and demigods.
103. After my adoration was over, the god having the crescent moon on
his head, spoke to me that was seated by him, with his speech as mild
as the cooling beams of the full-moon.
104. Say O Bráhman, whether thy affections are at peace within
thyself, and have found their rest in supreme spirit, and whether your
felicitous feelings are settled in the true object of divine essence.
105. Whether your devotion is spading unobstructed by the demons of
your passions, and whether felicity attends on you.
106. Have you obtained the obtainable one, that is alone to be
obtained, and are you set above the fears, that incessantly hunt after
all mankind?
107. After the Lord of gods and the sole cause of all created beings,
had spoken in this manner; I replied to him submissively in the
following words.
108. O Lord! there is nothing unattainable, nor is there anything to
be feared by any one, who remembers the three eyed god at all times in
his mind; and whose hearts are filled with rapture by their constant
remembrance of thee.
109. There is no one in the womb of this world, in any country or
quarter, or in the mountains or forests, that does not bow down his
head before thee.
110. Those whose minds are entirely devoted to their remembrance of
thee, get the rewards of the meritorious acts of their past lives;
and water the trees of their present lives, in order to produce their
manifold fruit in future births and lives.
111. Lord! thy remembrance expands the seed of our desire, thou art
the jar of the nectar of our knowledge, and thou art the reservoir of
patience, as the moon is the receptacle of cooling beams.
112. Thy remembrance, Lord! is the gate way to the city of salvation,
and it is thy remembrance which I deem as the invaluable gem of my
thoughts.
113. O Lord of creation! thy remembrance sets its foot on the head of
all our calamities (_i.e._ tramples over them). (Because Siva is called
Sankara for his doing good to all, by removal of their misfortunes).
114. I said thus far, and then bowing down lowly before the complacent
deity, I addressed him, O Ráma, in the manner as you shall hear from
me.
115. Lord! it is by thy favour that I have the fulness of my heart's
content on every side; yet as there is one doubt lurking in my mind, I
will request thee to explain it fully to me.
116. Say with your clear understanding, and without hesitation and
weariness, regarding the manner of the adoration of gods, which
removes all our sins and confers all good unto us. (The query was
quite appropriate as the Tantras of Siva treat principally of such
formularies).
117. The god replied:--Hear me, O Brahman, that art best acquainted
with the knowledge of Brahma; tell you about the best mode of
worshipping the gods, and the performance of which is sure to set the
worshipper free. (From the bonds of the world all at once).
118. Tell me first, O great armed Brahman, if you know at all who is
that god, whom you make the object of your worship, if it be not the
lotus-eyed Vishnu or the three-eyed Siva neither.
119. It is not the god born of the lotus Brahmá, nor he who is the lord
of the thirteen classes of god--the great Indra himself; it is not the
god of winds--Pavana, nor the god of fire, nor the regents of the sun
and moon.
120. The Brahman (called an earthly god _bhudeva_) is no god at all,
nor the king called the shadow of god, is any god likewise, neither I
or thou--the ego and tu (or the subjective self and objective unself)
are gods; nor the body or any embodied being, or the mind or any
conception or creation of the mind is the true god also.
121. Neither Laxmí the goddess of fortune, nor Sarasvatí the goddess
of intelligence are true goddesses, nor is there any one that may be
called a god, except the one unfictitious god, who is without beginning
and end, that is the true god. (The Viswasaratantra of Siva treats of
the one infinite and eternal God).
122. How can a body measured by a form and its dimensions, or having a
definite measure be the immeasurable deity! it is the inartificial and
unlimited Intellect, that is known as the Siva or the felicitous one.
123. It is that which is meant by the word God--Deva--Deus, and that
is the object of adoration; that is the only _ens_ or _on_, _est_ or
Esteor Esten, out of which all other beings have proceeded, and in
which they have their existence, and wherein they subsist with their
formal parts.
124. Those unacquainted with the true nature of the felicitous Siva,
worship the formal idols and images; as a weary traveller thinks the
distance of a mile, to be as long as the length of a league.
125. It is possible to have the reward of one's adoration of the Rudras
and other gods; but the reward of the meditation of the true God, is
the unbounded felicity of the soul.
126. He who forsakes the reward of true felicity, for that of
fictitious pleasures; is like one who quits a garden of mandara flower,
and repairs to a furze of thorny _karanja_ plants.
127. The true worshippers know the purely intellectual and felicitous
Siva, to be the only adorable god; to whom the understanding and
tranquillity and equanimity of the soul are, the most acceptable
offerings than wreaths of flowers.
