DESCRIPTION OF THE INTELLECTUAL SPHERE.
Argument. The Intellect as pervading all things, and making us
acquainted with them.
Ráma said:—Tell me O Bráhman! how the mundane system subsists in the
extra mundane immaterial soul, for the sake of my advancement in
knowledge.
2. Vasishtha replied:—The worlds having no separate existence (before
or after their formation) except in the Supreme mind, they are all
situated in the Divine Intellect, like the unheaving and unseen
would be waves of the sea.
3. As the all-pervading sky is not to be seen owing to its extreme
tenuity; so the undivided nature of the all-pervasive intellect, is not
to be perceived on account of its rarity.
4. As the gem has its brilliancy in it, whether it is moved or unmoved
by any body, so the unreal world has its potential existence in the
Divine Spirit, both in its states of action and inactivity. (Hence the
eternity of the world in the Eternal Mind).
5. As the clouds abiding in the sky, do not touch the sky or have a
tangible feeling of its vacuity; so the worlds subsisting in the
receptacle of the Intellectual soul, have no contact with the
extraneous (pará) intellect, which is unconnected with its contents.
6. As the light residing in the waters of the sea or a pot of water, is
not connected either with the water or pot, nor is it felt by us but by
its reflexion; so the intangible soul abides unconnected in its
receptacle of the body, and reflects itself to our knowledge only.
7. The intellect is devoid of every desire and designation; it is the
indestructible soul, and is named by our intelligence of it as (Chetya)
intelligible; or from some one of our intelligible ideas as the living
soul &c.
8. It is clearer than the translucent air, and finer than it by a
hundred times; it is known as an undivided whole by the learned; who
view it as identic with the whole undivided world, which it comprehends
within itself.
9. As the sea water shows itself in various forms in all its waves, so
the intellect does not differ from it, in showing us its various
representations of its own motion.
10. The diversities of our subjective and objective knowledge of myself
and thyself and these (ego, tu &c.), are like the varieties of waves
and billows in the ocean of the intellect, these are but erroneous
notions, since they are representations of the same element, and the
very same intellect.
11. The various states of the intellect (Chit), intellection (Chintá),
intelligence (Chittam) and intelligibles (Chetyas), all appertain to
the main principle of the soul. They are differently conceived by the
learned and ignorant, but the difference is a mere conceit (Kalpaná).
12. The intellect presents its two different aspects to the wise and
unwise people; to the ignorant, it shows its unreal nature in the
realistic conception of the world, while to the learned it exhibits its
luminous form in the identity of all things (with God).
13. The intellect enlightens the luminous bodies of the sun and stars,
by its internal (intellectual) light; it gives a relish to things by
its internal taste; and it gives birth to all beings from its inborn
ideas of them.
14. It neither rises nor sets, nor gets up nor sits; it neither
proceeds nor recedes to or fro, it is not here nor is it no where.
(Omniscience is present everywhere and is ever the same).
15. The pure and transpicuous intellect which is situated in the soul,
displays in itself the phantasmagoria which is called the world.
16. As a heap of fire emits its flame, and a luminous body blazes with
its rays; and as the sea swells in surges and breaks in with its arms,
so the intellect bursts out in its creations. (Omniscience is the cause
and not percipience of the world—God makes all things, and does not
perceive them like us).
17. Thus the intellect which is selfmanifest and omnipresent of its
own nature, developes and envelopes the world by its own manifestation
and occultation, and by its acts of integration and segregation
(_sánhára_ and _nirhára_); or the acts of accretion and secretion.
18. It is led by its own error and of its own accord, to forget and
forsake its state of infinitude; and then by assuming its individual
personality of egoism (that I am), it is converted to an ignoramus. (So
men of contracted views turn to be dunces).
19. It falls from its knowledge of generals to that of particulars, by
its act of specialization; and comes to the discrimination of the
positive, and negative, and of inclusion and exclusion (or admission or
rejection).
20. It strives and struggles within the confines of the sensuous body
(owing to its degradation from spirituality); and it multiplies in
these bodies like the weeds sprouting out of the bosom of the earth.
(_i.e._ From its unity becomes a multiplicity in the many animal
bodies).
21. It is the intellect that stretches the spacious vacuum, to make
room for the subsistence and growth of every thing; and makes the all
and ever moving air and the liquid water, for the vitality and
nourishment of all.
22. It makes the firm earth (terrafirma) and the light-some fire and
the fixed worlds all around; and employs time by its injunctions and
prohibitions, (to do or undo any thing).
23. It gives fragrance to flowers, and grows by degrees their filaments
and pistils; and it makes the moisture of the porous ground, to grow
vegetables on earth.
24. The rooted trees fructify with fruits, by their juicy saps from
beneath; and they produce their fruitage, and display their foliage
with lineaments in them, as their veins and arteries.
25. It renovates the forest with its gifts of various hues, and dyes
them with the variety of colours in the rainbow of Indra.
26. It bids the folia, fruits and flowers to wait on the flowery season
of spring; and then brings their fruitage to perfection, under the heat
of the summer sun.
27. It makes the dark blue clouds of heaven, to wait on the approach of
the rainy weather; and causes the harvest of fields, to follow in the
train of autumn.
28. The cold season is decorated with its smiling frost, in its faces
of the ten sides of the sky; and the dewy weather is made to waft its
icicles of dew drops, on the pinions of the chilling winds of winter.
29. It makes the ever moving time, to revolve in its rotation of years
and cycles and Yuga—ages; and causes the tide of creation to roll on in
its waves of worlds, on its bosom of the ocean of eternity.
30. Its decrees remain fixed with a wonderful stability, and the earth
(terra or dhara), continues firm (dhíra or sthira), with its quality of
containing all things. (In this sloka there is both a homonym and
paronym of similar sound and sense in the word _dhará_ derived from the
root _dhri_: namely, _dhírá_, _dhará_, = _sthirá_, terra and _dharana_
and _dharini_).
31. It made the universe teem with fourteen kinds of beings in its as
many worlds of the chaturdasa-bhuvanas; and these are as different in
their modes of life as in their forms and figures. (The Atharvan or
last Veda reckons tri-sapta or thrice seven worlds).
32. These are repeatedly produced from and reduced to nothing, and move
in their wonted courses for ever, as bubbles in the waterless ocean of
eternity.
33. Here the miserable multitudes, moving mad in vain struggles after
their desired objects, and in their imbecility under the subjection of
disease and death. They are incessantly coming to life and going away
in their exits, remaining in their living states and acquiring their
ends, and for ever running to and fro, in their repeated births and
deaths in this world.