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diff --git a/71064-0.txt b/71064-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5689025 --- /dev/null +++ b/71064-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,23416 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of
+Valmiki, Vol. 2 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2), by Valmiki
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 2 (of 4), Part 2
+ (of 2)
+
+Author: Valmiki
+
+Translator: Vihari-Lala Mitra
+
+Release Date: June 28, 2023 [eBook #71064]
+
+Language: English
+
+Credits: Mark C. Orton, Juliet Sutherland, Édith Nolot, Krista Zaleski,
+ windproof, readbueno and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+ Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOGA-VASISHTHA
+MAHARAMAYANA OF VALMIKI, VOL. 2 (OF 4), PART 2 (OF 2) ***
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes
+
+
+Inconsistent punctuation has been silently corrected.
+
+Obvious misspellings have been silently corrected, and the following
+corrections made to the text. Other spelling and hyphenation variations
+have not been modified.
+
+ Page 412 - and the other to that of the learned -> and the other to that
+ of the unlearned
+ Page 413 - in mountainous -> in the mountainous
+ Page 437, section 66 - favourite females -> favourite of females
+ Page 634, section 40 - full of inequity -> full of iniquity
+ Page 680, section 22 - the like -> like the
+ Page 715, section 53 - unvisionary -> visionary
+ Page 816, section 16 - bring though -> even though
+ Page 930, section 29 - very thick and lean -> very thin and lean
+
+Also, some of the shortcomings of the LPP edition have been corrected by
+referencing other printings:
+
+ Page 434: Missing line "remove it by your subjection to ignorance
+ and idleness" was inserted.
+
+ Page 687 in the printed book is a copy of page 887 (where it belongs).
+ The missing page 687 has been supplied from the Bharatiya edition. (It
+ is the start of chapter LXI: On Birth, Death and Existence (verse
+ 1-9)). This error has been reproduced in the Parimal ed. because this
+ is based on a scanning of an edition with this error.
+
+ Page 688 and 888 were switched in the printed book.
+
+ Page 886: verse 17-18 were missing.
+
+ Page 918: verse 8 was missing.
+
+Angle brackets: <...> have been used by the transcriber to indicate light
+editing of the text to insert missing words.
+
+The spelling of Sanskrit words are normalized to some extent, including
+correct/addition of accents where necessary. Note that the author uses
+á, í, ú to indicate long vowels. This notation has not been changed.
+
+The third Devanagari character in footnote 7 is illegible in the text.
+It has been inserted from an alternate text, although it appears that
+the original of this text may in fact have included a typo.
+
+The LPP edition (1999) which has been scanned for this ebook, is of
+poor quality, and in some cases text was missing. Where possible, the
+missing/unclear text has been supplied from another edition, which has
+the same typographical basis (both editions are photographical reprints
+of the same source, or perhaps one is a copy of the other): Bharatiya
+Publishing House, Delhi 1978.
+
+A third edition, Parimal Publications, Delhi 1998, which is based on an
+OCR scanning of the same typographical basis, has also been consulted.
+
+The term “Gloss.” or “Glossary” probably refers to the extensive classical
+commentary to Yoga Vásishtha by Ananda Bodhendra Saraswati (only
+available in Sanskrit).
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+ THE
+
+ YOGA-VÁSISHTHA-MAHÁRÁMÁYANA.
+
+ VOL. II (part 2)
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+ THE
+ YOGA-VÁSISHTHA
+ MAHÁRÁMÁYANA
+ OF
+ VÁLMÍKI
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+ THE
+
+ YOGA-VÁSISHTHA
+ MAHÁRÁMÁYANA
+
+ OF
+
+
+ VÁLMÍKI
+
+ in 4 vols. in 7 pts.
+ (Bound in 4.)
+
+ Vol. 2 (In 2 pts.)
+ Bound in one.
+
+ Containing
+ Utpatti Khanda, Sthiti Prakarana and
+ Upasama Khanda to Chapter LIII.
+
+ _Translated from the original Sanskrit
+ By_
+ VIHARI-LALA MITRA
+
+
+ YOGA VASISHTHA
+
+ BOOK IV.
+ STHITI PRAKARANA
+ ON ONTOLOGY OR EXISTENCE.
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+ OF
+ STHITI PRAKARANA.
+
+ (ON ONTOLOGY OR EXISTENCE).
+
+ BOOK IV.
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ Janya-Jani-Nirúpana 403
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+ The Receptacle of the Mundane Egg 408
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+ Eternity of the World 411
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ Treating of the Germ of Existence 414
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+ Story of Bhárgava 416
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ Elysium of Bhárgava 418
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ Re-union of the Lovers 421
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ Transmigration of Sukra 425
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ Description of Sukra’s Body 429
+
+ CHAPTER X.
+ Bhrigu’s Conference with Kála or Death 431
+
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ Cause of the Production of the World 439
+
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ Detailed Account of the Genesis of the World 448
+
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ Consolation of Bhrigu 451
+
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ Sukra’s Reminiscence of his Metempsychosis 454
+
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ Lamentation and Expostulation of Sukra 459
+
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ Resuscitation of Sukra 464
+
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+ Attainment of the Ideal Realm 467
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+ The Incarnation of the Living Spirit 471
+
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+ Investigation into the Nature of the Living Soul 480
+
+ CHAPTER XX.
+ Description of the Mind 484
+
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+ On the Philosophy of the Mind 486
+
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+ Resting in Supreme Felicity 493
+
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+ Meditation of the Wonders in the Realm
+ of the Body 498
+
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+ The Non-entity of the Mind 505
+
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+ Narrative of Dáma, Vyála and Kata 508
+
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+ Battle of the Deities and Demons 512
+
+ CHAPTER XXVII.
+ Admonition of Brahmá 518
+
+ CHAPTER XXVIII.
+ The Renewed Battle of the Gods and Demons 523
+
+ CHAPTER XXIX.
+ Defeat of the Demons 527
+
+ CHAPTER XXX.
+ Account of the Subsequent lives of the Demons 531
+
+ CHAPTER XXXI.
+ Investigation of Reality and Unreality 533
+
+ CHAPTER XXXII.
+ On Good Conduct 539
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIII.
+ Consideration of Egoism 545
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIV.
+ End of the Story of Dáma and Vyála 553
+
+ CHAPTER XXXV.
+ Description of Insouciance 558
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVI.
+ Description of the Intellectual Sphere 566
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVII.
+ Upasama. The Sameness or Quietism of the Soul 570
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+ The Same Quietness or Quietude of the Spirit 572
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIX.
+ On the Unity of all Things 577
+
+ CHAPTER XXXX.
+ Brahma Identic with the World 584
+
+ CHAPTER XLI.
+ Description of ignorance 589
+
+ CHAPTER XLII.
+ Production of Jíva or Living Souls 593
+
+ CHAPTER XLIII.
+ The Repositories of Living Souls 598
+
+ CHAPTER XLIV.
+ The Incarnation of Human Souls in the World 605
+
+ CHAPTER XLV.
+ Dependence of all on God 611
+
+ CHAPTER XLVI.
+ Description of Living-Liberation 617
+
+ CHAPTER XLVII.
+ Description of the Worlds and their Demiurgi 621
+
+ CHAPTER XLVIII.
+ Story of Dásúra 630
+
+ CHAPTER XLIX.
+ Description of Dásúra’s Kadamba Forest 635
+
+ CHAPTER L.
+ Dásúra’s Survey of the Heavens 639
+
+ CHAPTER LI.
+ Dásúra’s Begetting a Son 641
+
+ CHAPTER LII.
+ Grandeur of the Air-born King 645
+
+ CHAPTER LIII.
+ Description of the Mundane City 649
+
+ CHAPTER LIV.
+ Corrective of Desires 655
+
+ CHAPTER LV.
+ Meeting of Vasishtha and Dásúra 660
+
+ CHAPTER LVI.
+ On the Soul and its Inertness 664
+
+ CHAPTER LVII.
+ Nature of Volleity and Nolleity 670
+
+ CHAPTER LVIII.
+ The song of Kacha 676
+
+ CHAPTER LIX.
+ Works of Brahmá’s Creation 678
+
+ CHAPTER LX.
+ Production of Living Beings 684
+
+ CHAPTER LXI.
+ On Birth, Death and Existence 687
+
+ CHAPTER LXII.
+ Speech of the Divine Messenger 690
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+ OF
+ UPASAMA KHANDA.
+
+ (ON QUIETISM.)
+
+ BOOK V.
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ The Áhnika or Daily Ritual 693
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+ Ráma’s Recapitulation of Vasishtha’s Lectures 698
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+ Description of the Royal Assembly 703
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ Inquiries of Ráma 706
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+ Lecture on Tranquility of the Soul and Mind 710
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ Lecture on the Discharge of Duty 716
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ On Attainment of Divine Knowledge 719
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ Song of the Siddhas or Holy Adepts 720
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ Reflections of Janaka 723
+
+ CHAPTER X.
+ Silent and Solitary Reflections of Janaka 730
+
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ Subjection of the Mind 734
+
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ On the Greatness of the Intelligence 737
+
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ Government of the Mind 741
+
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ Ascertainment of the Thinking Principle 754
+
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ On Avarice 761
+
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ Healing of Avarice 764
+
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+ On the Extirpation of Avarice 767
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+ Living Liberation or True Felicity of Man
+ in this Life 771
+
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+ On Holy Knowledge 779
+
+ CHAPTER XX.
+ Remonstration of Pávana 784
+
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+ Repression of Desires by Means of Yoga-Meditation 789
+
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+ Narrative of Virochana 793
+
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+ Speech of Virochana on Subjection of the Mind 799
+
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+ On the Healing and Improvement of the Mind 803
+
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+ Reflections of Bali 811
+
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+ Admonition of Sukra to Bali 814
+
+ CHAPTER XXVII.
+ Hebetude of Bali 817
+
+ CHAPTER XXVIII.
+ Description of Bali’s anaesthesia 821
+
+ CHAPTER XXIX.
+ Bali’s resuscitation to sensibility 824
+
+ CHAPTER XXX.
+ Fall of Hiranyakasipu and Rise of Prahláda 831
+
+ CHAPTER XXXI.
+ Prahláda’s Faith in Vishnu 835
+
+ CHAPTER XXXII.
+ The Spiritual and formal Worship of Vishnu 843
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIII.
+ Prahláda’s Supplication to Hari 848
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIV.
+ Prahláda’s Self-knowledge of Spiritualism 852
+
+ CHAPTER XXXV.
+ Meditation on Brahma in One’s Self 865
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVI.
+ Hymn to the Soul 876
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVII.
+ Disorder and Disquiet of the Asura Realm 885
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+ Scrutiny into the Nature of God 887
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIX.
+ Admonitions of Hari to Prahláda 890
+
+ CHAPTER XL.
+ Resuscitation of Prahláda 896
+
+ CHAPTER XLI.
+ Installation of Prahláda in his Realm 900
+
+ CHAPTER XLII.
+ Spirituality of Prahláda 905
+
+ CHAPTER XLIII.
+ Rest and Repose of Prahláda 908
+
+ CHAPTER XLIV.
+ Narrative of Gádhi and his Destruction 913
+
+ CHAPTER XLV.
+ Gádhi is Reborn as a Chandála, and made King
+ over the Kir Tribe 918
+
+ CHAPTER XLVI.
+ Gádhi’s Loss of his Visionary Kingdom 923
+
+ CHAPTER XLVII.
+ Verification of Gádhi’s Vision 928
+
+ CHAPTER XLVIII.
+ On the Wondrous Powers of Illusion 935
+
+ CHAPTER XLIX.
+ Gádhi’s gaining of True Knowledge 943
+
+ CHAPTER L.
+ Intentions of Ráma 949
+
+ CHAPTER LI.
+ Desire of Uddálaka 960
+
+ CHAPTER LII.
+ Ratiocination of Uddálaka 966
+
+ CHAPTER LIII.
+ The Rational Rapture of Uddálaka 974
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+ YOGA VASISHTHA
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK IV.
+
+ STHITI PRAKARANA
+
+ ON ONTOLOGY OR EXISTENCE.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+
+ JANYA-JANI-NIRÚPANA.
+
+ _On Genesis and Epigenesis._
+
+
+Argument. The variety of creation is described as the working of
+the mind, and the existence of one Brahma only, is established in
+refutation of the Atomic and Materialistic doctrines of Nyáya and
+Sánkhya philosophy.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Attend now Ráma, to the subject of Existence, which
+follows that of Production: a knowledge of this, is productive of
+_nirvána_ or utter annihilation of the self or soul.
+
+2. Know then the phenomenal world which is existent before you, and
+your knowledge of egoism or self-existence, to be but erroneous
+conceptions of the formless inexistence or inanity.
+
+3. You see the tints of various hues painting the vacuous sky, without
+any paint (colouring substance), or their cause (the painter). This is
+but a conception of the mind without its visual perception, and like
+the vision in a dream of one, who is not in a state of sound sleep.
+(The world is a dream).
+
+4. It is like an aerial city built and present in your mind; or like
+the warming of shivering apes beside the red clay, thinking it as red
+hot fire; and as one’s pursuing an unreality or (grasping a shadow).
+
+5. It is but a different aspect of the self same Brahma, like that of a
+whirlpool in water, and as the unsubstantial sunlight, appearing as a
+real substance in the sky.
+
+6. It is like the baseless fabric of gold of the celestials on high;
+and like the air-built castle of Gandharvas in the midway sky. (The
+gods and Gandharvas are believed to dwell in their golden abodes in
+heaven).
+
+7. It is as the false sea in the mirage, appearing true at the time;
+and like the Elysian and Utopian cities of imagination in empty air,
+and taken for truth.
+
+8. It is like the romantic realms with their picturesque scenes in the
+fancies of poets, which are no where in nature but it seems to be solid
+and thick within, without any pith or solidity in it, as <a> thing in an
+empty dream.
+
+9. It is as the etherial sphere, full of light all around, but all
+hollow within; and like the blue autumnal sky, with its light and
+flimsy clouds without any rain-water in them.
+
+10. It is as the unsubstantial vacuum, with the cerulean blue of solid
+sapphire; and like the domes and dames appearing in dreams, fleeting as
+air and untangible to touch.
+
+11. It is as a flower garden in a picture, painted with blooming
+blossoms; and appearing as fragrant without any fragrance in them. It
+is lightsome to sight, without the inherent heat of light, and
+resembles the orb of the sun or a flaming fire represented in a picture.
+
+12. It is as an ideal domain—the coinage of the brain, and an unreal
+reality or a seeming something; and likens a lotus-bed in painting,
+without its essence or fragrance.
+
+13. It is as the variegated sky, painted with hues which it does not
+possess; and is as unsolid as empty air, and as many-hued as the
+rain-bow without any hue of its own.
+
+14. All its various colourings of materiality, fade away under the
+right discrimination of reason; and it is found in the end to be as
+unsolid a substance as the stem of a plantain tree; (all coated without,
+and nothing solid in the inside).
+
+15. It is like the rotation of black spots, before the eyes of a
+purblind man; and as the shape of a shadowy inexistence, presented as
+something existent before the naked eye.
+
+16. Like the bubble of water, it seems as something substantial to
+sight; but in reality all hollow within; and though appearing as juicy,
+it is without any moisture at all.
+
+17. The bubbling worlds are as wide spread as the morning dews or
+frost; but take them up, and you will find them as nothing, it is
+thought as gross matter by some, and as vacuum by others. It is
+believed as a fluctuation of thought or false vision by some, and as a
+mere compound of atoms by many. (It is the dull matter of Sánkhyas;
+mere vacuity of Vedántists; fluctuation of error—_avidyá spanda_ of the
+Sánkaras; empty air of Mádhyamikas; fortuitous union of atoms of
+Acháryas; different atomisms of Sautrántas, and Vaibháshikas; and so
+likewise of Kanáda, Gotama and Arhatas; and so many more according to
+the theories of others). (Gloss).
+
+18. I am partly of a material frame, on my body and mind, but
+spiritually I am an empty immaterial substance; and though felt by the
+touch of the hand, I am yet as intangible as a nocturnal fiend:—(an
+empty shadow only).
+
+19. Ráma said:—It is said Sir, that at the end of a great Kalpa age,
+the visible world remains in its seed; after which it developes again
+in its present form, which I require to be fully explained to me.
+
+20. Are they ignorant or knowing men, who think in these various ways?
+Please Sir, tell me the truth for removal of my doubts, and relate to
+me the process of the development.
+
+21. Vasishtha replied:—Those who say that the mundane world existed in
+the form of a seed at the final sleep (of Brahmá), are altogether
+ignorant of the truth, and talk as children and boys: (from what they
+think themselves, or hear from others).
+
+22. Hear me tell you, how unaccordant it is to right reason and how far
+removed from truth. It is a false supposition, and leading both the
+preacher and hearer of such a doctrine to great error and egregious
+mistake.
+
+23. Those who attempt to show the existence of the world, in the form
+of a germ in the mundane seed; maintain a very silly position, as I
+shall now explain unto you.
+
+24. A seed is in itself a visible thing, and is more an object of sense
+than that of the mind; as the seeds of paddy and barley, are seen to
+sprout forth in their germs and leaves.
+
+25. The mind which is beyond the six organs of sense, is a very minute
+particle; and it cannot possibly be born of itself, nor become the seed
+of the universe.
+
+26. The Supreme Spirit also, being more rarefied than the subtile
+ether, and undefinable by words, cannot be of the form of a seed.
+
+27. That which is as minute as a nil and a zero, is equivalent to
+nothing; and could never be the mundane seed, without which there could
+be no germ nor sprout.
+
+28. That which is more rare and transparent than the vacuous and clear
+firmament; cannot possibly contain the world with all its mountains and
+seas; and the heavens with all their hosts, in its transcendent
+substratum.
+
+29. There is nothing, that is in any way situated as a substance, in
+the substantiality of that Being; or if there is anything there, why is
+it not visible to us?
+
+30. There is nothing that comes of itself, and nothing material that
+comes but of the immaterial spirit; for who can believe a hill to
+proceed from the hollowness of an earthen pot?
+
+31. How can a thing remain with another, which is opposed to it in its
+nature? How can there be any shadow where there is light, and how does
+darkness reside in the disc of the sun, or even coldness in fire?
+
+32. How can an atom contain a hill, or anything subsist in nothing? The
+union of a similar with its dissimilar, is as impossible as that of
+shadow with the light of the sun.
+
+33. It is reasonable to suppose that the material seeds of the fig and
+paddy, should bring forth their shoots in time; but it is unreasonable
+to believe the big material world to be contained in an immaterial atom.
+
+34. We see the same organs of sense and their sensations, in all men in
+every country; but there is not the same uniformity in the
+understandings of men in every place, nor can there be any reason
+assigned to this difference.
+
+35. Those who assign a certain cause to some effect or event, betray
+their ignorance of the true cause; for what is it that produces the
+effect, except the very thing by some of its accessory powers. (Every
+production is but a transformation of itself, by some of its inherent
+powers and properties).
+
+36. Throw off at a distance, the doctrine of cause and effect invented
+by the ignorant; and know that to be true, which is without beginning
+and end, and the same appearing as the world. (An increate everlasting
+prototype in the mind of God).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+
+ THE RECEPTACLE OF THE MUNDANE EGG.
+
+
+Argument.—Refutation of the doctrine of the separate Existence of the
+world, and establishment of the tenet of the “One God as All in All.”
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Now Ráma! that best knowest the knowable, I will tell
+thee in disparagement of thy belief in the separate existence of the
+world; that there is one pure and vacuous principle of the Intellect
+only, above all the false fabrications of men.
+
+2. If it is granted, that there was the germ of the world in the
+beginning; still it is a question, what were the accompanying causes of
+its development.
+
+3. Without co-operation of the necessary causes, there can be no
+vegetation of the seed, as no barren woman is ever known or seen to
+bring forth an offspring, notwithstanding the seed is contained in the
+womb.
+
+4. If it was possible for the seed to grow without the aid of its
+accompanying causes, then it is useless to believe in the primary
+cause, when it is possessed of such power in its own nature.
+
+5. It is Brahmá himself who abides in his self, in the form of creation
+at the beginning of the world. This creation is as formless as the
+creator himself, and there is no relation of cause and effect between
+them.
+
+6. To say the earth and other elements, to be the accompanying causes
+of production, is also wrong; since it is impossible for these elements
+to exist prior to their creation.
+
+7. To say the world remained quiescent in its own nature, together with
+the accompanying causes, is the talk proceeding from the minds (mouths)
+of boys and not of the wise.
+
+8. Therefore Ráma! there neither is or was or ever will be a separate
+world in existence. It is the one intelligence of the Divinity, that
+displays the creation in itself.
+
+9. So Ráma! there being an absolute privation of this visible world, it
+is certain that Brahma himself is All, throughout the endless space.
+
+10. The knowledge of the visible world, is destroyed by the destruction
+of all its causalities; but the causes continuing in the mind, will
+cause the visibles to appear to the view even after their outward
+extinction (like objects in the dream).
+
+11. The absolute privation of the phenomenal, is only effected by the
+privation of its causes, (_i.e._ the suppression of our acts and
+desires); but if they are not suppressed in the mind, how can you
+effect to suppress the sight?
+
+12. There is no other means of destroying our erroneous conception of
+the world, except by a total extirpation of the visibles from our view.
+
+13. It is certain that the appearance of the visible world, is no more
+than our inward conception of it, in the vacuity of the intellect; and
+the knowledge of I, thou and he, are false impressions on our minds
+like figures in paintings.
+
+14. As these mountains and hills, these lands and seas and these
+revolutions of days and nights, and months and years and the knowledge
+that this is a Kalpa age, and this is a minute and moment, and this is
+life and this is death, are all mere conceptions of the mind.
+
+15. So is the knowledge of the duration and termination of a _Kalpa_
+and _Mahákalpa_ (millenniums &c.) and that of the creation and its
+beginning and end, are mere misconceptions of our minds.
+
+16. It is the mind that conceives millions of Kalpas and billions of
+worlds, most of which are gone by and many as yet to come. (Or else
+there is but an everlasting eternity, which is self-same with the
+infinity of the Deity).
+
+17. So the fourteen regions of the planetary spheres, and all the
+divisions of time and place, are contained in the infinite space of the
+Supreme Intellect.
+
+18. The universe continues and displays itself as serenely in the
+Divine mind, as it did from before and throughout all eternity; and it
+shines with particles of the light of that Intellect, as the firmament
+is as full with the radiance of solar light.
+
+19. The ineffable light, which is thrown into the mind by the Divine
+Intellect, shows itself as the creation, which in reality is a baseless
+fabric by itself.
+
+20. It does not come to existence nor dissolves into nothing, nor
+appears or sets at any time; but resembles a crystal glass with certain
+marks in it, which can never be effaced.
+
+21. The creations display of themselves in the clear Intellect of God,
+as the variegated skies form portions of the indivisible space of
+endless vacuum.
+
+22. These are but properties of the Divine Intellect, as fluidity is
+that of water, motion of the wind, the eddies of the sea, and the
+qualities of all things. (Creation is cœternal with the Eternal Mind).
+
+23. This creation is but a compact body of Divine wisdom, and is
+contained in the Divinity as its component part. Its rising and setting
+and continuance, are exhibited alike in the tranquil soul.
+
+24. The world is inane owing to its want of the accompaniment of
+secondary (_i.e._ material and instrumental) causes and is selfborn:
+and to call it as born or produced, is to breathe the breath (of life)
+like a madman (_i.e._, it is foolish to say so).
+
+25. Ráma! purify your mind from the dross of false representations, and
+rise from the bed of your doubts and desires; drive away your
+protracted sleep of ignorance (avidyá), and be freed from the fears of
+death and disease with every one of your friends in this Court.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+
+ ETERNITY OF THE WORLD.
+
+
+Ráma said:—But it is related, that Brahmá—the lord of creatures,
+springs up by his reminiscence at the end of a kalpa, and stretches out
+the world from his remembrance of it, in the beginning of creation.
+
+2. Vasishtha answered:—So it is said, O support of Raghu’s race! that
+the lord of creatures rises at first by his predestination, after the
+universal dissolution, and at the commencement of a new creation.
+
+3. It is by his will, that the world is stretched out from his
+recollection, and is manifested like an ideal city, in the presence of
+Brahmá—the creative power.
+
+4. The supreme being can have no remembrance of the past at the
+beginning of a new creation, owing to his want of a prior birth or
+death. Therefore this aerial arbour of reminiscence has no relation to
+Brahma. (Who being an ever living being, his cognizance of all things
+is also everlasting).
+
+5. Ráma asked:—Does not the reminiscence of the past, continue in
+Brahmá at his recreation of the world; and so the former remembrance of
+men upon their being reborn on earth? Or are all past remembrances
+effaced from the minds of men by the delirium of death in their past
+life?
+
+6. Vasishtha replied:—All intelligent beings, including Brahmá and all
+others of the past age, that obtain their _nirvána_ or extinction, are
+of course absorbed in One Brahma (and have lost their remembrance of
+every thing concerning their past lives).
+
+7. Now tell me, my good Ráma, where do these past remembrances and
+remembrancers abide any more, when they are wholly lost, at the final
+liberation (or extinction) of the rememberers?
+
+8. It is certain that all beings are liberated, and become extinct in
+Brahma at the great dissolution; hence there cannot be remembrance of
+anything in the absence of the persons that remember the same.
+
+9. The remembrance that lives impressed of itself in the empty space of
+individual Intellects, is verily the reservoir of the perceptible and
+imperceptible worlds. This reminiscence is eternally present before the
+sight of God, as a reflexion of his own Intellect.
+
+10. It shines with the lustre of his self-consciousness, from time
+without beginning and end, and is identic with this world, which is
+therefore called to be self-born (because it is immanent in the mind of
+God).
+
+11. The spiritual body which is the attribute of God from time without
+beginning (that God is a spirit); is the same with Viráta or
+manifestation of himself, and exhibits the form of the world or the
+microcosm (_i.e._ God—spirit—Virát or cosmos).
+
+12. But the world is said to be composed of atoms, which compose the
+land and woods, the clouds and the firmament. But there are no atoms to
+form time and space, actions and motions and revolutions of days and
+nights. (All which are shaped by the spirit and not by atoms).
+
+13. Again the atoms (of matter) which fill the world, have other
+incipient atoms (of spirit), which are inherent in them, and cause them
+to take and appear in the forms of mountains and the like.
+
+14. But these forms seeming to be conglomerations of atomic particles,
+and showing themselves to our vision as lightsome objects, are in
+reality no substantial things.
+
+15. Thus there is no end of the real and unreal sights of things; the
+one presenting itself to the view of the learned, and the other to that
+of the unlearned. (_i.e._ All things are viewed in their spiritual
+light by the learned, and in their material aspect by the ignorant).
+
+16. The cosmos appears as the immutable Brahma only to the intelligent,
+and as the mutable visible world to the unintelligent.
+
+17. As these bright worlds appear to roll about as eggs in their
+spheres, so there are multitudes of other orbs, shining in every atom
+in the universe.