128. Know that to be the true worship of God, when the Deity of the
spirit (or spiritual Divinity), is worshipped with the flowers of the
understanding and tranquillity of the spirit. (Worship God in spirit
and with the contriteness of thy spirit).
129. The soul is of the form of consciousness (and is to be worshipped
as such), by forsaking the adoration of idols; Those that are devoted
to any form of fictitious cult, are subject to endless misery.
130. Those knowing the knowable one are called as saints; but those
who slighting the meditation of the soul, betake themselves to the
adoration of idols, are said to liken little boys playing with their
dolls.
131. The Lord Siva is the spiritual god, and the supreme cause of all;
He is to be worshipped always and without fail, with the understanding
only. (So the sruti: The vipras adore him in their knowledge, but
others worship him with sacrifices &c.)
132. You should know the soul as the intellectual and living spirit,
undecaying as the very nature herself; there is no other that is to be
worshipped, the true puja is the worship of the spirit. (God is to be
worshipped in spirit only).
133. Vasishtha said:--The soul being of the nature of intellectual
void, as this world is an empty void also; please tell me, my lord, how
the Intellect could become the living soul etc., as you have declared.
134. The god replied:--There being an only vacuous Intellect in
existence, which is beyond all limit; it is impossible for an
intelligible object to exist anywhere which may continue to all
eternity. (The subjective only is self-existent, and the objective is a
nullity; it being impossible for two self-existent things to co-exist
together).
135. That which shines of itself, is the self-shining Being; and it is
the self or spontaneous agitation of that Being, which has stretched
out the universe.
136. Thus the world appears as a city in dream before the intellectual
soul, and this soul is only a form of the inane intellect, and this
world is but a baseless fabric.
137. It is altogether impossible for aught of the thinkables and
visibles, to exist anywhere except in the empty sphere of the
intellect, and whatever shone forth in the beginning in the plenitude
of the Divine intellect, the same is called its creation or the world
from the first.
138. Therefore this world which shows itself in the form of a fairy
land in dream, is only an appearance in the empty sphere of the
intellect; and cannot be any other in reality.
139. The Intellect is the human speech, and the firmament that supports
the world; the intellect becomes the soul and the living principle,
and it is this which forms the chain of created beings. (The seeming
appearances being null and void; the Intellect is all and everything).
140. Tell me, what other thing is there that could know all things in
the beginning and before creation of the universe, except it were the
Intellect which saw and exhibited everything, in heaven and earth as
contained in itself.
141. The words sky, firmament, and the vacuum of Brahma and the world,
are all applicable to the Intellect, as the words arbour and tree are
but synonymous expressions for the same thing.
142. And as both our dreams and desires arise in us by our delusion, so
it is our illusion only which makes us perceive the existence of the
outer world; in the empty space of the intellect.
143. And as it is our empty consciousness, that shows the sight of the
external world in our dream; so it is that very thing that shows us the
same, in the waking dream of ourselves.
144. As it is not possible for the city in a dream, to be represented
any where except in the hollow space of our intellect; so it is
impossible for the waking dream of the world, to be shown elsewhere
except in the emptiness of the same.
145. As it is not possible for any thing that is thinkable to exist
any where except in the thinking mind, so it is impossible for this
thinkable world to exist any other place beside the divine mind.
146. The triple world rose of itself at the will and in the empty space
of the supreme Intellect, as it was a dream rising and setting in the
self same mind, and not as any thing other than it, or a duality beside
itself.
147. As one sees the diverse appearances of _ghatas_ and _patas_, pots
and painting in his dream, and all lying within the hollowness of his
mind; so the world appears of itself, in the vacuity of the Divine
Intellect, at the beginning of creation.
147_a_. As there is no substantiality of anything in the fairy land of
one's dream, except his pure consciousness of the objects; so there is
no substantiality of the things which are seen in this triple world,
except our consciousness of them.
148. What ever is visible to sight, and all that is existent and
inexistent, in the three times of the present, past and future; and
all space, time and mind, are no other than appearances of vacuous
intellect (of Brahma).
149. He is verily the god of whom I have told you, who is supreme in
the highest degree (lit. in its transcendental sense). Who is all and
unbounded and includes me, thee and the endless world in Himself.
150. The bodies of all created beings, of thine, mine, and others, and
of all in this world, are all full with the intellectuality of the
supreme soul and no other.
151. As there is nothing, O sage, except the bodies that are produced
from the vacuous intellect or intellectual vacuity of Brahma, and
resembling the images produced in the fairy land of one's dream; so
there is no form or figure in this world, other than what was made in
the beginning of creation.