Eternal, Unborn, Self-Effulgent —
The Supreme Lord
The Supreme & Uncreated Being
“After the dissolution of the cosmos — when one great cycle of existence had ended and the next had not yet begun — the entire objective universe rested in a state of perfect equilibrium. No motion. No becoming. Everything that would ever appear… held in absolute stillness.”
And in that stillness, there existed the supreme Lord. Eternal. Unborn. Self-effulgent — meaning, luminous by his own nature, needing no external light to shine. He is the all. He is omnipotent. Yet he is beyond conception and beyond description.
He is known by many names — Ātmā, Brahman, the Self — but these are viewpoints. Pointers. Not the truth itself. The truth cannot be held inside a name.
He is — and yet the world does not recognise him. He is within this very body — and yet he seems infinitely far. From him, countless divinities emerged. Vishnu, and others beyond counting — the way countless rays pour from a single sun. And from him, infinite worlds arose — the way ripples appear at the surface of an ocean, without the ocean itself ever moving.
He is the cosmic intelligence into which all objects of perception enter. He is the light in which both the self and the world are seen. He ordains the nature of every created thing — what fire does, what water does, what a seed becomes. And in him, worlds appear and disappear — the way mirages form and dissolve repeatedly across a desert plain.
The world — which is his form — vanishes. But what he is does not change. He dwells in all things. He is hidden — and he overflows. By his mere presence, this apparently inert material world and all its inhabitants are ever active. The world does not move itself. It moves because he is in it.
The Vanity of the Physical Form
The cavity of the mouth, the sockets of the eyes, the nostrils and ear-holes in the open face, are all expressive of the hollowness of human and heavenly bodies (i.e. they are all hollow within, though they seem to be solid without).
It remembered how its body was washed on the banks of mountain rills, by the waterfalls from above, and how it was daubed by the flying dust and the dirt of sin. The crown of the head had become as white and smooth (by its baldness or grey hairs), as the phallus of Śiva anointed with camphor, at the Indu-varcha ceremony in honor of the moon.
He was prepared to pronounce his imprecation against the god of fate, in vengeance of his snatching his son so prematurely from him.
“You sages are observers of the multifarious rules of religious austerities, and we are observant of the endless and immutable laws of destiny; we honour you therefore for your holiness, and not from any other desire (of being blessed by you or exempted from your curse).”
“Why don’t you consider your case as the sequence of your own acts, and why then do you, who are a wise man, falsely accuse me like the ignorant (as the cause of what is ordained by the Supreme cause of all!). But the ignorant mind which is prone to evil, destroys the goodly body; as little children break their dolls of clay in sport.”
Transmigration and the Wanderings of the Jīva
It has the name of the heart from the affections of the body, and so it takes many other names at will. Being bereft of his aerial and celestial body, he passed through the atmospheric air, and was born again on earth in a human figure.
Then he became a Vidyādhara (Jadugar) or magician himself; and plied his jugglery of abstracting ornaments from the persons of females. At the end of the kalpa age (of universal destruction), he beheld the twelve suns of the zodiac shining at once before him, and he was reduced to ashes by their warmth, as a grasshopper is burnt up by its falling on fire. It is in this kalpa age that he has become a Vidyādhara again, and betaken himself to the performance of his devotion on the bank of Samangā, where he is sitting still in his yoga meditation.
The Illusory World
Those who are awakened to sense, and whose sins are washed off; have their understandings purified by the light of the śāstras. Saying so, the lord of death smiled to think of the course of nature, and taking hold of Bhrigu’s hand in his own, they both departed as the sun and moon together.
Nothing appears or disappears to any one in this world, but error and aerial phantasms; that show themselves to those that are bewitched by this magic scene of the world. The pure mind has the true notions of things, as the gem polished from its dross, receives the right reflection of everything (or) reflects the true image of everything.
Volition and Transmigration
As long as there is no volition nor nolition, connected with the identity of the living soul; so long it reposes in a state of rest, not unlike that of sound sleep (suṣupti). Some of them are situated apart from one another, and are dissolved also separately; and some are joined together, and are born as two guñjā fruits growing together.
As the pure Spirit taking the form of the vital breath, performs the functions of the body; so the mind being reborn in a new body, is employed in all the functions of the same body. The ubiquity of the intellect, makes it pass into the mind in its next birth; and exhibit itself in different forms in all its succeeding and subordinate regenerations (stages of life).
There are some living souls, which meet and join with others and propagate their species; and then cease to exist after having lived a long time together. I consider the atoms of the intellect and the mind, contained within the particles of the material body, to be both vacuous, and joined in one without causing a duality in their nature. These rove from one error to another, as a man sees one dream after another; and roll about in the pit of their delusion, as a stone when hurled from a hill downward.
Waking State
The state of waking dream is again of longer or shorter duration, in both of which the visions appear the same at all places and times.
“This breath circulating throughout the whole body, gives it the powers of sensibility and consciousness, which have their seats in the heart and mind, wherein the erroneous conception of the world is hidden.”
The particle of intellect taking the form of life, after being purified from its earthly impurity; mixes with the internal soul, and attains the state of sound sleep, as if lulled to insensibility by the cooling breeze. Whatever one desires to have, he sees the same in himself in his sleep; and this is by the force of his inward wind acting upon his mind, as upon his outward organs.