+
+18. As we see curved pillars, consisting of figures under figures, and
+those again under others; so is the grand pillar of the universe,
+composed of systems under systems to no end.
+
+19. As the sands on a rock, are separably attached to it, and are
+countless in their number; so the orbs in the three worlds, are as
+particles of dust in <the> mountainous body of Brahmá.
+
+20. It may be possible to count the particles of ray scattered in the
+sun-beams; but it is impossible to number the atoms of light, which are
+emanating from the great sun of Brahmá.
+
+21. As the sun scatters the particles of his light, on the sparkling
+waters and sands of the sea; so does the Intellect of God, disperse the
+atoms of its light all over the vacuity of the universe.
+
+22. As the notion of vacuity fills the mind, with the idea of the
+visible firmament; so the thought of creation, as self-same with Brahmá,
+gives us the notion of his intellectual sphere.
+
+23. To understand the creation as something different from Brahma,
+leads man apart from Him; but to take it as synonymous with Brahma,
+leads him to his felicity.
+
+24. The enlightened soul, freed from its knowledge of the mundane seed,
+and knowing Brahma alone as the plenum filling the vacuum of intellect;
+knows the knowable (God) in his inward understanding, as the same with
+what has proceeded from him.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+
+ TREATING OF THE GERM OF EXISTENCE.
+
+
+Argument. Sensations and Perceptions, as the Roots of the knowledge of
+Existence: suppression of these annuls all existence, and removes the
+visibles from view.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—It is the overthrow of the battery of the senses, that
+supplies us with a bridge over the ocean of the world; there is no
+other act, whereby we may cross over it (to the other shore of truth).
+
+2. Acquaintance with the sástras, association with the good and wise,
+and practice of the virtues, are the means whereby the rational and
+self-controlled man, may come to know the absolute negation of the
+visibles.
+
+3. I have thus told you, O handsome Ráma! of the causes of the
+appearance and disappearance of the creation, resembling the heaving
+and resting of the waves of the sea of the world.
+
+4. There is no need of a long discourse to tell you that, the mind is
+the germ of the arbour of acts, and this germ being nipped in the
+beginning, prevents the growth of the tree, and frustrates the doing of
+acts, which are the fruits thereof.
+
+5. The mind is all (_i.e._ the agent of all actions); therefore it is,
+that by the healing of your heart and mind, you can cure all the
+troubles and diseases, you may incur in the world.
+
+6. The minds of men are ever troubled, with their thoughts of the world
+and bodily actions; but these being deadened and defunct, we see
+neither the body nor the outer world.
+
+7. The negation of the outer world, and the suppression of the inner
+thoughts, serve to curb the demon of the mind, by practice of
+self-abnegation for a long period of time.
+
+8. It is possible to heal the inward disease of the internal mind, by
+administration of this best and only medicine of negation of the
+external world. (Ignoring the outer world, is the only way to restore
+the peace of the mind).
+
+9. It is because of its thoughts, that the mind is subjected to the
+errors of its birth and death; and to those of its being bound to or
+liberated from, the bonds of the body and this world.
+
+10. The mind being deluded by its thoughts, sees the worlds shining
+before it; as a man sees in his delusion, the imaginary city of the
+Gandharvas, drawn before him in empty air.
+
+11. All these visible worlds consist in the mind, wherein they seem to
+exist as the fragrance of the air, consists in the cluster of flowers
+containing the essence.
+
+12. The little particle of the mind contains the world, as a small
+grain of sesamum contains the oil, and as an attribute is contained in
+its subject, and a property abiding in the substance.
+
+13. The world abides in the mind in the same manner, as the sun-beams
+abide in the sun, and as brightness consists in the light, and as the
+heat is contained in fire.
+
+14. The mind is the reservoir of the worlds, as the snow is the
+receptacle of coldness. It is the substratum of all existence, as the
+sky is that of emptiness, and as velocity is inherent in the wind.
+
+15. Therefore the mind is the same with the world, and the world is
+identic with the mind; owing to their intimate and inseparable
+connection with one another. The world however is lost by the loss of
+the mind; but the mind is not lost by destruction of the world.
+(Because the thoughts thereof are imprinted in the mind).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+
+ STORY OF BHÁRGAVA.
+
+
+Argument. Meditation of Bhrigu, Ramblings of Sukra. His sight of and
+amour for an aerial nymph.
+
+
+Ráma said:—Tell me sir, that knowest all truths, and art best
+acquainted with all that is past and is to come, how the form of the
+world is so vividly existed in the mind.
+
+2. Please Sir, explain to me by some illustration, how this world,
+appears as a visible object to the inner mind.
+
+3. Vasishtha replied:—The world is situated as truly in the minds of
+men, as it appeared in its firm and compact state to the bodiless son
+of Indu (I have related long before).
+
+4. It is situated in the same manner in the minds of men, as the
+thought of king Lavana’s transformation of himself to a chandála, under
+the influence of sorcery.
+
+5. It is in the same manner, as Bhárgava believed himself to be
+possessed of all worldly gratifications. Because true bliss has much
+more relation to the mind, than to earthly possessions.
+
+6. Ráma said:—How is it Sir, that the son of Bhrigu came to the
+enjoyment of earthly pleasures, when he had been longing for the
+fruition of heavenly felicity.
+
+7. Vasishtha replied:—Attend now Ráma, to my narration of the history
+of Bhrigu and Kála, whereby you will know how he came to the possession
+of earthly enjoyments.
+
+8. There is a table-land of the Mandara mountain, which is beset by
+rows of tamála trees, with beautiful arbours of flowers under them.
+
+9. Here the sage Bhrigu conducted his arduous devotion in olden times
+and it was in this place, that his high-minded and valiant son Sukra,
+also came to perform his devotion.
+
+10. Sukra was as handsome as the moon, and radiant with his brilliant
+beams (like the sun). He took his seat in that happy grove of Bhrigu,
+for the purpose of his devotion.
+
+11. Having long sat in that grove under the umbrage of a rock, Sukra
+removed himself to the flowery beds and fair plains below.
+
+12. He roved freely about the bowers of Mandara in his youthful sport,
+and became revered among the wise and ignorant men of the place.
+
+13. He roved there at random like Trisanku, between the earth and sky;
+sometimes playing about as a boy, and at others sitting in fixed
+meditation as his father.
+
+14. He remained without any anxiety in his solitude, as a king who has
+subdued his enemy; until he happened to behold an Apsara fairy,
+traversing in her aerial journey.
+
+15. He beheld her with the eyes of Hari, fixed upon his Lakshmí, as she
+skims over the watery plain, decked with her wreaths of Mandara
+flowers, and her tresses waving loosely with the playful air.
+
+16. Her trinkets jingling with her movements, and the fragrance of her
+person perfuming the winds of the air; her fairy form was as beautiful
+as a creeping plant, and her eyeballs rolling as in the state of
+intoxication.
+
+17. The moon-beams of her body, shed their ambrosial dews over the
+landscape, which bewitched the hard-heart of the young devotee, as he
+beheld the fairy form before him.
+
+18. She also with her body shining as the fair full-moon, and shaking
+as the wave of the sea, became enamoured of Sukra as she looked at his
+face.
+
+19. Sukra then checked the impulse of his mind, which the god of love
+had raised after her; but losing all his power over himself, he became
+absorbed in the thought of his beloved object.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+
+ ELYSIUM OF BHÁRGAVA.
+
+
+Argument. Sukra’s imaginary journey to heaven, and his reception by
+Indra.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Henceforth Sukra continued to think of the nymph with
+his closed eye-lids, and indulge himself in his reverie of an imaginary
+kingdom.
+
+2. He thought that the nymph was passing in the air, to the paradise of
+Indra—the god with thousand eyes; and that he followed her closely,
+to the happy regions of the celestial gods.
+
+3. He thought, he saw before him the gods, decorated with their
+chaplets of beautiful _mandara_ blossoms on their heads, and with
+garlands of flowers pendant on their persons resplendent as liquid gold.
+
+4. He seemed to see the heavenly damsels with their eyes as
+blue-lotuses, regaling the eyes of their spectators; and others with
+their eyes as beautiful as those of antelopes, sporting with their
+sweet smiles all about (the garden of paradise).
+
+5. He saw also the Marutas or gods of winds, bearing the fragrance of
+flowers, and breathing their sweet scent on one another; and resembling
+the omnipresent Viswarúpa by their ubiquitous journey.
+
+6. He heard the sweet hum of bees, giddy with the perfumed ichor,
+exuding from the proboscis of Indra’s elephant; and listened to the
+sweet strains, sung by the chorus of the heavenly choir.
+
+7. There were the swans and storks, gabbling in the lakes, with lotuses
+of golden hue in them; and there were the celestial gods reposing in
+the arbours, beside the holy stream of the heavenly Gangá (Mandákiní).
+
+8. These were the gods Yama and Indra, and the sun and moon, and the
+deities of fire and the winds; and there were the regents of the
+worlds, whose shining bodies shaded the lustre of vivid fire.
+
+9. On one side was the warlike elephant of Indra—(Airávata), with the
+scratches of the demoniac weapons on his face (proboscis), and tusks
+gory with the blood of the defeated hosts of demons.
+
+10. Those who were translated from earth to heaven in the form of
+luminous stars, were roving in their aerial vehicles, blazing with
+aureate beams of the shining sun.
+
+11. The gods were washed by the showers, falling from the peaks of Meru
+below, and the waves of the Ganges, rolled on with scattered _mandara_
+flowers floating on them.
+
+12. The alleys of Indra’s groves, were tinged with saffron, by heaps of
+the dust of _mandara_ flowers; and were trodden by groups of Apsara
+lasses, sporting wantonly upon them.
+
+13. There were the gentle breezes blowing among the _párijáta_ plants,
+brightening as moon-beams in the sacred bowers; and wafting the
+fragrant honey, from the cups of _Kunda_ and _mandara_ blossoms.
+
+14. The pleasure garden of Indra, was crowded by heavenly damsels; who
+were besmeared with the frosty farina of _kēsara_ flowers, mantling
+them like the creepers of the grove in their yellow robes.
+
+15. Here were the heavenly nymphs dancing in their gaiety, at the tune
+of the songs of their lovers; and there were heavenly musicians Nárada
+and Tamburu, joining their vocal music in unison with the melody of the
+wired instruments of the lute and lyre (Vallakikákali).
+
+16. Holy men and the pious and virtuous, were seen to soar high in
+their heavenly cars, and sitting there with their decorations of
+various kinds.
+
+17. The amorous damsels of the gods, were clinging round their god
+Indra: as the tender creepers of the garden, twine about the trees
+beside them.
+
+18. There were the fruit trees of _gulunchas_, studded with clusters of
+their ripening fruits; and resembling the gemming sapphires and rubies,
+and set as rows of ivory teeth.
+
+19. After all these sights, Sukra thought of making his obeisance to
+Indra, who was seated on his seat like another Brahmá—the creator of
+the three worlds.
+
+20. Having thought so, Sukra bowed down to Indra in his own mind, as he
+was the second Bhrigu in heaven—(_i.e._ He bowed to him with a
+veneration equal to that he paid to his father).
+
+21. Indra received him with respect, and having lifted him up with his
+hand, made him sit by himself.
+
+22. Indra addressed him saying:—I am honoured, Sukra! by thy call, and
+this heaven of mine is graced by thy presence, may thou live long to
+enjoy the pleasure of this place.
+
+23. Indra then sat in his seat with a graceful countenance, which shone
+with the lustre of the unspotted full-moon.
+
+24. Sukra being thus seated by the side of Indra, was saluted by all
+the assembled gods of heaven; and he continued to enjoy every felicity
+there, by being received with paternal affection by the lord of gods
+and men.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+
+ RE-UNION OF THE LOVERS.
+
+
+Argument. Sukra sees his beloved in heaven, and is joined to her at
+that place.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Thus Sukra being got among the gods in the celestial
+city, forgot his former nature, without his passing through the pangs
+of death.
+
+2. Having halted awhile by the side of the Sachi’s consort (Indra), he
+rose up to roam about the paradise, by being charmed with all its
+various beauties.
+
+3. He looked with rapture on the beauty of his own person, and longed
+to see the lovely beauties of heavenly beings, as the swan is eager to
+meet the lotuses of the lake.
+
+4. He saw his beloved one among them in the garden of Indra’s Eden
+(udyána), with her eyes like those of a young fawn; and with a stature
+as delicate as that of a tender creeper of the _Amra_ (amarynthus).
+
+5. She also beheld the son of Bhrigu, and lost her government on
+herself; and was thus observed by him also in all her indications of
+amorous feelings.
+
+6. His whole frame was dissolved in affection for her, like the
+moonstone melting under the moonbeams; so was hers likewise in
+tenderness for him.
+
+7. He like the moonstone was soothed by her cooling beauty, beaming as
+moonlight in the sky; and she also being beheld by him, was entirely
+subdued by her love to him.
+
+8. At night they bewailed as chakravákas (ruddy geese), at their
+separation from one another, and were filled with delight on their
+mutual sight at the break of the day (which unites the Chakraváka pair
+together).
+
+9. They were both as beautiful to behold, as the sun and the opening
+blossom of the lotus at morn; and their presence added a charm to the
+garden of paradise, which promised to confer their desired bliss.
+
+10. She committed her subdued-self to the mercy of the god of love, who
+in his turn darted his arrows relentless on her tender heart.
+
+11. She was covered all over her person with the shafts of cupid, as
+when the lotus blossom is hid under a swarm of fleeting bees; and
+became as disordered as the leaves of the lotus, are disturbed under a
+shower of rain drops.
+
+12. She fluttered at the gentle breath of the playful winds, like the
+tender filaments of flowers; and moved as graceful as the swan, with
+her eyes as bluish as those of the leaflets of blue-lotuses.
+
+13. She was deranged in her person by the god of love, as the lotus-bed
+is put into disorder by the mighty elephant; and was beheld in that
+plight by her lover (Sukra), in the flight of his fancy.
+
+14. At last the shade of night overspread the landscape of the heavenly
+paradise, as if the god of destruction (Rudra) was advancing to bury
+the world under universal gloom.
+
+15. A deep darkness overspread the face of the earth, and covered it in
+thick gloom; like the regions of the polar mountains; where the
+hot-blazing-sun is obscured by the dark shade of perpetual night, as if
+hiding his face in shame under the dark veil of Cimmerian gloom.
+
+16. The loving pair met together in the midst of the grove, when the
+assembled crowds of the place, retired to their respective habitations
+in different directions.
+
+17. Then the love-smitten-dame approached her lover with her sidelong
+glances, as a bird of air alights from her aerial flight in the
+evening, to meet with her mate on the earth below.
+
+18. She advanced towards the son of Bhrigu, as a peahen comes out to
+meet the rising cloud; and thought she beheld there a white washed
+edifice, with a couch placed in the midst.
+
+19. Bhárgava entered the white hall, as when Vishnu enters into hoary
+sea, accompanied by his beloved Lakshmí; who held him by the hand with
+her down-cast countenance.
+
+20. She graced his person, as the lotus-stalk graces the bosom of the
+elephant; and then spoke to him sweetly with her words mixed with
+tender affection.
+
+21. She told him in a sweet and delightsome speech fraught with
+expressions of endearment: Behold, O my moon-faced lover! I see the
+curve of thy bow as a bow bent for my destruction.
+
+22. Cupid is thence darting his arrows to destroy this lovelorn maid;
+therefore protect me from him, that am so helpless and have come under
+thy protection from his rage.
+
+23. Know my good friend, that it is the duty of good people, to relieve
+the wretched from their distress; and those that do not look upon them
+with a compassionate eye, are reckoned as the basest of men.
+
+24. Love is never vilified by those, who are acquainted with erotics;
+because the true love of faithful lovers, have endured to the last
+without any fear of separation.
+
+25. Know my dear, that the delightful draught of love, defies the dewy
+beams distilled by the moon; and the sovereignty of the three worlds,
+is never so pleasing to the soul, as the love of the beloved.
+
+26. I derive the same bliss from the touch of thy feet, as it attends
+on mutual lovers on their first attachment to one another.
+
+27. I live by the nectarious draught of thy touch, as the _kumuda_
+blooms by night, imbibing the ambrosial beams of the moon.
+
+28. As the fluttering Chakora, is delighted with drinking the
+moonbeams, so is this suppliant at thy feet, blessed by the touch of
+the leaf-like palm of thy hand.
+
+29. Embrace me now to thy bosom, which is filled with ambrosial bliss.
+Saying so, the damsel fell upon his bosom with her body soft as a
+flower, and her eyes turning as a leaflet at the gentle breeze.
+
+30. The loving pair fell into their trance of love in that happy grove,
+as a couple of playful bees creeps into the lotus cup, under the fair
+filaments of the flower, shaking by the gentle breeze.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ TRANSMIGRATIONS OF SUKRA.
+
+
+Argument. Sukra fancies his fall from heaven, and passing through many
+imaginary births.
+
+
+Vasishtha related:—Thus the son of Bhrigu, believed himself to be in
+the enjoyment of heavenly pleasures, in his ideal reveries.
+
+2. He thought of enjoying the company of his beloved, bedecked with
+garlands of _mandara_ flowers, and inebriated with the drink of
+ambrosial draughts, like the full-moon accompanied by the evening star.
+
+3. He roved about the ideal lake of heaven (Mánas Sarovara), filled
+with golden lotuses, and frequented by the giddy swans and gabbling
+geese or hansas of heaven; and roamed beside the bank of the celestial
+river (Mandákiní), in company with the choristers (cháranas, and
+Kinnaras of paradise).
+
+4. He drank the sweet nectarious juice beaming as moonbeams in company
+with the gods; and reposed under the arbours of the groves, formed by
+the shaking branches of _párijáta_ plants.
+
+5. He amused himself with his favourite Vidyádharís, in swinging
+himself in the hanging cradles, formed by the shady creepers of the
+arbour, and screening him from the vernal sunbeams.
+
+6. The parterres of Nandana gardens were trodden down under the feet of
+the fellow followers of Siva, as when the ocean was churned by the
+_Mandara_ mountain.
+
+7. The tender weeds and willows growing as golden shrubberies, and
+tangled bushes in the beach of the river, were trampled under the legs
+of heated elephants, as when they infest the lotus lakes on Meru.
+(_i.e._ Lotuses growing in the lakes of mountainous regions).
+
+8. Associated by his sweet-heart, he passed the moonlight nights in the
+forest groves of Kailása, attending to the songs and music of heavenly
+choristers.
+
+9. Roaming on the table-lands of Gandhamádana mountain, he decorated
+his beloved with lotus-garlands from her head to foot.
+
+10. He roved with her to the polar mountain which is full of wonders,
+as having darkness on one side and lighted on the other. Here they
+sported together with their tender smiles and fond caresses and embrace.
+
+11. He thought he remained in a celestial abode beside the marshy lands
+of Mandara, for a period of full sixty years; and passed his time in
+the company of the fauna of the place.
+
+12. He believed he passed half a _yuga_ with his helpmate, on the
+border of the milky ocean, and associated with the maritime people and
+islanders of that ocean.
+
+13. He next thought to live in a garden at the city of the Gandharvas,
+where he believed to have lived for an immeasurable period like the
+genius of Time himself, who is the producer of an infinity of worlds.
+
+14. He was again translated to the celestial seat of Indra, where he
+believed to have resided for many cycles of the quadruple _yuga_ ages
+with his mistress.
+
+15. It was at the end of the merit of their acts that they were doomed
+to return on earth, shorn of their heavenly beauty and the fine
+features of their persons.
+
+16. Being deprived of his heavenly seat and vehicle, and bereft of his
+godlike form and features; Sukra was overcome by deep sorrow, like a
+hero falling in the field of warfare.
+
+17. His great grief at his fall from heaven to earth, broke his frame
+as it were into a hundred fragments; like a waterfall falling on the
+stony ground, and breaking into a hundred rills below.
+
+18. They with their emaciated bodies and sorrowful minds, wandered
+about in the air, like birds without their nest.
+
+19. Afterwards their disembodied minds entered into the net-work of
+lunar beams, and then in the form of molten frost or rain water, they
+grew the vegetables on earth.
+
+20. Some of these vegetables were concocted, and then eaten by a
+Bráhman in the land of Dasárna or confluence of the ten streams. The
+substance of Sukra was changed to the semen of the Bráhman, and then
+conceived as a son by his wife.
+
+21. The boy was trained up in the society of the munis to the practice
+of rigorous austerities, and he dwelt in the forests of Meru for a
+whole _manwantara_, observant of his holy rites.
+
+22. There he gave birth to a male child of human figure in a doe (to
+which his mistress was transformed in her next birth), and became
+exceedingly fond of the boy, to the neglect of his sacred duties.
+
+23. He constantly prayed for the long life, wealth and learning of his
+darling, and thus forsook the constancy of his faith and reliance in
+Providence. (Longevity, prosperity and capacity for learning, are the
+triple blessings of civil life, instead of austerity, purity and
+self-resignation of painful asceticism).
+
+24. Thus his falling off from the thought of heaven, to those of the
+earthly aggrandizement of his son, made his shortened life an easy prey
+to death, as the inhaling of air by the serpent. (It is said that the
+serpent lives upon air, which it takes in freely in want of any other
+food).
+
+25. His worldly thoughts having vitiated his understanding, caused him
+to be reborn as the son of the Madra king, and succeed to him in the
+kingdom of the Madras (Madura-Madras).
+
+26. Having long reigned in his kingdom of Madras by extirpation of all
+his enemies, he was overtaken at last by old age, as the lotus-flower
+is stunted by the frost.
+
+27. The king of Madras, was released of his kingly person by his desire
+of asceticism; whereby he became the son of an anchorite in next-birth,
+in order to perform his austerities.
+
+28. He retired to the bank of the meandering river of the Ganges, and
+there betook himself to his devotion; being devoid of all his worldly
+anxieties and cares.
+
+29. Thus the son of Bhrigu, having passed in various forms in his
+successive births, according to the desires of his heart; remained at
+last as a fixed arbour on the bank of a running stream.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+
+ DESCRIPTION OF SUKRA’S BODY.
+
+
+Argument. The departed spirit of Sukra, remembers the state of its
+former body.
+
+
+Vasishtha related:—As Sukra was indulging his reveries in this manner,
+he passed insensibly under the flight of a series of years, which
+glided upon him in the presence of his father.
+
+2. At last his arboraceous body withered away with age, under the
+inclement sun and winds and rain; and it fell down on the ground as a
+tree torn from its roots.
+
+3. In all his former births, his mind thirsted after fresh pleasures
+and enjoyments; as a stag hunts after fresh verdure from forest to
+forest.
+
+4. He underwent repeated births and deaths, in his wanderings in the
+world in search of its enjoyments; and seemed as some thing whirled
+about in a turning mill or wheel; till at last he found his rest in the
+cooling beach of the rivulet.
+
+5. Now the disembodied spirit of Sukra, remained to reflect on his past
+transmigrations, in all the real and ideal forms of his imagination.
+
+6. It thought of its former body on the Mandara mountain, and how it
+was reduced to a skeleton of mere bones and skin by the heat of the sun
+and his austerities (_i.e._ of the five fires _pancha-tapas_ of his
+penance).
+
+7. It remembered how the wind instrument of its lungs, breathed out the
+joyous music of its exemption from the pain of action (to which all
+other men were subjected). (It refers to the breathing of _so-ham
+hamsah_ in yoga, which is the sweet music of salvation).
+
+8. Seeing how the mind is plunged in the pit of worldly cares, the body
+seems to laugh at it, by showing the white teeth of the mouth in
+derision.
+
+9. 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).
+
+10. The body sheds the tears of its eyes in sorrow for its past pains
+and austerities, as the sky rains after its excessive heat to cool the
+earth.
+
+11. The body was refreshed by the breeze and moon-beams, as the
+woodlands are renovated by cooling showers in the rainy season.
+
+12. It remembered how its body was washed on the banks of mountain
+rills, by the water-falls from above, and how it was daubed by the
+flying dust and the dirt of sin.
+
+13. It was as naked as a withered tree, and rustling to the air with
+the breeze; yet it withstood the keen blasts of winter as unshaken
+devotion in person.
+
+14. The faded face, the withered lungs and arteries, and the skinny
+belly, resembled those of the goddess of famine, that cried aloud in
+the forest, in the howlings of the wild beasts.
+
+15. Yet the holy person of the hermit was unhurt by envious animals,
+owing to its freedom from passions and feelings, and its fervent
+devotion; and was not devoured by rapacious beasts and birds.
+
+16. The body of Bhrigu’s son was thus weakened by his abstinence and
+self-denial, and his mind was employed in holy devotion, as his body
+lay prostrate on the bed of stones.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER X.
+
+ BHRIGU’S CONFERENCE WITH KÁLA OR DEATH.
+
+
+Argument. Bhrigu’s grief at seeing the death-like body of his son.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—After the lapse of a thousand years, the great
+Bhrigu rose from his holy trance (anaesthesia); and was disengaged in
+his mind from its meditation of God, as in a state of suspension or
+syncope of his holy meditations.
+
+2. He did not find his son lowly bending down his head before him, the
+son who was the leader of the army of virtues, and who was the
+personified figure of all merits.
+
+3. He only beheld his body, lying as a skeleton before him, as it was
+wretchedness or poverty personified in that shape.
+
+4. The skin of his body was dried by the sun, and his nostrils snoring
+as a hooping bird; and the inner entrails of his belly, were sounding
+as dry leather-pipes with the croaking of frogs.
+
+5. The sockets of his eyes, were filled with new-born worms grown in
+them; and the bones of his ribs had become as bars of a cage, with the
+thin skin over them resembling the spider’s web.
+
+6. The dry and white skeleton of the body, resembled the desire of
+fruition, which bends it to the earth, to undergo all the favourable
+and unfavourable accidents of life.
+
+7. The crown of the head had become as white and smooth (by its
+baldness or grey hairs), as the phallus of Siva anointed with camphor,
+at the _Indu-varcha_ ceremony in honor of the moon.
+
+8. The withered head erected on the bony neckbone, likened the soul
+supported by the body:—(either to lead or be led by it).
+
+9. The nose was shriveled to a dry stalk, for want of its flesh; and
+the nose-bone stood as a post, dividing the two halves of the face.
+
+10. The face standing erect on the protruded shoulders on both sides,
+was looking forward in the womb of the vacuous sky, whither the vital
+breath had fled from the body.
+
+11. The two legs, thighs, knees and the two arms (forming the eight
+_angas_ or members of the body), had been doubled in their length (for
+their long etherial course); and lay slackened with fatigue of the long
+journey.
+
+12. The leanness of the belly like a _lath_, showed by its shriveled
+flesh and skin, the empty inside of the ignorant: (_i.e._ they may be
+puffed up with pride on the outside, but are all hollow in the inside).
+
+13. Bhrigu seeing the withered skeleton of his son, lying as the
+worn-out post (to which the elephant was tied by its feet), made his
+reflections as said before, and rose from his seat.
