ETERNITY OF THE WORLD.
Ráma said:—But it is related, that Brahmá—the lord of creatures,
springs up by his reminiscence at the end of a kalpa, and stretches out
the world from his remembrance of it, in the beginning of creation.
2. Vasishtha answered:—So it is said, O support of Raghu’s race! that
the lord of creatures rises at first by his predestination, after the
universal dissolution, and at the commencement of a new creation.
3. It is by his will, that the world is stretched out from his
recollection, and is manifested like an ideal city, in the presence of
Brahmá—the creative power.
4. The supreme being can have no remembrance of the past at the
beginning of a new creation, owing to his want of a prior birth or
death. Therefore this aerial arbour of reminiscence has no relation to
Brahma. (Who being an ever living being, his cognizance of all things
is also everlasting).
5. Ráma asked:—Does not the reminiscence of the past, continue in
Brahmá at his recreation of the world; and so the former remembrance of
men upon their being reborn on earth? Or are all past remembrances
effaced from the minds of men by the delirium of death in their past
life?
6. Vasishtha replied:—All intelligent beings, including Brahmá and all
others of the past age, that obtain their _nirvána_ or extinction, are
of course absorbed in One Brahma (and have lost their remembrance of
every thing concerning their past lives).
7. Now tell me, my good Ráma, where do these past remembrances and
remembrancers abide any more, when they are wholly lost, at the final
liberation (or extinction) of the rememberers?
8. It is certain that all beings are liberated, and become extinct in
Brahma at the great dissolution; hence there cannot be remembrance of
anything in the absence of the persons that remember the same.
9. The remembrance that lives impressed of itself in the empty space of
individual Intellects, is verily the reservoir of the perceptible and
imperceptible worlds. This reminiscence is eternally present before the
sight of God, as a reflexion of his own Intellect.
10. It shines with the lustre of his self-consciousness, from time
without beginning and end, and is identic with this world, which is
therefore called to be self-born (because it is immanent in the mind of
God).
11. The spiritual body which is the attribute of God from time without
beginning (that God is a spirit); is the same with Viráta or
manifestation of himself, and exhibits the form of the world or the
microcosm (_i.e._ God—spirit—Virát or cosmos).
12. But the world is said to be composed of atoms, which compose the
land and woods, the clouds and the firmament. But there are no atoms to
form time and space, actions and motions and revolutions of days and
nights. (All which are shaped by the spirit and not by atoms).
13. Again the atoms (of matter) which fill the world, have other
incipient atoms (of spirit), which are inherent in them, and cause them
to take and appear in the forms of mountains and the like.
14. But these forms seeming to be conglomerations of atomic particles,
and showing themselves to our vision as lightsome objects, are in
reality no substantial things.
15. Thus there is no end of the real and unreal sights of things; the
one presenting itself to the view of the learned, and the other to that
of the unlearned. (_i.e._ All things are viewed in their spiritual
light by the learned, and in their material aspect by the ignorant).
16. The cosmos appears as the immutable Brahma only to the intelligent,
and as the mutable visible world to the unintelligent.
17. As these bright worlds appear to roll about as eggs in their
spheres, so there are multitudes of other orbs, shining in every atom
in the universe.
18. As we see curved pillars, consisting of figures under figures, and
those again under others; so is the grand pillar of the universe,
composed of systems under systems to no end.
19. As the sands on a rock, are separably attached to it, and are
countless in their number; so the orbs in the three worlds, are as
particles of dust in <the> mountainous body of Brahmá.
20. It may be possible to count the particles of ray scattered in the
sun-beams; but it is impossible to number the atoms of light, which are
emanating from the great sun of Brahmá.
21. As the sun scatters the particles of his light, on the sparkling
waters and sands of the sea; so does the Intellect of God, disperse the
atoms of its light all over the vacuity of the universe.
22. As the notion of vacuity fills the mind, with the idea of the
visible firmament; so the thought of creation, as self-same with Brahmá,
gives us the notion of his intellectual sphere.
23. To understand the creation as something different from Brahma,
leads man apart from Him; but to take it as synonymous with Brahma,
leads him to his felicity.
24. The enlightened soul, freed from its knowledge of the mundane seed,
and knowing Brahma alone as the plenum filling the vacuum of intellect;
knows the knowable (God) in his inward understanding, as the same with
what has proceeded from him.