The Heavenly War
The encampment of the gods was beset by a magical flood of the demons, resembling the stream of the Ganges; while showers of firearms and missiles of all sorts were hurled upon their heads from above. Living lions with iron bodies, and rows of saw-like teeth and nails white as Kāsa flowers, were let loose by the magic art to roam rampant in the airy field; devouring the stones, flung by the gods and demons, and bursting out into shells and shots and many other weapons.
“The stone missiles which were thrown by the Garuda engine, to the aerial battlefield of the gods, emitted at intervals water and fire, and sometimes shone as the sun, and at others became altogether dark.”
Those skilled in the arts were pouring floods of purple fluids, mixed with the red clay of mountains, from the pipes of elephant’s trunks; as they sputter the festive water of Phagua, mixed with the red powder (phāga) through the syringe (phichkāri). The dreadful warfare of the gods and Titans resembled the tumults which rage through the endless space of the world, and that rise and fall with the vicissitudes of pleasure and pain, which it is incessantly subject to. (I.e. the world is a field of continued warfare of good and evil, like the battle-field of the gods and demons).
Worldy Desire
Their constant practice in arms made them sure of their success, as the nearness of objects casts their reflection in the mirror. All worldly desires lead to erroneous expectations, and those that are entangled in the snares of their expectations, are thereby reduced to the meanness of their spirits. They lost their patience by continually thinking on the stability of their bodies, and their properties and pleasures of life.
They moved slowly in despair of their victory, and for fear of losing their lives, in their encounter with the furious elephants (of the gods) in the field. They fell upon the summits of mountains, and in the arbours of the Sumeru range; some were enwrapped in the folds of the clouds above, and others fell on the banks of distant seas below. Some being pierced by the arrows of the celestials, fell in distant countries, villages and cities on earth; and others were hurled in thick jungles of wild beasts, and in sandy deserts and in wild conflagrations. Many were lying with their broken armours and weapons, slashed by the superior power of the adversary, and with their robes and attires all dismantled and torn by their fall.
There dwelt the horrid myrmidons of death, formidable as their lord Pluto (Yama) himself; and who were glad with their charge of guarding the abyss of hell. Their time passed away in such thoughts as these, that, “this is my consort and this my daughter, and I am their lord”; and they were bound together in the ties of mutual affections as strong as the chain of death. Getting rid of that birth, they were next born as ravens, and then as vultures and falcons of mountain caves (preying on the harmless birds below).
Egotism as the Root of Misery
See their unselfishness of mind and great patience at first, and then see their vain desires and assumption of the vanity of egotism at last.
“Selfish egotism is the root of the wide extended branches of misery in the forest of the world, which produces and bears the poisonous blossoms of desire.”
They are now living as fishes in the muddy pool of a lake, among the forest lands of Kashmir, where they are content at present with feeding with zest upon the moss and weeds growing in it.
True Knowledge, and the Phenomenal World
Rāma asked:—Why sir, all that is existent is ever present before us as our own bodies, and all things beside ourselves; but you are speaking of Dāma and the demons, as mere nullities and yet to be in existence.
“Yes Rāma, Their prohibition is an admonition, giving to the ignorant, (who are incapable of persuasions); as for the learned who know themselves to be Brahma, it is useless to lecture them on this subject (which they are already acquainted with).”
The ignorant have no notion of the spirit, beside that of matter, which they believe as the cause and effect (Kārya Kāraṇa) of its own production; but the learned man sees the substantive spirit, in all forms of creation, as he views the substance of gold in all the ornaments made of that metal.
Being perfect quietude and void, he seems as nothing existent; and all these creations subsist in that vacuity as particles of its own splendour. As the divine consciousness expanded itself with the images of Dāma and others, it immediately assumed those shapes by its notions of the same. The waking state of the vacuous intellect is styled the phenomenal world, and its state of sleep and rest is what we call liberation, emancipation or salvation from pain (ātyantika dukkha nivritti mokṣa). The Divine Intellect like the blinded eye, sees nothing from without, but views every form within itself; because there is no visible nor phenomenal world, beside what is situated within the vacuous sphere of the intellect.
Debased Egotism
Being then crushed to death in that marshy ground under the feet of buffaloes, they were transformed afterwards to the shapes of cranes, frequenting that lake of lotuses. On the north-east corner of that edifice, there is a hollow at the top of its towering head; which is overgrown with moss, and is continually resounding to the blowing winds.
There was at that time a prince in the same city, by name of Yaśaṣkara or the renowned, who reigned there like Indra over the gods in heaven. Thus I have related to you the whole of the story of the demon Dāma and others, which will fully convince you of the vanity of the world.
“When the sphere of the pure intellect is tinged with the hue of egotism, it is debased to another form without changing its nature (by another birth).”
Those who are prone to false reasoning and heresy, by rejecting the revelations, are subject to various changes and miseries, and fall like the running water into the pit, by loss of their best interests in life. He who abides by the dictates of the true śāstras, and associates with the best of men, are never subject to the darkness of error.