+
+14. He then began to dubitate in his mind, at the sight of the dead
+body, as to whether it could be the lifeless carcass of his son or any
+other.
+
+15. Thinking it no other than the dead body of his son, he became sore
+angry upon the god of death (that had untimely taken him away).
+
+16. He was prepared to pronounce his imprecation against the god of
+fate, in vengeance of his snatching his son so prematurely from him.
+
+17. At this _Yama_—the regent of death, and devourer of living beings,
+assumed his figurative form of a material body, and appeared in an
+instant before the enraged father.
+
+18. He appeared in armour with six arms and as many faces, accompanied
+by the army of his adherents, and holding the noose and sword and other
+weapons in his hands. (The commentary ascribes a dozen of arms to
+_Yama_, by the number of the twelve months of the year, and having half
+of the number on either side, according to the six signs of the zodiac
+in either hemisphere. The six faces are representative of the six
+seasons of Hindu astronomy instead of four of other nations).
+
+19. The rays of light radiating from his body, gave it the appearance
+of a hill, filled with heaps of the crimson _kinsuka_ flowers, growing
+in mountain forests.
+
+20. The rays of the living fire flashing from his trident gave it the
+glare of golden ringlets, fastened to the ears of all the sides of the
+sky.
+
+21. The breath of his host, hurled down the ridges of mountains, which
+hung about them, like swinging cradles on earth.
+
+22. His sable sword flashing with sombre light, darkened the disk of
+the sun; as it were by the smoke of the final conflagration of the
+earth.
+
+23. Having appeared before the great sage, who was enraged as the
+raging sea, he soothed him to calmness as after a storm, by the gentle
+breath of his speech.
+
+24. “The sages” said he, “are acquainted with the laws of nature, and
+know the past and future as present before them. They are never moved
+even with a motive to anything, and are far from being moved without a
+cause.
+
+25. “You sages are observers of the multifarious rules of religions
+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).”
+
+26. Do not belie your righteousness by your rage, nor think to do us
+any harm, who are spared unhurt by the flames of final dissolution, and
+cannot be consumed by your curses.
+
+27. We have destroyed the spheres of the universe and devoured legions
+of Rudras, millions of Brahmás and myriads of Vishnus (in the repeated
+revolutions of creation); what is it therefore that we cannot do?
+
+28. We are appointed as devourers of all beings; and you are destined
+to be devoured by us. This is ordained by destiny herself, and not by
+any act of our own will.
+
+29. It is the nature of flame to ascend upwards, and that of fluids to
+flow downward; it is destined for the food to be fed upon by its
+eaters, and that creation must come under its destruction by us.
+
+30. Know this form of mine to be that of the Supreme Being, whose
+universal spirit acts in various forms, all over the universe.
+
+31. To the unstained (clear) sight, there is no other agent or object
+here, except the supreme; but the stained sight (of the clear eyed),
+views many agents and objects (beside the one in all).
+
+32. Agency and objectivity are terms, coined only by the short sighted;
+but they disappear before the enlarged view of the wise.
+
+33. As flowers grow upon trees, so are animals born on earth; their
+growth and birth, as also their fall and death, are of their own
+spontaneity, and miscalled as their causality.
+
+34. As the motion of the moon is caused by no casual cause, though they
+falsely attribute a causality to it; such is the course of death in the
+world of its own spontaneous nature.
+
+35. The mind is falsely said to be the agent of all its enjoyments in
+life; though it is no agent of itself. It is a misbelief like the false
+conception of a serpent in the rope, where there is no serpent at all.
+
+36. Therefore, O sage! allow not yourself to be so angry for your
+sorrow; but consider in its true light, the course of events that
+befall on humankind.
+
+37. We were not actuated by desire of fame, nor influenced by pride or
+passion to any act; but are ourselves subject to the destiny, which
+predominates over all our actions.
+
+38. Knowing that the course of our conduct, is subject to the destiny
+appointed by the Divine will, the wise never allow themselves to be
+subjected under the darkness of pride or passion, at our doings.
+
+39. That our duties only should be done at all times, is the rule laid
+down by the wise creator; and you cannot attempt to remove it by your
+subjection to ignorance and idleness.
+
+40. Where is that enlightened sight, that gravity and that patience of
+yours, that you grovel in this manner in the dark like the blind, and
+slide from the broad and beaten path laid open for every body? (This
+path is submission to what is destined by the Divine will, according to
+the common prayer: “Let not mine, but thy will be done”).
+
+41. 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!)
+
+42. You know that all living beings have two bodies here, of which one
+is known as the intellectual or spiritual body or mind.
+
+43. The other is the inert or corporeal frame, which is fragile and
+perishable. But the minute thing of the mind which lasts until its
+liberation, is what leads all to their good or evil desires.
+
+44. As the skilful charioteer guides his chariot with care, so is this
+body conducted by the intelligent mind, with equal attention and
+fondness.
+
+45. But the ignorant mind which is prone to evil, destroys the goodly
+body; as little children break their dolls of clay in sport.
+
+46. The mind is hence called the _purusha_ or regent of the body, and
+the working of the mind is taken for the act of the man. It is bound to
+the earth by its desires, and freed by its freedom from earthly
+attractions and expectations.
+
+47. That is called the mind which thinks in itself, “this is my body
+which is so situated here, and these are the members of my body and
+this my head.”
+
+48. The mind is called life, for its having the living principle in it;
+and the same is one and identic with the understanding. It becomes
+egoism by its consciousness, and so the same mind passes under various
+designations, according to its different functions.
+
+49. It has the name of the heart from the affections of the body, and
+so it takes many other names at will (according to its divers
+operations). But the earthly bodies are all perishable.
+
+50. When the mind receives the light of truth, it is called the
+enlightened intellect, which being freed from its thoughts relating to
+the body, is set to its supreme felicity.
+
+51. Thus the mind of your son, wandered from your presence, as you sat
+absorbed in meditation, to regions far and wide in the ways of its
+various desires. (_i.e._ His body was before thee, but his mind was led
+afar by its inward desires).
+
+52. He having left this body of his behind him, in the mountain cave of
+Mandara, fled to the celestial region, as a bird flies from his nest to
+the open air.
+
+53. This mind got into the city of the tutelar gods, and remained in a
+part of the garden of Eden (Nandana), in the happy groves of Mandara,
+and under the bower of _párijáta_ flowers.
+
+54. There he thought he passed a revolution of eight cycles of the four
+_yugas_, in company with _Viswáchí_ a beauteous Apsara damsel, unto
+whom he clung as the hexaped bee clings to the blooming lotus.
+
+55. But as his strong desire led him to the happy regions of his
+imagination, so he had his fall from them at the end of his desert,
+like the nightly dew falling from heaven.
+
+56. He faded away in his body and all his limbs, like a flower attached
+to the ear or head ornament; and fell down together with his beloved
+one, like the ripened fruits of trees.
+
+57. Being bereft of his aerial and celestial body, he passed through
+the atmospheric air, and was born again on earth in a human figure.
+
+58. He had become a Bráhman in the land of Dasárná, and then a king of
+the city of Kosala. He became a hunter in a great forest, and then a
+swan on the bank of Ganges.
+
+59. He became a king of the solar race, and then a rája of the Pundras,
+and afterwards a missionary among the Sauras and Sálwas. He next became
+a Vidyádhara, and lastly the son of a sage or _muni_.
+
+60. He had become a ruler in Madras, and then the son of a devotee,
+bearing the name of Vásudeva, and living on the bank of Samangá.
+
+61. Your son has also passed many other births, which he was led to by
+his desire; and he had likewise to undergo some _itara-janma_
+heterogeneous births in lower animals.
+
+62. He had repeatedly been a Kiráta—huntsman in the Vindhyá hills and
+at Kaikatav. He was a chieftain in Sauvíra, and had become an ass at
+Trigarta.
+
+63. He grew as a bamboo tree in the land of Keralas, and as a deer in
+the skirts of China. He became a serpent on a palm tree, and a cock on
+the tamála tree.
+
+64. This son of yours had been skilled in incantations—mantras, and
+propagated them in the land of Vidyádharas. (So called from their skill
+in enchantments).
+
+65. Then he became a Vidyádhara (Jadugar) or magician himself; and
+plied his jugglery of abstracting ornaments from the persons of females.
+
+66. He became a favourite of females, as the sun is dear to
+lotus-flowers; and being as handsome as Káma (Cupid) in his person, he
+become a favourite amongst Vidyádhara damsels in the land of Gandharvas.
+
+67. 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.
+
+68. Finding no other world nor body where he could enter (upon the
+extinction of the universe), his spirit roved about in the empty air,
+as a bird soars on high without its nest.
+
+69. After the lapse of a long time, as Brahmá awoke again from his long
+night of repose, and commenced anew his creation of the world in all
+its various forms:—
+
+70. The roving spirit of your son was led by its desire, as if it was
+propelled by a gust of wind, to become a Bráhman again, and to be
+reborn as such on this earth.
+
+71. He was born as the boy of a Bráhman, under the name of Vásudeva,
+and was taught in all the Srutis, among the intelligent and learned men
+of the place.
+
+72. It is in this _kalpa_ age that he has become a Vidyádhara again,
+and betaken himself to the performance of his devotion on the bank of
+Samangá, where he is sitting still in his yoga meditation.
+
+73. Thus his desire for the varieties of worldly appearances, has led
+him to various births, amidst the woods and forests in the womb of this
+earth, covered with jungles of the thorny khadira, karanja and other
+bushes and brambles.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XI.
+
+ CAUSE OF THE PRODUCTION OF THE WORLD.
+
+
+Argument. Yama’s narration of Sukra’s meditation, and his inclination
+to worldliness.
+
+
+Yama continued:—Your son is still engaged in his rigorous austerities
+on the bank of the rivulet, rolling with its loud waves on the beach,
+and the winds blowing and howling from all sides.
+
+2. He has been sitting still in his firm devotion, with matted braids
+of hair on his head; and beads of _rudráksha_ seeds in his hand; and
+controuling the members of his body from their going astray.
+
+3. If you wish, O venerable sage! to know the reveries in his mind, you
+shall have to open your intellectual eye, in order to pry into the
+thoughts of others.
+
+4. Vasishtha said:—Saying so, Yama the lord of world, who sees all at
+one view, made the Muni to dive into the thoughts of his son with his
+intellectual eye.
+
+5. The sage immediately saw by his percipience, all the excogitations
+of his son’s mind; as if they were reflected in the mirror of his own
+mind.
+
+6. Having seen the mind of his son in his own mind, the _muni_ returned
+from the bank of Samangá to his own body on mount Mandara, where it was
+left in its sitting posture, in the presence of Yama (during the
+wandering of his mind).
+
+7. Surprised at what he saw, the sage looked upon Yama with a smile;
+and dispassionate as he was, he spoke to the god in the following soft
+and dispassionate words.
+
+8. O god, that art the lord of the past and future! we are but ignorant
+striplings before thee; whose brilliant insight views at once, the
+three times presented before it.
+
+9. The knowledge of the existence of the world, whether it is a real
+entity or not, is the source of all errors of the wisest of men, by its
+varying forms and fluctuations.
+
+10. It is thou, O potent god! that knowest what is inside this world;
+while to us it presents its outward figure, in the shape of a magic
+scene only.
+
+11. I knew very well, that my son is not subject to death; and
+therefore I was struck with wonder, to behold him lying as a dead body.
+
+12. Thinking the imperishable soul of my son, to be snatched by death;
+I was led to the vile desire, of cursing thee on his untimely demise.
+
+13. For though we know the course of things in the world; yet we are
+subjected to the impulses of joy and grief, owing to the casualties of
+prosperity and adversity.
+
+14. Moreover, to be angry with wrong doers, and to be pleased with
+those that act rightly, have become the general rule in the course of
+the world.
+
+15. So long do we labour under the sense of what is our duty, and what
+we must refrain from, as we are subject to the error of the reality of
+the world; but deliverance from this error, removes all such
+responsibilities from us.
+
+16. When we fret at death, without understanding its intention (that it
+is intended only for our good); we are of course blamable for it.
+
+17. I am now made to be acquainted by thee, regarding the thoughts of
+my son; and am enabled also to see the whole scene on the bank of
+Samangá (by thy favour).
+
+18. Of the two bodies of men, the mind alone is ubiquitous, and leader
+of the outer body of animated beings. The mind therefore is the true
+body, which reflects and makes us conscious of the existence of
+ourselves, as also of the exterior world.
+
+19. Yama replied:—You have rightly said, O Bráhman! that the mind is
+the true body of man. It is the mind that moulds the body according to
+its will, as the potter makes the pot _ad libitum_ (_ex suo moto_).
+
+20. It frames a form and gives a feature to the person, that it had not
+before; and destroys one in existence in a moment. It is the
+imagination that gives an image to airy nothing, as children see ghosts
+before them in the dark. (The mind changes the features of the face and
+body, and views things according to its own fancy).
+
+21. Its power to create apparent realities out of absolute unreality,
+is well known to every body, in his dream and delirium, in his
+misconceptions and fallacies and all kinds of error; as the sight of
+magic cities and talismans.
+
+22. It is from reliance in visual sight, that men consider it as the
+principal body, and conceive the mind as a secondary or supplementary
+part.
+
+23. It was the (Divine) mind, that formed the world from its thought;
+wherefore the phenomenal is neither a substance by itself (as it
+subsists in the mind); nor is it nothing (being in existence in us).
+Gloss. It is therefore undefinable—_anirvachaníya_.
+
+24. The mind is part of the body, and spreads itself in its thoughts
+and desires into many forms; as the branch of a tree shoots forth in
+its blossoms and leaves. And as we see two moons by optical deception,
+so does one mind appear as many in many individuals (and as different
+in different persons).
+
+25. It is from the variety of its desires, that the mind perceives and
+produces varieties of things, as pots and pictures and the
+like—_ghatapatádi_. (Hence the mind is the maker of all things).
+
+26. The same mind thinks itself as many by the diversity of its
+thoughts; such as:—“I am weak, I am poor, I am ignorant and the like;”
+(all which serve to liken the mind to the object constantly thought
+upon).
+
+27. The thought, that I am none of the fancied forms which I feign to
+myself, but of that form from whence I am, causes the mind to be one
+with the everlasting Brahma, by divesting it of the thoughts of all
+other things.
+
+28. All things springing from Brahma, sink at last in him; as the huge
+waves of the wide and billowy ocean, rise but to subside in its calm
+and undisturbed waters below.
+
+29. They sink in the Supreme Spirit, resembling one vast body of pure
+and transparent, cold and sweet water; and like a vast mine of
+brilliant gems of unfailing effulgence.
+
+30. One thinking himself as a little billow, diminishes his soul to
+littleness. (He who bemeans himself, becomes mean).
+
+31. But one believing himself as a large wave, enlarges his spirit to
+greatness. (Nobleness of mind, ennobles a man).
+
+32. He who thinks himself as a little being, and fallen from above to
+suffer in the nether world; is born upon earth in the form he took for
+his pattern.
+
+33. But he who thinks himself to be born to greatness, and rises
+betimes by his energy; becomes as big as a hill, and shines with the
+lustre of rich gems growing upon it.
+
+34. He rests in peace, who thinks himself to be situated in the cooling
+orb of the moon; otherwise the body is consumed with cares; as a tree
+on the bank is burnt down by a conflagration.
+
+35. Others like forest trees are fixed and silent, and shudder for fear
+of being burnt down by the wild fire of the world; though they are
+situated at ease, as beside the running streams of limpid water, and as
+high as on mountain tops of inaccessible height.
+
+36. Those who think themselves to be surrounded by worldly affairs; are
+as wide-stretching trees, awaiting their fall by impending blasts of
+wind.
+
+37. Those who wail aloud for being broken to pieces under the pressure
+of their misery; are like the noisy waves of the sea, breaking against
+the shore and shedding their tears in the form of the watery spray.
+
+38. But the waves are not of one kind, nor are they altogether entities
+or nullities in nature; they are neither small or large nor high or
+low, nor do these qualities abide in them.
+
+39. The waves do not abide in the sea, nor are they without the sea or
+the sea without them: they are of the nature of desires in the soul,
+rising and setting at their own accord.
+
+40. The dead are undying, (because they die to be born again), and the
+living are not living, (because they live but to die at last). Thus is
+the law of their mutual succession which nothing can forefend or alter.
+
+41. As water is universally the same and transparent in its nature, so
+is the all pervading spirit of God, pure and holy in every place.
+
+42. It is this one and self-same spirit which is the body of God, that
+is called the transparent Brahma. It is omnipotent and everlasting, and
+constitutes the whole world appearing as distinct from it.
+
+43. The many wonderful powers that it contains, are all active in their
+various ways. The several powers productive of several ends, are all
+contained in that same body. All the natural and material forces, have
+the Divine spirit for their focus.
+
+44. Brahmá was produced in Brahma as the billow is produced in the
+water, and the male and female are produced from the neuter Brahma,
+changed to and forming both of them.
+
+45. That which is called the world, is only an attribute of Brahmá; and
+there is not the slightest difference between Brahmá and the world.
+(The one being a fac-simile of the original Mind).
+
+46. Verily this plenitude is Brahma, and the world is no other than
+Brahma himself. Think intently upon this truth and shun all other false
+beliefs (of the creator and created, and the like).
+
+47. There is one eternal law, that presides over all things, and this
+one law branches forth into many, bringing forth a hundred varieties of
+effects. The world is a congeries of laws, which are but manifestations
+of the Almighty power and omniscience. (Therefore says the psalmist:
+“Blessed is he, who meditates on his laws day and night”—_O bhi Turat
+Jehovah hefzo yomam olaila_).
+
+48. Both the inert and active (matter and life), proceed from the same;
+and the mind proceeds from the intellect—chit of God. The various
+desires are evolved by the power of the mind, from their exact
+prototypes in the Supreme soul.
+
+49. It is Brahmá therefore, O sinless Ráma! that manifests itself in
+the visible world; and is full with various forms, as the sea with all
+its billows and surges.
+
+50. It assumes to itself all varieties of forms by its volition of
+evolution or the will of becoming many; and it is the spirit that
+displays itself in itself and by itself (of its own causality); as the
+sea water displays its waves in its own water and by itself.
+
+51. As the various waves are no other than the sea water, so all these
+phenomena are not different from the essence of the lord of the world.
+
+52. As the same seed developes itself in the various forms of its
+branches and buds, its twigs and leaves, and its fruits and flowers; so
+the same almighty seed evolves itself in the multifarious varieties of
+creation.
+
+53. As the strong sun light, displays itself in variegated colours in
+different bodies; so does Omnipotence, display itself in various vivid
+colours, all of which are unreal shades. (_Urdu: O leken chamakta hai
+har rang men._—It is His light, that shines in all colours).
+
+54. As the colourless cloud receives in its bosom, the variety of
+transient hues displayed in the rainbow; so the inscrutable spirit of
+the Almighty, reflects and refracts the various colours displayed in
+creation. (Shines in the stars, glows in the sun &c. Pope).
+
+55. From the active agent, proceed the inert matter and inactivity
+without a secondary cause; as the active spider produces the passive
+thread, and the living man brings upon him, his dull torpor in sleep.
+(So the active spirit of God, brings forth _inertia_ and inactive
+matter, out of itself into being. The laws of statics as well as
+dynamics both subsist in the energy of the spirit).
+
+56. Again the Lord makes the mind to produce matter for its own bondage
+only; as he makes the silkworm weave its own sheathing for its
+confinements alone. (So the mind maketh its material equipage, for its
+own imprisonment in the world).
+
+57. The mind forgets its spiritual nature of its own will; and makes
+for itself a strong prison house (of its earthly possessions), as the
+silkworm weaves its own coating.
+
+58. But when the mind inclines to think of its spiritual nature by its
+own free will; it gets its release from the prison-house of the body
+and bondage in the world; as a bird or beast is released from its cage,
+and the big elephant let loose from his fetters and the tying post.
+
+59. The mind gradually moulds itself into the form, which it constantly
+thinks upon in itself; and it derives from within itself, the power to
+be what it wishes to become. (Constant thought brings about its end.
+_Yádrisí bhávaná yasya_ &c.).
+
+60. The long sought power when acquired, becomes as familiar to the
+soul, as the dark clouds are attendant upon the sky in the rainy-season.
+
+61. The newly obtained power is assimilated with its recipient, as the
+virtue of every season is manifested in its effect upon the trees,
+(_i.e._ in the season fruits and flowers).
+
+62. There is no bondage nor liberation of human soul, nor of the Divine
+Spirit. We cannot account for the use of these words among mankind.
+(These terms apply to the mind which is bound and freed, and not to the
+soul which is ever free).
+
+63. There is no liberation nor bondage of the soul, which is the same
+with the Divine. It is this delusive world which shows the immortal
+soul under the veil of mortality, or as eclipsed by and under the
+shadow of temporary affairs.
+
+64. It is the unsteady mind, which has enwrapped the steady soul, under
+the sheath of error; as the coverlet of the silkworm, covers the
+dormant worm.
+
+65. All other bondages which bind the embodied soul to earth, are the
+works of the mind, which is the root of all worldly ties and affections.
+
+66. All human affections and attachments to the visible world, are born
+in and remain in the mind; although they are as distinct from it, as
+the waves of the sea or as the beams of the moon; are produced from and
+contained in their receptacles.
+
+67. It is the Supreme spirit, which is stretched out as one universal
+ocean, agitated into myriads of its waves and billows. The Intellect
+itself is spread out as the water of the universal ocean, containing
+everything that is aqueous and terrene in its infinite bosom.
+
+68. All those that appear as Brahmá, Vishnu and Rudras, as also they
+that have become as gods, and those that are called men and male
+creatures:—
+
+68.—(1). Are all as the waves of the sea, raised spontaneously by the
+underlying spirit; and so are Yama, Indra, the sun, fire, Cuvera and
+the other deities.
+
+68.—(2). So too are the Gandharvas and Kinnaras, the Vidyádharas and
+the other gods and demigods, that rise and fall or remain for a while
+like the breakers of the sea.
+
+68.—(3). They rise and fall as waves on every side, though some
+continue for a longer duration, as the lotus-born Brahmá and others.
+
+68.—(4). Some are born to die in a moment, as the petty gods and men;
+and others are dead no sooner they are born as the ephemerids and some
+worms.
+
+69. Worms and insects, gnats and flies and serpents and huge snakes,
+rise in the great ocean of the Divine Spirit, like drops of water
+scattered about by waves of the sea.
+
+70. There are other moving animals as men and deer, vultures and
+jackals, which are produced on land and mountains, in woods and forests
+and in marshy grounds.
+
+71. Some are long lived and others living for a short duration; some
+living with higher aims and ambitions, and others with no other care
+than that of their contemptible bodies, or self-preservation only.
+
+72. Some think of their stability in this world of dreams, and others
+are betrayed by their false hope of the stability of worldly affairs,
+which are quite unstable. (So in Persian _Daregá jehán rá baquina
+didam_).
+
+73. Some that are subjected to penury and poverty, have little to
+effect in their lives; and always torment themselves with the thoughts,
+that they are poor and miserable, weak and ignorant.
+
+74. Some are born as trees, and others have become as gods and
+demigods; and while some are furnished with moving bodies, others are
+dissolved as water in the sea.
+
+75. Some are no less durable than many _kalpas_ (as the land and sea
+and mountains &c.); and others return to the Supreme Spirit, by the
+moonlike purity of their souls. All things have risen from the
+oceanlike Spirit of Brahma, like its moving undulations. It is the
+intellectual consciousness of every body that is termed his mind.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XII.
+
+ DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE GENESIS OF THE WORLD.
+
+
+Argument. Confutation of the instance of the sea and its fluctuation,
+with regard to the immutable spirit of God; and resolution of the
+phenomenal world, to our erroneous conception, and visual deception.
+
+
+Yama said:—The consciousness of gods, demigods and men as distinct
+beings, is quite wrong, since they are no way distinct from the
+infinite ocean of Divine Spirit, of which they are all as undulations.
+
+2. It is owing to our erroneous conceptions that we make these
+distinctions in ourselves and the Supreme Soul. The thought of our
+being separate and apart from the Supreme spirit, is the cause of our
+degradation from our pristine holiness and the image of God, in which
+man was made at first and was infused with his holy spirit.
+
+3. Remaining within the depth of the Divine Spirit, and yet thinking
+ourselves to live without it, is the cause of keeping us in darkness on
+the surface of the earth.
+
+4. Our consciousness of ourselves as Brahmá, being vitiated by the
+various thoughts in our minds, becomes the root of our activities;
+while the pure consciousness of ego sum—I am, is free from all actions
+and energies.
+
+5. It is the inward desire of the heart and mind, that becomes the seed
+of earthly actions; which sprouts forth in thorny plants like the
+karanja, a handful of which fills the ground with rankest weeds.
+
+6. Those living bodies, that lie scattered as pebbles on earth; are
+seen to roll about or lie down with their temporary joy and grief in
+continued succession, owing to their ignorance of themselves.
+
+7. From the highest empyrean of Brahmá, down to the lowest deep, there
+is an incessant undulation of the Divine spirit, like the oscillation
+of the wind; which keeps all beings in their successive wailing and
+rejoicing, and in their incessant births and deaths.
+
+8. There are some of pure and enlightened souls, as the gods Hari, Hara
+and others; and some of somewhat darkened understandings, as men and
+the inferior demigods.
+
+9. Some are placed in greater darkness, as the worms and insects; and
+others are situated in utter darkness, as the trees and vegetables.
+
+10. Some grow afar from the great ocean of the Divine Spirit; as the
+grass and weeds of the earth, which are ever degraded, owing to their
+being the emblems of sin; and others are barred from elevation as dull
+stones and heinous snakes.
+
+11. Some have come to being only with their bodies, (without any share
+of understanding); and they know not that death has been undermining
+the fabric of their bodies, as a mouse burrows a house.
+
+12. Some have gone through the ocean of Divine knowledge, and have
+become as divinities, in their living bodies as Brahmá, Hari, and Hara.
+(The gods like angels are embodied beings in which form, they are
+worshipped by their votaries. It is wrong therefore for the Kesavite
+Brahmos, to call the formless Brahma as Hari, who had a visible body
+according to our text).
+
+13. Some having a little understanding, have gone down the depth of
+holy knowledge, without ever reaching the bottom, or finding its either
+shore.
+
+14. Some beings that have undergone many births, and have yet to pass
+through many more, have ever remained abortive and benighted without
+the light of truth.
+
+15. Some are tossed up and down, like fruits flung from the hand: those
+flying upward have gone higher still; and those going down have fallen
+still lower and lower. (None can know the highest pitch or lowest depth
+of existence?).
+
+16. It is forgetfulness of Supreme felicity, that causes one to rove in
+various births of weal or woe; but the knowledge of the Supreme, causes
+the cessation of transmigration; as the remembrance of Garuda, destroys
+the power of the most destructive poison.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ CONSOLATION OF BHRIGU.
+
+
+Argument. Bhrigu being acquainted with the powers of the mind and
+Death, rose to repair to the spot where the body of Sukra was lying.
