ON THE QUIESCENCE OF THE SOUL.
Argument:—God is not manifest in the world, nor is the world
manifested in God; but both these appear by turns in the soul of
the living-liberated person.
Vasishtha continued:—The sight of things, actions of the mind, the
internal faculties and perceptions of the senses, being all of a
superphysical nature, the true states of these categories are far
removed from our knowledge, and present but a faint appearance of theirs
unto us.
2. The minuteness of the superphysical or in totals, is outstretched in
the forms of external or physical objects; but this extended appearance
of the outer world, is a mere error (and creation of our false
imagination).
3. But when this external nature disappears and subsides in the inner
soul, it is then that this phenomenal world is absorbed like a dream in
the sound sleeping state of the soul.
4. Our enjoyments and our greatest ailments on earth, and our kindred
and relations are our strongest bondages here; our wealth is for our
bale and woe, therefore hold yourself to yourself alone (and mind not
about all others).
5. Know your felicity to consist, in your communion with yourself; and
that you lose yourself, by your familiarity with the world. Participate
with the supreme vacuum, be calm and quiet like it, and do not disturb
yourself like the turbulent air or wind. (So Hafiz and the Persian
mystics: If thou seekest thyself, then seek not <but> forsake all others).
6. I know not myself, nor do I understand what this visible and mistaken
world may mean; I am absorbed in the calm and quiet Brahma, and feel
myself as the sound Brahma himself.
7. You behold me as another person, and address me with words thou &c.
in the second person; but I find myself as calm and quiet as the
transcendent vacuum itself.
8. It is in the vacuous sphere of the divine soul, that you view the
false appearances (of things), as are produced therein by the
misconceptions of your mind; and these errors are continually rising in
your mind, in the manner of the erratic trepidations in the mind.
9. The tranquil soul of Brahma, knows (has) no effort of creation in it;
nor doth the nature of creation, know the quiescent nature of Brahma. It
is as the soundly sleeping soul knows no dream, nor does the dreaming
man know the state of sound sleep. (The nature of Brahma is one of
profound sleep, and that of creation is no other than a dream).
10. Brahma is ever wakeful, and the world is no other than a waking
dream, and the living liberated man knows, the phenomenon as a reflexion
of the noumenon in his tranquil understanding.
11. The intelligent man well knows the true state of things in the
world, and holy men are as quiet in their souls as the autumnal sky with
a moving cloud.
12. The erroneous conception of one’s egoism or personality, and that of
the existence of the world; is like the impression of the relation of a
battle, preserved in one’s memory or as pictured in his imaginations; in
both cases truth and falsehood are found to be blended together.
13. The phenomena of the world, which is neither exhibited in the divine
spirit, as an intrinsic or subjective part of itself nor has it a viewer
(or subjective framer) for itself; which is neither a vacuity nor even a
solidity of its nature; cannot be otherwise than an erroneous conception
of the mind.