Those, the lakes of whose hearts are brightened by the moonbeams of fame (i.e. whose hearts are desirous of fame); have the form of Hari seated in their hearts, as in the sea of milk. Take care, that your sensuous soul does not perish as a prey in the snare of your sensual appetites, nor as a blind old man by falling in the hidden pits of this world. Acts done according to the śāstras and good usage also, are productive of the best fruits of immortality.
The Non-Dual Reality
All this is derived from the one self-existence, and have become the reciprocal causes of one another, by their mutual transformations; and again they are destroyed of themselves by their mutual destructiveness of one another. The world is neither a reality nor unreality; it is situated in the Intellect but appears to be placed without it. It is not separate from the soul, although it seems to be different from it, as the ornament appears to differ from its gold.
State of Perfect Bliss
For what is it that is called an action, but the exertion of mental and voluntary energies, with a fixed determination and desire of performing some physical acts, which they call the actions of a person. (But the apathetic minds of the wise, being insensible both of the purposes and their ends, there is no imputation of agency which can ever attach to them).
“The minds of spiritualists (or those knowing the soul), come to the state of that perfect insensibility of their desires, as when the false watery mirage is set down by the raining clouds, and the particles of morning dews are dried up by the raging sun.”
It is then that the soul is said to rest in its perfect bliss (The turyā — sans souci or impassibility).
This is one and no other else (i.e. it is all that is, and there is none else beside it). It is as the sea, whose waters have endless varieties of shapes, and represent the images of myriads of stars in its bosom; rising spontaneously of themselves.
As light is produced from light, corns come from corn, and man is born of man, and all kinds come out of their own kind. You cannot conceive Rāma, of there being a second person or thing beside the One Brahma; as you can have no conception of fire beside its heat. (Its light being adscititious).
Instruction for the Seekers
The educated and intelligent mind, that has known the knowable One, has of itself got to the end of the subject of liberation, by its own reasoning and intuition as that of Rāma. But the half-educated are not fit to receive spiritual instruction, because their view of the visibles, which dwells on obvious objects, proves the cause of their ruin (by obstructing their sight of the spiritual).
Let the intelligent preserve the sameness (samatā) of their minds and dispositions amidst all changes; knowing them as the varying conditions of the same unvarying Mind. All things appear before us in the presence of our souls, and they vanish from before us in their absence from the body.
The power of the intellect of Brahma exerts of its free will, and this omnipotence becomes whatever is thought of (chetya) in the Divine Intellect. The first form is applied to the world as proceeding from Brahma: but the other form of the producer and produced, means also the creative power which made the world. The learned know Brahma as the ocean rolling in its endless waves, and as significant words and their significations, which go together as Brahma and his creation.
“This is one thing and that is another”, and “this is a part of the great soul”, are all contradictory assertions of ignorance (false knowledge), as no words can express the true nature of the unknown. The spacious world which appears to your false sight of it, will vanish, O Rāma! on your attaining to the state of calm quietism. The fallacious appearances must disappear from your vision, as soon as the light of truth comes to dawn upon your soul.
Bondage and the Cosmic Cycle
The living souls that are under the subjection of their desires, are so powerless of themselves, that they have forgotten their freedom, and are fast chained to the fetters of their wishes. The whole creation moves onward in eternal progression, in its course of evolution and involution, and in its motions of ascension and descension like the waves of the ocean. The world is a creation of the imagination, by the nature of all living souls, and it remains therefore impressed in the soul, until it attains its final liberation.
Rāma said:—I require, Sir, to be fully informed, whether all other beings sprang from the same cause as Brahmā—the lotus-born.
These united together produced the gross form of earth—the receptacle of scent; and then the mind being filled with these minute elementary particles in its thoughts of them, forsook its fine form of the spirit for its gross body of the quintuple elements (called the quintessence of material bodies (pañchabhautika)). He, the lord Brahmā was the progenitor of all beings, and fraught with the qualities of strength and understanding, activity, dignity and knowledge. (The Smriti attributes the Siddhi chatuṣṭaya or quadruple perfections to him). Thus Brahmā became the preserver of many kinds of beings, which he created of his own will from his mind at each stage or kalpa-period; of which he was the first that issued from Brahma himself. (He was the first begotten, and nothing was created but by him).
The Illusion of Samsara
What impossibility is there of the same powers residing in Omnipotence, which are possessed by the mind in its secluded cell? Know the world as an enchanted scene, presented by the magic of thy error (māyā); it is a fabrication of the working of thy mind, and is a nullity though appearing as a reality. The foolish man that runs after some imaginary object of his heart’s desire, is surely exposed to trouble and disappointment for his folly.
As nothing is lost or drowned in the talismanic tank of a conjuror, so nothing is dead or dissolved in the magical sea of this world (saṃsāra sāgara). If the Deity is the only absolute existence, what else is there for us to lose in it?
“The whole universe being full with Brahma, there can be no cause of our joy or sorrow for anything whatever.“
Therefore act not as a child, O lotus-eyed Rāma! but conduct yourself as the wise, and by looking at these fleeting baubles as ever evanescent, rely in the Everlasting alone.
The sage then pronounced his imprecation by saying:—”Do you, O reprobate sinner, soon meet with thy perdition, together with this sinful woman, that is so faithless to her husband.” Afterwards, O lord of our creation, this loving pair came to be born as man and woman, who by their practice of austerities, came to be reborn as a Brāhmaṇa and Brāhmaṇī at last.
