VANITY OF WORLD AND WORLDLY THINGS.
Argument.--Refutation of Received Doctrines.
Vasishtha asked:--What is called the god Siva, and is meant by supreme
Brahma; and what is the meaning of soul, and what is its difference
from the supreme soul?
2. That the _tat sat_--_Id. est_ is the true entity, and all else is
non entity; what is vacuum that is nothing, and what is philosophy
that knows everything. Explain to me these differences, for thou lord!
knowest them all.
3. The god replied:--There exist a _sat ens_, which is without
beginning and end; and without any appearance, or reflexion of its own;
and this entity appears as a non entity, owing to its imperceptibility
by the senses.
4. Vasishtha rejoined--If this entity, lord! is not perceptible by
the organs of sense, and unknowable by the understanding, how then, O
Isána! is it to be known at all.
5. The god replied:--The man that desires his salvation, and yet sticks
to his ignorance, is a sage by name only; and such men are subjected to
greater ignorance, by the sástras they are guided by.
6. Let one ignorance removes another, as washerman cleanses one dirt by
another. (_i.e._ Let the erroneous and mutually discordant theories of
the sástras, refute the errors of one another).
7. When the error of ignorance, are removed by the opposition to each
other; it is then that the soul appears of itself to view as a matter
of course.
8. As a child daubs his fingers by rubbing one piece of coat against
another (so is a man darkened the more by the tenets of contradictory
sástras); but gets them cleansed by washing off his hands from both of
them.
9. As they examine both sides of a question in a learned discussion,
and the truth comes out from amidst them both, so the knowledge of the
soul, appears from midst of the mist of ignorance.
10. When the soul perceives the soul, and scans it by itself; and as
it comes to know it in itself, it is said to get rid of its ignorance,
which is then said to be utterly destroyed.
11. The paths of learning and the lectures of a preceptor, are not the
proper means to the knowledge of the soul, until one comes to know the
unity of this thing by his own intuition.
12. All the preceptors of sástras, place the soul amidst the bodily
senses; but Brahmá is situated beyond the senses, and is known after
subjection of sensible organs. So the thing which is obtainable in
absence of something, is never to be had in the presence of that thing
(such is the antipathy of the soul and senses against one another).
13. It is seen however, that many things are used as causes of what
they are no causes at all; as they make use of the lectures of the
preceptor and the like, as means for the attainment of spiritual
knowledge.
14. A course of lectures is of course calculated, to throw light on
the student's knowledge of the knowables; but in matters of abstract
knowledge and invisible soul, it is the soul itself that must throw its
own light.
15. No explanation of the sástras, nor the lectures of the preceptor,
are calculated to give light on spiritual knowledge, unless it is
understood by the intuitive knowledge of the spirit itself.
16. Again the soul is never to be known without learning and lectures,
and therefore both of them must combine with our inquiry to bring us to
the light of the soul.
17. It is therefore the combination of bookish knowledge with the
instruction of the preceptor, joined with the investigation of the
inquirer, that is calculated to enlighten us on spiritual knowledge, as
the appearance of the day with the rising sun and waking world, gives
an impetus to the rise of duties of the rising world.
18. After subsidence of the senses and actions of bodily organs,
together with the imperceptibility of our sensations of pain and
pleasure; that we come to the knowledge of Siva, other wise known as
the soul, the _tat sat_, He that is, and under many other designations.
19. When there was not this plenum of the world, or it existed in its
spiritual or ideal forms; it is since then that this infinite entity
has existed, in its vacuous form which is rarer than the ether.
20. Who is continually meditated upon by the nice discernment of the
seekers of salvation, and is variously represented by the pure minded
and those of vitiated minds.
21. There are others who are situated in the sight of, and not far from
the path of living liberation, who are employed in leading others to
salvation, and in the exposition of the sástras in their works.
22. There have been many thinking and learned men, who have used the
words Brahmá, Indra, Rudra, and the names of the regents of worlds
(for God), in order to justify the doctrines of the Puránas, Vedas and
Siddhántas.
23. Others have applied the fictitious titles of chit or intellect,
Brahmá, Siva, Átmá the soul or spirit, Ísha--the Lord, the supreme
spirit and Íshvara-god, to the nameless god head that is apart and
aloof from all.
24. Such is the truth of nature and of thyself also, which is styled
the siva of felicitous; and which always confers all felicity to the
world and to thyself also. (The word siva means jovus or solas and is
meant to express the joviality and soliety which always attends on all
beings).
25. The words siva, soul, supreme Brahmá and some others, have been
coined by the ancients to express the supreme being; and though
they differ in sound, there is no difference of them in sense and
signification.
26. Know, O chief of sages! that wise men always adore this god whom we
serve also, and unto when we return as the best and ultimate states of
all. (Siva is a _hypostasis_ of the infinite deity).
