STORY OF INDRÁNÍ; AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE IDENTITY
OF THE ACTS OF CREATION AND IMAGINATION.
Argument:—Origin of Sakra race and of the World like the fibres
of Lotus-stalks and its spiritual sense.
Bhusunda continued:—There was one prince born of the race of that Indra;
who had also become the lord of gods; He was endowed with prosperity and
all good qualities, and devoted to divine knowledge.
2. This prince of Indra’s race, received his divine knowledge from the
oral instruction of Vrihaspati (the preceptor of the gods).
3. He knowing the knowable-one, persisted in the course of knowledge as
he was taught and being the sovereign lord of gods, he reigned over all
the three worlds.
4. He fought against the demigods, and conquered all his foes; he made a
hundred sacrifices, and got over the darkness of ignorance by his
enlightened mind.
5. He remained long in meditation, having his mind fixed in his cerebral
artery, resembling the thread of a tubular stalk of the lotus, and
continued to reflect on hundreds of many others matters. (_i.e._ On the
imaginary world and its kingdom and conquests together with many other
things).
6. He had once the desire of knowing by the power of his understanding,
how he could see the essence of Brahma in his meditation (or how he
could have a sight of the nature of God, manifest before him. Gloss).
7. He sat in his solitary retirement, and saw in this silent meditation
of his tranquil mind, the disappearance of the concatenation of causes
all about and inside himself.
8. He beheld the omnipotent Brahma, as extended in and about all things;
and presenting all times and places and existing as all in all, and
pervading all things in all places.
9. His hands stretch to all sides, and his feet reach to the ends of the
worlds; his face and eyes are on all sides, and his head pierces the
spheres; his ears are set in all places, and he endures by encompassing
all things every where.
10. He is devoid of all the organs of sense, and yet possest of the
powers of all senses in himself; he is the support of all, and being
destitute of qualities, is the source and receptacle of all quality.
(The qualities of finite bodies are of a finite nature, but the infinite
are infinite, eternal and immutable).
11. Unmoved and unmoving by himself, he is moving in and out of all
things, as well as moveth them all both internally and externally (that
is to say, He is the moving force of dull matter). He is unknowable
owing to his minuteness, and appears to be at a distance, though he is
so near us.
12. He is as the one sun and moon in the whole universe, and the same
land in all the earth; He is the one universal ocean on the globe, and
one Meru Mountain (of the sun’s path) all about.
13. He is the pith and gravity of all objects, and he is the one vacuum
every where; he is the wide world and the great cosmos, that is common
to all.
14. He is the liberated soul of all, and the primary intellect in every
place; he is every object everywhere, and beside all things in all
places.
15. He is in all pots and huts, in all trees and their coatings; he
moves the carts and carriages, and enlivens alike all men and other
animals likewise.
16. He is in all the various customs and manners of men, and in all the
many modes of their thinking; he resides equally in the parts of an
atom, as also in the stupendous frame of the triple world.
17. He resides as pungency in the heart of pepper, as vacuity in the
sky; and in his intellectual soul the three worlds, whether they are
real entities or mere unrealities.
18. Indra beheld the lord in this manner, and then being liberated from
his animal state by the help of his pure understanding; he remained all
along in the same state of his meditation as before.
19. The magnanimous god sees in his revery, all things united in his
meditative mind; and beheld this creation in the same light as it
appears to us (as a real entity).
20. He then wandered in his mind all over this creation, and believing
himself as the lord of all he saw in it, became the very god Indra; and
reigned over the three worlds and their manifold pageantries.
21. Know, O chief of the race of vidyádharas, that the same Indra who
was descended of the family of Indras, has been still holding his reign
as the lord of gods to this day.
22. He then perceived in his mind, by virtue of his former habit of
thinking, the seed of his remembrance sprouting forth with the lotus
stalk, wherein he thought to have lain before.
23. As I have related to you of the reign of the former Indra, in the
bosom of an atom in the sunbeam; and of the residence of his last
generation—the latter Indra, in the hollow fibre of the lotus stalk.
24. So have thousands of other Indras gone by, and are going on still in
their fancied realm in the empty sky, in the same manner and mode as
observed by their predecessors.
25. So runs the course of nature in ceaseless succession, like the
current of a river running onward to the sea; and so do men whether
acquainted or not with the divine knowledge, flow on as streams to the
abyss of eternity (which is _tatpada_ or state of the Deity).
26. Such is lengthening delusion of the world appearing as true; but
vanishing to nothing at the appearance of the light of truth (which is
the sight of God in everything).
27. From whatever cause, and in whatever place or time, and in whatever
manner this delusion is seen to have sprung, it is made to disappear by
knowledge of the same.
28. It is egoism alone, which produces the wonderful appearance of
delusion; as the cloud in the sky causes the rain; it spreads itself as
a mist, but disappears immediately at the sight of light.
29. He who has got rid of his belief of the looking and sight of the
world (_i.e._ Of both the subjective and objective, as well as of his
action and passion); and has attained the knowledge of self-reflecting
soul; and who has placed his belief in one vacuous form of empty air;
which is devoid of all properties and beyond all categories, is freed
from all option and settled in the only One.