+
+
+Yama said:—Among these various species of living creatures, which
+resemble the waves of the ocean, and are as numerous as the plants and
+creepers of spring:—
+
+2. There are some persons among the Yakshas, Gandharvas and Kinnaras,
+who have overcome the errors of their minds, and have well considered
+every thing before and after them; that have become perfect in their
+lives, and passing as the living liberated persons in this world.
+
+3. Others there are among the moving and unmoving, that are as
+unconscious of themselves as wood and stone; and many that are worn out
+with error, and are incapable of judging for themselves. (Worn out with
+error, means hardened in their ignorance).
+
+4. But those that are awakened to sense, have the rich mine of the
+sástras, framed by the enlightened, for the guidance of their souls.
+(Hence it is for the sensible only to benefit themselves by learning).
+
+5. Those who are awakened to sense, and whose sins are washed off; have
+their understandings purified by the light of the sástras. (Lit., by
+investigation into the sástras).
+
+6. The study of good works, destroys the errors of the mind; as the
+course of the sun in the sky, destroys the darkness of the night.
+
+7. Those who have not succeeded to dispel the errors of their minds,
+have darkened their understandings by a mist of ignorance; like the
+frosty sky of winter, and they find the phantoms of their error,
+dancing as demons before their eyes.
+
+8. All living bodies are subject to pain and pleasure; but it is the
+mind which constitutes the body, and not the flesh (which is insensible
+of either).
+
+9. The body that is seen to be composed of flesh and bones and the five
+elemental parts, is a creation of the imagination of the mind, and has
+no substantiality in it.
+
+10. What your son had thought of in his mental body (mánas-saríra), the
+same he found in the same body; and was not accountable to any body for
+aught or whatever passed in his mind. (We are responsible for every act
+of the body; but not so for the thoughts or reveries of the mind).
+
+11. Whatever acts a man wills to do in his own mind, the same comes to
+take place in a short time; and there is no other (foreign) agency of
+anybody else required to bring them about.
+
+12. Whatever the mind doth in a moment and of its own accord, and
+actuated by its own will or desire, there is no body in the world, who
+has the power to do or undo the same at any time. (The mind is master
+of the act, and not the body, nor any body besides. Or; whatever the
+mind sets about to do, it does it sooner than by the help of another).
+
+13. The suffering of hell torments and enjoyment of heavenly bliss, and
+the thoughts of birth and death; are all fabrications of the mind;
+which labours under these thoughts. (It is the mind that makes a heaven
+of hell and a hell of heaven).
+
+14. What need I to tell more in the manner of verbose writers (on this
+subject), than go together at once, to the place where your son is
+situated.
+
+15. He (Sukra) having tasted the pleasure and pain of all these states
+at a moment’s thought of his mind, is now seated as a devotee on the
+bank of Samangá, under the spreading beams of the moon. (The Gloss
+speaks here of Sukra’s passing into many births, before his betaking
+himself to devotion).
+
+16. His vital breath having fled from his heart, became as the moonbeam
+sparkling in a dew drop, which entered the uterus in the form of _semen
+virilis_.
+
+17. 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.
+
+18. O wonderful is the law of nature! said Bhrigu slowly to himself,
+and then rose higher and higher, as the sun ascends above his rising
+mountain.
+
+19. With their luminous bodies, they arrived at the spot of Samangá,
+and shone on high above the tamála trees below. Their simultaneous
+rising in the clear firmament, made them appear as the sun rising with
+the full-moon over the cloudy horizon.
+
+20. Válmíki said:—As the _muni_ (Vasishtha) was telling these things,
+the sun went down his setting mountain, and the day departed to its
+evening service. The court broke with mutual salutations, to perform
+their evening rites and observances, after which they joined the
+assembly at the dawn of the next day.[1]
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+
+ SUKRA’S REMINISCENCE OF HIS METEMPSYCHOSIS.
+
+
+Argument. Bhrigu and Yama’s Expostulation with Sukra, and desiring him
+to return to his former state.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Now as Yama and Bhrigu departed from the cavern of the
+Mandara mountain, and proceeded towards the bank of Samangá river:—
+
+2. They beheld upon their descending from the mountain, a great light
+below; proceeding from the bodies of the celestials, sleeping in the
+arbours of aureate creepers.
+
+3. The birds were sporting in their sprays, formed by the cradling
+creepers under the canopy of heaven; and the lovely antelopes looking
+face to face, with their eyes resembling the blue-lotuses.
+
+4. They beheld the Siddhas, sitting on their stony seats upon the
+elevated rocks; with their bodies full of vigour, and their eyes
+looking on the spheres with defiance.
+
+5. They saw the lords of the elephantine tribe, with their big trunks
+as large as the palm trees, and plunging in the lakes covered with
+flowers, falling incessantly from the beachening boughs, and branches
+of flowering trees.
+
+6. They saw the mountain bulls (Bos guavus) dozing in their giddiness,
+and sitting as ebriety in person; while their bodies were reddened by
+the red dust of flowers, and their tails flushed with the crimson
+farina blown by the breeze.
+
+7. There were the brisk and beautiful _chowri_ deer serving as flappers
+of the mountain king, and dousing in the pools filled with falling
+flowers.
+
+8. They saw the Kinnara lads sitting on the tops of straight and
+stately date trees, and sporting with pelting the date fruits upon one
+another, which stuck to the reeds below as their fruits.
+
+9. They beheld big monkeys, jumping about with their hideous reddish
+cheeks, and hiding themselves in the coverts of widespreading creepers.
+
+10. They saw the Siddhas, to be hit by the celestial damsels with
+blossoms of mandara flowers, and clad with vests of the tawny clouds by
+which they were shrouded.
+
+11. The uninhabited skirts of the mountain, were as the solitary walks
+of Buddhist vagrants; and the rivulets at its foot, were gliding with
+their currents covered under the _kunda_ and _mandara_ flowers, as if
+they were running to meet the sea, mantled in their yellow vests of the
+spring season.
+
+(It is well known that the vernal vesture of damsels, is of the yellow
+colour of the farina of flowers, and the rivulets are poetically
+figured as females hastening towards their lord the sea
+(saritám-pathih)).
+
+12. The trees decorated with wreaths of flowers, and shaken by the
+breeze, seemed as bacchanals giddy with the honey of the flowers, and
+rolling their dizzy eyes formed of the fluttering bees.
+
+13. They walked about here and there, and looked at and admired the
+grandeur of the mountain, till at last they alighted on the nether
+earth, decorated with its cities and human habitations.
+
+14. They arrived in a moment at the bank of Samangá, flowing with the
+loosened flowers of all kinds, as if it were a bed of flowers by itself.
+
+15. Bhrigu beheld his son on one of its banks, with his body changed to
+another form, and his features quite altered from his former state.
+
+16. His limbs were stiff, and his sense at a stand still, as he sat
+with his mind fixed on steady meditation. He seemed to be long at rest,
+in order to get his rest from the turmoils of the world.
+
+17. He thought upon the course of the currents of the world, which are
+continually gliding with successive joy and sorrow to man, who gets rid
+of them after his long trial.
+
+18. He became motionless as a wheel, after its long winded motion; and
+found his rest after his prolonged whirling, in the whirlpool of the
+ocean of the world.
+
+19. He sat retired as a lover, solely reclined on the thought of his
+beloved object in his retirement; and his mind was at rest, after its
+long wanderings.
+
+20. He sat in a state of uniform meditation, without a shadow of
+biplicity in it; and was smiling with a cold apathy at all the pursuits
+of mankind.
+
+21. Liberated from all concerns, and released from the enjoyments of
+life, and disenthralled from the snare of desires and fancies, he
+rested in the supreme bliss of the soul.
+
+22. His soul was at rest, in the everlasting rest of God; as the pure
+crystal catches the colour of the gem, which is contiguous to it.
+
+23. Bhrigu beheld his son in the calmly composed and awakened state of
+his mind, and freed alike both from his thoughts of what was desirable,
+as also from his hatred against what was disgusting. (God is said to be
+eternally at rest the six days creation, but an act of his Mind, Will,
+Word, Fiat, Logos or Brahmá).
+
+24. Yama seeing the son of Bhrigu, said to the father in a voice,
+hoarse as the sounding sea. ‘Lo there thy son.’
+
+25. “Awake”, said he to Bhárgava, which startled him from his
+meditation, as the roaring of a cloud, rouses the slumbering peacock
+from his summer sleep.
+
+26. Upon opening and lifting up his eyes, he beheld the god standing
+with his father on one side, who being pleased at his sight, glowed in
+their countenances like the disks of the sun and moon.
+
+27. He rose from his seat of Kadamba leaves, and made his obeisance to
+them, who appeared to have come to him like the gods Hari and Hara in
+the disguise of a couple of Bráhmans.
+
+28. After their mutual salutations, they were seated on a slab of
+stone, and appeared as the venerable gods Vishnu and Siva, were seated
+on the pinnacle of Meru.
+
+29. The Bráhman boy, having ended the muttering of his mantras on the
+bank of Samangá, accosted them with a voice distilling as the sweet
+nectarine juice of ambrosia _amrita_ or water of life (_aqua-vitae_ or
+_abi haiyát_).
+
+30. “I am emancipated, my lords, at your sight this day (from all
+earthly cares), as you have blessed me by your sights, resembling those
+of the sun and moon, appearing together to view.” (Lit. as the orbs of
+the cooling and dazzling beams. (_himánsu and ushnánsu_)).
+
+31. The darkness, which reigned in my mind, and which no light of the
+sástras or spiritual or temporal knowledge, nor even my austerities
+could remove, is dispelled today by the light of your presence.
+
+32. A kind look of the great, gives as much joy to the mind, as
+draughts of pure ambrosia, serve to satisfy the heart.
+
+33. Tell me who are you, whose feet have sanctified this place; as the
+glorious orbs of the day and night, enlighten the firmament.
+
+34. Being addressed in this manner, Bhrigu desired him to remember his
+prior births, which he could well do, by his enlightened understanding.
+
+35. Bhrigu made him acquainted with the state of his former birth, and
+he remembered it instantly by the clairvoyance of his inward sight.
+
+36. He was struck with wonder at the remembrance of his former state,
+and smiled with a joyous face and gladsome heart, to ponder on what he
+had been; and then uttered as follows.
+
+37. Blessed is the law of the Supreme Being, which is without its
+beginning or end, and is known as destiny here below; and by whose
+power the world is revolving as a curricle.
+
+38. I see my countless and unknown births, and the innumerable
+accidents to which they were subject, for the period of a whole kalpa
+or duration of the world from first to last. (The Soul being immortal,
+has to pass into infinite births under various shapes and forms of
+bodies. If it were to lie dormant in the grave for ever what is the
+good of its being made or created to be immortal?)
+
+39. I have undergone great hardships, and known prosperity also with
+the toil of earning; have had my wanderings also in different lives,
+and remember to have roamed for a long time, over the mountainous
+regions of Meru.
+
+40. I drank the water reddened with the pollen of mandara flowers, and
+roved along the bank of the heavenly stream of Mandákiní filled with
+lotuses.
+
+41. I wandered about the Mandara groves, filled with flowering creepers
+like gold, and under the shade of the kalpa arbors of Meru, and in the
+flowery plains above and about it.
+
+42. There is naught of good or evil, which I have not tasted or felt or
+done myself; nor is there anything, which I have not seen and felt and
+known in my past lives.
+
+43. I have now known the knowable (that is to be known), and seen the
+imperishable one in whom I have my repose. I have now rested after my
+toils were over, and have passed beyond the domain of error and
+darkness.
+
+44. Now rise, O father! and let us go to see that body, lying on the
+Mandara mount, and which is now dried as a withered plant.
+
+45. I have no desire to remain in this place, nor go anywhere of my own
+will; it is only to see the works of fate, that we wander all about.
+
+46. I will follow you, with my firm belief in the one adored Deity of
+the learned. Let that be the desirable object of my mind, and I will
+act exactly in conformity with my belief.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XV.
+
+ LAMENTATION AND EXPOSTULATION OF SUKRA.
+
+
+Argument. Sukra laments on seeing his former body, and his consolation
+at its ultimate anaesthesia.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Thus contemplating on the course of nature, these
+philomaths moved with their spiritual bodies, from the bank of Samangá
+(towards the Mandara mountain).
+
+2. They ascended to the sky, and passed through the pores of the clouds
+to the region of the Siddhas; whence they descended to the lower world,
+and arrived at the valley of Mandara.
+
+3. There Sukra saw on a cliff of that mountain, the dried body of his
+former birth, lying covered under the dark and dewy leaves of trees.
+
+4. He said, here is that shriveled body, O father! which thou hadst
+nourished with many a dainty food before.
+
+5. There is that body of mine, which was so fondly anointed with
+camphor, agallochum and sandal paste, by my wet-nurse before.
+
+6. This is that body of mine, which was used to repose on the cooling
+beds, made with heaps of mandara flowers, in the airy spots of Meru.
+
+7. This is that body of mine, which was so fondly caressed by heavenly
+dames of yore, and which is now lying, to be bitten by creeping insects
+and worms, on the bare ground below.
+
+8. This is that body of mine, which was wont of yore to ramble in the
+parterres of sandalwood; now lying a dried skeleton on the naked spot.
+
+9. This is that body of mine, now lying impassive of the feelings of
+delight in the company of heavenly nymphs, and withering away
+unconscious of the actions and passions of its mind.
+
+10. Ah my pitiable body! how dost thou rest here in peace, forgetful of
+thy former delights in the different stages of life; and insensible of
+the thoughts of thy past enjoyments and amusements of yore.
+
+11. O my body! that hast become a dead corpse and dried by sun-beams;
+thou art now become so hideous in thy frame of the skeleton, as to
+frighten me at this change of thy form.
+
+12. I take fright to look upon this body, in which I had taken so much
+pleasure before, and which is now reduced to a skeleton.
+
+13. I see the ants now creeping over that breast of mine, which was
+formerly adorned with necklaces studded with starry gems.
+
+14. Look at the remains of my body, whose appearance of molten gold,
+attracted the hearts of beauteous dames, bearing now a load of dry
+bones only.
+
+15. Behold the stags of the forest flying with fear, at the sight of
+the wide open jaws, and withered skin of my carcass; which with its
+horrid mouth, frightens the timid fawns in the woods.
+
+16. I see the cavity of the belly of the withered corpse, is filled
+with sun shine, as the mind of man is enlightened by knowledge.
+
+17. This dried body of mine, lying flat on the mountain stone,
+resembles the mind of the wise, abased at the sense of its own
+unworthiness.
+
+18. It seems to be emaciating itself like an ascetic, in his supine
+hypnotism on the mountain, dead to the perceptions of colour and sound,
+and of touch and taste, and freed from all its desires and passions.
+
+19. It is freed from the demon of the mind (mental activity), and is
+resting in its felicity without any apprehension of the vicissitudes of
+fate and fortune, or fear of fall.
+
+20. The felicity which attends on the body, upon the calmness of the
+demon of the mind; is not to be had, from possession of the vast
+dominion of the world.
+
+21. See how happily this body is sleeping in this forest, by being
+freed from all its doubts and desires in the world; and by its being
+liberated from the net work of its fancies.
+
+22. The body is disturbed and troubled like a tall tree, by the
+restlessness of the apish mind; and it is hurled down by its excitation
+like a tree uprooted from its bottom.
+
+23. This body being set free from the impulses of the mischievous mind,
+is sleeping in its highest and perfect felicity, and is quite released
+from the jarring broils of the world, clashing like the mingled
+roarings of lions and elephants in their mutual conflict.
+
+24. Every desire is a fever in the bosom, and the group of our errors
+is as the mist of autumn; and there is no release of mankind from
+these, save by the impassionateness of their minds.
+
+25. They have gone over the bounds of worldly enjoyments, who have had
+the high-mindedness, to lay hold on the tranquility of their minds.
+
+26. It is by my good fortune, that I came to find this body of mine,
+resting in these woods without its troublesome mind; and freed from all
+its tribulations and feverish anxieties.
+
+27. Ráma said:—Venerable Sir, that art versed in all knowledge, you
+have already related of Sukra’s passing through many births in
+different shapes; and feeling all their casualties of good and evil.
+
+28. How was it then that he regretted so much for his body begotten by
+Bhrigu; in disregard of all his other bodies; and the pains and
+pleasures which attended upon them?
+
+29. Vasishtha answered:—Ráma! the other bodies of Sukra were merely the
+creations of his imagination; but that of Bhárgava or as the son of
+Bhrigu, was the actual one, as produced by the merit of his pristine
+acts. (Here the gloss is too verbose on the theory of metempsychosis;
+but the literal meaning of the couplet is what is given above).
+
+30. This was the first body with which he was born by the will of his
+Maker, being first formed in the form of subtile air, and then changed
+into the shape of wind.
+
+31. This wind entered into heart of Bhrigu in a flux of the vital and
+circulating breaths, and being joined in time with the semen, formed
+the germ of Sukra’s body. (So called from the seed—sukra).
+
+32. The person of Sukra, received the Bráhmanical sacraments, and
+became an associate of the father; till at last it was reduced to the
+form of a skeleton in course of a long time.
+
+33. Because this was the first body which Sukra had obtained from
+Brahmá the creator, it was on this account that he lamented so much for
+it. (Sukra the son of Bhrigu, was the grandson of Manu—the first human
+being, after creation of the world called kalpárambha).
+
+34. Though impassionate and devoid of desire as Sukra was, yet he
+sorrowed for his body, according to the nature of all being born of
+flesh (dehaja). (All flesh is subject to sorrow).
+
+35. This is the way of all flesh, whether it be the body of a wise or
+unwise man (to mourn for its loss). This is usual custom of the
+world, whether the person was mighty or not.
+
+36. They who are acquainted with the course of nature, as also those
+that are ignorant of it as brutes and beasts; are all subject to the
+course of the world, as if they are bound in the net of fate and liable
+to grief and sorrow. (It is not the greatness of a great mind, to be
+insensible of the tender feelings of his nature, but to keep his joys
+and sorrows under proper bounds).
+
+37. The wise as well as the unwise, are on an equal footing with
+respect to their nature and custom. It is only the difference in desire
+that distinguishes the one from the other, as it is the privation of or
+bondage to desires, that is the cause of their liberation or
+enthralment in this world. It is also the great aim that distinguishes
+the great, from the mean-mindedness of the base.
+
+38. As long as there is the body, so long is there the feeling of
+pleasure in pleasure and that of pain in pain. But the mind which is
+unattached to and unaffected by them, feigns to itself the show of
+wisdom. (Unfeelingness is a mere show and not reality).
+
+39. Even great souls are seen to feel happy in pleasure and become
+sorrowful in matters of pain; and show themselves as the wise in their
+outward circumstances.
+
+40. The shadow of the sun, is seen to shake in the water, but not so
+the fixed sun himself; so the wise are moved in worldly matters, though
+they are firm in their faith in God.
+
+41. As the unmoved and fixed sun, seems to move in his shadow on the
+wave, so the wiseman who has got rid of his worldly concerns, still
+behaves himself like the unwise in it.
+
+42. He is free who has the freedom of his mind, although his body is
+enthraled in bondage; but he labours in bondage whose mind is
+bethraled by error, though he is free in his body. (True liberty
+consists in moral and not in bodily freedom).
+
+43. The causes of happiness and misery as also those of liberty and
+bondage, are the feelings of the mind; as the sun-beams and flame of
+fire, are the causes of light.
+
+44. Therefore conform thyself with the custom of the society in thy
+outward conduct; but remain indifferent to all worldly concerns in thy
+inward mind.
+
+45. Remain true to thyself, by giving up thy concerns in the world; but
+continue to discharge all thy duties in this world by the acts of thy
+body. (Keep your soul to yourself, but devote your body to the service
+of the world).
+
+46. Take care of the inward sorrows and bodily diseases, and the
+dangerous whirlpools and pitfals in the course of thy life; and do not
+fall into the blackhole of selfishness (meitatem), which gives the
+soul its greatest anguish.
+
+47. Mind, O lotus-eyed Ráma, that you mix with nothing, nor let
+anything to mix with you; but be of a purely enlightened nature, and
+rest content in thy inward soul.
+
+48. Think in thyself the pure and holy spirit of Brahmá, the universal
+soul and maker of all, the tranquil and increate All, and be happy for
+ever.
+
+49. If you can rescue yourself from the great gloom of egotism, and
+arrive at the state of pure indifference to all objects; you will
+certainly become great in your mind and soul, and be the object of
+universal veneration.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+
+ RESUSCITATION OF SUKRA.
+
+
+Argument. Sukra’s Revival at the word of Yama, and his becoming the
+preceptor of Daityas.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Then the god Yama, interrupted the long
+lamentation of Sukra, and addressed him in words, sounding as deep as
+the roaring of a cloud.
+
+2. Yama said:—Now, O Sukra! cast off thy body of the Samangá devotee,
+and enter this dead body in the manner of a prince entering his palace.
+
+3. Thou shalt perform austere devotion with this thy first born body,
+and obtain by virtue of that, the preceptorship of the Daitya tribe.
+
+4. Then at the end of the great kalpa, thou shalt have to shuffle off
+thy mortal coil for ever, as one casts off a faded flower.
+
+5. Having attained the state of living liberation, by merit of thy
+prior acts; thou shalt continue in the preceptorship of the leader of
+the great Asuras for ever.
+
+6. Fare you well, we shall now depart to our desired habitation; know
+for certain that there is nothing desirable to the mind, which it
+cannot accomplish (by perseverance).
+
+7. Saying so, the god vanished from before the weeping father and son,
+and moved amidst the burning sky, like the dispenser of light (sun).
+
+8. After the god had gone to the place of his destination, and gained
+his destined state among the gods, the Bhrigus remained to ruminate on
+the inexplicable and unalterable course of destiny (or divine
+ordinance).
+
+9. Sukra entered into his withered corpse, as the season of spring
+enters into a faded plant, in order to adorn it again with its vernal
+bloom, and its re-springing blossoms.
+
+10. His Bráhmanical body fell down immediately on the ground,
+staggering as when a tree is felled or falls down with its uprooted
+trunk; and it became disfigured in a moment in its face and limbs.
+
+11. The old sage Bhrigu finding the revivification of the dead body of
+his son, sanctified it with propitiatory mantras and sprinkling of
+water, from his sacerdotal water pot (kamandalu).
+
+12. The veins and arteries and all the cells and cavities of the dead
+body, were again supplied with their circulating blood; as the dry beds
+of rivers, are filled again with floods of water in the rainy weather.
+
+13. The body being filled with blood, gave the limbs to bloom; like the
+growth of lotuses in rainy lakes, and the bursting of new shoots and
+buds in vernal plants.
+
+14. Sukra then rose up from the ground, breathing the breath of life,
+like the cloud ascending to the sky by force of the winds.
+
+15. He bowed down to his father, standing in his holy figure before
+him; as the rising cloud clings to, and kisses the foot of the lofty
+mountain.
+
+16. The father then embraced the revived body of his son, and shed a
+flood of his affectionate tears upon him; as the high risen cloud
+washes the mountain top with showers.
+
+17. Bhrigu looked with affection on the new risen old body of his son;
+and smiled to see the resuscitation of the body that was begotten by
+him.
+
+18. He was pleased to know him as the son born of himself; and to find
+his features engrafted in him.
+
+19. Thus the son and sire graced each other by their company, as the
+sun and lotus-lake rejoice to see one another, after the shade of night.
+
+20. They rejoiced at their reunion, like the loving pair of swans at
+the end of the night of their separation; and as the joyous couple of
+peacocks, at the approach of the rainy clouds.
+
+21. The worthy sire and son, sat awhile on the spot, to halt after all
+their toils and troubles were at an end, and then they rose up to
+discharge the duties that were then at hand.
+
+22. They then set fire to the body of the Samangá Bráhman, and reduced
+it to ashes; for who is there among the earth-born mortals, that ought
+to set at naught aught of the customary usages of his country?
+
+23. Afterwards the two devotees Bhrigu and Bhárgava, continued to dwell
+in that forest, like the two luminaries—the sun and moon, in the region
+of the sky.
+
+24. They both continued as the living liberated guides of men, by their
+knowledge of all that was to be known; and preserving the equanimity of
+their minds, and the steadiness of their dispositions, amidst all the
+vicissitudes of time and place (and the changes of their fortune and
+circumstances).
+
+25. In course of time Sukra obtained the preceptorship of the demons,
+and Bhrigu remained in his patriarchal rank and authority among the
+sons of men (mánavas).
+
+26. Thus the son of Bhrigu, who was born as Sukra at first, was
+gradually led away from his holy state by his thought of the heavenly
+nymph, and subjected to various states of life to which he was prone
+(by the bent of his mind and inward proclivities).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+
+ ATTAINMENT OF THE IDEAL REALM.
+
+
+Argument. Mutual sympathy of pure hearted souls, the reciprocities of
+their affections, and their union with one another.
+
+
+Ráma said:—Tell me sir, why the ideal reflexion of others, is not
+attended with equal result, with that of the son of Bhrigu (though one
+is given to the like reveries as the other).
+
+2. Vasishtha replied:—The reason is, that the body of Sukra issued at
+first from the will of Brahmá, and was born of the pure family of
+Bhrigu, without being vitiated by any other birth (either prior to it
+or of a lower kind).
+
+3. The purity of mind which follows upon subsidence of desires, is
+called its coolness, and the same is known as the unsullied state of
+the soul. (Nirmalátmá).
+
+4. Whatever the man of a pure and contrite spirit, thinks in his mind,
+the same comes to take place immediately; as the turning of the sea
+water turns into the eddy. (Turning over in the mind, turns out into
+being).
+
+5. As the errors of various wanderings, occurred to the mind of Sukra;
+so it is with every body (from his observation of the world), as it is
+instanced in the case of Bhrigu’s son.
+
+6. As the serum contained in the seed, developes itself in the shoots
+and leaves; so the mind evolves in all the forms which are contained
+therein.
+
+7. Whatever forms of things are seen to exist in this world, are all
+false appearances; and so are their disappearances also, (mere
+creations of the mind).
+
+8. 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.
+
+9. As it is our notion of this part of the world, which presents its
+form to our view; so the appearance of thousands of such worlds in the
+mind, is mere ideal; and as false as the show of a magic-lantern.
+
+10. As the sights in our dream, and the images of our imagination, are
+never apart from our minds; and as they cannot show themselves to the
+view of others; such is our erroneous conception of the world (confined
+within ourselves).
+
+11. So are all places and things but imaginary ideas, and show
+themselves as real objects, to the purblind sight of the ignorant only.
+
+12. So also are the ghosts and goblins, demons and devils, but
+imaginary figures of the mind; born in the shallow brain of men, to
+terrify them with their hideous shapes.
+
+13. Thus have we all become, like the dreaming son of Bhrigu; to
+understand the false creations of our imagination, as sober realities.
+
+14. So the creation of the world, and all created things, are situated
+(pictured) in the mind of Brahmá; and make their repeated appearance,
+as the phantoms of a phantasmagoria before him.