The Infinite Space of Intellect
Thou lord that hast made these creatures, remain firm in thy place, and behold the infinite space which is spread out before thee, and commensurate with the ample scope of thy understanding, in the triple spheres of thy intellect and mind, and the vast vacuity of the firmament. These threefold infinities of ethereal, mental and intellectual spaces, are but reflections of the infinite vacuity of divine intellect, and supply thee, O Brahmā, with ample space for thy creation of as many worlds at thy will.
As the living souls of the Aindavas were incorporated with Brahmā, by their intense thought of him in them (or by their mental absorption of themselves in him); so also have we attained to Brahmāhood, by means of our mental conception of that spiritual light and supreme intellect in ourselves.
There is no body as myself or any other person in this world, except this wondrous and self-existent mind; which like the sons of Indu, assumes the false conception of being real Brahmās themselves. The conception of phenomenals as real, cannot make them real, any more than the appearance of a golden bracelet can make it gold, or the phenomenals appearing in Brahma can identify themselves with Brahma himself.
There is no error in the unity of the intellect, nor is the soul liable to error, unless it is deluded by its belief of pluralities. The intellect is as full as the ocean, with all its thoughts rising and sitting in it as its endless waves. The belief of egoism rises as any other thought of the mind, and is as inborn in it as the water in the mirage, which does not exist really in it. It is the pure substance of the intellect which forms the ideas of gross bodies, as one dreams of his death in his sleep. The all-pervading intelligence which is the all inherent and omnipotent soul, produces all forms in itself, and of which there is no end until they are reduced to unity. We should cleanse the mind which exists forever, rather than the body which is transient and non-existent; and as unreal as the trees in the air, of which no one takes any notice. Whatever one thinks inwardly in himself, he is verily transformed to its likeness, as in the instance of the Aindava Brāhmans, and of Indra and Aholyā cited before.
The Hierarchy of Living Beings
- 4th Grade (Atyanta Tāmasī): Infatuated people addicted to their varying desires in this changeful world, who come to the knowledge of truth after passing a thousand lives in ignorance and sin, suffering proportional effects of their deeds.
- 5th Grade (Adhama-satwā): Men of a baser nature who may possibly achieve liberation after a course of ten thousand births in different shapes and forms.
- 6th Grade (Atyanta Tāmasī / Saṃdigdha-mokṣa): Extremely benighted men doubtful of their liberation who continue in the vicious course of past lives.
- 7th Grade (Rājasa): Those who after two or three previous births are born with gentleness.
8th Grade (Rāja Sātwiki): Noble gentlemen whose acts accord with nobility, entitled to liberation after a few births on earth.
- 9th Grade (Rāja-rājasa): Right gentlemen who obtain long-longed-for liberation after a course of a hundred births in the same state.
- 10th Grade (Rājatāmasī / Atyanta-rāja-tamashi): Blinded and excessively infatuated gentry acting foolishly whose transmigrations do not cease easily.
- 11th Grade (Tāmasa): Children of darkness (including Rākṣasas and demons); deprived of liberation forever, though a few obtain salvation through divine knowledge and good acts.
- 12th Grade (Tāmasa-rājasa): Those combining darkness and enlightenment, liberated after 1,000 births in a demoniac state and 100 in progressive improvements.
- 13th Grade (Tāmas-tāmasī): In darkest darkness, transmigrating for millions of years before liberation from the body.
- 14th Grade (Atyanta-tāmasī): Beings continuing in gross ignorance forever; it is doubted whether they can have liberation at all.
Mind as Organ of Action
An infinity of living beings will continue to spring from the same, like blades of grass sprouting from the earth below; and they will likewise be reduced to the same, like the season plants of spring, dying away in the hot weather of Summer. On one hand you have set at naught the law of antecedence and sequence of birth and action to one another, by your position of their simultaneity. It is possible to deny the existence of material objects, of the air and water, the hill and others; but it is impossible to deny the operations of our mental faculties, of which we have subjective evidence in ourselves.
Whatever is determined by the mind, is readily brought into performance by the external organs of action (Karmendriya); thus because the mind is the cause of action, it is identified with the effect. The appetence which resides in the region of the mind, for possession of the objects of past enjoyment; as also the efforts of the mind for attainment of other things, are called its desires.
The intellect being depraved by its falling off from the sole supreme soul, is variously named by the learned according to its successive phases and functions, owing to its being vitiated by its various desires, and the variety of their objects. The intellect (chit) which is the cause of the world, is called the chitta or heart, when it is situated in the bosom of sentient bodies, with all its affections and feelings (āvilām). It then has a nature between goodness and badness.
Views across Philosophical Schools
They have attributed to the mind many designations, according to the views in which they designed to exhibit its nature; such as some calling it the intellect, another the understanding, the sensation and so forth.
- The Nyāya View: Takes the Ego to be a dravya (substance); the living soul as God; the mind a sensitive particle and internal organ; and understanding as a transitory property of the mind.
- The Sāṅkhya View: Explains understanding as a product of matter, egoism a resultant of the same, and the mind as the eleventh organ of sense.
