CONTINUATION OF THE SAME SUBJECT.
Argument:--Difference of Brahma from the world, consisting in the
indestructibility of his essence.
Sikhidhwaja said:--If it is so, O most intelligent sir, that the work
is alike to the nature of its maker; and therefore the world resembles
Brahma in every respect.
2. Kumbha replied:--Where there exists a causality, there is an
effectuality also accompanied with it; so where there is no cause
whatever, there can be no effect also following the same.
3. Therefore there is no possibility of any cause or its effect in this
world, which is manifest before us as the self-same essence of the ever
tranquil and the unborn spirit of God.
4. The effect that comes to pass from a cause, is of course alike
to the nature of its causality; but what similarity can there exist
between one, which is neither the cause nor effect of the other?
5. Say how can a tree grow which has no seed for its growth, and
how can God have a seed whose nature is inscrutable in thought, and
inexpressible in words.
6. All things that have their causality at any time or place, are of
course of the nature of their causal influence; but how can there be a
similarity of anything with God who is never the cause of an effect?
7. Brahma the uncausing uncaused cause of all, has no causality in him;
therefore the meaning of the word world, is something that has no cause
whatever. (Jagat means what is going on forever).
8. Therefore think thyself as Brahma, according to the view of the
intelligent; but the world appears as some thing extended in the sight
of men of imperfect understandings.
9. When the world is taken as one and the same with the tranquil
intellect of God, it must be viewed in the light of the transparent
spirit of Brahma. (_i.e._ spiritually and intellectually they are both
the same).
10. Any other notion, Oh prince, which the mind may entertain about the
nature of God, is said by the intelligent, to be the destruction of the
right concept of the Deity.
11. Know O prince, that the destruction of the mind (or mental error),
is tantamount to the destruction of the soul; and slight forgetfulness
of the spirit, is hard to be retrieved in a whole kalpa. (He that loses
the sight of his Lord for a moment, loses it forever).
12. No sooner you are freed from your personality, than you find
yourself to be full of Divine knowledge, and your false personality
flies away for your consummation in spirituality.
13. If you think the world to be existent from the meaning of the word
_viswa_ or all, then tell me how and whence could all this come into
existence.
14. How can you call one to be a Brahman, who lifts up his arms and
proclaims himself about to be a sudra?
15. He who cries himself saying that he is dead, after the sinking of
his pulsation; take him for the dead, and his living to be mistaken for
life.
16. All these erroneous appearances, that present themselves before us,
are as false as a circle described by the whirling flame of a torch;
and as delusive as the water in the mirage, a secondary moon in the
mist, and the spectre of boys.
17. What then is the true name of this erroneous substance, misleading
us to the wrong, which is commonly designated as the mind, and is
wrapped in ignorance and error.
18. The mind is another name for ignorance, and an unreality appearing
as a real entity. Here ignorance takes the name of the mind, and
unreality passes under the title of reality. Ignorance is the want of
true knowledge, as knowledge is the privation of ignorance.
19. Ignorance or false knowledge, is driven by our knowledge of truth;
as the error of water in the desert, is dispelled by the knowledge of
mirage.
20. As the knowledge of mirage removes the error of water in the sandy
desert, so the knowledge of the mind as gross ignorance, removes the
erroneous mind from the inward seat of the heart. (The heart and mind
are often used for one another).
21. The knowledge of the want of a mind, serves to root out its
prejudice at once; as the knowledge of the rope as no snake, removes
the fear of the reptile in the rope.
22. As the knowledge of the privation of the snake in the rope, removes
its bias from the mind; so the knowledge of the want of the mind,
removes this offspring of error and ignorance from within us.
23. The knowledge of there being no such thing as the mind, removes its
false impressions from the heart; because the mind and our egoism, are
the brood of our ignorance only.
24. There is no mind nor egoism, seated in us as we commonly believe to
be; there is one pure intelligence only both with and without us, which
we can hardly perceive.
25. You who had so long the sense of your desire, your mind and your
personality from your ignorance only; are quite set free from all of
them at this moment, by your being awakened to the light of knowledge.
26. All the troubles that you have to meet with, owing to your
fostering the inborn desire of your heart; are all driven away by your
want of desire, as the wind disperses the flaming conflagration of the
forest.
27. It is the dense essence of the Divinity that pervades the whole
universe, as it is this circumambient ocean which surrounds all the
continents of the earth.
28. There is nothing in existence as I, thou, this, or that or any
other; there is no mind nor the senses, nor the earth nor sky; but they
are all as the manifestations of the Divine spirit.
29. As the visibles appear in the forms of the frail pot and other
fragile bodies on earth; so the many false invisible things appear to
us in the forms of the mind, egoism and the like.
30. There is nothing, that is either born or dies away in all these
three worlds; it is only the display of the Divine intellect, that
gives rise to the ideas of existence and non-existence.
31. All these are but representations of the supreme soul, now evolved
and now spread out from it; and there is no room for unity or duality,
nor any error or fallibility in its nature.
32. Mind, O friend, that you are the true one, in the shape of your
senses; and these will never be burnt at your cremation, nor will you
be utterly destroyed by your death.
33. No part of thyself is ever increased or annihilated at any time,
the entirety of thy pure self is immortal, and must remain entire for
ever.
34. The powers of thy volition and nolition, and the other faculties
of thy body and mind, are attributes of thyself; as the beams of moon,
are the significant properties of that luminary. (The attributes are
denotative of the subject).
35. Always remember the nature of thy soul, to be unborn and increate,
without its beginning and end, never decaying and ever remaining the
same; it is indivisible and without parts, it is the true essence, and
existing from the beginning and never to have its end. (The immortality
of the soul).