+
+15. All things appearing unto us, are as false as these phantoms; and
+they proceed from the mind of Brahmá, as the varieties of trees and
+shrubs, are produced from the same sap of the vernal season. (The one
+is the source of many).
+
+16. Considering in a philosophical light (tatwadarsana), it will be
+found, that it is the will or desire of every body, which is productive
+of the objects of his desire. (Lit. which evolves itself in its
+productions. And as it is with the will of the creator, so is it with
+that of every one).
+
+17. Every body beholds everything in the world, according to the nature
+of the thoughts in his mind, and then perishes with his wrong view of
+it.
+
+18. It is in its ideality, that anything appears as existent, which in
+reality is inexistent, though it is apparent to sight. The existence of
+the world, is as that of a lengthened dream; and the visible world is a
+wide spread snare of the mind, like fetters at the feet of an elephant.
+
+(The world is existent in the ideal, but inexistent in its apparent
+real and visual form. It is a network of the mind, like a longspun
+dream, and binds it as fast as fetters at the feet of an elephant).
+
+19. The reality of the world depends upon the reality of mind, which
+causes the world to appear as real. The loss of the one, destroys them
+both; because neither of them can subsist without the other.
+
+20. The pure mind has the true notions of things, as the gem polished
+from its dross, receives the right reflection of every thing, (or)
+reflects the true image of every thing.
+
+21. The mind is purified by its habit of fixed attention to one
+particular object; and it is the mind undisturbed by desires, that
+receives the true light and reflexion of things.
+
+22. As the gilding of gold or any brilliant colour, cannot stand on
+base metal or on a piece of dirty cloth, so it is impossible for the
+vitiated mind, to apply itself intensely to any one particular object.
+
+23. Ráma asked:—Will you tell me sir, in what manner the mind of Sukra,
+received the reflexion of the shadowy world, and its temporaneous
+movement in itself, and how these fluctuations rose and remained in his
+mind?
+
+24. Vasishtha said:—In the same manner as Sukra was impressed with the
+thoughts of the world, from the lectures of his father; so did they
+remain in his mind, as the future peacock resides in the egg.
+
+25. It is also naturally situated in the embryo of the mind, of every
+species of living being, and is gradually evolved from it, in the
+manner of the shoots and sprouts, and leaves and flowers of trees,
+growing out of the seed.
+
+26. Every body sees in his mind, what its heart desires to possess, as
+it is in the case of our prolonged dreams.
+
+27. Know it thus, O Ráma! that a partial view of the world, rises in
+the mind of every body; in the same manner, as it appears in the mind
+in a dream at night.
+
+28. Ráma said:—But tell me sir, whether the thought and the things
+thought of, simultaneously meet themselves in the mind of the thinker;
+or it is the mind only that thinks of the object which is never met
+with by it.
+
+29. Vasishtha replied:—But the sullied mind cannot easily unite with
+the object of its thought, as a dirty and cold piece of iron, cannot
+join with a pure red-hot one, unless it is heated and purified from its
+dross.
+
+30. The pure mind and its pure thoughts, are readily united with one
+another, as the pure waters mix together into one body of the same
+kind, which the muddied water cannot do.
+
+31. Want of desire constitutes the purity of the mind, which is readily
+united with immaterial things of the same nature like itself. The
+purity of the mind conduces to its enlightenment, and these being
+united in one, leads it to the Supreme.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+ THE INCARNATION OF THE LIVING SPIRIT
+
+
+Argument. The Impure state of the soul; and its Purity leading to the
+knowledge of the only One.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—The living souls (Jivátman), residing in the seeds
+of material bodies (bhúta-víja) in all parts of the world, differ from
+one another; and there according to the difference in their knowledge
+of themselves (_tanmátra_), or self identity with the _Unity_.
+
+2. 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 (susupti).
+
+3. But living souls addicted to their wishes, view their identity with
+the same; and find themselves born in their desired shapes here below.
+
+4. The _tanmátras_ of the living soul and its proclivities, run in one
+channel to the reservoir of life, and are thickened into one living
+being by their mutual coalition.
+
+5. Some of them are situated apart from one another, and are dissolved
+also separately; and some are joined together, and are born as two
+_gunja_ fruits growing together.
+
+6. The world consisting of thousands of orbs like _gunja_ fruits,
+contains the assemblage of atoms on atoms; and these unconnected with
+one another, form the great garden of God.
+
+7. These being joined also with one another, became dense and thick;
+and remain in the same place, where it has grown.
+
+8. The different states of the mind, ensuing upon the absence of its
+present objects under its province, brings on a change in its
+constitution, which is called its regeneration (in a new life).
+
+(Thus the change of the mind under the change of circumstances, is
+reckoned its transformation to a different being).
+
+9. Thus every regeneration of the mind in a new life, is accompanied
+with its concomitant desires, and their results. The new life is
+attended with its proper body, unless the mind has lost its
+reminiscence.
+
+10. 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.
+
+11. The souls of all living beings are subject to the three states of
+waking, dreaming, and sound sleep, which are caused by the mind and not
+by the body.
+
+12. Thus the soul passing under the triple condition in its living
+state, does not give rise to the body, as the sea-water gives rise to
+the waves. (The body is caused by the mind, and not by the soul which
+has no connection with it).
+
+13. The living soul having attained its intellectual state, and the
+rest of the conditions of sound sleep (susupti), is awakened to the
+knowledge of itself, and is released from its rebirth; while the
+ignorant soul is subjected to be born again.
+
+14. And though the knowing and unknowing souls attain the state of
+_susupti_, and resemble each other in kind; yet the unknowing _susupta_
+soul, which is not awakened to the knowledge of its spirituality, is
+doomed to be reborn in the mortal world.
+
+15. 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).
+
+16. Among these repeated births, the subordinate regenerations resemble
+the many folded coatings of a plantain tree; and the spirit of Brahmá
+is contiguous to, and pervades the whole, like the lofty leaves of the
+same tree.
+
+17. The influence of the Divine spirit, is as cool as the cooling shade
+of a plantain arbour. It is of its own nature; and is as unchangeable
+as the pith of the plantain tree, notwithstanding the changes in all
+its outer coats and coverings.
+
+18. There is no difference or diversity in the nature of Brahmá the
+creator, in his repeated and manifold creations of worlds; for he being
+the seed of the world, shoots forth by his moisture into the form of
+the expanded tree of the world, and becomes the same seed again.
+
+19. So Brahmá taking the form of the mind, becomes the same Brahmá by
+reminiscence of his mind; as the sap of the soil makes the seed to
+bring forth the fruit, which reproduces the like seed.
+
+20. So the productive seed proceeding from Brahmá, displays itself in
+the form of the world. But as no body can say what is the cause of the
+sap in the seed, so no one can tell why the spirit of God, teems with
+productive seed (of Brahmá) in it.
+
+21. So no one should inquire into the cause of Brahmá; because his
+nature being inscrutable and undefinable, it is improper to say him
+this or the other.
+
+22. He must not attribute causality to what is not the cause, nor
+impute the causation of material bodies to the immaterial spirit of
+God, that is the prime and supreme cause of all (as the Prototype). We
+must reason rightly regarding what is certain truth, and not argue
+falsely about what transcends our knowledge.
+
+23. The seed casts off its seedy form, and assumes the shape of the
+fruit; but Brahmá (the seed of all) contains the fruit (of the
+universe) in his bosom, without laying aside the seed.
+
+24. The seed of the fruit bears a material form, but Brahmá—the
+universal seed, has no form at all; therefore it is improper to compare
+the visible seed, with the invisible Brahmá; who is beyond all
+comparison.
+
+25. Brahmá evolves himself in his creation and does not produce the
+world like the fruit from the seed; therefore know the world as the
+vacuous heart of Brahmá, and is neither born nor unborn of itself.
+
+26. The viewer viewing the view, is unable to see himself (his inward
+soul) because his consciousness being engrossed by external objects, is
+disabled from looking into itself.
+
+27. Of what avail is sagacity to one, whose mind labours under the
+error of water in a mirage; and what power has the mirage over a mind,
+which is possessed of its sagacity?
+
+28. As the looker on the clear sky does not see every part of it, and
+as the eye that looks on all others does not see itself; so we see
+everything about us besides ourselves.
+
+29. As the looker on the clear sky, does not see what is above the
+skies; so we see ourselves and others as material beings; but cannot
+see the inward part of the immaterial soul, as the wise men do.
+
+30. Brahmá who is as clear as the firmament, cannot be perceived by all
+our endeavours; because the sight of the sky as a visible thing, cannot
+give us an insight into the invisible Brahmá; (which fills all space
+with his presence).
+
+31. Such a sight cannot present itself to us, unless we can see the
+true form of God; but it is far from being visible to the beholder, as
+the sight of subtilest things.
+
+32. We see the outward sight because we cannot see the beholder of the
+sight (_i.e._ God himself who beholds his works). The beholder (God) is
+only the existent being, and the visibles are all nothing.
+
+33. 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. Because whatever the Almighty King proposes to do, he instantly
+forms their notions, and becomes the same himself.
+
+34. As the sweet saccharine juice of the sugarcane, thickens itself
+into the form of the sugarcandy; so the will of God, becomes compact in
+the solid body of the universe.
+
+35. As the moisture of the ground and of the vernal season, becomes
+incorporated in vegetable life, bringing forth the fruits and flowers;
+so the energy of the Divine Intellect, turns itself into the living
+spirit; which shortly appears in a corporeal form (of the body and its
+limbs).
+
+36. As every thing is beheld in our sight, without being separated from
+its idea in the mind; so the inward notion, shows itself in the shape
+of the visible object, like the vision in a dream, which is but a
+representation of the thoughts entertained in our minds. (_i.e._ The
+thought is the archetype of the appearance).
+
+37. The ideas of self and others, are as granules in the mind, and are
+like the grains of salt, which are produced in the briny grounds from
+moisture of the earth (_i.e._ saline particles, produced of terrene and
+marine serosity). So the multitudes of thoughts in the mind, are
+exactly as the globules of salt or sand on the seashore: (almost
+infinite in their number).
+
+38. As the serum of the earth appears in various shapes (of minerals
+and vegetables); so the sap of the intellect, produces the infinity of
+ideas and thoughts, growing as trees in the wilderness of the mind.
+
+39. These trees again shoot forth in branches and leaves, of which
+there is no end; and so is every other world like a forest, supplying
+its sap to innumerable plants, like the thoughts in the mind.
+
+40. The intellect perceives in itself the existence of everything, as
+distinctly as the inherent power of the living soul exhibits itself in
+creation. (The power of the soul is its reminiscence (sanskára) of the
+past, which reproduces and presents the former impressions in its
+subsequent states of birth).
+
+41. Every one’s intellect, perceives the existence of the world, in the
+same manner as his living soul, happens to meet with every thing, as
+present before it, by virtue of its former acts, and their reminiscence
+stampt in it.[2]
+
+42. 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.
+
+43. You must observe with your keensightedness and well discerning
+mind, in order to look into the different states and thoughts of
+others. (Read the minds in their outward look and indications).
+
+44. There are thousands of worlds like atoms of earth, contained in the
+mind; as in the ample space of the sky and in the particles of water;
+and these reside in those atoms like oil in the mustard seeds.
+
+45. When the mind becomes perfect, it comes to be the living being; and
+the intellect being purified, becomes all pervasive. Hence is the union
+of the intellect with the living spirit.
+
+46. The self-entity of the lotus-born Brahmá and all other living
+beings, is only their self-deception; and the sense of the existence of
+the world, is as a protracted dream rising and setting in the mind.
+
+47. Some beings pass into successive states of existence, as a man
+passes from one dream to another; and they think themselves to be
+firmly established in them, as one supposes to be settled in some
+house, appearing to him in his dream.
+
+48. Whatever the intellect dwells upon at any time or place, it
+immediately sees the same appearing therein before it; as anything
+which is seen in dream, appears to be true to the dreamer all that time.
+
+49. The atom of the intellect, contains the particles of all our
+notions; as the seed-vessel contains the farinaceous atoms of the
+future fruits and flowers, and branches and leaves (of very large
+trees).
+
+50. 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.
+
+51. So the intellect conceives within itself and of its own particles,
+many other atomic germs, under the influence of particular times and
+places and actions and circumstances; which cannot be extraneous from
+itself. (_i.e._ All notions are the making of the mind, and not
+impressions from without).
+
+52. It is this particle of the intellect which displays the creation,
+like the vision of a dream before it; and it is this conception, that
+led the gods Brahmá and others to the idea of their visible bodies, as
+it makes the little insects to think of their own bodies. (_i.e._ The
+minds of all display the outer world subjectively to all beings).
+
+53. All that is displayed in this (outer) world, is in reality nothing
+at all; and yet do these living beings, though possessing the particles
+of intellect in them, erroneously conceive the duality of an extraneous
+existence.
+
+54. Some intellects (of particular persons), display themselves in
+their bodies, and derive the pleasure of their consciousness, through
+the medium of their eyes and external organs. (_i.e._ Some men believe
+their bodily senses as the intellect, and no mind besides).
+
+55. Others look on outward objects as receptacles of the intellect,
+from the belief that the all pervasive, inseparable and imperishable
+intellect (soul), must abide in all and every one of them. (It is the
+intellect which contains the material world, and not this the other, as
+many think omnipresence to mean).
+
+56. Some men view the whole gross world within the body, instead of the
+all pervading intellect of Brahmá; as Viswarúpa, and these being
+hardened by long habit of thinking so, are plunged in the gulph of
+error. (These are the materialists and the Tántrika microcosmists).
+
+57. 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.
+
+58. Some persons rely on the union of the body and soul, and others
+relying in the soul alone, are placed beyond the reach of error; while
+there are many, who rely on their consciousness alone, and shine
+thereby as rational beings. (_The Cartesians and conscientionalists_).
+
+59. They that perceive in themselves the errors of other people, are to
+be considered as under the influence of false dreams in their sleep
+(but mind not themselves, that labour under the error as the dreamer).
+
+60. God being the all pervading spirit of nature, is verily seen in the
+spirit of every body; and as he is ubiquitous, his omnipresence is
+present in every thing in all places. (This doctrine is the source of
+pantheism, and gives rise to universal idolatry, which adores the
+presiding spirit of the idol, and not the idol itself).
+
+61. God that shines is the living soul of every body, resides also in
+the soul of that soul, as also in all the living souls and mind which
+are contained within the body of another. (Such as in living beings
+born inside the body of another).
+
+62. One living being in born in another, and that again within another,
+like the coatings of plantain trees, which grow one under the other
+over the inmost pith. (So God is the inmost marrow of all external
+lives and souls, which are as crusts of the same).
+
+63. By reverting the cognition of visibles, to the recognition of their
+essence (tanmátra) in the invisible plenum, we get rid of our error of
+the reality of the formal world, as we do of the ornament in the
+material gold. (_i.e._ The substances of gold is the material cause of
+the formal and changeable jewels). Gloss. The knowledge of the
+consequent (parák) and antecedent (pratyak), must blend in that of the
+sameness (samáni) of both (yugupat), the internal (antar) and external
+(báhya) (existences).
+
+64. He who does not inquire into the question “who he is” and “what is
+the world” beside himself; is not liberated in his inward soul, and
+suffers under the continuous fever of an erroneous life.
+
+65. He is successful in his inquiry, who by his good understanding,
+comes to know how to curb his worldly avarice day by day.
+
+66. As proper regimen is the best medicine to secure the health of the
+body; so is the habit of keeping the organs of sense under control, the
+only means of edifying the understanding.
+
+67. He who is discoursive in his words, and not discerning in his mind,
+is like a blazing fire in a picture (which lightens no body). No one
+can be wise until he gets rid of his false wit.
+
+68. As the perception of air, comes by the feeling and not by words of
+the mouth; so wisdom proceeds from the curtailing of desires (and not
+by lengthy or loud vociferation).
+
+69. As the ambrosia in the painting is no ambrosial food, nor the fire
+in a picture is burning flame; so a beauty in a drawing is no beauteous
+maid, and wisdom in words is want of wisdom only.
+
+70. Wisdom serves at first to weaken our passions and enmity, and then
+uproot them at once, and at last it lessens our desires and endeavours,
+and gives an appearance of holiness to its possessor.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+
+ INVESTIGATION INTO THE NATURE OF THE LIVING SOUL.
+
+
+Argument. The quadruple conditions of the soul in its waking, dreaming,
+sound sleep and its anaesthesia.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Brahmá is the seed of life, and remains as empty
+air everywhere. Hence there are many kinds of living beings, situated
+in the world within the womb of universal Life. (God is the light and
+life of all we see).
+
+2. All living beings composed of the dense intellect and soul, contain
+other living animals under one another, like the manifold crusts of the
+plantain tree, and the insects contained in the womb of earth. (So also
+the parasite plants and worms growing upon the bodies of trees and
+animals).
+
+3. The worms and insects, that grow out of the dirt and scum of earth
+and water in the hot season, and appear filthy to our sight; are
+nevertheless full of the particles of intellect, becoming to them as
+living beings. (Even the dirty worms, are full with the holy spirit of
+god).
+
+4. According as living beings strive for their progress, so they
+prosper in their lives, agreeably to the various scope of their
+thoughts and actions.
+
+5. The worshippers of gods, get to the region of gods, and those of
+Yakshas meet at the place of Yakshas, and the adorers of Brahmá ascend
+to Brahmaloka. Resort therefore to what is best and the greatest refuge.
+
+6. So the son of Bhrigu, obtained his liberation at last by the purity
+of his conscience; though he was enslaved of his own nature to the
+visibles, at his first sight of them (as of the Apsara and others).
+
+7. The child that is born on earth with the purity of its soul at
+first, becomes afterwards of the same nature, as the education he gets
+herein, and not otherwise.
+
+8. Ráma said:—Please sir, tell me the difference of the states of
+waking and dreaming, and what are the states of waking watchfulness,
+waking dream and waking delusion.
+
+9. Vasishtha answered:—The waking state is that wherein we have a sure
+reliance; and that is called dreaming, in which we place no certain
+reliance and are believed to be untrue.
+
+10. That which is seen for a moment (as true), and as it were in the
+waking state, is called a dream; but if the object is seen at a
+distance of time and place, it is said to be waking dream or dreaming
+wakefulness.
+
+11. 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.
+
+12. Dreaming also appears as waking, as long as it lasts; but waking
+seems as dreaming, when the objects of its vision are not lasting.
+
+13. A dream which is understood as an occurrence of the waking state,
+is believed as waking, (as the prolonged dream of Harish Chandra); but
+the inward consciousness of dreaming makes it a dream.
+
+14. As long as one knows anything to be lasting before him, so long he
+believes himself to be waking, but no sooner is it lost to him, than he
+thinks himself to have been dreaming of it.
+
+15. Hear now how it is. There is the principle of life in the body,
+which causes it to live; this vital element is an electric force, which
+is termed the life.
+
+16. When the body has its activity with the powers of the mind, speech
+and the other members of action, it is to be understood, that its vital
+element is put to motion by the vital breath which it breathes.
+
+17. This breath circulating through out 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.
+
+18. The mind circulates about the outer world, through the passages of
+sight and other organs; and sees within itself the forms of many
+mutable shapes and figures.
+
+19. As long as these forms, remain permanent in the mind, it is called
+the waking state. So far have I told you about the cause of waking; now
+hear me expound to you the laws of sleep and dreaming.
+
+20. When the body is weary with action of its limbs, mind or speech,
+the living element then becomes still, and remains in its composure,
+with the calm and quiet soul residing within the body.
+
+21. The internal actions of the body and mind being quieted, and the
+motion of the heart being at rest, the living principle becomes as
+still, as the flame of a lamp unshaken by the wind.
+
+22. The vital power ceases to exert itself in the members of the body,
+and to keep the consciousness awake. The senses of sight and others do
+not act upon their organs, nor receive the sensations from without.
+
+23. Life lies latent in the inner heart, as the liquid oil resides in
+the sesamum seed; it lies as dormant in the interior part, as frigidity
+within the frost, and fluidity in the clarified butter.
+
+24. 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.
+
+25. One feeling the impassibility of his mind, and dealing
+unconcernedly with every one, and reaching to the fourth stage of
+consciousness, beyond the three states of waking, dreaming and
+sleeping, is said to be _turíya_ or deadened in life.
+
+26. When the vital principle comes again to action, after the enjoyment
+of its sound sleep, either in this or the other world (_i.e._ when it
+is restored to or reborn in life); it takes the name of the living
+element or the mind or self-consciousness (in the living body).
+
+27. This principle of life and thought, sees the multitudinous worlds
+situated with all their vicissitudes within itself, as the large tree
+and all its parts and productions, are observed to be contained within
+the seed. (This is the picture of life in its dreaming state).
+
+28. When the element of life is put to slight motion, by the breeze of
+the vital breath, it becomes conscious of its self-existence as “I am”;
+but the motion being accelerated, it finds itself to be flying in the
+air.
+
+29. When it is immerged in the water (phlegm) of the body: it gets the
+feeling of humidity in itself, as a flower perceives its own fragrance.
+
+30. When it is assailed by the internal bile, it has then the feeling
+of its inward heat, and sees all outward objects with its splenetic
+humour.
+
+31. When it is full of blood, it perceives a fiery redness in itself,
+like that of a rubicund rock, or as the crimson red of the setting sun
+in the sky.
+
+32. 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.
+
+33. When the organs are not besieged by external objects, which disturb
+the inward senses of the mind; it indulges itself in the reflexion of
+many things, which is called its dreaming state.
+
+34. But when the organs are besieged by outward objects, and the mind
+is moved by flatulence (বাযু váyu), to their sight and
+perception, it is called the state of waking.
+
+35. Now O great-minded Ráma! you have learnt the inward process of your
+mind; but there is no reality in them nor in this existent world, which
+is subject to the evils of death, desire and destruction.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XX.
+
+ DESCRIPTION OF THE MIND.
+
+
+Argument. The delusion of the world and reliance in the true Spirit,
+which is the same with the heart, soul and mind.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Now Ráma! I have told you all this, in order to explain
+the nature of the mind to you, and for no other reason.
+
+2. Whatever the mind often thinks upon with a strong conviction of its
+reality, it immediately assumes that form, as the iron-ball becomes
+ignited by its contact with fire.
+
+3. Therefore the convictions of being or not being, and of receiving or
+rejecting of a thing, depend upon the imagination of the mind; they are
+neither true nor untrue, but are mere fluctuations of the mind.
+
+4. The mind is the cause of error, and it is the mind which is the
+framer of the world. The mind also stretches itself in the form of the
+universe (Viswarúpa) in its gross state. (The first is the human mind,
+second the mind of Brahmá, and the third is the mind of Virát).
+
+5. The mind is styled the _purusha_ or regent of the body, which being
+brought under subjection, and directed in the right course, is
+productive of all prosperity (or supernatural powers).
+
+6. If the body were the _purusha_, how could the highminded Sukra, pass
+into various forms in his very many transmigrations (as mentioned
+before)?
+
+7. Therefore the mind (_chitta_) is the _purusha_ or regent of the
+body, which is rendered sensible (chetya) by it: Whatever form the mind
+assumes to itself, it undoubtedly becomes the same.
+
+8. So inquire into what is great, devoid of attributes and error, and
+which is easily attainable by every body. Be diligent in your inquiry,
+and you will surely succeed to obtain the same.
+
+9. Hence whatever is seated in the mind, the same comes to pass on the
+body; but what is done by the body never affects the mind. Therefore, O
+fortunate Ráma! apply your mind to truth, and shun whatever is untrue.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+
+ ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIND.
+
+
+Argument. Inquiry into the cause of the fulness of the mind.
+
+
+Ráma said:—Venerable sir! that art acquainted with the mysteries of all
+things, I have a great doubt swelling in my breast like a huge surge of
+the sea.
+
+2. How is it sir, that any foulness could attach to the mind, when it
+is situated in the eternal purity of the infinite Spirit, which is
+unbounded by time and space.
+
+3. Again as there is nothing, nor was there ever, nor anything ever to
+be at any time, or place, beside the entity of the Holy one, how and
+whence could this foulness come in Him?
+
+4. Vasishtha answered: Well said Ráma! I see your understanding
+approaching to the way of your liberation, and exhaling the sweetness
+of the blossoms of the garden of paradise (Nandana).
+
+5. I see your understanding is capable of judging both _a priori_ and
+_a posteriori_, and is likely to attain that _acme_ which was gained by
+the gods, Sankara and others.
+
+6. It is not now the proper time and place for you to propose this
+question, it should be adduced when I would come to the conclusion of
+the subject.
+
+7. This question should be asked by you when I come to the conclusion,
+and it will be demonstrated to you as clearly as the situation of a
+place in a map or globe, placed in the palm of your hand (hastámalaka).
+
+8. This question of yours will be most suitable at the end, as the
+sounds of the peacock and swan, are best suited to the rainy season and
+autumn.
+
+9. The blueness of the sky, is pleasant to look upon at the end of the
+rainy weather; but it is odd to speak of it during the rains. (So the
+question must have its proper place and occasion).
+
+10. It is best to investigate into the mind by the nature of its acts
+and operations, which tend to be the causes of the repeated births of
+mankind.
+
+11. It is by its nature, that the mind has its power of thinking, and
+leading all the organs and members to their several actions, as it is
+ascertained by the seekers of salvation.
+
+12. Men learned in the sástras and eloquent in speech, have given
+various appellations to the mind, in different systems of philosophy,
+according to its various perceptive faculties and different functions
+and operations in the body. (Gloss. It is called the mind (_mana_) from
+its power of minding (_manana_); it is termed internal sight (pasyanti)
+from its seeing inwardly; it is the ear (_srotra_) from its
+hearing—_sravana_ from within, and so on).
+
+13. Whatever nature the mind assumes by the fickleness of its thoughts,
+it receives the same name and nature for itself, as the same fleeting
+air receives from its exhaling of different odours.
+
+14. So the mind delights itself with the thoughts of its desired
+objects, and assimilating itself into their natures.
+
+15. It receives the same form in which it delights, and which it
+assumes to itself in its imagination.
+
+16. The body being subject to the mind, is moulded in the same form of
+the mind; just as the wind is perfumed by the odour of the flowerbed,
+through which it passes (and the fragrance it carries).
+
+17. The inward senses being excited, actuate the outward organs of
+sense in their own ways, as the exciting motion of the winds, drives
+the dust of the earth before their course.
+
+18. The mind exerts its powers in the action of the external organs in
+the performance of their several functions; just as the flying winds
+drive the dust in different directions.
+
+19. Such are the acts of the mind which is said to be the root of
+action, and these combine together as inseparably as the flower and its
+fragrance.
+
+20. Whatever nature the mind adopts to itself by its wonted habit, the
+same shoots forth in the form of its two kinds of motion (the will and
+action).
+
+21. And according as the mind does its action, and brings about the
+result by its assiduity, in like manner does it enjoy the fruition
+thereof, and enslaves itself to the enjoyment.