As the actor gets his many titles, according to the several parts which he performs; so the mind takes the name of a Jīva or living being, from its animation of the body and its desires. The mind has a multiplicity of synonyms, varied by its multifarious avocations; as the one continuous duration undergoes a hundred homonyms, by the variations of its times and seasons. The same pure Intellect is brought to bear the different designations of the mind, as understanding, living principle and egoism; and the same is expressed in the world by the terms intelligence, heart, animation and many other synonyms, which being taken as expressive of the same thing, must put an end to all dispute.
Transmigrations
Somewhere he showed himself as a demon and at another place like a yakṣa; here he was as a Gandharva, and there in the form of a Kinnara. (All these were the ideal manifestations of the Divine Mind). Having then gone a great way off from that place, he got to a grove of plantain arbour under the cooling moonbeams, where he sat for a while with a smiling countenance.
The souls which are subjected to metempsychosis, have their rise and fall in repetition, from higher to lower births, and the vice-versa likewise. Those who smiled in the cheerfulness of their hearts, were men who had come to the light of reason; and it was their reason which gave consolation to their hearts. Thus every man being harassed by his ceaseless desires, pants in his mind to fly to his Maker, and set his heart to yoga meditation.
The omnipotence of Brahmā is seen to stretch itself to all the ten sides of the universe; his power of annihilation is seen in the extinction of beings; and his punishment is evident, in the sorrows of the miserable. The mind adopts the same image as the reflections which it receives from without, or the thoughts and imaginations it forms of itself, and as the instance of the Aindava brothers serves to support this truth: (of the double power of intuition and perception of the mind, to see into its own inner operations, and receive the impressions from without).
The whole is a form of the Supreme soul, and all things are but forms of the same; and the mind also is a form of it, as a golden ornament is but a form of the gold. Imagination represents an unreality as reality, even to men of enlightened understandings; as a rope presents the appearance of a snake even to the wise.
“They were refreshed from the fatigue of their journey, under the shade of these trees; and they halted there like the three Deities Indra, Vāyu and Yama, under the umbrage of the Pārijāta arbour of Paradise. (The three gods—regents of the three regions of heaven, sky and the infernal world:—swar, bhuvar and bhur, composing the three spheres of their circuit).”
Here they saw three beautiful and goodly looking houses, with turrets of gold and gems shining afar, like peaks of mount Meru under the blazing sun. (These were the human bodies, standing and walking upright upon the earth, and decorated with crowns and coronets on their heads).
His uncommonly magnanimous and wondrous acts, which were free from the fault of niggardliness, were unlike to anything that was ever heard or seen by anybody.
The Volatile Nature of the Mind
We have never seen the motionless quiet of the mind; fleetness is the nature of the mind, as heat is that of fire. The mind is a thing that stands between the real and unreal and between intelligence and dull matter, and is moved to and fro by the contending powers on either side. You can also be free from fears, and find your rest in your reliance in the sorrowless Being; provided you exercise your manly activities therein, and curb the proclivities of your mind by your intelligence.
It is by their own attention that men soon come to the knowledge of the knowables; but it is the unknowing or unconsciousness of these that is our nirvāṇa, while our consciousness is the cause of our woe. Though you are the actor of an action, yet think not yourself as such, minding your inability to do or undo anything: for how can you boast yourself as the actor, when you know your inability for action.
The Transience and Delusion of the World
Know Rāma, this ovum of the world to be a delusion, and being inexistent in itself, appears as a real existence to others. This world is as volatile as the air and water flying in the air, and hardly to be tangible or held fast in the hand; and as precipitous as the waterfall in its course (hurling down and sweeping away everything before it). The objects of our desire are often had without our seeking; but they are as frail as the fire of heaven; they appear to vanish like the twinkling lightnings, and being held carefully in the hand, they burn it like the electric fire.
“It is this delusive avidyā that shortens the flight of time to the rich and happy, and prolongs its course with the poor and miserable: all of whom are subject to the power of delusion (viparyāsa).”
There is the same delusion here on earth, as in the appearance of a couple of moons in the sky; and in the vision of things in a dream, as also in the motion of immovable things on the land, to the passenger in a boat. It causes the long to appear as short, as our nightly sleep shortens the duration of time; and makes a moment appear as a year, as in the case of separated lovers.
Eradication of Avidyā
As the particles of snow melt away at the sight of the sun, so is this ignorance dispelled in a moment, by a glance of the holy spirit. That which is not the subject of thought, which is all-pervasive, and the thought of which is beyond expression and comprehension, is the universal spirit.
Therefore the world, being the production of desire or will, has its extinction with the privation of desires; for that which becomes the growth of a thing, causes its extinction also; as the wind which kindles the fire, extinguishes it likewise. The goddess of ignorance — Avidyā, with her uplifted arms resembling the long stalks of lotus plants, laughs in exultation over her conquests, with the glaring light of shining moonbeams. By understanding this, as you come to the knowledge that the apparent blackness of the sky is no black colour of its own, so you come to learn the seeming darkness of ignorance to be no darkness in reality.
“The thought that “I am dead” makes one as sorrowful as when he dreams of his death in sleep; so also the thought that “I am living” makes one as cheerful as when he wakes from the deadly dream of his death-like sleep.”
Thy wishes burst out in expressions as these:
“These are my sons and these my treasures; I am such a one, and these things are mine.”
