REFUTATION OF ATHEISM.
Argument:—Refutation of the Atheistical doctrine of the
materiality of the soul.
Ráma rejoined:—Please to tell me, sir, what are your arguments, for
allaying the miseries of this world, against the position (paksha) of
others who maintain in that:—
2. A living being is happy so long, as the dread of death (either of
himself or others) is out of his view; and that there is no reappearance
(revivification) of the dead, that is already reduced to ashes. (Hence
there is no happiness either for the living or dead (according to
them)).
3. Vasishtha replied:—Whatever is the certain belief of any body, he
finds the same in his consciousness; and that he feels and conceives
accordingly, is a truth that is well known to all mankind (that every
one thinks according to his belief).
4. As the firmament is firm, quiet and ubiquitous, so also is the
ubiquity of the Intellect (_i.e._ the vacuous intellect is also
allpervading), and are considered to form a duality by the ignorant
dualist, while the sapient take them as the one and same thing, from the
impossibility of conceiving the co-existence of two things from
eternity.
5. It is wrong to suppose the existence of a chaos before creation
began, for that would be assigning another (chaotic) cause to the
creation when has proceeded from Brahma, who is without a cause and
is diffused in his creation.
6. He who does not acknowledge the purport of the Vedas, (that all
things are produced from Brahma), and the final great dissolution (when
all things are dissolved in and return to him); are known as men without
a revelation and religion, and are considered as dead by us (_i.e._
spiritually dead).
7. Those whose minds are settled in the undisputed belief of the
sástras, that all these is Brahmá or the varied god himself; are persons
with whom we have to hold no discussion or argument.
8. As our consciousness is ever awake in our minds, and without any
intermission; so Brahma that constitutes our consciousness, is ever
wakeful in us, whether the body lasts or not.
9. If our perceptions are to produce our consciousness, then must man be
very miserable indeed; because the sense of a feeling, other <than> that
of the ever felicitous state of the soul, is what actually makes us so.
10. Knowing the universe as the splendours of the intellectual vacuum
(_i.e._ in the sphere of the vacuous intellect); you cannot suppose the
knowledge of anything, or the feeling of any pleasure or pain, ever to
attach or stick to an empty nothing. (_i.e._ to the vacuous spirit).
11. Hence men who are quite certain and conscious, of the entirety and
pure unity of the soul, can never find the feelings of sorrow or grief,
to rise in or overwhelm it in any way than the dust of earth rising to
the sky, and filling its sphere with foulness. (This passage rests on
text of the sruti which says: there is no sorrow or pain to any body who
sees the pure unity only).
12. Whether the consciousness of unity, be true or not in all men; yet
the common notion of it even in the minds of boys, cannot be discarded
as untrue. (_i.e._ All men may differ in their conceptions respecting
the nature of the Divine soul, but they all agree in the notion of one
prime cause of all. See kusumanjali).
13. The body is not the soul nor the living spirit, nor any other thing
of which we have any conception; It is the consciousness which is every
thing, and the world is as it conceives it to be. (There is nothing
beyond our consciousness of it).
14. Whether it is true or not, yet we have the conception of our bodies
by means of this; and it gives us conceptions of all things in earth,
water and heaven, independent of their material forms, as we see the
aerial forms of things in our dreams. (_i.e._ We are conscious only of
the abstract notions of things, and of their substantial properties).
15. Whether our consciousness is a real entity or not, yet it is this
power which is called the conscious soul; and whatever is the conviction
of this power, the same is received as positive truth by all.
16. The authority of all the sástras, rests upon the proof of
consciousness; and the truth which is generally arrived at by all, must
be acknowledged as quite certain in my opinion also.
17. Therefore the consciousness of atheists, which is vitiated by their
misunderstanding, being purified afterwards by right reasoning, becomes
productive of good results likewise (_i.e._ of producing the fruit of
their liberation also).
18. But a perverted conscience or vitiated understanding, is never
reproved by any means; either by performance of pious acts at any time
or place, or by study of vedas, or by pursuit of other things.
19. Errors of the understanding (avidyá) recur to the reprobate as often
as they corrected from time to time; say therefore what other means
can there be, to preserve our consciousness from fallacy.
20. Self-consciousness is the soul of man, and in proportion to its
firmness or weakness, the happiness or misery of man, increases or
decreases accordingly. (_i.e._ The strong minded are always prosperous).
21. If there is a consciousness in men, and such men also who are
conscious of the Divine essence in them, and those who are resorted to
by the pious, for their liberation from the bonds of the world; then
this world would appear as a dead and dumb block of stone, and a dark
and dreary desert.
22. The knowledge of nature or gross materialism, which rises in the
mind of man, for want of his knowledge of the consciousness of himself,
is like the dark ignorance in which one is involved in his sleep.
23. Ráma rejoined:—Tell me Sir, how is that atheist who denies the end
of the ten sides of heaven, and disbelieves the destruction of the
world; who believe only in what is existent, and have no thought of
inexistence (either prior to the creation or after its dissolution).
24. Who does not perceive the perfect wisdom, which is displayed
throughout the universe; but sees only whatever is visible, without
knowing their destruction (frailty). (The atheists consider the world as
eternal).
25. Tell me Sir, what are their arguments, about allaying the evils of
the world; and remove my doubts about it, for increase of my knowledge
in this important truth.
26. Vasishtha replied:—I have already given my reply to your query
regarding the infidels (that they are not to be spoken to); hear me now
to give the reply with regard to your second question touching the
salvation of the soul.