+
+22. It understands that as its right course, which agrees well with its
+temperament; and knows for certain that there is no other way to its
+real good (beside its wonted course).
+
+23. Minds of different casts follow different pursuits, according to
+their particular proclivities; and employ themselves in the acquisition
+of wealth and virtues, desired objects and liberation according to
+their best choice.
+
+24. The mind is ascertained by the Kápila (Sánkhya) philosophers, as a
+pure substance, like the immaterial intellect (under the title of
+_pradhána_); and this view of it is adopted in their system or sástra
+(in opposition to the doctrine of Vedánta).
+
+25. These men relying on the error of their own hypothesis, inculcate
+their supposed view of the mind to others, as the only light to guide
+them in the way of their salvation.
+
+26. But the professors of Vedánta doctrines, acknowledge the mind as
+Brahmá himself; and preach peace and self-control, as the only means of
+the attainment of liberation.
+
+27. But that there is no other way to the salvation of the supposed
+mind (than by these means), is an _ipse dixit_ of the Vedánta, and an
+assumed dogma (_kalpitániyama_) as those of other schools.
+
+28. The Vijnánavádi philosophers also, have ascertained and upheld
+peace and self-government as the leaders to liberation, but this too is
+an effusion of their erroneous understandings.
+
+29. Thus all sects give out their own views, in the false rules they
+have adopted for the salvation of their supposed minds; and assert that
+there is no other way to it, beside what is laid down by them.
+
+30. So the Arhatas (Buddhists) and the other sectarians, have proposed
+a variety of fictitious methods for the liberation of the mind, of
+their arbitrary will in their respective sástras.[3]
+
+31. The arbitrary rules of the learned, and those unsupported by the
+srutis, are as numerous and varying from one another, as the bubbles of
+clear water (but are never lasting like the dicta of the holy writ).
+
+32. Know mighty Ráma, the mind to be the source of all these rules and
+methods, as the sea is the source of every kind of gem (lying hid in
+its bosom).
+
+33. There is no innate sweetness in the sugarcane nor bitterness in the
+_nimba_, both of which are sucked by insects; nor is there any heat or
+cold inherent in the sun or moon (as both of them are peopled by gods
+and spirits). It is the intrinsic habit of the mind that makes the
+difference.
+
+34. Those that want to enjoy the unadulterated happiness of their
+souls, should habituate their minds to assimilate themselves to that
+happy state, and they are sure to have the same.
+
+35. The mind having fled from the sphere of the phenomenal world,
+becomes exempt from all its pleasure and pain, like the fledged bird
+flying in the air by casting its shell and leaving its cage below.
+
+36. O sinless Ráma! Cherish no fondness for the phenomenal world, which
+is an unreal illusion, full of fear and unholiness, and is stretched
+out to ensnare the mind.
+
+37. The wise have styled our consciousness of the world as a magic
+scene (máyá), an appearance of ignorance—avidyá, a mere thought
+(bhávaná), and the cause and effect of our acts.
+
+38. Know that it is the delusive mind, which stretches the visible
+world before thee, rub it off therefore as dirty mud from the mind.
+
+39. This visible appearance which naturally appears before thee in the
+form of the world, is called the production of ignorance by the wise.
+
+40. Men being deluded by it, are at a loss to know their real good, as
+the blinded eye is incapable to perceive the brightness of the day.
+
+41. It is the contemplation of objects (sankalpa), that presents the
+phenomena to our view, like arbors in the empty sky; and it is their
+incogitancy (asankalpana), which effaces their images from the inward
+and outward sights.
+
+42. It is the abstract meditation of the thoughtful yogi, that weakens
+the outward impressions, and by dissociating the soul from all external
+things, keeps it steady and sedate in itself.
+
+43. The mind being inclined to the right view of things, by its
+abstraction from the unreal sights, produces the clearness of the
+understanding, and an insouciant tranquility of the soul.
+
+44. The mind that is regardless of realities as well as of unrealities
+(that is of its inward and outward reflections); and is insensible of
+pleasure and plain, feels in itself the delight of its singleness or
+unity.
+
+45. Application of the mind to unworthy thoughts, and to the internal
+or external sights of things, debars the soul from tasting the sweets
+of its solity (apart from other considerations).
+
+46. The mind that is subject to its endless desires, is like the clear
+firmament obscured by the clouds; and ranges in the maze of doubt
+between truth and untruth, as of supposing the rope for the serpent.
+
+47. Man obstructs to himself the sight of the clear firmament of his
+intellect, by the mist of his doubts; but he thinks it as unobstructed
+by his error, and indulges the fancies of his imagination which tends
+the more to his error.
+
+48. He takes the true, incorruptible and supreme Brahmá in a different
+light (of base and corruptible things), as one mistakes one thing for
+another in the dark or in his error.
+
+49. Having got rid of his false imagination, man comes to the knowledge
+of true God and his happiness, as one freed from his false apprehension
+of a tiger in a copse, is set at rest with himself.
+
+50. The bugbear of one’s (soul’s) imprisonment in the vacuity (cavity)
+of the body, is dispersed by his insight into it, as the fear of a lion
+lurking in the jungle, is removed upon finding no such thing therein.
+
+51. So on looking deeply, you will find no bondage in the world; the
+notions that this is the world and this is myself, are only errors of
+the mind.
+
+52. It is flight of fancy, that fills the mind with chimeras of good
+and evil; just as the shade of evening, presents spectres of _vetála_
+ghosts to little children.
+
+53. Our fancies alight on us at one time, and depart at another, and
+assume different forms at will; just as our consorts act the part of
+wives in our youth, and of nurses in our old age.
+
+54. She acts the part of a house wife in her management of household
+affairs, and taken as a mistress, she embraces us in her bosom (or She
+hangs on us by the neck).
+
+55. And like an actress, the mind forgets to display its parts, when it
+plays another, so every body is betaken by the thoughts he has in his
+head, in neglect of others which are absent.
+
+56. The ignorant do not perceive the selfsame unity, in all things he
+beholds in the world; but they view every thing in the light, as they
+have its idea imprinted in their minds.
+
+57. They meet also with the results of the forms, which they have in
+view for the time; though they are not in reality what they seem to be,
+nor are they entirely false (being the idealities of their mind).
+
+58. Man views every thing in the same manner as he thinks it in
+himself; as his fancy of an elephant in the sky, makes him view the
+elephants in clouds.
+
+59. He believes these elephants pursuing their mates, in his thought;
+so it is the thought, that gives the outward forms of things.
+
+60. Ráma! repel your drowsiness, and behold the supreme soul in thy
+soul; and be as a bright gem by repelling the shadows of all external
+things.
+
+61. It is impossible, O Ráma, that one so enlightened as thyself, will
+receive the reflexion of the world, as dull matter like others (rather
+than a reflexion of the Spirit).
+
+62. Being certain of its immateriality, never taint thy mind with its
+outward colouring, or the knowledge of its reality; but know it as no
+way distinct from the Supreme Spirit.
+
+63. Mind in thyself the Being that is without beginning or end, and
+meditate on the Spirit in Spirit. Do not let the reflexions of thy
+mind, imbue their tinge in the pure crystal of thy soul.
+
+64. Be on thy guard, as never to allow the reflexions of your mind, to
+taint the clear crystal of thy soul; but remain unmindful of the
+visibles, and regardless of all worldly desires (which are causes of
+misery and repeated births and deaths).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+
+ RESTING IN SUPREME FELICITY.
+
+
+Argument. Remission of the sins of the enlightened, and their sight of
+the pure Spirit.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Men of sound judgment, are freed from mental
+perturbation, and are perfected in their mastery over themselves, by
+restraining the flight of the mind, and fastening it to its inward
+cogitation. (Gloss. The Yogi given to meditation is master of his soul
+and mind).
+
+2. They swerve from the sight of the visibles as unworthy of their
+notice, and seek after the knowledge of their chief good; they behold
+the all-seeing God in their mental and external sights, and have no
+perception of the unintelligent perceptibles. (_i.e._ They perceive the
+noumenon only in the phenomenon).
+
+3. They are dormant amidst the thick gloom of error, overspreading the
+mazy paths of life, and are awake under the transcendent light (of
+divine knowledge), requiring the vigilance of the living.
+
+4. They are utterly indifferent to the sweet pleasures of this life, as
+also to the cheerless prospects of future enjoyments (in the next
+world). (The Yogi is equally averse to the present and prospective
+pleasures of both worlds).
+
+5. They are mixed (like salt) with the water of spiritual (divine)
+unity, and in the boundless ocean of omnipresence; and they melt away
+as the ice in a river, by their rigorous austerities, resembling the
+vigorous heat of the sun.
+
+6. All their restless desires and passions are set to rest, at the
+disappearance of their ignorance; as the turbulent waves of rivers
+subside of themselves, in the absence of stormy clouds.
+
+7. The net of desires, which ensnares men as birds in their traps, is
+cut asunder by a spirit of dispassionateness; as the meshes of a net,
+are torn into twain, by the teeth of a mouse.
+
+8. As the seeds of _kata_ fruits, serve to purify the foul water; so
+doth philosophy tend to expurgate human nature, from all its errors.
+
+9. The mind that is freed from passions, from worldly connections and
+contentions, and from dependance on any one (person or thing); is
+liberated also from the bonds of ignorance and error, as a bird is set
+free from its imprisoning cage. (True freedom is the freedom from all
+cares, concerns and connections, which are but bondages of the soul).
+
+10. When the disturbances of doubts are settled, and the wandering of
+curiosity is over, it is then that the fullmoon of internal fulness,
+sheds its lustre over the mind.
+
+11. As the mind has its true magnanimity, after its setting from the
+height of its dignity and highmindedness, so it begins to have its
+equanimity in a state, resembling the calmness of the sea after the
+storm.
+
+12. As long as the shadow of solicitude, hangs over the mind, it is
+darkened and stupified and broken in the heart, until the sun of
+inappetency rises to dispel its gloom.
+
+13. It is by the sunshine of the intellect, that the lotus-bed of
+intelligence, shines in its pure lustre; and unfolds the foliage of its
+virtues before the dawning light above it.
+
+14. Intelligence is charmer of hearts and delighter of all in the
+world; it is fostered by the quality of goodness (sattwaguna), as the
+moon becomes full by her increasing digits.
+
+15. What more shall I say on this subject, than that he who knows the
+knowable (God), has his mind expanded as the sphere of heaven, which
+has no beginning nor end.
+
+16. The mind which is enlightened by reasoning, is as exalted in its
+nature, as to take pity even on the great gods Hari, Hara, Brahmá, and
+Indra (on account of their incessant avocations in the management of
+the world).
+
+17. They are far from tasting the happiness of the egoistic yogis, who
+are continually seeking to quench their thirst (after pleasure), from
+the waters appearing in the mirage, as the parching deer (running to
+them by mistake).
+
+18. It is the heart’s desire of all beings, that subjects them to
+repeated births and deaths, which cause the ignorant only and not the
+wise, to appear and disappear like waves of the sea.
+
+19. The world presents no other show in its course, except that of the
+appearance and disappearance of bodies, which are now seen to move
+about at the sport of time, and now fall as a prey to it for ever.
+
+20. But the spiritual body (the spirit or one knowing the spirit), is
+neither born nor dies in this world; nor is it affected by the
+decoration or perdition of the material body; but remains unchanged as
+the vacuity of a pot, both when it is in existence or broken to pieces.
+(The vacuous soul is aloof from the body).
+
+21. As the understanding rises with its cooling moon-beams within us,
+it dispels the mist of erroneous desires rising before us like the
+mirage of the dreary desert.
+
+22. So long does the pageant of the world, present its dusky appearance
+to our view, as we do not deign to consider the questions “what am I,
+and what are all these about me”. (That is; “whether I or these or all
+other things are true or false?”)
+
+23. He sees rightly, who sees his body as an apparition of his error,
+and the abode of all evils; and that it does not serve for the
+spiritual meditation of his soul and his maker.
+
+24. He sees rightly, who sees that his body is the source of all the
+pain and pleasure, which betides one at different times and places, and
+that it does not answer his purpose of spiritual edification.
+
+25. He sees rightly, who sees the Ego to pervade the infinite space and
+time, and as the source of all accidents and events, which incessantly
+take place in them. (The Ego is ubiquitous).
+
+26. He knows rightly, who knows the Ego to be as minute as a millionth
+or billionth part of the point of a hair, and pervading all over the
+infinity of space and eternity of time.
+
+27. He perceives rightly, who perceives the universal soul to be
+permeated in all the various objects of his sight; and knows them as
+sparks of the Intellectual Light.
+
+28. He perceives rightly, who perceives within himself the omnipotence
+of the infinite Spirit, to be present in all the states and conditions
+of beings, and the self-same Intellect to abide in and preside over all.
+
+29. He understands rightly, who understands by his wisdom, that he is
+not his body, which is subject to diseases and dangers, to fears and
+anxieties, and to the pain and pangs of old age and death.
+
+30. He understands rightly, who understands his soul to stretch above
+and below and all about him; whose magnitude has no bounds nor an equal
+to it.
+
+31. He knows, full well who kens his soul as a string (Sútrátmá), to
+which all things are strung as gems in a jewel; and that it is not the
+mind or heart, which is seated in the brain or bosom.
+
+32. He kens rightly, who weens neither himself nor any thing else as
+existent, except the imperishable-Brahma; and who knows himself as
+living between the reality and unreality, (_i.e._ betwixt the present
+and absent, and between the visible and invisible. Gloss).
+
+33. He is right, who beholds what they call the three worlds, to be but
+parts of his self, and have been rolling about him as the waves of the
+sea.
+
+34. He is wise, who looks with pity upon the frail world, and
+compassionates the earth as his younger sister.
+
+35. That great soul looks brightly upon the earth, who has withdrawn
+his mind from it, by retrenching his reliance on his egoism or tuism,
+(_i.e._ both on his subjectivity and objectivity).
+
+36. He sees the truth, who finds his body and the whole world, filled
+by the colossus figure of the Intellect, without the opposition of any
+sensible object.
+
+37. He that looks on the states of misery and happiness, which attend
+on worldly life, to be but the fluctuating conditions of the ego, has
+no cause to repine or rejoice at them.
+
+38. He is the right-sighted man, who sees himself situated amidst the
+world, which is filled with the divine spirit, (and the endless joy
+emanating from it); he has nothing to desire or dislike in this (or in
+his future) state of existence.
+
+39. He is the right (discerning) man, who has weakened his estimation
+and dislike of what is desirable and disgusting to him in the world,
+which is full of the essence of that being, whose nature is beyond
+comprehension and conception. (The world being full with the presence
+of God, we have nothing to like or dislike, or to take or shun in it).
+
+40. That great-souled man is a great god, whose soul like the
+all-pervading sky extends over all, and penetrates through every state
+of existence, without receiving the tincture of any. (Who is informed
+with all and untinged by any).
+
+41. I bow down to that great soul, which has passed beyond the states
+of light, darkness and fancy, (_i.e._ the state of waking or life, sleep
+or death, and dreaming or transmigration, and which is situated in a
+state of brightness and tranquility in supreme felicity or heavenly
+bliss).
+
+42. I bow down to that Siva, of transcendental understanding; whose
+faculties are wholly engrossed in the meditation of that eternal Being,
+who presides over the creation, destruction and preservation of the
+universe, and who is manifest in all the various wondrous and beauteous
+grandeurs of nature.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+ MEDITATION OF THE WONDERS IN THE REALM OF THE BODY.
+
+
+Argument. The dominion of the enlightened man over the realm of his
+Body, and the pleasure of the government of the mind.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—The man that is liberated in this life, and is
+settled in the Supreme state of felicity, is not tarnished by his
+reigning over the realm of his body, and turning about like a wheel.
+
+2. The body of the wise man is as a princedom to him, and calculated
+for his benefit and no disadvantage. It is comparable with the bower of
+a holy hermit, for the consummation of his fruition and liberation.
+
+3. Ráma said:—How do you call, O great sage! the body to be the
+dominion of a man, and how the Yogi can enjoy his princely felicity in
+it?
+
+4. Vasishtha replied:—Beautiful is this city of the body, and fraught
+with every good to mankind, and being enlightened by the light of the
+mind, it is productive of endless blessings in both worlds.
+
+5. The eyes are the windows of this city, letting out the light for the
+sight of distant worlds, the two arms are as the two valves of this
+city-gate, with the hands like latches reaching to the knees.
+
+6. The hairs on the body are as the moss and grass on the walls, and
+the porous skin resembles the netted covering of the palace; the thighs
+and legs are as the columns of the edifice, and the feet with the
+ancles and toes, are as pedestals of the pillars.
+
+7. The lines marked under the soles of the feet, are as inscriptions
+marked on the foundation stone, and upon those at the base of the
+pedestals of the pillars; and the outer skin which covers the flesh,
+marrow, veins and arteries, and the joints of the body, is as the
+beautiful plaster of the building, hiding the mortar and bricks inside.
+
+8. The middle part of the body above the two thick thighs, contains the
+aqueducts, beset by the hairy bushes about them, and likening to rivers
+running amidst a city, between rows of trees on both sides of the banks.
+
+9. The face is as the royal garden beautified by the eye-brows,
+forehead and the lips; the glancing of the eyes, are as the blooming
+lotuses; and the cheeks are as flat planes in it.
+
+10. The broad bosom is as a lake with the nipples like buds of lotuses;
+the streaks of hairs on the breast, are as its herbage, and the
+shoulders are as the projecting rocks (ghats) upon it.
+
+11. The belly is the store-house, which is eager to receive the
+delicious articles of food; and the long lungs of the throat, are blown
+loudly by the internal winds.
+
+12. The bosom is considered as the depository of jewels (from their
+being worn upon it); and the nine orifices of the body, serve as so
+many windows for the breathing of the citizens.
+
+13. There is the open mouth like the open door-way, with its tooth-bones
+slightly seen as its gratings; and the tongue moving in the door way
+like a naked sword, is as the projecting tongue of the goddess Kálí,
+when she devours her food. (The voracity of the goddess is well known
+whence she is called Kálí, the consort of the all devouring Kála—death).
+
+14. The ear-holes are covered by hairs like long grass, and the broad
+back resembles a large plain, beset by rows of trees on its borders.
+
+15. The two private passages serve as sewers and drains of the city, to
+let out its dirt, and the heart is the garden-ground, where the
+passions parade about as ladies. (Or, the region of the mind is the
+garden-ground for the rambling thoughts as ladies).
+
+16. Here the understanding is fast bound in chains as a prisoner, and
+the organs of sense are let loose as monkies to play about. The face is
+as a flower garden, the smiles whereof are its blooming blossoms.
+
+17. The life of the man, knowing the proper use of his body and mind,
+is prosperous in everything; it is attended by happiness and
+advantages, and no disadvantage whatever.
+
+18. This body is also the source of infinite troubles to the ignorant;
+but it is the fountain of infinite happiness to the wise man.
+
+19. Its loss is no loss to the wise; but its continuance is the cause
+of continued happiness to the wise man.
+
+20. The body serves as a chariot to the wise, who can traverse
+everywhere by riding in it; and can produce and procure everything
+conducive to his welfare and liberation.
+
+21. The possession of the body, is of no disadvantage to the wise man;
+who can obtain by it, all the objects of his hearing and seeing, of his
+touch and smelling, and his friends and prosperity.
+
+22. It is true that the body is subject to a great amount of pain and
+pleasure; but the wise man can well bear with them, (knowing them to be
+concomitant to human life).
+
+23. Hence the wise man reigns over the dominion of his body, without
+any pain or trouble, in the same manner as one remains the lord of his
+house, without any anxiety or disturbance.
+
+24. He is not addicted to licentiousness like a high mettled steed; nor
+parts with the auspicious daughter of his prudence, from his avarice
+after some poisonous plant.
+
+25. The ignorant can see the cities of others, but not observe the gaps
+and breaks of their own. It is better to root out the fears of our
+worldly enemies (passions) from the heart, than live under their
+subjection.
+
+26. Beware of diving in the perilous river, which flows fast by the
+dreary forest of this world, with the current of desire, whirl-pools of
+avarice, and the sharks of temporal enjoyment.
+
+27. Men often bathe their outer bodies in holy streams, without looking
+to the purification of their inward souls; and they shave their persons
+at the confluence of rivers with the sea, in hopes of obtaining their
+object. ((Bathing in the sauger) (Sagora sangama stána), is said to
+confer every object of desire).
+
+28. All sensual people are averse to the unseen happiness of the next
+world; and dwell on the pleasure of their own imagination in the inward
+recesses of their minds.
+
+29. This city of the body is pleasant to one, acquainted with his
+spiritual nature; because he deems it as the paradise of Indra, which
+is filled with pleasurable fruits, as well as of those of immortality
+(or future life and bliss).
+
+30. All things depend on the existence of the city of the body, yet
+nothing is lost by its loss since the mind is the seat of everything.
+These bodily cities which fill the earth, cannot be unpleasant to any
+body.
+
+31. The wise man loses nothing by loss of the citadel of his body; as
+the vacuity in a vessel is never lost, by the breaking of the vessel.
+(So the death of the body, does not destroy the vacuous soul).
+
+32. As the air contained in a pot, is not felt by the touch like the
+pot itself, so is the living soul, which resides in the city of the
+body.
+
+33. The ubiquitous soul being situated in this body, enjoys all worldly
+enjoyments, until at last it comes to partake of the felicity of
+liberation, which is the main object it has in view.
+
+34. The soul doing all actions, is yet no doer of them; but remains as
+witness of whatever is done by the body; and sometimes presides over
+the actions actually done by it.
+
+35. The sportive mind rides on the swifting car of the body, as one
+mounts on a locomotive carriage for the place of its destination, and
+passes in its unimpeded course to distant journeys. (So the body leads
+one to his journey from this world to the next).
+
+36. Seated there, it sports with its favourite and lovely objects of
+desire, which are seated in the heart as its mistresses. (The embodied
+mind enjoys the pleasurable desires, rising before it from the recess
+of the heart).
+
+37. These two lovers reside side by side in the same body, as the moon
+and the star visákhá, remain gladly in the same lunar mansion.
+
+38. The sage, like the sun, looks down from above the atmosphere of the
+earth, on the hosts of mortals that have been hewn down by misery, like
+heaps of brambles and branches scattered in the woods.
+
+39. The sage has the full satisfaction of his desires, and full
+possession of his best riches, and shines as the full-moon without the
+fear of waning.
+
+40. The worldly enjoyments of the wise, do not tend to vitiate their
+nature; as the poisonous draught of Siva, was not capable of doing him
+any injury. (The baneful effects of worldliness, do not affect the
+wise).
+
+41. The food which is habitual to one (as the poison of Siva) is as
+gratifying to him; as a thief by long acquaintance forgets his
+thievishness, and becomes friendly to his neighbours.
+
+42. The wise man looks upon the separation of his friends and
+possessions, in the light of the departures (exits), of the visitant
+men and women and actors and actresses, at the end of a play from the
+theatre.
+
+43. As passengers chance to meet unexpectedly, at the exhibition of a
+play on their way; so the wise people look unconcernedly, at their
+meeting with and separation from the occurrences of life.
+
+44. As our eye-sight falls indifferently on all objects about us, so
+doth the wise man look unconcernedly upon all things and transactions
+of life.
+
+45. The wise man is selfsufficient in all conditions of life; he
+neither rejects the earthly blessings that are presented to him; nor
+longs or strives hard for what is denied to him.
+
+46. The regret of longing after what one does not possess, as also the
+fear of losing what he is in possession of, does not vacillate the mind
+of the wise; as the plumes of the dancing peacock do not oscillate the
+unshaking mountain.
+
+47. The wise man reigns as a monarch, free from all fears and doubts,
+and devoid of all cares and curiosity; and with a mind freed from false
+fancies (of subtile and gross bodies).
+
+48. The soul which is immeasurable in itself, is situated in the
+Supreme Soul; as the boundless Milky ocean, is contained in the body of
+the one universal ocean.
+
+49. Those that are sober in their minds, and tranquil in their spirits,
+laugh to scorn the vile beasts of sensuality as madmen; as also those
+that have been bemeaned by the meanness of their sensual appetites to
+the state of mean reptiles.
+
+50. The sensualist eager for the gratification of his senses, are as
+much ridiculed by the wise; as a man who takes to him a woman deserted
+by another, is derided by his tribe.
+
+51. The unwiseman becomes wise by relinquishing all the pleasures of
+his body, and subduing the emotions of his mind by his reason; as the
+rider subdues the ungovernable elephant by the goad (ankusa) in his
+hand.
+
+52. He whose mind is bent to the enjoyment of carnal pleasures, should
+first of all check the inclination, as they draw out the poisonous
+plants from the ground.
+
+53. The well governed mind, being once let loose, recurs like a spoiled
+boy to its former habits; as the tree withered in summer heat, grows
+luxuriant at a slight rain-fall.
+
+54. That which is full out of its time, does not become fuller in its
+season; as the river which is everfull, receives no addition in the
+rains over its fulness. (The full never becomes fuller).
+
+55. The mind that is naturally greedy, wishes for more with all its
+fulness; as the sea with the sufficiency of its water to overflood the
+earth, receives the rain waters and the outpourings of innumerable
+rivers in its insatiate womb. (The greedy mind like the insatiate sea,
+is neverfull).
+
+56. The mind that is restrained in its desires, is gladdened at its
+little gains; and these being increased are reckoned as blessings by
+the stinted mind.
+
+57. A captive prince when enfranchised, is content with his morsel of
+bread, who ere before had been discontented with a realm in his free
+and uncaptured state.
+
+58. With the writhing of your hands and gnashing of your teeth, and
+twisting of your limbs and body, you must chastise your reprobate
+members and mind. (So is Plato said to have chastised his angry self).
+
+59. The brave and wise man, who intends to overcome his enemies; must
+first of all strive to subdue the internal enemies of his own heart and
+mind, and the members of his body. (Subdue yourself, ere you subdue
+others).
+
+60. Those men are reckoned the most prosperous, and best disposed in
+their minds in this earth; who have the manliness to govern their
+minds, instead of being governed by them.
+
+61. I revere those pure and holy men, who have quelled the huge and
+crooked serpent of their minds, lying coiling in the cave of their
+hearts; and who rest in the inward tranquility and serenity of their
+souls.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+ THE NON-ENTITY OF THE MIND.
+
+
+Argument. The means of repressing the force of the senses, and of
+curbing the sensual desires of men.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—The vast domain of death, in region of hell,
+is full of the furious elephants of our sins; and the ungovernable
+enemies of the senses with the arrows of desires. (_i.e._ Hell is the
+abode of sinners, sensualists and the greedy).
+
+2. Our senses are our invincible enemies, being the sources of all
+misdeeds and wicked actions. They are the ungrateful miscreants against
+the body, in which they have found their refuge.
+
+3. The roving senses like flying birds, have found their nest in the
+body; whence with their outstretched wings of right and wrong, they
+pounce on their prey like vultures.
+
+4. He who can entrap these greedy birds of the senses, under the snare
+of his right reason, is never ensnared in his person in the trap of
+sin, but breaks its bonds as the elephant does his fetters.
