DESCRIPTION OF THE WATERY CREATION.
Argument:—Description of the Waters and Islands on the surface of
the Earth, and Watery things in all nature.
Ráma Said:—Tell me Sir, what other things (lit.—worlds), you saw on the
surface of the earth.
2. Vasishtha replied:—With my waking soul, I thought as it were in my
sleep that I was assimilated to land, and saw many groups of lands
scattered this earth: I saw them in my mysterious vision, and then
reflected them in my mind.
3. As I beheld those groups of lands, lying every where before my
intellectual vision; the outer world receded from my sight, all
dualities were quite lost and hushed in my tranquil soul.
4. I saw those groups as so many spots, lying in the expanded spirit of
Brahma; which was a perfect void, quite calm, and inert to all
agitations.
5. I saw every where large tracts, as great and solid as the earth
itself: but found them in reality to be nothing more, than the empty
dreams appearing in the vacant mind.
6. Here there was no diversity nor uniformity neither, nor was there any
entity or nihility either; there was no sense of my egoism also, but all
blinded in an indefinite void.
7. And though I conceived myself to be something in existence; yet I
perceived it had no personality of its own, and its entity depended on
that of one sole Brahma, who is increate and ever undecaying (or never
decays).
8. Thus these sights being as appearances of dream, in the empty space
of the intellect; it is not known how and in what form they were
situated in the divine mind, before they were exhibited in creation.
9. Now as I saw those tracts of land in the form of so many worlds, so I
beheld large basins of water also (surrounding them on all sides).
10. Then my active spirit, became as the inert element of water in many
a great (or reservoirs of water); and these are called as seas and
oceans, in which lay and played with a gurgling noise.
11. These waters are incessantly gliding on, bearing upon them loads of
grass and straw, and bushes of plants and shrubs and trunks of trees;
which float upon them, as the bugs and leeches crawl and creep on your
body.
12. These are borne by the circling waters, like small insects and worms
into the crevices of waves; and thence hurled into the womb of the
whirlpools, whose depth is beyond all comparison.
13. The currents of the waters were gliding, with the leaves and fruits
of trees in their mouths; while the floating creepers and branches,
described the encircling necklaces about them.
14. Again the drinkable water being taken by the mouth, goes into the
hearts of living beings; and produces different effects on the humours
of animal bodies, according to their properties at different seasons.
15. Again it is this water which descends in the form of dews, sleeps on
leafy beds in the shape of icicles, and shines under the (moon-beams on
all sides), all the time and without interruption.
16. It runs with irresistible course to many a lake and brook as its
home, it flows in the currents of rivers, unless it is stopped by some
bridge or embankment.
17. The waters of the sea like ignorant men on earth, ran up and down
in search of the proper course; but failing to find the same, they
tumbled and turned about in eddies and whirlpools (of doubts).
18. I saw the water on the mountain-top, which thought it rested on
high, yet it fell owing to its restlessness in the form of a water-fall
in the cataract, where it was dashed to a thousand splashes. (So I found
myself to be hurled down by my sins, from my high position in heaven, to
a thousand devious paths on earth).
19. I saw the water rising from the earth in the form of vapour on high,
and then mixing with the blue ocean of the azure sky, or appearing as
blue sapphires among the twinkling stars of heaven.
20. I saw the waters ascending and riding on the back of the clouds, and
there joining with the lightnings as their hidden consorts, shining as
the cerulean god Vishnu, mounted on the back of the hoary
serpent—_Vásuki_.
21. I found this water both in the atomic and elementary creations, as
well as in all gross bodies on earth, and I found it lying unperceived
in the very grain of all things, as the omnipresent Brahma inheres in
all substances.
22. This element resides in the tongue; which perceives the flavour of
things from their particles, and conveys the sense to the mind. Hence I
ween the feeling of taste relates to the soul and its perception, and
not to the sensibility of the body. (The Divine Spirit is said to be
flavour—_rasovaitat_, and it is the human soul only that perceives it).
23. I did not taste this spiritual savour, by means of the body or any
of its organs; it is felt in the inner soul only, and not by the
perceptions of the mind, which are misleading and therefore false and
unreal.
24. There is this flavour scattered on all sides, in the sapidity of the
season’s fruits and flowers; I have tasted them all and left the flowers
to be sucked by the bees and butterflies.
25. Again the sentient soul abides in the form of this liquid, in the
bodies and limbs of all the fourteen kinds of living bodies (in some of
which it appears in the form of red hot blood).
26. It assumes the form of the showers of rain, and mounts on the back
of the driving winds; and then it fills the whole atmosphere, with
a sweet aromatic fragrance. (This sweet scent is called in Bengali
সেঁদোগন্ধ, which is a corruption of স্বাডু swádu or sweet).
27. Ráma! remaining in that state of my sublimated abstraction, I
perceived the particulars of the world in each individual and particular
particle.
28. Remaining unknown to and unseen by any body, I perceived the
properties of all things, as I marked those of water, with this my
sensible body, appearing as gross matter.
29. Thus I saw thousands of worlds, and the repeated rising and
fallings, like the leaves of plantain trees (or rather the barks of
those trees, which grow upon and envelop one another).
30. Thus did this material world, appear to me in its immaterial form;
as a creation of the Intellect, and presenting a pure and vacuous
aspect.
31. The phenomenal is nothing, and it is its mental perception only that
we have all of this world; and this also vanishes into nothing, when we
know this all to be a mere void.