SERMON ON THE TRUE SENSE OF TRUTH.
Argument:—Causes of erroneous conceptions and false Imagination,
our hankering for the future world and its remedy.
Vasishtha continued:—Ráma, if a man will not gain his wisdom by his own
exertion, by his own reasoning and by the development of his
understanding in the company of good men, then there is no other way to
it.
2. If one will try to remove his mis-apprehensions and the false
creations of his imagination, by the prescribed remedies of the sástras,
he will succeed to change and rectify them himself, as they remove or
remedy one poison by means of a counter poison.
3. All fancies and desires are checked by unfancying them, and this
unfancifulness or undesirousness is the cause of liberation, by
relinquishment of worldly enjoyment, which is the first step to it. (So
says the sruti:—Renunciation of enjoyments, is the leader to
liberation).
4. First consider well the meanings of words, both in your mind and
utterance of them; and all the habitual and growing misconceptions will
slowly cease and subside of themselves.
5. There is no greater error or ignorance in one’s self, except the
sense of his egoism; and this error having subsided by one’s disregard
of its accepted sense, it is not far from him to arrive at his
liberation.
6. If you have the least reliance in your body and egoism, you surely
lose the infinite joy of your unbounded soul; but by forsaking the
feeling of your egoism or personality, you are freed from the bondage of
your fondness for anything of this world, and become perfected in divine
knowledge and blissfulness.
7. It is from want of understanding, that all these unrealities appear
as real to the ignorant; but we venerate and bow down to the sage, who
remains unmoved as a stone at all this.
8. Who from want of his sense of external objects, remains as cold as a
stone, and being reclined in the Supreme spirit by the meditation of the
Divine Mind in his own mind; sees but an empty void both within and all
around himself. (This is called perfect liberation of the soul).
9. Whether there be or not be all these visibles, they tend alike to our
misery; it is our thoughtlessness of them alone that conduces to our
happiness, wherefore it is better to remain insensible of them, by
shutting our senses against them. (Our happiness or misery does not
depend on the presence or absence of things, but upon our disregard of
or concern for them).
10. There are two very serious diseases waiting on mankind, in their
cares for this as well as those of the next world; and both of these are
attended with intolerable pains to the patients of both their temporal
as well as spiritual maladies.
11. In this world the intelligent are seen to try all their best
medicines in vain, to remove their inveterate diseases of hunger and
thirst, by means of their remedies of food and drink, during the whole
period of their lives; but there is no remedy whatever for to heal their
spiritual maladies of sin and vile, and avert their inevitable fate
of death and rebirths in endless succession.
12. The best sort of men are trying to heal their spiritual maladies,
and avert their future fate, by means of the ambrosial medicines of
dispassionateness, keeping good company and improvement of their
understanding.
13. Those who are careful to cure their spiritual complaint, become
successful to get their riddance, by means of their desire of getting
better, and by virtue of the best medicine of abstinence and refraining
from evil. (Gloss. _apathya tyága &c._).
14. Whoever does not heal even now his deadly disease of sin, which is
his leader to hell fire on future; let him say what remedy is left for
him to try, after he has gone to the next world, where there is no
balsam to heal the sickly soul.
15. Try all earthly medicines to preserve your life, from being wasted
away by earthly diseases; and keep your souls entire for the next world,
by the healing balm of spiritual knowledge in this life.
16. This life is but a breath, alikens a tremulous dew drop, hanging at
the end of a shaking leaf, and ready to fall down; but your future life
is long, and enduring under all its variations, therefore heal it for
the everlasting futurity.
17. By carefully attending to the treatment of spiritual diseases at
present, you will not only be hale and holy in your soul in the next
world, but evade all the diseases of this life, which will fly off afar
from you.
18. Know thy conscious soul as an animalcule, which evolves itself into
the form of this vast world; just as an atom contains a huge mountain in
it, which evolves from its bosom in time.
19. As the evolution of your consciousness, presents to your view the
forms that you have in your mind (_i.e._ ideals); so doth the phenomenon
of the world appear in the womb of vacuum, and is no more real than a
false phantasy.
20. Notwithstanding the repeated deluge and destruction of the visible
earth, there is no change nor end of the false phantom of our mind,
where its figure is neither destroyed nor resuscitated, owing to its
being a phantasy only and no reality whatever. (It is possible to
destroy the form of _a_, but not its idea in the mind).
21. Should you like to lift up your soul, from the muddy pit of earthly
pleasures and desires, wherein it drowned forever; you must put forth
your manly virtues, as the only means to this end, and without which
there is no other.
22. The man of ungoverned mind and soul, is a dull-headed fool, and
fallen in the miry pit of carnal desires; he becomes the receptacle of
all kinds of danger and difficulty, as the bed of the sea is the
reservoir of all the waters falling to it.
