DESCRIPTION OF THE PERSON OF THE GOD SIVA.
Argument:—Description of the perfection and personality of Siva
as an undivided whole.
Ráma rejoined:—Who is this goddess, sir, that is dancing thus in her act
of destruction, and why is it that she bears on her body the pots and
fruits as her wreaths of flowers?
2. Say, whether the worlds are wholly destroyed at the end, or they
become extinct in the goddess Káli, and reside in her person, and when
doth her dance come to an end.
3. Vasishtha replied:—Neither is he a male, nor is she a female; nor was
there a dancing of the one, or a duality of the two (in their spirit);
such being the case (of their unity), and such the nature of their
action (of destruction); neither of them any form, or figure of their
own (except that they are personified as such).
4. That which is without its beginning or end, is the divine Intellect
alone; which in the manner of infinite vacuity, is the cause of all
causes. (In the beginning all was void, which caused all things).
5. It is the increate and endless light, that exists from eternity, and
extends over all space. This calm and quiet state of the etherial space
is known as Siva or tranquil, and its change to confusion at the end, is
denominated Bhairava or the dreadful. (_i.e._ the Lord acting his
dreadful part in the theatre of the universe).
6. It is impossible for the pure and formless intellect, to remain alone
and aloof from its association with plastic nature; as it is not likely
to find any gold to exist without some form or other. (So the sruti:—The
creation and absorption of the world, require a formal agent and
recipient also).
7. Say ye who know, how the intellect may subsist without its
intelligence, and where a pepper may be had without its pungency? (There
is nothing without its necessary property, nor the formal world without
a formal cause).
8. Consider how can there be any gold, without its form of a bracelet or
any other; and how doth a substance exist without its substantial
property or nature?
9. Say what is the extract of the sugar-cane, unless it is possessed of
its sweetness; you can not call it the juice of sugar-cane, unless you
find the saccharine flavour in the same.
10. When the intellect is devoid of its intellection, you can not call
it as the intellect any more; nor is the vacuous form of the intellect,
ever liable to any change or annihilation. (A void is devoid of all
accidents).
11. Vacuity admits of no variety, besides its retaining the identity of
its inanity; and in order to assume a diversity, the void must remain a
void as ever. (Or else it becomes a solid, which is no more itself).
12. Therefore the unchanged and unagitated essence, which is essential
to it, must be without beginning and unlimited, and full of all potency
in itself (since vacuum is the medium both of creation as well as of
annihilation also).
13. And therefore the creation of the three worlds and their
destruction, the earth, firmament and the sides of the compass; together
with all the acts of creation and destruction, are the indiscriminate
phenomena of vacuum.
14. All births, deaths, delusions and ignorance, being and not being,
together with knowledge and dullness, restraint and liberty, and all
events whether good or evil.
15. Knowledge and its want, the body and its loss, temporariness and
diuturnity; together with mobility and inertia, and egoism and tuism and
illism.
16. All good and evil, goodness and badness, ignorance and intelligence;
together with durations of time and space, substance and action, and all
our thoughts, fancies and imagination.
17. The sight of the forms of things and the thoughts of the mind, the
action of the body, understanding and senses; with those of the elements
of earth and water, fire, air, and vacuum extending all about us.
18. These and all others, proceed from the pure intellectual vacuity of
the Divine spirit; which resides in its vacuous form in everything and
is always without decay and decrease.
19. All things subsist in pure vacuum, and are as pure as the void
itself; there is nothing beside this empty air, though they appear as
real as doth a mountain in our hollow dream.
20. The intellectual spirit, which I have said to be transcendent void;
is the same which we call as jíva—the sempiternal and Rudra—the august.
21. He is adored as Hari or Vishnu by some, and as Brahmá the great
progenitor of men by others; he is called the sun and moon, and as
Indra, Varuna, Yama, the Viráta and the God of fire also.
22. He is the marut or wind, the cloud and sea, the sky, and everything
that there is or is not; all whatever manifests itself in the empty
sphere of the Intellect.
23. In this manner all things appearing under different names, and taken
to be true by the ignorant eye; vanish into nothing in their spiritual
light, which shows them in their pure intellectual natures.
24. In the understanding of the ignorant, the world appears as apart
from the spirit; but to the intellectual soul, the vacuity of the
intellect is known to be situated in the Divine spirit; therefore there
is no distinction of unity and duality to the knowing mind (in which all
multiplicities blend into unity).
25. So long is the living soul tossed about as a wave in the ocean of
the world, and running the course of its repeated births and deaths in
it; until it comes to know the nature of the supreme spirit, when it
becomes as immortal and perfect as the eternal soul and self-same with
it.
26. By this knowledge of the universal soul, the human soul attains its
perfect tranquility; as to find itself no more, as the fluctuating wave
in the ocean of the world, but views itself and everything beside, to be
as calm and quiet, as the eternal and infinite spirit of God.