VASISHTHA’S ADMONITION TO MANKI.
Argument:—The _avarana sakti_ or all-enfolding power of God is
called ignorance, his _vikshepa sakti_ or delusive power is the
cause of error, and the combination of both cause the world.
Vasishtha said:—Consciousness (of the objects of perception), their
reflection, the desire of having them and their imagination, are the
four roots of evil in this world; and though these words are
meaningless, yet considerable sense is attached to them (as categories
of some schools of false philosophy); as the four sources of knowledge.
2. Know that knowledge (of externals) is their reflexion also, which is
the seat (or root) of all evils; and all our calamities proceed
therefrom, as thickly as vegetation springs out of the vernal juice (or
breath of spring).
3. Men garbed in the robes of their desires, walk in the dreary paths of
this world, with very many varieties of their actions (both temporal and
ritual), as there are circles drawn under a circle (_i.e._ one circle of
duty enclosing many others under it).
4. But these aberrations and wanderings over the earth, are at an end to
the wise together with their desires; as the moisture of the ground, is
dried up and diminishes at the end of the vernal season.
5. Our various desires, are the growers of the very many thorny plants
and brambles in the world; as the vernal moisture is the cause of
growing the thick clumps of _kadalí_ or plantain trees.
6. The world appears as a dark maze to the mind, that is cloyed in the
serum of its lickerish appetites; as the ground is shaded under the
bushy trees, by the sap supplied by the vernal season.
7. There is nothing in existence except the clear and vacuous intellect,
as there is nothing in the boundless sky, beside the hollow vacuity of
the air. (This is another passage of the vacuistic theory of Vasishtha).
8. There is no intelligent soul beside this one, and all else is the
everlasting reflexion of this one alone; This it is which is styled
ignorance and error, and the world also.
9. He is seen without being seen, and is lost upon being seen (that is,
the Lord is seen in the spirit and not by the visual sight). On looking
to it an unreal or evil spirit appears to sight instead of the true and
holy spirit, like ghosts and goblins appearing before children. (Whoever
wishes to the spirit of God, sees the spirit of the devil only).
10. It is by rejecting all visible sights, the understanding views the
one essence of all, and all things dwindle into it, as all the rivers on
earth, run and fall into one universal ocean. (The one invisible unity
is the essence of multiplicity).
11. As an earthen ware cannot be without its earth; so all intelligent
beings, are never devoid of their intelligence or the intellect. (This
couplet corroborates the eighth verse, where it is said that, there is
nothing except the intellect).
12. Whatever is known by the understanding, is said to be our knowledge;
but the understanding has no knowledge of the unknowable, nor want of
understanding can have any knowledge, owing to their opposite natures.
(Because understanding and knowledge are of the same nature, but
understanding and unknowable are contraries, and want of understanding
and the knowable are sub-contraries). (The plain meaning is that the
understanding knows the knowable and not the unknowable; while want of
understanding knows neither the one nor the other).
13. As there is the same relation of knowledge between the looker, his
seeing and sight (_i.e._ the subject, act, and object of seeing); so it
is omniscience of Brahma which is the only essence. (_Sáraikarasyam_),
all else is as null as an aerial flower (_Kha-pushpa_) which never
exists.
14. Things of the same kind bear an affinity to one another, and readily
unite in one (as water with water &c.); so the world being alike to its
notion, and all notions being alike to the eternal ideas in the mind of
God, the world and the divine mind, are certainly the same thing and no
other.
15. If there be no knowledge or notion of wood and stone in us, then
they would be the same as the non-existent things of which we have no
notion:—(such as the horns of a hare or a flower in the air).
16. When the outward and visible features of things, are so exactly
similar to the notions and knowledge of them that we have in our minds;
therefore they appear to be no other than our notions or knowledge of
them. (Because things agreeing in all respects with one another, must be
the same and very thing).
17. All visible appearances in the universe, are only the outstretched
reflexions of our inner ideas; their fluctuation is as that of the
winds, as their motion is as that of the waters in the ocean.
18. All things are mixed up with the omnipresent spirit, as a log of
wood is covered over by lac-dye; both of which appear to be mixed
together to the unthinking, but both are taken for the one and same
thing by the thinking part of mankind; (who believe the spirit to
exhibit itself in all shapes _Ápna jathaika bhuvana_).
19. The idea of reciprocity is unity, and the knowledge of mutuality is
union also; such as the interchange of water and milk, and so the
correlation of vision and visibles; and not as the union of the wood and
lac-dye with one another. (This means unity to consist in the
interchangeableness and interdependence of two things as of the spirit
and matter, and not as sticking the lac-dye upon wood, but as fire
inhering in every particle of the wood, as it is expressed in the
afore cited sruti):—
20. The knowledge of one’s egoism is his bondage, and that of his
unegoism is his emancipation from it; thus one’s imprisonment in and
enfranchisement from the confines of his body and the world; being both
under his subjection, why is it that he should be slack to sit himself
at freedom from his perpetual thraldom?
21. Like our sight of two moons in the sky, and our belief of water in
the mirage, we believe in the reality of our egoism, which is altogether
an unreality. (Lit. We think it present without its presence).
22. The disbelief in one’s self or his egoism, removes his meity
(_mámatá_) or selfishness also; and it being possible to everyone to get
rid of them, how is it that he should be ignorant of it?
23. Why do you maintain your egoism only, to be confined in the cell of
your body, like a plum drowned in a cup of water, or like the air
confined in a pot? your relation to God is to be no other but like
himself and to be one with him, is to have the reciprocal knowledge of
yourself in the likeness of God (_i.e._ to be like the image of God in
perfection).
24. It is said that the want of reciprocal knowledge, makes the union of
two things into one (_i.e._ the entire commingling of two things
together makes them one); but this is wrong in both ways, because
neither doth any dull material thing or any spiritual substance, lose
its own form (however mixed up with one or the other).
25. Neither is force converted into inertness (_i.e._ the spirit never
becomes matter), from the indestructibility of their nature, and
whenever the spiritual is seen or considered as the material, it becomes
a duality, and there is no unity in this view of the two. (Hence there
is no union or entire assimilation either of the spirituals or
materials).
26. Thus men being under the influence of their desires, and beset by
their vanities of various kinds (altogether) are going on downward
still, as a stone torn from the head of a cliff, falls from precipice to
precipice headlong to the ground.
27. Men are as straws carried here and there by the current of their
desire, and whirled about in its eddy; they are overtaken by and
overwhelmed in an endless series of difficulties which <are> impossible
for me to enumerate. (The Sanskrit _na párjate_ is the Bengali
_párájáyaná_).
28. Men being cast like a ball flung from the palm of fate, are hurried
onward by their ardent desires till they are hurled headlong into the
depth of hell; where being worried and worn out with hell torments, they
take other forms and shapes after lapses of long periods (to undergo
fresh toils and troubles on earth).