DESCRIPTION OF THE SUPREME BRAHMA.
Argument:—The One undivided Brahma with and without his
attributes and his real and unreal forms.
Vasishtha continued:—The state of the soul is as placid, as that of the
untroubled mind in the interval of one’s journey from one place to
another, when it is free from the cares of both places (of trouble).
2. Be therefore quite unconcerned in your mind in all states of your
life, whether when you sit or walk or hear or see anything, for the
purpose of securing your unalterable composure.
3. Being thus devoid of your desires, and undistinguished in society,
continue as steadfast as a rock, in the particular conduct of your
station in life.
4. Being placed in this manner beyond the reach of ignorance, one is
blest with the light of knowledge in his mind.
5. After disappearance of ignorance from the mind, there can be no trace
of any thought left in it; nor can the mind think of anything, when
tranquility has got her ascendency in it.
6. Brahma is verily one with the world, and the selfsame one appearing
as many to our ignorance; which represents the plenitude of Brahma as a
multitude, and his pure spirit as extended matter.
7. The plenum (of creation) appears as vacuum (of annihilation), and
vacuity appearing as substantiality; brightness deemed by darkness, and
what is obscure is brought to light.
8. The unchangeable is seen as changing and the steady appearing as
moving; the real appears as unreal, and the unreality as reality; so
that seeming as otherwise, and so the vice versa also.
9. The indivisible appears as divided, and energy appearing as inertia;
the unthinkable seems as the object of thought, and the unparted whole
seeming to shine in innumerable parts.
10. The unego appears as the very ego, and the imperishable One
appearing as perishable; the unstained seem as tainted, and the
unknowable known as the knowable all of the known world.
11. The luminous One appearing as deep darkness of chaos, and the oldest
in time manifested as the new born creation; and the One minuter than an
atom, bearing the boundless universe in its bosom.
12. He the soul of all, is yet unseen or dimly seen in all these his
works; and though boundless and endless in Himself, he appears as
bounded in the multitudinous works of his creation.
13. Being beyond illusion, He binds the world in delusion; and being
ineffable light, he centres his brightness in the dazzling sun. Know
then, O best of inquirers, that Brahma resembles the endless expanse of
the vast ocean.
14. This immense treasure of the universe, so enormous in its bulk,
appears yet as light as a feather, when put into balance with the
immensity of Brahma; and the rays of his illusion, eluding the
moon-beams in their transparency, are as invisible as the glare of the
mirage.
15. Brahma is boundless and unfordable (as the ocean), and is situated
in no time nor place nor in the sky, where he has set the forests of the
clusters of the stars, and the huge mountains of the orbs of planets.
16. He is minutest of the minute (by his inhering in the bodies of the
smallest minutiae); and the bulkiest of the bulky. He is the greatest
among the great, and the chiefest of the chief.
17. He is neither the doer, deed nor instrument of doing anything; and
neither is the cause of another, nor has he any cause for himself. (In
Vedánta, all causality is denied of the all pervading Brahma). And being
all empty within, Brahma is full in Himself.
18. The world which is the great casket of its contents, is as void as a
vast desert; and notwithstanding its containing the countless massy and
stony mountains in it, it is as ductile as the plastic ether and as
subtile as the rarefied air.
19. All things however time worn appear anew every day; the light
becomes dark by night, and darkness is changed to light again.
20. Things present become invisible to sight, and objects at a distance
present themselves to view, the intellectual changes to the material,
and the material vanishes to the superphysical (thought or spirit).
21. The ego becomes the non-ego, and the non-ego changes to the ego; one
becomes the ego of another, and that other and the ego, become as
something other and different than the ego.
22. The full ocean of the bosom of Brahma, gives rise to the innumerable
waves of world; and these waves like worlds evolve from and dissolve
into the ocean of Brahma’s breast, by their liquid like and plastic
nature.
23. The vacuous body of Brahma bears a snow white brightness over all
its parts, whence the whole creations is full of a light as fair as snow
and frost. (Light is the first appearance or work of God, and envelopes
the whole universe that was formed in and after it).
24. This God being beyond the space of all time and place, and without
all forms, figures, and shapes whatever; stretches out in space and all
times of day and night, the unreal figures in the world like the
unstable waves of the sea.
25. In this light there shines the bright filament of the worlds, in the
ample space of the sky; appearing as so many ancient arbours standing in
a long and large forest, and bearing the five elements as their
pentapetalous leaves.
26. The great God has spread out this light, as a clear mirror before
his sight; in order as he wished to see the shadow of his own face,
represented in the pellucid twilight (which proceeded at first from
him).
27. The unbounded intellect of God, produced of its own free will the
spacious firmament, wherein the lord planted the tree of his creation,
which brought forth the luminous orbs as its fruits in different parts
of it.
28. The lord created a great many varieties of things, both in the
inside as well as outside of himself; which appear as internal thoughts
in his intellect, and as all entities and non-entities in his outer or
physical world.
29. In this manner, the divine mind exhibits the different forms of
things, in itself and of its own will, as the tongue displays the
varieties of speech within the cavity of the mouth.
30. It is the flowing of the fluid of divine will, which forms the
worlds; and it is the conception of pleasant sensations in the mind,
that causes these torrents and whirlpools in the ocean of the world.
(_i.e._ The will is the cause of creation, and the feelings and passions
are as whirlwinds and whirlpools in the mind).
31. It is from the divine mind that all things proceed, as the light
issues from fire; as it is the lulling of the creative mind to rest,
that the glow of all visible objects are extinguished and put out of
sight.
32. All the worlds appertain to the divine intellect, as the property of
whiteness adheres to the substance of snow; and all things proceeded
from it, as the cooling moon-beams issue out of the lunar orb.
33. It is from flush of the hue of this bodiless intellect, that the
picture of the world derives its variegated colouring; and it is this
intellect alone which is to be known, as an infinite extension without
its privation or variation at any time.
34. This stupendous Intellect, like the gigantic fig-tree (ficus
religiosa) of the forest, stretches out its huge branches on the empty
air of heaven, bearing the enormous bodies of orbs of worlds, like
clusters of its fruits and flowers.
35. Again this colossal intellect appears as a huge mountain, firmly
fixed in the air, and letting down many a gushing and running stream,
flowing with numberless flowers, falling from the mountain trees.
36. In this spacious theatre of vacuum, the old actress of destiny, acts
her part of the representation of worlds in their repeated rotations and
succession.
37. In this stage the player boy—time is also seen to play his part, of
producing and destroying by turns an infinity of worlds, in the
continued course of Kalpa and Mahákalpa ages, and in the rotation of the
parts of time.
38. This playful time remains firm in his post, notwithstanding the
repeated entrances and exits of worlds in the theatre of the universe;
just as a fixed mirror ever remains the same, though shadows and
appearance in it, are continually shifting and gliding through it.
39. The Lord God is the causal seed of the worlds, whether existing at
present or to come into existence in future; just in the same manner as
the five elemental principles are causes of the present creation. (Here
Brahma is represented, as in all other passages, as the material cause
of the world).
40. The twinklings of his eye cause the appearance and disappearance of
the world, with all its beauty and brightness; but the Supreme soul
having no outward eye or its twinkling, is confined in his spirit only.
(The physical actions which are attributed to God, are always taken in
their figurative sense).
41. The very many great, and very great creations and dissolutions of
worlds, and the incessant births and deaths of livings, which are
continually going on in the course of the nature; are all the various
forms of the One unvaried spirit, whose breath, like the inflation of
air, produces and reduces all from and into itself. Know this and be
quiet and still.