All this is the effect of a magic spell of ignorance that binds thee fast in it. The phenomenals rise to view from our ignorance, and disappear before the light of knowledge (as the dreams and spectres of the dark are put to flight before the rising sunlight). They appear in various forms in the substratum of the soul, as the fallacy of a snake appearing in the substance of a rope.
Of what good is this dull and dumb body to you, Rāma, that you are so overcome by your alternate joy and grief at its pleasure and pain? Know ignorance to be a false fiend and deluder of the strongest minds; it is the baneful cause of endless woes, and producer of the poisonous fruits of illusion. The more does our false knowledge (error) lay hold of our minds, the more we feel the torments of hell and its punishments in us, as one dreams of nightmares in his sleep. Therefore, Rāma, give up the earthly desires that serve at best to bind down the soul to this mortal earth and its mortifying cares; and remain as the pure and white crystal, reflecting the hues of all things around in your stainless mind.
Mind the Experiencer
His smiling countenance shone forth as the shining moon, with his inward enlightenment and wonder; and then with the nectarious beams of his bright and white pearly teeth, he spoke out these words:
This principle is subject to endless pains and pleasures in its unenlightened or unawakened state, and the body bears no relation with them. As the master of the house does his many acts in it, and not the house itself; so the mind acts its several parts in the body, and not the body by itself. The mind has to feel the effects of its actions whether good or evil; and in order that you may understand it well, hear attentively what I will now relate unto you. He called the sacrificial priests, and honoured the holy saints; he invited the gods to it, and kindled the sacrificial fire.
Substance vs. Form
When the jeweller sells his gold ring for the price of gold, he undoubtedly delivers the gold which is the substance of the ring, and not the ring without its substance. The water in the mirage, the two moons in the sky, the egoism of men, and the forms of things, though appearing as real ones to sight and thought, cannot be proved as separate existences apart from their subjects. It is the incircumspect view of a thing that makes a nullity appear as a reality, as the appearance of silver in the shell and the water in the mirage.
He is no elementary principle, nor is he any cause as the material or efficient. He is none of the three times of past, present and future, but all; nor is he anything in being or not-being. This plenitude of the world is without its beginning and end, and appears as a faultless or perfect piece of workmanship. It is full with the fullness of the supreme Being, and remains full in the fullness of God. Unless our inborn ignorance, like an arbour of noxious plants, is burnt down to the very root by the flame of right reasoning, it will not cease to spread out its branches and grow the rankest weeds of our imaginary pleasures and sorrows.
Reason and Goodwill
The King was lost in wonder at hearing these words from the mouth of the elderly lady; and looking at the face of his follower, the faithful minister, remained in dumb amazement like the figure in a picture. As the human mind is liable to forget many things which are actually done by some, so it is susceptible to remember those acts as true which were never done, but had been merely thought upon in the mind. The relation between the tongue and taste is also homogeneous; because rasa (taste) and rasanā (the instrument of tasting) are both watery substances, and there is no heterogeneous relation between them.
Remain free from anxiety about the present, as you are unconcerned about the future. Never be impelled by the impulses of your mind; but remain steadfast in your trust in the true God. He then arrives at that ground of reason which is known as good will, or a desire to do what is good and keep from what is bad and evil. There is a certain illusion which raises the false appetites within us; otherwise the unity of the soul requires the help of no duality or secondary substance in order to be united with the sole unity. These are as lines on the leaves of trees, and as the curls and waves on the surface of waters. They are as ornaments made of that gold, and as the heat and cold of that fire and water.
“The soul called the puruṣa or inner person, whether it abideth in the body or not, and whether it is intelligent or otherwise, never dies upon the death of the body.”
No sooner you get rid of your error of the substantiality of the world, than you shall come to the consciousness of its being a vacuum, resting in the spirit of God. Non-entity appears as an entity before us, it dies away at death, and reappears with our new birth. The mind itself takes its rise from the divine intellect, and displays itself in the substance of the Divine Soul, as the waves play about on the surface of the waters of the deep.
The Cessation of Desires
There is increase of care with the increase of wealth and family; and there is no happiness in the increase of worldly possessions and affections. When thou comest to feel, Rāma, that the sensible objects have ceased to give any relish to thy soul, then thou shalt know thyself to have reached the acme of thy spiritual edification, and got over the boisterous sea of the world. Sharpen your understanding to the edge of a razor, erase the weeds of doubt therewith, and after scanning the nature of the soul, enter into thy spiritual state of blessedness.
Rāma said:—O venerable sir, that art acquainted with all religious doctrines and versed in all branches of the Vedas, I am set at perfect ease by thy holy preachings.
Among these, the births of Brahmā and the other gods in the different worlds are as wonderful as the productions of many things in a magic show. One Brahmā was lotus-born, another was produced from the water; a third was born of an egg, and the fourth was produced in the air (named as the Padmaja, Nārāyaṇa, Aṇḍaja and Māruta). It may be possible to count the particles of the solar rays, but not the number of worlds abounding in the Supreme Spirit. It is not known since when they have been in existence, and what numbers of them have gone by, and are remaining at the present time. They rise over and over, to sink lower and lower again; just as the waves of the sea, rising aloft and falling low by turns.