23. As boyhood is the first stage of the life of a man, and introduces
the other ages for perfection of human nature; so the first step to
one’s self-extinction, is the renunciation of his carnal enjoyments,
conducing to the subjection of passions.
24. The stream of the life of a wise man, is ever flowing onward with
the undulations of events, without overflowing its banks or breaking its
bounds; and resembles a river drawn in a picture, which is flowing
without the current of its waters.
25. The course of the lives of ignorant people, runs with tremendous
noise, like the precipitate current of rivers; it rolls onward with
dangerous whirlpools, and flows on with its rising and setting billows
(till it mixes with the sea of eternity).
26. Continuous creations and course of events, are transpiring with the
succession of our thoughts; and appearing before us like the illusive
train of our dreams, and the false appearance of two moons in the sky,
and the delusion of mirage and apparitions rising to the sight of
children.
27. So the incessant waves raised by the undulating waters of our
consciousness, appears as the endless chain of created objects, rising
in reality to our view; but being taken into mature consideration, they
will appear to be as false and unreal, as they seem true and real to our
erroneous apprehension of them.
28. It is said that are worlds and the cities of Gandharvas and
Siddhas, contained in the concavity of the firmament, and it is
supposed also that, the cavity of the sky is a reservoir of waters; but
all these are but creations of the mind, and there no such things in
reality.
29. The worlds are as bubbles of water, in the ocean of the conscious
mind; they are only the productions of the fanciful mind, and no such
things, as they are thought to be; and the idea of ego, is but forms of
our varying thoughts.
30. The expansion of consciousness is the course of unfolding the world,
and the closing of it conceals the phenomenals from view; therefore
these appearances are neither in the inside nor outside of us; and they
are neither realities, nor altogether unreal also (but effects of the
opening and shutting of our minds only).
31. There is one thing alone of the form of the intellect, which is
unborn and unknown (in its true nature), and is the undecaying (_i.e._
everlasting) lord of all; it is devoid of substance and property, and is
called Brahma or immensity, and tranquil spirit, which is as quiet and
calm as the infinite void, are rarer than even the empty atmosphere.
32. There is no cause whatever, which can be reasonably assigned to the
agitation, consciousness and creations of the spirit of Brahma; which
being above nature is said to have no nature at all. Its agitation is as
that of the air; whose cause is beyond all conception.
33. Brahma has his thoughts rising in him, as waves in the ocean of
himself, and as our consciousness of the dreams rising in our soul; and
the nature of this creation is in reality, neither as that of his dream,
or the wave produced from his essence. (It is hard to say, whether this
is a thought of himself as a dream, or a part of him like a wave).
34. This much therefore can only be said of him that, there is only an
unknowable unity, which is ever the same and never as quick as thought,
nor even as dull as matter; it is not a reality or unreality, nor any
thing this positive or negative. (In a word, it is nothing that
conceivable by the human mind).
35. The Yogi that remains in this _insouciant_ state of Brahma, and
insensible of his own consciousness (_i.e._ who is inexcitable both in
his body and mind), such a person is said to be the best of sages and
saints.
36. Who becomes inactive and inert as a clod of earth, even while he is
alive; who becomes unconscious of himself and the outer world, and
thinks of nothing (except the Supreme soul); he is said as the best of
sages and saints.
37. As we lose sight of wished for objects, by ceasing to wish for them
(such as the sights of fairy lands &c.); so we get rid of our knowledge
of ourselves and the world, by our ceasing to think about them (by
confining our thoughts in God alone).
38. All things expressed, in words have certain causes assigned to them;
but the cause of their nature remains inexplicable, (whence
nature—_swabháva_ is said to be _avidyá_ or hidden ignorance). It is the
cause of this prime nature (_i.e._ God), whose knowledge alone conduces
to our liberations (from ignorance).
39. Nothing whatever has its particular nature of itself, unless it were
implanted in it by the intelligence of God, as it were by infusion of
the moisture of divine intelligence.
40. All our thoughts, are agitated by inspiration of the breath of the
great intellect; know them therefore as proceeding from the vacuum of
the entity of the supreme Brahma.
41. There is no difference whatever, in the different nature of the
creator and creation; except it be as that of the air and its agitation,
which are the one and same thing and of the same nature. The thought of
their difference is as erroneous, as the sight of one’s death in his
dream.
42. An error continues so long, as the blunder does not become evident
by the light of reasoning; when the error being cleared of its falsity,
flies to and vanishes into the light and truth of Brahma.
43. Error being the false representation of something, flies away before
a critical insight into it; and all things being but productions of our
error, like our conception of the horns of hare, they all vanish before
the light of true knowledge, which leaves the entity of Brahma only at
the end.
44. Therefore give up all your errors and delusions, and thereby get rid
of the burden of your diseases and decay; and meditate only on the One,
that has no beginning, middle, or end, is always clear and the same, and
full of bliss and felicity, and assimilate yourself to the nature of the
clear firmament: (which according to Vasishtha is the nature and form of
God).