ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE KNOWN AND UNKNOWN.
Argument:—Difference of Egoism in wise and in common people, and
Disappearance of visibles.
Ráma rejoined:—Tell me, O most sapient sage, how it is possible for the
demon of ego to take hold of you, that are extinct in the deity, and
dissipate my doubts there.
2. Vasishtha replied:—It is impossible, O Ráma, for any being whether
knowing or unknown to live here without the sense of his egoism; as it
is not possible for the contained to subsist without its container.
3. But there is a difference of this which you must know, that the
demoniac egoism of the quiet minded man, is capable of control by means
of his knowledge of and attention to the _srutis_.
4. It is the infantine ignorance which raises up this idol of egoism,
though it is found to exist no where; just as little children make dolls
and images of gods and men, that have no existence at all.
5. This ignorance also (which is the cause of egoism), is nothing
positive of itself; since it is dispelled by knowledge and reason, as
darkness is driven away by the light of a lamp. (Ignorance and darkness
are but negative terms).
6. Ignorance is a demon that dances about in the dark, and a fiend that
flies afar before the light of reason. (Hence the disappearance of
ignorance causes our egoism to disappear also).
7. Granting the existence of ignorance, in absence of the advance of
knowledge and reason; yet it is at best but a fiend of delusion, and is
as shapeless as the darkest night (When nothing is to be seen).
8. Granting the existence of creation, we have no trace of ignorance any
where in it (since creation is the production of omniscience, there is
no nescience in any part of) the existence of two moons in the sky.
9. Creation having no other cause (but God himself), we know not how
could ignorance find a place in it; just so it is impossible for a tree
to grow in the air (which God hath made void, barren, and bare). (God
hath planted the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden, but no tree of
ignorance did He set any where).
10. When creation began and was begotten in the beginning, in its pure
and subtile form in the womb of absolute vacuum (or the mind of God);
how is it possible for the material bodies of earth and water to proceed
(from the immaterial spirit) without a material cause?
11. The Lord is beyond (the conception of) the mind, and (the perception
of) the six senses, and is yet the source of the mind and senses; but
how could that formless and incorporeal being, be the cause of material
and corporeal things?
12. The germ is the effect (or product), germinating from its causal
source—the seed; but how and where can you expect to see the sprout
springing without the productive seed?
13. No effect can ever result, without its formal cause or main-spring;
say who has ever seen or found a tree to spring from and grow in empty
air. (_Nihil ex nihilo fit, et nihil in nihilum reverte posse_).
14. It is imagination alone that paints these prospects in the mind,
just as the fume of fancy shows you the sight of trees in the empty air;
so it is the phrensy of the mind, that exhibits these phenomena before
your eyes, but which in reality have no essentiality in them.
15. So, the universe as it appeared at its first creation, in the
vacuity of the divine intellect; was all a congeries of worlds swimming
in empty air (in their hollow ideal shapes).
16. (But the universe is not altogether a void and nihility). It is the
same as it shines itself in the spacious intellect of the supreme soul
(or spirit); it is the divine nature itself which is termed as creation,
and which is an intellectual system having proceeded from the intellect,
and the self-same divinity.
17. The vision of the world which is presented in our dream, and which
is of daily occurrence to us, furnishes us with the best instance of
this; when we are conscious of the sights of cities, and of the
appearance of hills, all before our mental eyes in the dreaming state.
(So this world is but a dream).
18. It is the nature of the Intellect as that of a dream, to see the
vision of creation, as we view the appearance of the uncreated creation
before our eyes, in the same manner as it appeared at first in the vast
void (of divine mind).
19. There is but one unintelligible intelligence, a purely unborn and
imperishable being, that appears now before us in the shape of this
creation, as it existed with its everlasting ideas of infinite worlds,
before this creation began.
20. There is no creation here, nor these orbs of earth and others; it is
all calm and quiet with but One Brahma seated in his immensity.
21. This Brahma is omnipotent and as He manifests himself in any manner,
He instantly becomes as such without forsaking his purely transparent
form.
22. As our intellect shows itself, in the form of visionary cities in
our dream; so doth the divine intellect exhibit itself, in the forms of
all these worlds, at the commencement of their creation.
23. It is in the transparent and transcendent vacuum of the Intellect,
that the vacuous intellect is situated; and the creation is the display
of its own nature, by an act of its thought in itself. (There is a large
note explanatory of this passage).
24. The whole creation consists in the clear vacuity of the intellect,
and is of the nature of the spirit situated in the spirit of God. (The
world exists in its spiritual form in the ample space of the divine
spirit).
25. The whole creation being but the diffusion of the selfsame spiritual
essence of God, there is no possibility of the existence of a material
world or ignorance or egoism, in the creation and pervasivefulness of
the Supreme spirit.
26. Everything have I told you all about the desinence of your egoism,
and one knowing the unreality of his egoisticism, gets rid of his false
belief, as a boy is freed from his fear of a ghost.
27. In this manner, no sooner was I fully convinced of the futility of
egoism, than I lost the sense of my personality; and though I retained
fully the consciousness of myself, yet I got freed from my selfishness,
as a light autumnal cloud by disloading its watery burden.
28. As our knowledge of the inefficacy of a flaming fire in painting,
removes the fear of our being burnt by it; so our connection of our
fallacies of egoism and creation, serves to efface the impressions of
the subjective and objective from our minds.
29. Thus when I was delivered from my egoism, and set to the
tranquility of my passions; I then found myself seated in an
unatmospheric firmament (which was free from cloud and rain); and in an
uncreated creation (_i.e._ in the everlasting vacuity or eternal
sunshine of heaven).
30. I am none of egoism, nor is it anything to me; having got rid of it,
I have become one with clear intellectual vacuum.
31. In this respect, all intelligent men are of the same opinion with
myself; as it is well known to them that our notion of egoism is as
false, as the fallacy of fire represented in a painting.
32. Being certain of the unreality of yourself and of others, and of the
nihility of everything beside; conduct yourself in all your dealings
with indifference, and remain as mute as a stone.
33. Let your mind shine with the clearness of the vault of heaven, and
be as impregnable to the excess of all thoughts and feelings as solid
stone. Know that there is but One Intellectual essence from beginning to
end, and that there nothing to be seen except the One-deity, who
composes the whole plenum.