27. Vasishtha said:--Please Lord! explain to me in short, how the ever
existent Deity remains as non-existent, and could it come to existence
from its prior state of nihility?
28. The god replied:--Know the meaning of the words Brahmá &c. to bear
relation to our consciousness only, and this though it is as clear as
the sky, and as minute as an atom, has the great bulk of the mount Meru
contained in it.
29. Although this is unintelligible to us, and far beyond our
conception and comprehension of it; yet it becomes intelligible to us
when we take it the form of our intellect.
30. By taking it objectively, it becomes intelligible to us in the
manner of our Egoism; and by thinking on its personality we have the
same idea of it, as one has of a wild elephant from its sight in a
dream.
31. These ideas of its egoism and personality, being limited by time
and space, give rise to many aerial forms as attendants upon it. (These
aerial forms are the different attributes of God).
32. Accompanied with these, there proceeds the entity called the
_Jíva_ or living spirit, which is conversant with its oscillation and
respiration, in the form of a pencil of air.
33. After the power of vitality is established and has come in force;
there follows the faculty of understanding; which remains in utter
ignorance at first.
34. It is followed by the faculties of bearing, action and perceptions;
all of which operate inward by without their development in outward
organs.
35. All these powers uniting together, conduce to the excitement of
memory, which exhibits itself soon in the form of the mind; which is
the tree of desires.
36. Hear now what is called the spiritual body by the learned, it is
the inward power of God of the form of the conscious soul, and seeing
the divine soul in itself.
37. There rise afterwards the following powers in the mind; which
develop themselves in the outer organs, although their powers may be
wanting in them. (Such as the blind eyes, deaf ears &c.).
38. These are the essences of air and motion, and of feeling also,
together with the senses of touch and heat emitted by the eyes.
39. There are the essences of colour, water and taste also, and
likewise the essences of smell and flavour too.
40. There are the essences of earth and gold, and the essences of thick
mass; and also the essences of time and space, all of which are without
form and shape.
41. The spiritual body contains all these essences in itself as its
component parts, as the seed of a fruit contains the leaves and germ of
the future tree in its cell.
42. Know this to be _ativáhika_ or spiritual body, and containing the
eight elementary senses, wherefore it is called the _puryashtaka_ also;
and these are developed afterwards in the organs of sense.
43. The primary or spiritual body which is formed in this manner, is
actually nobody at all; since it is devoid of understanding, intellect,
senses and sensibility.
44. It is the supreme Being only, which contains the essence of the
soul, as it is the sea which contains the limpid waters.
45. The soul is that which is possessed of its consciousness and
knowledge, all besides this is dull and insensible matter; and which is
viewed by the soul, as the sight of a fairy land in the dream.
46. It is therefore by consciousness and knowledge that Siva can be
known, and what is not to be known by these can be nothing at all.
47. The supreme soul sees all things within itself, as parts of itself
(produced from its will of becoming or dividing itself into many); and
beholds particles of his atomic self, formed into innumerable bodies.
48. These soon increased in bulk and became big bodies, and bore the
marks of the organs upon them.
49. Then it became of the form of a man, from his thought of being so;
and this soon grew up in its size of a full grown man.
50. So do our bodies appear to us in our living state, as the fairyland
appears to one in his dream.
51. Vasishtha said:--I see the appearance of the human body, to
resemble the vision of the fairyland in the dream; and I see also the
miseries awaiting on human life in this world. Now tell me, my Lord!
how all this misery is to be removed from it.
52. The god replied--All human woe is owing to their desires, and
belief of the reality of the world; but it must be known to be all as
unreal, as waves of water seen in a sea in the mirage.
53. There why such desire, and for what good and use, and why should
the dreaming man be deluded to drink the show of water in the mirage?
54. The viewer of truth, who is freed from his views of egoism and
tuism, and has got off from the deluded and its delusive thoughts, doth
verily behold the true entity of God in his presence, in the utter
absence of all worldly thoughts from his mind.
55. Where there is no desirer or desire or the desired object, but the
only thought of the one unity, there is an end of all error and misery.
56. He whose mind is freed from the true and false bugbears of common
and imaginary error, and is settled in the thought of one unity alone,
sees nothing but the unity before him.
57. The desires of the mind, rise as goblins in the midway sky; and
the thoughts of the world rove about the sphere of the mind, as the
numerous worlds revolve in the sky hence there is no peace of the soul,
unless these subside to rest.
58. It is useless to advise the man to wisdom, who is elated by his
egoism, and is deluded by the waters of the mirage of this evanescent
world.
59. Wise men should advise the prudent only, and throw away their
instruction to boys that are wandering in error, and are shunned by
good people. To give good counsel to the ignorant, is as offering a
fair daughter in marriage to the spectre of man seen in a dream.