+
+5. He who indulges himself in sensual pleasures which are pleasant at
+first, will have to be cloyed in them in process of time. (Pleasure is
+followed by pain. Or: Rills of pleasure not sincere.)
+
+6. He who is fraught with the treasure of knowledge in his frail body,
+is not to be overcome by his inward enemies of sensual appetites.
+
+7. The kings of earth are not so happy in their earthly citadels, as
+the lords of the cities of the own bodies, and the masters of their own
+minds. (Mastery over one’s self, is better than over a realm).
+
+8. He who has brought the senses under his slavery, and reduced the
+enemy of his mind to subjection; has the blossoms of his understanding
+ever blooming within him as in the vernal meadow.
+
+9. He who has weakened the pride of his mind, and subdued the enemies
+of his senses; has his desires all shrunken as the lotuses in the cold
+weather.
+
+10. So long do the demons of our desires, infest the region of our
+hearts, as we are unable to bring the mind under the subjection of our
+knowledge of the True one.
+
+11. He is the faithful servant, who acts according to the will of his
+master, and he is the true minister who does good services to his
+prince. He is the best general who has command over the force of his
+own body, and that is the best understanding which is guided by reason.
+
+12. The wife is loved for her endearments, and the father is revered
+for his protection of the child. A friend is valued by his confidence,
+and the mind for its wisdom.
+
+13. The mind is called our father, for its enlightening our
+understanding with the light of the sástras derived by itself, and for
+its leading us to perfection by losing itself in the Supreme spirit.
+(The mind like the father, is the instructor and bequeather of its all
+to man, ere it is extinct in the universal soul).
+
+14. The mind that has well observed and considered all things, that is
+enlightened and firm in its belief, and is employed in laudable
+pursuits, is verily a valuable gem within the body.
+
+15. The mind as a counsellor of our good, teaches us how to fell down
+the tree of our transmigration, and produce the arbour of our future
+bliss.
+
+16. Such is the gem of the mind, O Ráma! unless it is soiled by the
+dirt and filth of sin and vice; when it requires to be washed and
+cleansed with the water of reason, in order to throw its light on thee.
+
+17. Be not dormant to cultivate reason as long as you abide in the
+darksome abode of this world; nor thrust yourself to every accident,
+which awaits upon the ignorant and unreasonable men.
+
+18. Do not overlook the mist of error which overspreads this world of
+illusion, abounding with multitudes of mishaps and mischiefs. (Harm
+watch, harm catch. Hold arms, against harms).
+
+19. Try to cross over the wide ocean of the world, by riding on the
+strong barque of your reason, espying the right course by your
+discretion, against the currents of your sensual desires.
+
+20. Know your body to be a frail flower, and all its pleasure and pain
+to be unreal; so never take them for realities, as in the instance of
+the snare, snake and the matting; but remain above sorrowing for any
+thing as in the instance of Bhíma and Bhása (which will be shortly
+related to you).
+
+21. Give up, O high minded Ráma! your misjudgments of the reality of
+yourself, and of this and that thing; but direct your understanding to
+the knowledge of the Reality which is beyond all these; and by
+forsaking your belief and reliance in the mind, continue in your course
+of eating and drinking as before.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+
+ NARRATIVE OF DÁMA, VYÁLA AND KATA.
+
+
+Argument. The demon Sambara defeated by the deities, and his production
+of other demons by magic and sorcery.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—O intelligent Ráma! that dost shine as the delight of
+mankind in this world, and endeavourest after the attainment of thy
+chief good, by the accomplishment of thy best objects.
+
+2. Do not let the instance of the demons Dáma and Vyála or the snare
+and snake, apply to thy case; but try to extricate thyself from vain
+sorrowing (at the miseries of the world), by the lesson of fortitude as
+given in the story of Bhíma and Bhása.
+
+3. Ráma asked:—What is that parable of the snare and snake, which thou
+sayest must not apply to my case? Please relate it in full, to remove
+the sorrows of my mind and of all mankind.
+
+4. And how is that fortitude which thou pointest out for my imitation,
+from the instance of Bhíma and Bhása, in order to get rid from all
+earthly sorrow?
+
+5. Kindly relate the whole, and enlighten me with thy purifying words,
+as the roaring of the rainy clouds, serves to alleviate the summer heat
+of peacocks.
+
+6. Vasishtha replied:—Hear me Ráma! relate to you both these anecdotes,
+that you may derive the benefit of aping according the same.
+
+7. There lived one Sambara—the chief of demons, and a profound sorcerer
+in a subterraneous cell, filled with enchanting wonders like a sea of
+gems.
+
+8. He constructed a magic city in the sky, with gardens and temples of
+gods in it; and artificial suns and moons emblazoning its vault.
+
+9. It was beset with rich stones, resembling the gems of the Sumeru
+mountain; and the palace of the demon was full with opulence and
+treasures of every kind.
+
+10. The beauties in his seraglio, vied with the celestial dames in
+their charming strains; and the arbors of his pleasure garden, were
+shaded by an awning of bright moon-beams on high.
+
+11. The blue lotuses blooming in his bed room, put to blush the blue
+eyed maids of his court; and the gemming swans in the lakes, cackled
+about the beds of golden lotuses in them.
+
+12. The high branches of aureate plants, bore the blossoms of
+artificial lotuses on them; and the rows of _Karanga_ arbours dropped
+down showers of _mandára_ flowers on the ground.
+
+13. His garden-house consisted both of cold and hot baths, and
+refrigeratories and fire-places for the hot and cold seasons; and the
+_tarku_ (?) weapons of the demons, had baffled the arms of Indra
+himself.
+
+14. The flower-gardens on all sides, had surpassed the _mandara_ groves
+of paradise; and the magical skill of the demon, had set rows of sandal
+trees, with their encircling snakes all around.
+
+15. The inner compound which was strewn over with gold dust, vanquished
+the glory of heaven; and the court-yard of the palace, was filled with
+heaps of flowers upto the knee.
+
+16. The earthen figure of Siva which was exposed for show, had
+surpassed the image of Hari holding his discus and the mace; and the
+gems sparkling as fire-flies in the inside apartment, resembled the
+twinkling stars in the arena of heaven.
+
+17. The dark night of the subterrene dwelling, was lightened by a
+hundred moon-lights like the starry heaven, and he chaunted his martial
+songs before his idol deity.
+
+18. His magical elephant, drove away the Airávata of Indra; and his
+inward apartment was hoarded with the precious treasures of the three
+worlds.
+
+19. All wealth and prosperity and grandeur and dignity, paid their
+homage to him; and the whole host of demons, honoured him as their
+commander.
+
+20. The umbrage of his arms, gave shelter to the whole body of demons;
+and he was the receptacle of all sagacity, and reservoir of every kind
+of treasure.
+
+21. This destroyer of the _devas_ (gods), had a gigantic and terrific
+appearance; and commanded a large army of Asura—demons to defeat the
+Sura—deities.
+
+22. The gods also sought every opportunity of harassing the demoniac
+force, whenever this exorcist demigod, went to sleep or somewhere out
+of his city.
+
+23. This enraged Sambara to a degree, that he broke the trees in his
+rage, and employed his generals for protection of his legions.
+
+24. The devas finding their fit opportunities, killed the demons one by
+one; as the aerial hawks pounce upon and kill the feeble and timid
+sparrows.
+
+25. The king of the demons then appointed other generals over his army,
+and they were as swift-footed and hoarse sounding as the waves of the
+sea.
+
+26. The Devas destroyed these also in a short time; when the leader of
+the demon band pursued his enemies to their station above the heavens.
+
+27. The gods fled from their heavenly abode for fear of them, as the
+timorous deer fly from before the sight of Siva’s and Gaurí’s bull into
+the thick thickets.
+
+28. The gods were weakened with weeping, and the faces of Apsaras were
+suffused in tears. The demon saw the heavenly abode abandoned by the
+celestials, as it was the desolation of the world.
+
+29. He wandered about in his rage, and plundered and took away all the
+valuables of the place. He burnt down the cities of the regents of
+heaven, and then returned to his own abode.
+
+30. The enmity between the deities and demons, was so inveterate on
+both sides, that it forced the Devas to quit their heavenly abodes, and
+hide themselves in distant parts of the world.
+
+31. But the enraged gods, succeeded at last by their perseverance, to
+defeat and slay all the generals and combatants, that were set against
+them by Sambara.
+
+32. The discomfited demon, then gave vent to his fury, and began to
+breathe out living fire from his nostrils like a burning mountain.
+
+33. He after much search in the three worlds, found out the hiding
+place of the gods, as a wicked man succeeds in his purpose by his best
+endeavours.
+
+34. Then he produced by his sorcery three very strong and fearful
+Asuras for the protection of his army, with their hideous appearances
+as that of death.
+
+35. These horrible leaders of his army, being produced in his magic,
+flew upward with their enormous bodies, resembling the flying mountains
+of old.
+
+36. They had the names of Dáma—the snare, Vyála—the snake, and Kata—the
+mat given them for their entrapping, enfolding and enwrapping the
+enemy, according to the demon’s wish.
+
+37. They were preadamite beings and devoid of changing desires; and the
+want of their prior acts (like those of the human kind), made them move
+about as free as spiritual beings in one uniform tenor of their course.
+
+38. These were not born as men from the seeds of their previous acts,
+with solid and substantial bodies; but mere artificial forces and airy
+forms, as facsimiles of the images in the demon’s mind.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+ BATTLE OF THE DEITIES AND DEMONS.
+
+
+Argument. The war of the gods with the Demons, rising from the Rasátala
+or Infernal regions.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—So saying, the chief of the demons despatched his
+generals Dáma, Vyála and Kata, to lead his armies for the destruction
+of the Deities upon earth.
+
+2. The demoniac army rose out of the foaming sea and infernal caverns,
+in full armour and begirt with fiendish arms; and then bursting forth
+with hideous noise, soared aloft with their huge bodies, like mountains
+flying on high.
+
+3. Their monstrous and mountainous bodies, hid the disk of the sun in
+the sky; and their stretching arms smote him of his rays. They
+increased also in their number and size under the leadership of Dáma,
+Vyála and Kata.
+
+(This is the war of the Gods and Titans, wherein Sambara is the Satan,
+and his generals are the devils, Damon, Baal or Bel and etc.)?
+
+4. Then the dreadful hosts of the celestials also, issued out from the
+forests and caverns of the heavenly mountain—Meru, like torrents of the
+great deluge.
+
+5. The forces under the flags of the deities and demons, fought
+together with such obstinacy, that it seemed to be an untimely and
+deadly struggle between the gods and Titans as of the prior world.
+
+6. The heads of the decapitated warriors, decorated with shining
+earrings, fell down on the ground like the orbs of the sun and moon;
+which being shorn of their beams as at the end of the world, were
+rolling in the great abyss of chaos.
+
+7. Huge hills were hurled by the heroes, with the hoarse noise of
+roaring lions; and were blown up and down, by the blast of an all
+destroying tornado.
+
+8. The broken weapons of the warriors, fell on mountain tops, and
+ground them to granules; that fell down as hailstones upon the lions,
+that had been resting by their sides below.
+
+9. The sparks of fire that flew about by the commingled clashing of the
+weapons, were as the scattered stars of the sky, flying at random on
+the last day of dissolution.
+
+10. The ghosts of Vetálas as big as the _tálas_ or palmtrees, were
+beating the _tála_ or time of their giddy dance, with the _táli_ or
+clapping of their palms, over the heaps of carnage, floating on floods
+of blood flowing as a sanguinary sea, on the surface of earth.
+
+11. Showers of shedding blood, had put down the flying dust of the
+battlefield; and numbers of the crowned heads separated from their
+bodies, glistened amidst the clouds, like so many stars sparkling in
+the sky.
+
+12. All sides were filled by the demons, who blazed like burning suns
+with their luminous bodies, and held the tall _kalpa_ branches in their
+hands for striking the enemy therewith, and with which they broke down
+the tops and peaks of mountains.
+
+13. They ran about with their brandished swords in hand, and broke down
+the buildings by the rapidity of their motion, like the blast of a
+gale; and the rocks which they hurled at the foe, were reduced to dust,
+like the ashes of a burning mountain.
+
+14. The gods also pursued them as sacrificial horses, and drove the
+weaponless Asuras, like clouds before the storm.
+
+15. They fell upon and laid hold of them like cats pouncing upon rats,
+and seizing them for their prey; while the Asuras also were seizing the
+_devas_ as bears lay hold on men, mounting on high trees for fear of
+them.
+
+16. Thus the gods and demigods dashed over one another, as the forest
+trees in a storm, striking each other with their branching arms, and
+strewing the flowers of mutual bloodshed.
+
+17. Their broken weapons lay scattered on all sides, like heaps of
+flowers lying on the sides of a hill after a strong gale is over.
+
+18. There was a close fight of both armies, with a confused noise
+filling the vault of the sky; which like the hollow of the Udumbara
+tree, resounded to the commingled hum of the gnats rumbling within it.
+
+19. The elephants that were the regents of the different quarters of
+the skies, sent their loud roars, answering the tremendous peal of the
+world-destroying cloud.
+
+20. The thickened air grew as hard as the solid earth with the
+gathering clouds, and the thickened clouds that became as dense as to
+be grasped in the fist, were heavy and slow in their motion.
+
+21. The broken weapons which were repelled by the war-chariots and hit
+against the hills, emitted a rattling noise from their inward
+hollowness, like the cacophony of a chorus.
+
+22. The mountain forests were set on fire by the fiery weapons, and the
+burning rocks melted down their lava with as dreadful a noise, as that
+of the volcanic mount of Meru with its melting gold, and blazing with
+the effulgence of the twelve suns of the zodiac.
+
+23. The clamour of the battle, was as that of the beating waves of the
+boisterous ocean, filling the vast deep of the earth, and resounding
+hoarsely by their concussion.
+
+24. The huge rocks which were hurled by the demons, flew as birds in
+the air with their flapping wings sounding as thunder claps; while the
+hoarse noise of the rocky caverns, sounded as the deep sounding main.
+
+25. The clamour of the warfare resembled the rumbling of the ocean, at
+its churning by the Mandara mountain, and the clashing arms sounded as
+the clappings of the hands of the gods, in their revelry for the
+ambrosial draughts.
+
+26. In this warfare of the two armies, the haughty demons gained the
+day; and laid waste the cities and villages of the gods, together with
+whole tracts of their hills and forests.
+
+27. The mountainous bodies of the demons also, were pierced by the
+great weapons of the gods; and the vault of heaven was filled with the
+flying weapons, flung by the hands of both parties.
+
+28. The bursting rockets broke the peaks and pinnacles of the rocks by
+hundreds; and the flying arrows pierced the faces of both parties of
+the gods and demigods.
+
+29. The whirling disks lopped off the heads of the warriors like blades
+of grass, and the clamour of the armies rolled with an uproar in the
+midway sky.
+
+30. Struck by the flying weapons, the heavenly charioteers fell upon
+the ground; and their celestial cities were deluged by the hydraulic
+engines of the demons.
+
+31. Flights of swords, spears and lances were flying in the air, like
+rivers running down the sides of mountains; and the vault of heaven was
+filled by war-whoops and shouts of the combatants.
+
+32. The habitation of the regnant divinities, were falling under the
+blows of demons from behind; and their female apartments reechoed to
+the lamentations and jingling trinkets of the goddesses.
+
+33. The stream of the flying weapons of the demons, washed the bodies
+of fighting men with blood, and made them fly off from the battle-field
+with hideous cries.
+
+34. Death was now lurking behind, and now hovering over the heads of
+the gods and leaders of armies; like a black-bee now skulking in, and
+then flitting over the lotuses; while the armies on both sides, were
+discomfited by the blows of the gods and demigods on the battle field.
+
+35. The demons flew in the air like winged mountains, moving around the
+sky; and making a whizzing rustle that was dreadful to hear.
+
+36. The mountainous bodies of the demons, being pierced by the weapons
+of the gods, were gushing out with streams of blood; which converted
+the earth below to a crimson sea, and tinged the air with purple clouds
+over the mountain heights.
+
+37. Many countries and cities, villages and forests, vales and dales
+were laid waste; and innumerable demons and elephants, horses and human
+beings were put to death.
+
+38. Also numbers of elephants were pierced, with long and pointed
+shafts of steel and iron; and huge Airávatas were bruised in their
+bodies, by the blows of steeled fists.
+
+39. Flights of arrows falling in showers like the diluvian rains,
+crushed the tops of mountains; and the friction of thunderbolts, broke
+down the bodies of the mountainous giants.
+
+40. The furious flames of heavenly fire, burned the bodies of the
+infernal hosts; who in their turn, quenched the flame with water-spouts
+drawn out of the subterranean deep.
+
+41. The enraged demons flung up and hurled, the huge hills to oppose
+the falling fires of the gods; which like a wild conflagration, melted
+down the hardstones to liquid water.
+
+42. The demons spread a dark night in the sky, by the shadow of their
+arms; which the gods destroyed by the artificial flame of lightenings,
+blazing as so many suns in heaven.
+
+43. The fire of the lightenings, dried up the waters of the raining
+clouds; and the clashing of arms, emitted a shower of fire on all sides.
+
+44. The shower of thunder-arms, broke down the battery of mountain
+ramparts; and the Morphean weapon of slumber dispelled by that of its
+counteraction.
+
+45. Some bore the sawing weapon, while others held the Brahmástra—the
+invincible weapon of warfare, that dispelled the darkness of the field
+by its flashing.
+
+46. The air was filled with shells and shots, emitted by the fire-arms;
+and the machine of hurling stones, crushed the missile weapons of fire
+(agneyastra).
+
+47. The war chariots with their up-lifted flags and moon-like disks,
+moved as clouds about the horizon, while their wheel rolled with loud
+roaring under the vault of heaven.
+
+48. The incessant thunders of heaven were killing the demons in
+numbers, who were again restored to life by the great art of Sukra,
+that gave immortality to demoniac spirits.
+
+49. The gods that were now victorious and now flying away with loss,
+were now looking to their good stars, and now to the inauspicious ones
+in vain.
+
+50. They looked upon heaven for signs of good and evil with their
+uplifted heads and eyes, but the world appeared to them as a sea of
+blood from the heaven above to the earth below.
+
+51. The world seemed to them as a forest of full blown rubicund
+(Kinsuka) flowers, by the rage of their obstinate enmity, and appeared
+as a sea of blood filled with mountains of dead bodies in it.
+
+52. The dead bodies hanging pendant on the branches of trees, appeared
+as their fruits moving to and fro by the breath of winds.
+
+53. The vault of the sky was filled with forests of long and large
+arrows, and with mountains of headless trunks with their hundred arms
+(as those of Briareus).
+
+54. These as they leaped and jumped in the air, plucked the clouds and
+stars and the heavenly cars of the celestials with their numerous arms;
+and hurled their mountain like missile arms and clubs and arrows to the
+heavens.
+
+55. The sky was filled with the broken fragments of the edifices,
+falling from the seven spheres of heaven, and their incessant fall
+raised a noise like the roaring of the diluvian clouds.
+
+56. These sounds were resounded by the elephants of the deep (pátála);
+while the bird of heaven—_Garuda_, was snatching the gigantic demons as
+his prey.
+
+57. The dread of the demons drove the celestial deities, the Siddhas
+and Sáddays and the gods of the winds, together with the Kinnaras,
+Gandharvas and Cháranas, from all their different quarters to one
+indistinct side. (There was no distinction of the sides in the chaotic
+state).
+
+58. Then there blew a tremendous tornado like the all-destroying Boreas
+of universal desolation; laying waste the trees of the garden of
+paradise, and threatening to destroy the gods; while the thunders of
+heaven were splitting and breaking down the mountains flung to the face
+of the sky.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVII
+
+ ADMONITION OF BRAHMÁ.
+
+
+Argument. The defeated Devas have recourse to Brahmá in their danger,
+who tells them the way of their averting it.
+
+
+Vasishtha related:—As the war of the gods and Titans, was raging
+violently on both sides, and their bodies were pierced by the weapons
+of one another:—
+
+2. Streams of blood, gushed out of their wounds like water-falls in the
+basin of Ganges; and the gods caught into the snares of the demigods,
+groaned and roared aloud like lions.
+
+3. Vyála (Baal) with his stretching arms, was crushing the bodies of
+the gods; and Kata was harassing them in their unequal challenge with
+them.
+
+4. The Daityas waged their battle with the rage of the mid-day sun, and
+put to flight the Airávata elephant of Indra—the leader of the gods.
+
+5. The Devas dropped down with their bodies gored with wounds, and
+spouting with blood; and their armies fled on all sides, like the
+currents of a river overflowing and breaking down its bank.
+
+6. Dáma, Vyála and Kata pursued the flying and run away gods, in the
+same manner as a raging fire runs after the wood for its fuel.
+
+7. The Asuras sought and searched long after the gods in vain, for they
+had disappeared like the deer and lions, among the thickets after
+breaking loose of their snares.
+
+8. Failing to find out the gods, the generals Dáma, Vyála and Kata,
+repaired with cheerful hearts to their chief in his abode in the
+infernal region.
+
+9. The defeated gods after halting awhile, had then their recourse to
+the almighty Brahmá, in order to consult him on the means of gaining
+their victory over the demons.
+
+10. Brahmá then appeared to the blood besmeared Devas with his purple
+countenance, as the bright and cooling moonbeams appear in the evening
+on the surface of the sea, tinged with the crimson hues of the setting
+sun.
+
+11. They bowed down before him, and complained of the danger that was
+brought upon them by Sambara, through his generals Dáma, Vyála and
+Kata, whose doings they fully related to him.
+
+12. The judging-Brahmá having heard and considered all this, delivered
+the following encouraging words to the host of gods before him.
+
+13. Brahmá said:—“You shall have to wait a hundred thousand years more,
+for the destruction of Sambara under the arms of Hari in an open
+engagement.”[4]
+
+14. You have been put to flight to-day by the demoniac Dáma, Vyála and
+Kata, who have been fighting with their magical art (and deceitful
+weapons).
+
+15. They are elated with pride at their great skill in warfare, but it
+will soon vanish like the shadow of a man in a mirror.
+
+16. These demons who are led by their ambition to annoy you, will soon
+be reduced under your might, like birds caught in a snare.
+
+17. The gods being devoid of ambition, are freed from the vicissitudes
+of pain and pleasure; and have become invincible by destroying the
+enemy by their patience.
+
+18. Those that are caught and bound fast in the net of their ambition,
+and led away by the thread of their expectation, are surely defeated in
+their aims, and are caught as birds by a string.
+
+19. The learned that are devoid of desire, and are unattached to
+anything in their minds, are truly great and invincible, as nothing can
+elate or depress them at any time.
+
+20. A man however great and experienced he may be, is easily overcome
+by a boy, when he is enticed to pursue after every thing by his avarice.
+
+21. The knowledge that, this is I and these are mine (and apart from
+all others), is the bane of human life; and one with such knowledge of
+his self and egoism, becomes the receptacle of evils like the sea of
+briny waters.
+
+22. He who confines his mind within a narrow limit, for want of his
+great and extended views, is called dastardly and narrow-minded man
+notwithstanding with all his learning and wisdom. (Why then do you
+compress the unlimited soul, within the limited nut-shell of your
+body?).
+
+23. He that puts a limit to his soul or _átmá_, which is unbounded and
+infinite, both surely reduce his magnanimity or _garimá_ to the
+minuteness or anima by his own making.
+
+24. If there be anything in the world beside the oneself, that may be
+thine or worth thy desiring, thou mayst long to have it; but all things
+being but parts of the universe, there is nothing particular for any
+one to have or seek.
+
+25. Reliance on earthly things is the source of unhappiness, while our
+disinterestedness with all things, is the fountain of everlasting
+felicity.
+
+26. As long as the Asuras are independent of worldly things, they must
+remain invincible; but being dependent on them, they will perish as a
+swarm of gnats in the flame of wild fire.
+
+27. It is the inward desire of man that makes him miserable in himself,
+and became subdued by others; otherwise the worm-like man is as firm as
+a rock. (Cringing avarice makes one a slave to others, but its want
+makes a lion of a weak man).
+
+28. Where there is any desire in the heart, it is thickened and
+hardened in time; as every thing in nature increases in its bulk in
+time; but not so the things that are not in existence, as the want of
+desires (_i.e._ all what exists, has its increase likewise, but a
+nullity can have no increase).
+
+29. Do you, O Indra! try to foster both the egoistic selfishness, as
+well as the ambition of Dáma and others for their universal dominion,
+if you want to cause their destruction.
+
+30. Know, it is avarice which is the cause of the poverty, and all
+dangers to mankind; just as the _Karanja_ tree is the source of its
+bitter and pernicious fruits.
+
+31. All those men who rove about under the bondage of avarice, have bid
+farewell to their happiness, by subjecting themselves to misery.
+
+32. One may be very learned and well-informed in every thing, he may be
+a noble and great man also, but he is sure to be tied down by his
+avarice, as a lion is fettered by his chain.
+
+33. Avarice is known as the snare of the mind, which is situated like a
+bird in its nest of the heart, as it is within the hollow of the tree
+of the body.
+
+34. The miserable man becomes an easy prey to the clutches of death by
+his avarice, as a bird is caught in the birdlime by a boy; and lies
+panting on the ground owing to its greediness.
+
+35. You gods, need not bear the burden of your weapons any more, nor
+toil and moil in the field of war any longer; but try your best to
+inflame the pernicious avarice of your enemies to the utmost.
+
+36. Know, O chief of the gods, that no arm nor weapon, nor any polity
+or policy, is able to defeat the enemy, until they are defeated of
+themselves by their want of patience, through excess of their avarice.
+
+37. These Dáma, Vyála and Kata, that have become elated with their
+success in warfare, must now cherish their ambition and foster their
+avarice to their ruin.
+
+38. No sooner these ignorant creatures of Sambara, shall have gained
+their high desires, than they are sure to be foiled by you in their
+vain attempts. (The great height must have its fall).
+
+39. Now ye gods! excite your enemies to the war by your policy, of
+creating in them an ambition and intense desire for conquest, and by
+this you will gain your object.
+
+40. They being subjected by their desire, will be easily subdued by
+you; for nobody that is led blindfold by his desires in this world, is
+ever master of himself.
+
+41. The path of this world, is either even or rugged, according to the
+good or restless desires of our hearts. The heart is like the sea in
+its calm after storm, when its waves are still as our subsided desires,
+or as boisterous as the stormy sea with our increasing rapacity.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+ THE RENEWED BATTLE OF THE GODS AND DEMONS.
+
+
+Argument. The rising Desires of the Demons, causing them to resume the
+Battle.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Saying so, the god Brahmá vanished from the sight
+of the gods, as the wave of the sea retires and mixes with its waters,
+after having dashed and crashed against the shore.
+
+2. The gods, having heard the words of Brahmá, returned to their
+respective abodes; as the breeze bearing the fragrance of the lotus,
+wafts it to the forests on all sides.
