ESTABLISHMENT OF THE UNDIVIDED INDIVIDUALITY OF GOD.
Argument:—Ascertainment of the unity of God.
Vasishtha continued:—The world is a clear vacuum, subsisting in the
entity of the vacuous Brahma; it is as the visible sky in the empty sky,
and means the manifestation of Brahma.
2. The words I and thou are expressive of the same Brahma, seated in his
undivided individuality; so are all things seated as calmly and quietly
in him, as if they are not seated there, though they are shining in and
by the same light.
3. The earth with its hills and protuberant bodies upon it, resembles
the tumour on the body of Brahma; and the whole world, remains as dumb
as a block in the person of Brahma.
4. He views the visibles, as he is no viewer of them; and he is the
maker of all, without making anything; because they naturally subsist
with their several natures in the Supreme spirit.
5. This knowledge of the subsistence of all nature in the essence of
God, precludes our knowledge of the positive existence of everything
besides; and our ideas of all entity and vacuity and of action and
passion, vanish into nothing. (Since the One is all in all).
6. The one solid essence of the everlasting One, is diffused through all
every where, as the solidity of a stone stretches throughout its parts;
and all varieties blending into unity, are ever alike to him.
7. Life and death, truth and untruth, and all good and evil, are equally
indifferent in that vacuous spirit, as the endless billows continually
rising and falling in the waters of the deep.
8. The selfsame Brahma becomes divided, into the viewer and the view
(_i.e._ into the subjective and the objective); the one being the
intellect or the supreme, and the other the living soul (the former
being the viewer of the latter). This division is known in the dreaming
and waking states of the living or animal soul; when the same is both
the subject as well the object in either state. (_i.e._ The sleeping soul
dreams the living state as its object, and the living soul believes the
other as object of its dream).
9. In this manner the form of the world, being exhibited as a vision in
a dream, in the sphere of the divine intellect; is manifest therein as
the counterpart or representation of Brahma himself, from the beginning.
(This is the doctrine of the eternal ideas, being co-existent with the
essence of the eternal One).
10. Therefore know this world and all things in it, to be exactly of
that spiritual form, in which they are exhibited in the divine spirit;
nor is there any variation in their spirituality (to materiality) owing
to their appearance in various forms, as there is no change in the
substance of the moon, owing to her several phases.
11. All these worlds reside and rove amidst the quiet spirit of God, in
the same manner, as the waters remain and roll in waves in the midst of
the calm bosom of the ocean.
12. Whatever is manifest, is manifested as the work, and that which is
not apparent is the hidden cause of them; and there is no difference in
them, in as much as they are both situated in that spirit, as their
common centre; just as a traveller ever going forward, yet never moving
from the centre of the earth. (The cause and effect both concentrate in
the Lord, and there is no particle that goes out of that centre).
13. Hence the prime cause of creation is as nil, as the horn of a hare
(which is a nullity in nature); search for it as much as you can, and
you will find nothing (save an ectype of the eternal One).
14. Whatever appears anywhere without its <cause>, must be a fallacy of
vision and mind; and who can account for the truth of an error which is
untrue itself. (Falsehood is no truth).
15. How and what effect can come to existence without its cause, and
what is it but an error of the brain, for a childless man to say he sees
his son.
16. Whatever comes to appearance without its cause, is all owing to the
nature of our imagination of the same; which shows the objects of our
desire in all their various forms to our view, as our fancy paints the
fairy lands in our minds.
17. As a traveller passing from one country to another, finds his body
(himself) to stand at the midspot (from his knowledge of the rotundity
of the earth); so nothing departs from its nature, but turns about that
centre like.
18. The understanding also shows many false and biggest objects, in its
airy and minute receptacle; as for instance the many objects of desire,
and the notion of mountains, which it presents to us in our waking and
dreaming states.
19. Ráma rejoined:—We know well that the future banian tree, resides
within the minute receptacle of its seed; why then don’t you say, that
the creation was hidden in the same manner in the unevolved spirit of
God?
20. Vasishtha replied:—The seed in its material form, contains the
formless big tree in its undeveloped bosom; which developes afterwards to
a gigantic size, by aid of the auxiliary causalities (of heat, rain
&c.). (But God is formless spirit and cannot contain the material world
in it, nor has it the need of other helping causes to produce the
world).
21. The whole creation being dissolved in the end, tell me what remains
there of it in the form of its seed; and what ancillary causes are there
to be found, which cause the production of the world. (Nothing exists in
nothing).
22. The pure and transparent spirit of God, has nothing of any possible
shape or figure in it; and if it is impossible for even an atom to find
a place therein, what possibility is there for a formal seed to exist or
subsist in it.
23. So the reality of a causal (productive) seed, being altogether
untrue; there is no possibility of the existence of a real (substantial)
world, nor can you say how, whence, by whom and when it came into being.
24. It is improper to say that the world consisted in a minute particle
in the divine spirit, and quite absurd to maintain that it remained in
an eternal atom (according to the atomic theory); for how is it possible
that a body as big as a mountain could be contained in a minim as small
as a mustard seed? It is therefore a false theory of the ignorant.
25. Had there been a real seed from eternity, it is possible for the
world to be produced from it, by causes inherent in the same; but how
could a real and formal seed, be contained in the formless spirit of
God; and by what process could the material proceed from the immaterial?
26. It is therefore that prime and transcendent principle (of the divine
spirit), which exhibits itself in the form of the world; and there is
nothing which is ever produced from, nor reduced into it.
27. The world is situated in its intellectual form, in the vacuity of
the Intellect; it is the human heart which portrays it, in its material
shape. The pure soul views it in its pure spiritual light, but the
perverted heart perceives it in a gross and concrete state.
28. It appears in the mind as empty air, and fluctuates there with the
oscillation of the wind; there is nothing of its substantiality in the
mind, nor even an idea of its creation (or being a created thing), as
the word _sarga_ is meant to express.
29. As there is vacuity in the sky, and fluidity in the water of its own
nature; so is there spirituality alone in the soul, which views the
world in a spiritual light only.
30. The world is a reflexion of Brahma, and as such, it is Brahma
himself, and not a solid and extended thing; it is without its beginning
or end and quiet in its nature, and never rises nor sets of itself.
(_i.e._ It is inherent in the divinity, and is neither involved in nor
evolved from it).
31. As a wise man going from one country to another, finds his body to
be ever situated in the midst of this globe; so the universe with all
its remotest worlds, is situated in the vacuity of the divine spirit.
32. As fluctuation is innate in the air, and fluidity is inherent in
water, and vacuity is essential to vacuum; so is this world intrinsic in
the divine soul, without anything concomitant with it.
33. The vacuous phantom of the world, is in the vacuum of divine
consciousness or intellect; and being thus situated in the Supreme soul,
it has no rising nor setting as that of the sun. Therefore knowing all
these to be included in that vacuum, and there is nothing visible beside
the same, cease from viewing the phantoms of imagination, and be as the
very vacuity yourself.