Other worlds will come into existence in the course of other creations, as the pots come to be formed of clay, and the leaves grow from germs in endless succession. The world is a perspective, and all things are but paintings in it; they are not without the tableau of the mind, and are represented in it as the figures on a canvas. All created things that you see in their gross or subtle forms, have proceeded from the vacuity of the Divine Mind, and are strung together, like a rosary of large and small gems and beads.
The Production of Creations
- Creation by Elements: Condensation of water, air or heat producing beings in male or female form.
- Lotus-Born Brahmā: The Great Being causing a lotus to grow from his navel.
- Egg-Born Brahmā: Production in the pure vacuity of the Divine mind, forming the golden mundane egg.
It is agreed by all that the creation is but the development of the divine mind; although I have related for your acquaintance the various processes of its production. It is never as it appears to you, but quite a different thing from what it seems to be; it is a show depending on the power of the Omnipotent. But it is to be wondered why they do not consider the world to be destructible, seeing the incessant perishableness of all things all around. Again the wicked age of Kali appears to soil the holy Satya Yuga, as the black body of Nārāyaṇa fills the clear waters of the deep, or as a blast of wind sweeps the dust of the earth on its pellucid surface. Again the dozen of zodiacal suns, rising at once and burning the creation, leaves the dead bodies all around, like the white bones lying scattered in a country. Again the creation appears to view, and again it is submerged in the water of deluge, both of which follow one another like the axles of a wheel.
The Air-Born Prince & Structure of the Body
I came to listen to a voice proceeding from the hollow of the tree in the forest, which was as charming as the buzzing of the bee fluttering about the bud of a lotus. He exulted in his valour and the possession of all kinds of rarities, and there is no one in the three worlds that is able to bring him under his subjection. It is lighted by two lamps of hot and cooling light (the sun and moon), which revolve above and below it in their diurnal and nocturnal courses.
They are supplied with five lights of sensation and perceptions and supported by three posts of the two legs and the backbone, and a framework of white bones for the beams and bamboo rafters. It is plastered over with flesh as its moistened clay, and defended by the two arms as latches on the doorway. Like one under the influence of a ghost, he stirs up from one place and runs to another, as a man builds and breaks and rebuilds his aerial castle at his hobby. This prince sometimes repents of his own conduct and acts in his new life, and then laments for his ignorance and miseries and knows not what to do.
The son said:—Tell me Sir, who is this Air-born prince of Supernatural form, about whom you related to me just now; I do not fully comprehend its meaning, and want it to be explained to me clearly.
It is the Will which produces everything, and there is nothing produced but by the Will. The Will is self-same with its object, which constitutes and subsists in it; and it lives and dies also along with its object. This Mind builds the city of the triple world in the vacuum of Brahma by reason of its being endowed with intelligence from Omniscience, in its form of Viriñchi. The self-willed King (the mind) has employed here many persons to act their several parts before him for his pleasure.
“It is egoism that spreads the view of this miserable world before him; but absence of the knowledge of self-entity removes the sight of all objects from view, as the veil of thick darkness hides all things from sight.”
Now try diligently, my boy, to extricate thy mind from all outward objects, and fix thy attention to the inward object of this meditation. Even if you have Brahmā himself or Śiva for your preceptor, or get the very kind and tender-hearted ascetic for your religious guide — the real is unreal and the unreal is real, as the mind may make it appear to be; all reality and unreality consists in our conception of them, and in nothing besides.
The Origin and Cure of Desire
Dāsūra replied:—The desire or will is situated in the mind or mental part of the one eternal, universal and spiritual substance of God. Remaining in the divine Intellect, the mind thinks of thinkables as they are distinct from itself; and its longing after them is called its desire, which springs from it as a germ from its seed. Knowing yourself as nothing, why do you think of your birth and your pleasures here? You are deluded in vain by the vanity of your desires.
Our desires being quieted, all worldly cares come to a standstill, and all our troubles are put to a dead lock. Our reliance on unrealities proving to be unreal, leaves no room for our thinking about them; the suppression of their thoughts produces that perfection, insouciance, than which there is nothing more desirable on earth. Forget therefore all that is unreal. Our desire like fire is kindled by every straw; and it burns and blows out in its invisible form within the mind. Desire is undoubtedly a curable disease as long as it is a transient malady of the mind; but it becomes incurable when it takes a deep root in it. The worldliness of the wise is as soon removed as the husk of rice and the blackness of a cooking kettle. The world is not yours, nor are you of this world; there is nobody nor anything here akin to you, nor are you so to any; never think otherwise, nor take the false for true.
Dāsūra on the Kadamba Tree
I alighted from the sky on the top of the Kadamba tree, which was decorated with its verdant leaves, and beautiful fruits and flowers; and then with my spiritual body, I sat myself slowly and silently on the top of the tree, as a light cloud alights on the summit of a mountain. Seeing me presenting myself before him, Dāsūra spread a leafy seat for me to sit down, and then honoured me according to the rules of ceremonial law.