27. O best of men Ráma! you have spoken in this sense, that the human
soul (purusha) is constituted of the intelligence alone (as you think it
to be and which is but a flash of the Divine Intellect, and the measure
of the objects of consciousness).
28. This intelligence (or intelligent soul) is indestructible, and is
not destroyed with the destruction of the body, but is joined with the
Divine Intelligence without fail. Or if the body be indestructible
(owing to its resurrection after death), then there is no cause of
sorrow at its temporary loss.
29. The intelligence is said to be divided into various parts, in the
souls of men and different members of their bodies; if so it be, then
the intelligence is destroyed with the destruction of individual souls
and bodily members also. (Therefore the supremely intelligent soul is
beyond these).
30. The self-conscious soul that is liberated in the living state, has
no more to return to earth after death; but the consciousness which is
not purified by divine knowledge, cannot be exempted from its
transmigration to this world.
31. Those again that deny the existence of consciousness, such souls are
doomed to the gross ignorance of stones (_i.e._ to become stony block
heads) for this disbelief of theirs.
32. As the knowledge of sensible objects, keeps the mind in utter
darkness; so the death of such persons is calculated as their final
bliss, because they have <no> more to feel the sensibles nor view the
visible world any more (although they are deprived of their spiritual
bliss).
33. Men of pure understandings; who have lost the sense of their
corporeality, are never to be reborn on earth any more; but those of
dull understandings, become as gross corporeal bodies and are involved
in impenetrable darkness (_i.e._ the gloom of ignorance according to the
dictum of the sruti).
34. Those intellectual philosophers (vijnána-vádis), who view the world
as an aerial city in his dream; to them the world presents its aspect as
a phantom and no other. (The world is a day dream, and its sight a
delusion. _In haman ke didam khab bud_).
35. There are some that maintain the stability, and others asserting the
frailty of the world and every thing; but what do they gain by these
opinions, since the knowledge of either, neither augments the amount of
human happiness, nor lessens any quantity of mortal misery (_i.e._ the
misery of mortals).
36. The stability or unstability, of the greatest or least of things,
makes no difference in any of them whatever; they are all alike the
radiating rays of the intellect, though they appear as extended bodies
to the ignorant.
37. Those who assign unlimitedness to the essence of consciousness, and
of limitation to that of insensibility; and maintain the permanence of
the one and the transience of the other, talk mere nonsense like the
babbling of boys.
38. They are the best and most venerable of men, who know the body to be
the product of and encompassed by the intellect. And they are the
meanest among mankind, who believe the intellect as the produce and
offspring of the body; (and these are Kanada and Nyáya philosophers of
gross materialism, who believe intelligence as a resultant of the
material body).
39. The intellect (personified as Hiranyagarbha or Brahmá the Divine
spirit), is distributed into the souls of all living beings; and the
infinite space of vacuity, is as a net work or curtain, which all
animal lives, flying within its ample expanse like bodies of gnats and
flies, and rising up and sinking below or moving all about, as the
shoals of fishes in the interminable ocean. (The Divine Intellect or
spirit, is the collection of all specialities).
40. As this universal soul, thinks of creating the various species; so
it conceives them within itself, as the seeds conceive the future plants
in themselves, and the same are developed afterward.
41. Whatever lives or living beings, it thinks of or conceives in
itself; the same spring forth quickly from it, and this truth is known
even to boys (from the repeated texts importing the Lord as the fountain
of all).
42. As the vapours fly in the air, and as the waters roll in the ocean;
and as they form curls and waves of various kinds, so the lives of
living beings, are continually floating in the vacuum of the Divine
Intellect.
43. As the vacuity of the Intellect, presents the sight of a city to a
man in his dream; so the world presents its variegated aspects since its
first creation, to the sight of the day dreaming man.
44. There were no co-ordinate causes of material bodies (as earth, water
&c.), at the first formation of the world; but it rose spontaneously of
itself as the empty sights appearing in our dream.
45. As in a city seen in dream, its houses and their apartments, come to
appear gradually to sight; so the dream becomes enlarged and expanded
and divided by degrees to our vision.
46. All this creation is but the empty void of the intellect, (or as
pictures drawn in empty air); there is no duality or variety in it, but
is one even plane of the intellect, like the open sky, without any spot
or place attached to it.
47. The moon-light of the Intellect, diffuses its coolness on all sides,
and gladdens the souls of all beings; it scatters the beams of
intellection all around, and casts its reflexions in the image of the
world.
48. The world as it is now visible to us, lies for ever in the mind of
God in the same vacuous state, as it was before its creation; and as it
is to be reduced to nothing upon its final destruction. It is the
twinkling, or the opening and closing of the intellectual eye, that this
empty shadow of the world, appears and disappears amidst the universal
vacuum of the Divine Mind.
49. Whoever views this world in any light, it appears to him in the same
manner (as some thinking it a solid plenum, and others as an empty
vacuum). And as it depends upon the Intellect alone, it is exhibited in
various forms according to the caprice of its observers.
50. The minds of the intelligent, are as pure as the clear sphere of the
summer sky; and the pure hearted and holy people, think themselves as
nothing else, beside their intellects or as intellectual beings only.
51. These pious and holy people, are free from ignorance and the faults
of society; they share the gifts of fortune, as it falls to them by the
common lot of mankind; and they continue in the conduct of their worldly
affairs, like some working machine (acting externally and without taking
any thing to mind).