EXPLANATION OF NIRVÁNA—ANAESTHESIA.
Argument:—Ascertainment of the source of cause of the visible
world.
Ráma said:—How there is sensibility in sensible beings, and there is
durability in time; how vacuum is a perfect void, and how inertness
abides in dull material substances:—
2. How does fluctuation reside in air, and what is the state of things
_in futuro_, and those that absent at present; how doth motion reside in
moving things, and how doth plasmic bodies receive their forms.
3. Whence is the difference of different things, and the infinity of
infinite natures; how there is visibility in the visibles, (_i.e._ how
the visibles appear to view), and how does the creation of created
things come to take place:—
4. Tell me, O most eloquent Brahman, all these things one by one, and
explain them from the first to last, in such manner, that they may be
intelligible to the lowest understanding.
5. Vasishtha replied:—That endless great vacuum, is known as the great
and solid intellect itself; but this is not to be known any more, than
as a tranquil and self-existent unity.
6. The Gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva and others, are reduced to their
origin at the last dissolution of the world; and there remains only that
pure source whence they have sprung.
7. There is however no cause to be assigned in this prime cause of all,
who is also the seed of matter and form, as well as of delusion,
ignorance and error. (These being but counterparts of spirit and
knowledge, are all mingled in Him).
8. The original cause is quite transparent and tranquil, and having
neither its beginning nor end, and the subtile ether itself is dense and
solid, in comparison with the rarity of the other.
9. It is not proper to call it a nullity, when it is possessed of an
intellectual body; nor can it with propriety styled as an existent
being, when it is altogether calm and quiet (and nothing imaginable).
10. The form of that being is as inconceivable, as the idea of that
little space of time which lies in midst of our thought of the length of
a thousand miles, which the mind’s eye sees in a moment. (Its flash is
quicker than that of a lightning and the flight of imagination).
11. The yogi who is insensible of the false and delusive desires and
sights of objects, that intrude upon internal mind and external vision,
sees the transient flash of that light in his meditation, as he wakes
amidst the gloom of midnight.
12. The man that sits with the quiet calmness of his mind, and without
any of joy or grief; comes to feel the pulsation of that spirit in
himself, as he perceives the fluctuation of his mind within him.
13. That which is the spring of creation, as the sprout is the source of
all vegetable productions; the very same is the form of the Lord (That
he is the vegetative seed or germ of the arbour of the world. _Sansára
Briksa Brijánkura_).
14. He is the cause of the world, which is seen to exist in Him; and
which is a manifestation of himself, in all its varieties of fearful
forms and shapes (All which is the act of his illusion).
15. These therefore having no actual or real cause, are no real
productions nor actual existences; because there is no formal world (in
its natural form), nor a duality co-existent with the spiritual unity.
16. That which has no cause, can have no possible existence; the eternal
ideas of God cannot be otherwise than mere ideal shapes.
17. The vacuum which has no beginning nor end, is yet no cause of the
world; because Brahma is formless, but the vacuous sky, which presents a
visible appearance, cannot be the form of the formless and invisible
Brahma.
18. Therefore he is that, in which the form of the world appears to
exist; hence the lord himself appears as that which is situated in the
vacuity of his intellect.
19. The world being of the nature of the intellectual Brahma, is of the
same intellectual kind with him; though our error shows it otherwise
(_i.e._ in a material and visible form. All is one with the unborn and
ever tranquil One, in whom all dualities blend in unity).
20. This whole world springs from that whole intellect, and subsists in
its entirety in that entire One; the completeness of that is displayed
in the totality of this, and the completeness of creation, depends upon
the perfection of its cause. (Nothing imperfect proceeds from the
perfect one).
21. Knowing that One as ever even and quiet, having neither its rise or
fall; nor any form of likeness, but ever remaining in its translucent
unity as the ample sky, and is the everlasting all; and combining the
reality and unreality together in its unity, makes the _nirvána_ of
sages.