Smeared with the dust of its flowers, it appeared to be anointed with sandal paste; while its blowsy bark mantled it in roseate red. The bowers of shrubberies all around resembled the leafy huts of hermits, which with their overtopping blossoms, seemed as a city flaring with flying flags in festivity. Here the goddess Flora seemed to be sporting in the lawns, with the roseate flowers in her hands, and smiling sweetly in the blooming blossoms; she revelled with the nectarine honey of flowers; and shed her beauty on all sides. She swang in her swinging cradle of bluish blossoms, and was adorned with various floral ornaments from her head to foot. The bees tired with their labour of love, refreshed themselves with sipping the dew-drops trickling on the tops of the flowers, and then making their repast on the farinaceous meal, slept together with their mates in the cells of the flower cups.
The sage remained attentive for a moment to the murmur proceeding from the village beyond the forest; and now he listened with pricked up ears to the busy buzz of blue-bees and flies at a distance. The forest was redolent with fragrance, and the sky was overhung by a cloud of flowers; the dust of Kadamba blossoms tinged the ground with ambergris, and the Kadamba fruits covered the face of the land. Now it began to dawn, and the blushing flowers commenced to ope their petals; while the host of the stars on high disappeared from their arena of the sky.
Now I have related to you, Rāma, this story of Dāsūra, that you may learn from his instance the unreality of the apparent world, and as it is but a shadow of the ideal one (in the Divine mind). Rub out the dirt of desire from your mind, and see the image of truth in it as in a mirror; you will thus attain to the highest state of knowledge, and be honoured in all worlds as a perfect being.
Reality vs. Reflection
If you take the phenomenal world for a reality, you may continue to enslave yourself to the unreal material, and lose the spiritual nature of your soul. The world is no substantial existence, nor are you a being of its unsubstantiality; it is only a clear reflection of the divine mind, and extending over all infinity. Whether the world is with or without an agent, or has a maker or not, yet you cannot tell it as a real substance, except that it appears so to your mind.
The world is neither stable nor fragile, but it is mutable from one state to another, as it is known by its repeated reproductions and visibility to us. The limit of a hundred years of human life is but a very small portion of unlimited duration; it is therefore very astonishing that anyone should be concerned with this small portion of his existence here (in utter disregard of his eternal life).
“Never place your reliance on anything of this world with that fond desire, as the heated man looks to the moon, the cold-stricken to the sun, and the thirsty doth to the water in the mirage.”
It is a general law (niyati, or nature of things) that the propinquity of the cause causes the act, even without the will of the actor; as the presence of the lamp enlightens the room without the will of the lamp. Thus the properties both of causality and its want reside in the soul; you may take it in any light you may choose for your purpose, and rest content with your belief.
Vaśiṣṭha Enlightens Rāma
Rāma said— But sir, there is a doubt too vivid and rankling in my mind, which I pray you to remove by your enlightened speech, as the moon-beams dispel the darkness of the night.
Vaśiṣṭha answered:—Rāma! I will give the right answer to this question of yours, as I come to the conclusion; and then you will learn the cause of these biplicities. Sayings of such great importance are as fruitless with ignorant people as a work on erotic subjects is useless to children. The preaching of a sermon is selectable to old men, as fine colourings are suitable to clean canvas; and so a spiritual discourse of deep sense suits one who has known the Spirit. When you shall come to know the Spirit in your own spirit, you will doubtlessly come to find the solution of your query by yourself.
The man bound to his desires is a bondsman, and one freed from them is said to be set free from his slavery; do you but cast away your desires, and you will have no cause to seek for your freedom. Forsake your desire for the objects of sense, and root out your sense of egoism, which is the root of desire. Let your understanding be calm and quiet, and you will be honoured by all. Let a man practice his hibernation or other sorts of intense devotion or not, he is reckoned to have obtained his liberation whose elevated mind has lost its reliance on worldly things.
The Primordial Mind
Therefore it is not right for thee, O great Brahmā, to destroy the ideal fabric of the air-drawn world of the sons of Indu, because it is improper for great souls to put a check to the fancies of others. It is only by a conceit of my mind that I think myself situated as a Brahmā in this place; otherwise all these material bodies are known to be as unreal as the vacuity of the soul wherein they abide. He who can control his mind by continued patience on one hand, and by incessant vigilance on the other, is the man of an unimpeachable character, and unapproachable by calamity.
The seed of the fruit bears a material form, but Brahmā — the universal seed — has no form at all; therefore it is improper to compare the visible seed with the invisible Brahmā, who is beyond all comparison. But the all-seeing God, being permeated in the visibles, there can be no beholding of him as a personal God, nor of them as distinct things. Therefore know Rāma, this same Brahmā to be the Parameṣṭhī or situated in the Supreme, and being a personification of the Will of God, is called the Mind.
Final Liberation
An infinity of living beings will continue to spring from the same, like blades of grass sprouting from the earth below; and they will likewise be reduced to the same, like the season plants of spring, dying away in the hot weather of Summer. It is the exertion of bodily activity which we call an action here; but it is well known to the wise to be preceded by a mental action, which is called its thought in the mind (chitta of the chit or the thought of the thinking principle).
The mind is known by many names in the same person and body, according to its various faculties and functions, its various thoughts and desires, and their manifold operations and consequences:
Synonyms of the Mind: Mind, Understanding, Egoism, Intellect, Action, Imagination, Memory (Retentiveness), Desire, Ignorance, Exertion.
And because of his omnipresence, his omnipotence, his omniscience — his very thought materialises. This is the Lord who was there before the worlds arose. And who has never, in truth, been absent.