+
+3. They halted in their delightsome houses for some days, as the bees
+rest themselves in the cells of flowers after their wanderings.
+
+4. Having refreshed and invigorated themselves in the course of time,
+they gave the alarm of their rising, with the beating of their drums,
+sounding as the peal of the last day.
+
+5. Immediately the demons rose from the infernal regions, and met the
+gods in the midway air, and commenced their dreadful onset upon them.
+
+6. Then there was a clashing of the armours, and clattering of swords
+and arrows, the flashing of lances and spears, and the crackling of
+mallets and various other weapons, as battle axes and discuses,
+thunderbolts, and hurling of rockstones and huge trees and the like.
+
+7. There was also many magical instruments, which ran on all sides like
+the torrents of rivers; while rocks and hills, high mountains and huge
+trees, were flung and hurled from both sides, filling the earth with
+confused noise and rumbling.
+
+8. 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.
+
+9. Many big bodies of the gods and demons, rose and fought and fell by
+turns, as the elemental bodies of earth and the other elements, rise to
+and disappear from view by the act of Máyá or illusion. (The enormous
+bodies of the warriors, fought with one another in the same manner, as
+the jarring elements clash against each other).
+
+10. Big bombs broke the heads of mountains, and the earth became a vast
+sheet of blood like a sanguine sea. The heaps of dead bodies on both
+sides, rose as forests to the face of heaven.
+
+11. Living lions with iron bodies, and rows of saw-like teeth and nails
+white as Kása 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.
+
+12. The serpentine weapons flew with their mountainous shapes in the
+ocean of the sky; having their eyes flashing with their venomous heat,
+and burning with the fire of the twelve suns on the last day of
+desolation.
+
+13. The hydraulic engine sent forth floods of weapons, whirling as
+whirlpools, and sounding loud as the rattling thunder; and sweeping the
+hills and rocks in their current.
+
+14. The stone missiles which were thrown by the Garuda engine, to the
+aerial battle-field of the gods, emitted at intervals water and fire,
+and sometimes shone as the sun, and at others became altogether dark.
+
+15. The Garuda weapons flew and roared in the sky, and the fire-arms
+spread a conflict of burning hills above; the burning towers of the
+gods fell upon the earth and, the world became as unendurable as in its
+conflagration on the last day.
+
+16. The demons jumped up to the sky from the surface of the earth, as
+birds fly to heaven from mountain tops. The gods fell violently on the
+earth, as the fragment of a rock falls precipitately on the ground.
+
+17. The long weapons sticking to the bodies of the deities and demons,
+were as bushes with their burning pain; thus their big statures
+appeared as rocks decorated with arbors growing upon them.
+
+18. The gods and demons, roving with their mountainous bodies, all
+streaming in blood, appeared as the evening clouds of heaven, pouring
+the purple floods of celestial Gangá (Mandákiní).
+
+19. Showers of weapons were falling as water-falls or showers of rain,
+and the tide of thunders flowed as fast as the fall of meteoric fire in
+promiscuous confusion.
+
+20. Those skilled in the arts, were pouring floods of purple fluids,
+mixed with the red clay of mountains, from the pipes of elephants’
+trunks; as they sputter the festive water of Phagua, mixed with the red
+powder (phága) through the syringe (phichkári). (The pouring, of holy
+(hori) water is a sacrament of Krishnites, as well as of Christians;
+but this baptismal function of Krishna among his comrades, is now
+become a mockery and foolery even among the coreligionist-vaishnavites.
+The text expresses it as—_punyavarsana_ or purifying sprinkling).
+
+21. The _Devas_ and Asuras, though worried by one another, did not yet
+give up their hope of victory, but hurled the weapons from their hands
+for mutual annoyance; and riding on the broad backs of big elephants,
+they wandered in the air, spreading their effulgence all around.
+
+22. They then wandered in the sky like flights of inauspicious locusts,
+with their bodies pierced in the heads, hands, arms, and breasts, and
+filled the vault of the world like the flying clouds, obscuring the sun
+and the sides of heaven, and the surface and heights of the earth.
+
+23. The earth was battered and rent to pieces by the fragments of
+broken weapons, falling from the waists of the combatants, who assailed
+one another with their loud shouts.
+
+24. The sky re-echoed to the thunder-claps of the mutual strokes of the
+weapons, the clattering of the stones and trees, and the blows of the
+warriors on one another, as it was the bustle of the day of universal
+destruction.
+
+25. The disordered world seemed to approach its untimely end, by the
+blowing of the furious winds mixed with fire and water (as in the
+chaotic state); and the many suns of the deities and demons, shining
+above and below (as it is predicted of the dreaded last day).
+
+26. All the quarters of heaven, seemed to be crying aloud, with the
+sounds of the hurling weapons, rolling as mountain peaks, roaring as
+lions, and borne by the blowing winds on all sides.
+
+27. The sky appeared as an ocean of illusion, burning with the bodies
+of the warriors like flaming trees, and rolling in surges of the dead
+bodies of the gods and demons, floating on it like mountains; while the
+skirts of the earth, seemed as forest, made by the clubs and lances and
+spears, and many other weapons incessantly falling upon them.
+
+28. The horizon was surrounded by the big and impenetrable line of
+demoniac bodies, resembling the chain of Sumeru mountains girding the
+earth; while the earth itself resembled the ocean filled with the
+mountainous bodies of fallen warriors, and towers of the celestial
+cities blown down by the winds.
+
+29. The sky was filled with violent sounds, and the earth and its
+mountains, were washed by torrents of blood; the blood-sucking goblins
+danced on all sides, and filled the cavity of the world with confusion.
+
+30. 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).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+ DEFEAT OF THE DEMONS.
+
+
+Argument. The Demons elated with the pride of their bodily strength,
+are at last foiled and put to flight by the gods.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—In this manner, the energetic and murderous
+Asuras, repeated their attacks and waged many wars with the gods.
+
+2. They carried on their warfare sometimes by fraud and often by their
+aggressiveness; and frequently after a truce or open war was made with
+the gods. They sometimes took themselves to flight, and having
+recruited their strength, they met again in the open field; and at
+others they lay in ambush, and concealed themselves in their
+subterranean caves.
+
+3. Thus they waged their battle for five and thirty years against the
+celestials, by repeatedly flying and withdrawing themselves from the
+field, and then reappearing in it with their arms.
+
+4. They fought again for five years, eight months and ten days, darting
+their fire arms, trees and stones and thunders upon the gods.
+
+5. Being used to warfare for so long a period, they at last grew proud
+of their superior strength and repeated successes, and entertained the
+desire of their final victory.
+
+6. Their constant practice in arms made them sure of their success, as
+the nearness of objects casts their reflection in the mirror. (Constant
+application makes one hopeful of success).
+
+7. But as distant objects are never reflected in the glass, so the
+desire for any thing, is never successful without intense application
+to it.
+
+8. So when the desires of the demons Dáma and others, became identified
+with their selves, their souls were degraded from their greatness, and
+confined to the belief of the desired objects.
+
+9. 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.
+
+10. Falling into the errors of egotism and selfishness, they were led
+to the blunder of _mei tatem_ or thinking these things as mine; just as
+a man mistakes a rope for a snake.
+
+11. Being reduced to the depravity of selfishness, they began to think
+their personalities to consist in their bodies, and to reflect how
+their bodies from the head to foot could be safe and secure from harm.
+
+12. They lost their patience by continually thinking on the stability
+of their bodies, and their properties and pleasures of life. (_i.e._
+The eager desire of worldly gain and good, grows into impatience at
+last).
+
+13. Desire of their enjoyments, diminished their strength and valour;
+and their former acts of gallantry now became a dead letter to them.
+
+14. They thought only how to become lords of the earth, and thus became
+lazy and enervated, as lotus-flowers without water. (As the thought of
+grandeur enervated the Romans to impotence).
+
+15. Their pride and egoism led their inclination to the pleasures of
+good eating and drinking, and to the possession of every worldly good.
+(Luxury is the bane of valour).
+
+16. They began to hesitate in joining the warfare, and became as timid
+as the timorous deer, to encounter the furious elephants in their
+ravages of the forest.
+
+17. 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.
+
+18. These cowards wishing to preserve their bodies from the hands of
+death, became as powerless as to rest satisfied with having the feet of
+their enemies set up on their heads. (_i.e._ They fell at the feet of
+their foes to spare their lives; (as they say; that cowards die many
+times before their death)).
+
+19. Thus these enervated demons, were as disabled to kill the enemy
+standing before them; as the fire is unable to consume the sacred
+_ghee_ offering, when it is not kindled by its fuel.
+
+20. They became as gnats before the aggressive gods, and stood with
+their bruised bodies like beaten soldiers.
+
+21. What needs saying more, than that the demons being overpowered by
+the gods, fled away from the field of battle for fear of their lives.
+
+22. When the demons Dáma, Vyála, Kata and others, who were renounced
+before the gods in their prowess, fled cowardly in different ways:—
+
+23. The force of the Daityas, fell before the deities, and fled from
+the air on all sides, like the falling stars of heaven, at the end of a
+kalpa age or last day (of judgment).
+
+24. They fell upon the summits of mountains, and in the arbours of the
+Sumeru range; some were enwrapt in the folds of the clouds above, and
+others fell on the banks of distant seas below.
+
+25. Many fell in the cavities of the eddies of seas, and in the abyss
+of the ocean, and in the running streams; some fell into far distant
+forests, and others dropped down amidst the burning woods of wild fire.
+
+26. 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. (_i.e._ The demons were hurled down by the gods from
+high heaven to the earth below).
+
+27. Many fell in the polar regions, some alighting on the mountain
+tops, and others sinking in the lakes below; while several of them were
+tossed over the countries of Ándhra, Dravida, Kashmir and Persia.
+
+28. Some sank in billowy seas and in the watery maze of Ganges, and
+others fell on distant islands, in different parts of the Jambudwípa,
+and in the nets of fisher-men.
+
+29. Thus the enemies of the gods, lay everywhere with their mountainous
+bodies, all full of scars from head to foot; and maimed in their hands
+and arms.
+
+30. Some were hanging on the branches of trees, by their outstretched
+entrails, gushing out with blood; others with their cropt off crowns
+and heads, were lying on the ground with open and fiery eyes.
+
+31. 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.
+
+32. Their helmets which were terrific by their blaze, were hanging down
+their necks; and the braids of their hairs woven with stones, hung
+loosely about their bodies.
+
+33. Their heads which were covered with hard brazen and pointed
+coronets, were broken by slabs of stone, which were pelted upon them
+from the hands of the gods.
+
+34. In this manner the demons were destroyed on all sides, together
+with all weapons at the end of the battle; which devoured them, as the
+sea water dissolves the dust.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXX.
+
+ ACCOUNT OF THE SUBSEQUENT LIVES OF THE DEMONS.
+
+
+Argument. Account of the torments of the Demons in the regions of
+Pluto, and their succeeding births.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Upon destruction of the demons, the gods were
+exceedingly joyous; but Dáma and the other leaders of the Daityas,
+became immerged in sorrow and grief.
+
+2. Upon this Sambara was full of wrath, and his anger was kindled like
+the all destroying fire against his generals, whom he called aloud by
+their names and said, where are they?
+
+3. But they fled from their abodes for fear of his ire, and hid
+themselves in the seventh sphere of the infernal regions.
+
+4. 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.
+
+5. Dauntless warders of the hell-gate received them into their favour,
+and having given them shelter in the hell-pit, gave them their three
+maiden daughters in marriage.
+
+6. They there passed in their company, a period of ten thousand years,
+and gave a free vent to their evil desires up to the end of their
+lives. (The evil thoughts being the progeny of hell).
+
+7. 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.
+
+8. It happened on one occasion that Yama—the god of retributive
+justice, gave his call to that spot, in order to survey the state of
+affairs in the doleful pits of hell.
+
+9. The three Asuras, being unware of his rank and dignity, (by seeing
+him unattended with his ensigns), failed to make their obeisance to the
+lord of hell, by taking him to their peril as one of his servants.
+
+10. Then a nod of his eyebrows, assigned to them a place in the burning
+furnace of hell; where they were immediately cast by the stern porters
+of hell gate.
+
+11. There they lay burning with their wives and children, until they
+were consumed to death, like a straw-hut and withered trees.
+
+12. The evil desires and wicked propensities, which they contracted in
+the company of the hellish train, caused their transmigration to the
+forms of Kirátas, for carrying on their slaughters and atrocities like
+the myrmidons of Yama.
+
+13. 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).
+
+14. They were then transformed to the forms of hogs in the land of
+Trigarta, and then as mountain rams in Magadha, and afterwards of
+heinous reptiles in caves and holes.
+
+15. Thus after passing successively into a variety of other forms, they
+are now lying as fishes in the wood-land lakes of Cashmir.
+
+16. Being burnt in hell fire at first, they have now their respite in
+the watery lake, and drink its filthy water, whereby they neither die
+nor live to their hearts content.
+
+17. Having thus passed over and over into various births, and being
+transformed again and again to be reborn on earth, they are rolling
+like waves of the sea to all eternity.
+
+18. Thus like their endless desires, they have been eternally rolling
+like weeds in the ocean of the earth; and there is no end of their
+pains until the end of their desires.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+ INVESTIGATION OF REALITY AND UNREALITY
+
+
+Argument. Egoism the cause of Poverty and Calamity, illustrated in the
+instance of Dáma and others.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—It was for your enlightenment, O high minded Ráma!
+that I have related to you the instance of Dáma and Vyála, that you may
+derive instruction thereby, and not let it go for nothing as a mere
+idle story.
+
+2. Following after untruth by slighting the truth, is attended with the
+danger of incurring endless miseries, which the careless pursuer after
+it, is little aware of.
+
+3. Mind! how great was the leadership of Sambara’s army, (once held by
+Dáma and his colleagues), and whereby they defeated the hosts of the
+immortal deities, and reflect on the change of their state to
+contemptible fishes in a dry and dirty quagmire.
+
+4. Mind their former fortitude, which put to flight the legions of the
+immortals; and think on their base servility as hunters, under the
+chief of Kirátas afterwards.
+
+5. 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.
+
+6. 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.
+
+7. Therefore, O Ráma! be diligent to wipe off from thy heart the sense
+of thy egoism, and try to be happy by thinking always of the nullity of
+thyself.
+
+8. The error of egoism like a dark cloud, hidst the bright disk of the
+moon of truth under its gloom, and causes its cooling beams to
+disappear from sight.
+
+9. The three Daityas Dáma, Vyála and Kata, being under the demoniac
+influence of Egoism, believed their nonentity as positive entity by the
+excess of their illusion.
+
+10. They are now living as fishes in the muddy pool of a lake, among
+the forest lands of Kashmira, where they are content at present with
+feeding with _zest_ upon the moss and weeds growing in it. (The watery
+land of Kashmir is well-known to abound in fishes feeding on aquatic
+herbs and moss).
+
+11. Ráma said:—Tell me sir, how they came to existence when they were
+nonexistent before; for neither can a _nil_ be an _ens_, nor an entity
+become a nonentity at any time.
+
+12. Vasishtha replied:—So it is, O strong armed Ráma! that nothing can
+ever be something, or anything can ever be nothing. But it is possible
+for a little thing to be great, as for a great one to be reduced to
+minuteness. (As it is the case in the evolution and involutions of
+beings).
+
+13. Say what nonentity has come to being, or what entity has been
+lasting for ever. All these I will explain to you by their best proofs
+and examples.
+
+14. Ráma answered:—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 Dáma and the demons, as mere nullities and yet to be in
+existence.
+
+15. Yes Ráma, it was in the same way, that the non-existent and unreal
+Dáma and others seemed to be in existence by mere illusion, as the
+mirage appears to us to be full of water by our optical delusion (or
+deception of vision).
+
+16. It is in like manner that ourselves, these gods and demigods, and
+all things besides, are unrealities in fact, and yet we seem to turn
+about and speak and act as real persons.
+
+17. My existence is as unreal as thine, and yet it appears as real as
+we dream our death in sleep. (So we dream of our existence while we are
+awake).
+
+18. As the sight of a dead friend in a dream is not a reality, so the
+notion of the reality of the world, ceases upon the conviction of its
+unreality, as that of the demise of the person seen in a dream.
+
+19. But such assertions of our nihility are not acceptable to them, who
+are deluded to the belief of the reality of sensible objects. It is the
+habit of thinking its reality, that will not listen to its
+contradiction.
+
+20. This mistaken impression of the reality of the world, is never to
+be effaced without the knowledge of its unreality, derived from the
+sástras, and the assuetude of thinking it so.
+
+21. He who preaches the unreality of the world and the reality of
+Brahma, is derided by the ignorant as a mad man; (for his negation of
+the seeming reality, and assertion of the unseen God).
+
+22. The learned and the ignorant cannot agree on this subject, as the
+drunken and sobermen can not meet together. It is one who has the
+distinct knowledge of light and darkness, that knows the difference
+between the shade and sunlight.
+
+23. It is as impossible to turn the ignorant to truth, from their
+belief in the reality of unrealities, as to make a dead body to stand
+on it legs by any effort.
+
+24. It is in vain to preach the doctrine of “_to pan_”, that “Brahma is
+all” to the vulgar, who for want of their knowledge of abstract
+meditation, are devoted to their sensible notions.
+
+25. There 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).
+
+26. The intelligent man, who believes that the supremely quiescent
+spirit of Brahma, pervades the whole universe, is not to be led away by
+any from his firm belief.
+
+27. So nothing can shake the faith of that man, who knows himself as no
+other, beside the Supreme Being who is all in all; and thinks himself
+to be dependent on the substantiality of God, as the formal ring
+depends on its substance of gold.
+
+28. The ignorant have no notion of the spirit, beside that of matter,
+which they believe as the cause and effect (Kárya Kárana) 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.
+
+29. The ignorant man is composed of his egoism only, and the sage is
+fraught with his spirituality alone; and neither of them is ever
+thwarted from his own belief.
+
+30. What is one’s nature or habit (of thinking), can hardly be altered
+at any time; for it would be foolish in one, who has been habituated to
+think himself as a man, to take himself for a pot or otherwise.
+
+31. Hence though ourselves and others, and that Dáma and the demons are
+nothing in reality; yet who can believe that we or these or those and
+not what ourselves to be.
+
+32. There is but One Being that is really existent, who is truth and
+consciousness himself, and of the nature of the vacuum and pure
+understanding. He is immaculate, all pervading, quiescent and without
+his rise or fall.
+
+33. Being perfect quietude and void, he seems as nothing existent; and
+all these creations subsist in that vacuity as particles of its own
+splendour.
+
+34. As the stars are seen to shine resplendent in the darkness of
+night, and the worms and waves are seen to float on the surface of the
+waters, so do all these phenomena appear to occur in his reality.
+
+35. Whatever that being purposes himself to be, he conceives himself to
+be immediately the same: it is that vacuous Intellect only which is the
+true reality, and all others are also real, as viewed in it and rising
+and setting in it out of its own will (volition or bidding).
+
+36. Therefore there is nothing real or unreal in the three worlds, but
+all of or the same form as it is viewed by the Intellect, and rising
+before it of its own spontaneity. (The three worlds are composed of
+this earth and the worlds above and beneath it, called as swarga,
+martya and pátála).
+
+37. We have also sprung from that Will Divine as Dáma and others; hence
+there is neither any reality or unreality in any of us, except at the
+time (when we exist or cease to do so).
+
+38. This infinite and formless void of the Intellect, is ubiquitous and
+all pervading; and in whatever form this intellect manifests itself in
+any place, it appears there just in the same figure and manner.
+
+39. As the divine consciousness expanded itself with the images of Dáma
+and others, it immediately assumed those shapes by its notions of the
+same. (But here it was the consciousness of Sambara or Satan, which
+manifested itself in those shapes, and implies every thing to be but a
+manifestation of our notion of it).
+
+40. So it is with every one of us, that all things are produced to our
+view, according to their notions which are presented to our
+consciousness. (This is the tenet of conceptualism or idealism, which
+bears resemblance to the doctrine of Realism. See Cousin’s treatise “De
+Intellectibus”).
+
+41. What we call the world, is the representation of things to us as in
+our dream; it is a hollow body as a bubble rising in the empty ocean of
+the Intellect, and appearing as the water in the mirage.
+
+42. 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 (_átyantika dukkha nivritti
+moksha_).
+
+43. But the Intellect which never sleeps, nor has to be awakened at any
+time (but is ever wakeful), is the vacuity of the Divine Mind, in which
+the world is ever present in its visible form (and to which nothing is
+invisible).
+
+44. There the work of creation is united with the rest of _nirvána_,
+and the cessation from the act of creation, is joined with
+uninterrupted quiescence; and no difference of alternate work and rest
+whatever subsists in God any time. (There is no such thing as “God
+rested from his works”).
+
+45. The Divine Intellect views its own form in the world, and the world
+in itself in its true sense; as the blinded eye sees the internal light
+in its orbit. (?)
+
+46. 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.
+
+47. There are all these things every where, as we have ideas of them in
+our minds; but there is never any thing any where, of which we have no
+previous idea in the mind. It is the one quiet spirit of God, which
+lies extended in all these forms coming to our knowledge. Therefore
+knowing him as all in all, give up all your fears and sorrows and
+duality, rest in peace in his unity.
+
+48. The great intellect of God, is as solid and clear as a block of
+crystal, which is both dense and transparent in the inside. They appear
+to be all hollow within, but replete with the images of all things from
+without.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+ ON GOOD CONDUCT.
+
+
+Argument. Passing from the meaner to higher births, is the way to the
+attainment of Liberation, and supreme felicity.
+
+
+Ráma said:—Tell me sir, how Dáma, Vyála and Kata obtained their
+liberation at last like all other virtuous souls, and got released from
+the torments of hell, like children getting rid of the fear of Yakshas
+and Pisáchas.
+
+2. Vasishtha replied:—Hear, O thou support of Raghu’s race! what Yama
+said in respect of Dáma, Vyála and their companions, when they besought
+for their liberation through his attendants in hell.
+
+3. That Dáma and others would obtain their liberation, upon their
+release from their demoniac bodies by death; and upon hearing the
+account of their lives and actions.
+
+4. Ráma said:—Tell me sir, how, when and from what source, Dáma and
+others, came to learn the accounts of their lives, and in what manner
+they obtained their release from hell.
+
+5. Vasishtha replied:—These demons being transformed to fishes in a
+pool, by the bank of the great lotus lake in Kashmere, underwent many
+miserable births, in their finny forms in the same bog.
+
+6. 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.
+
+7. There they fed upon the moss and mushrooms and tender petals of
+lotuses, and had to live upon the leaves of aquatic plants and
+creepers, that floated on the surface of the waves.
+
+8. They swung in cradles of flowers, and rested on beds of blue
+lotuses; and dived in vortices of the waters, or flew under the cooling
+showers of rainy clouds.
+
+9. These charming cranes and herons, were at last becleansed of their
+brutish foulness, by their vegetable food of sweet fruits and flowers,
+and by their pure beverage of the crystal lake, the food of holy saints.
+
+10. Having by these means obtained a clear understanding, they were
+prepared for their release from the brutish state, as men when enabled
+to distinguish and get hold of the qualities of _satva_ and _rajas_
+(_i.e._ of goodness and virtue), from that of _tamas_ or wrong and
+evil, are entitled to their liberation.
+
+11. Now there is a city by name of Adhisthána, in the happy valley of
+Kashmere, which is beset by mountains and trees on all sides, and very
+romantic in its appearance.
+
+12. There is a hill in the midst of that city known as Pradyumna
+Sekhara, which bears resemblance to a pistil, rising from the pericarp
+within the cell of a lotus-flower.
+
+13. On the top of that hill, there is an edifice towering above all
+other buildings; and piercing the sky with its high turrets, which
+appears like pinnacles above its summit.
+
+14. 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.
+
+15. There the demon Vyála built his nest in the form of a sparrow, and
+chirped his meaningless notes, as one repeats the Vedic hymns without
+knowing their meanings. (This chanting is elsewhere compared with the
+croaking of frogs).
+
+16. There was at that time a prince in the same city, by name of
+_Yasaskara_ or the renowned, who reigned there like Indra over the gods
+in heaven.
+
+17. Then the demon Dáma became a gnat and dwelt in that dwelling, and
+continued to buzz his low tune in the crevice of a lofty column of that
+building.
+
+18. It then came to pass, that the citizens of Adhisthána, prepared a
+play ground by name of Ratnávatí-vehara in that city.
+
+19. There the minister of the king known as Narasinha by name, took his
+residence. He understood the fates of human kind, as the astronomer
+knows the stars of heaven on a small celestial globe, which he holds in
+his hand.
+
+20. It happened at that time, that the deceitful demon Kata, is as
+reborn as a parrot, and became the favourite of the minister, by being
+kept in a silver cage in his house.
+
+21. It then turned out that the minister recited this poetical
+narrative of the Titan war to the inmates of the house.
+
+22. And the parrot Kata, happening to hear it, remembered his past
+life, whereby he was absolved of his sins, and attained his final
+liberation.
+
+23. The sparrow dwelling on the top of the Pradyumna hill, also chanced
+to hear the narration of his life in that place, and obtained his
+emancipation thereby.
+
+24. Dáma who in the form of a gnat, resided in the palace, happened
+also to hear the minister’s recital of his tale, and obtained thereby
+his peace and release.
+
+25. In this manner, O Ráma! the sparrow on the Pradyumna mount, the
+gnat in the palace, and the parrot on the play ground, had all their
+liberation.
+
+26. Thus I have related to you the whole of the story of the demon Dáma
+and others, which will fully convince you of the vanity of the world.
+
+27. It is the ignorant only that are tempted to vanity by their error,
+as they are led to the delusion of water in a mirage; and so the great
+also are liable like these demons, to fall low from their high stations
+by their error.
+
+28. Think of one of these, that reduced the high Meru and Mandara
+mountains with a nod of his eyebrows, was constrained to remain as a
+contemptible gnat in the chink of a pillar in the palace. (So the huge
+Satan entered the body of the small and hateful serpent, and the
+gigantic devils in the hateful bodies of the herd of swine).
+
+29. Look at another who threatened to destroy the sun and moon with a
+slap, living at last as a poor sparrow in a hole of the peak of the
+Pradyumna mountain.
+
+30. Look at the third who balanced the mount Meru like a flower bouquet
+in his hand, lying imprisoned as a parrot in the cage at the house of
+Nrisingha.
+
+31. 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).
+
+32. It is because of the wrong desire of a man that he takes the
+untruth for truth, as if by the excessive thirst of a person, that he
+mistakes the mirage for water, and thereby loses both his way and his
+life.
+
+33. Those men only can ford across the ocean of the world, who by the
+natural bent of their good understanding, are inclined to the study of
+the sástras, and look forward to their liberation, by rejecting
+whatever is vicious and untrue.
+
+34. 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.
+
+35. But those who walk by the dictates of conscience, and follow the
+path pointed by the Ágama (Veda), are saved from destruction, and
+attain their best state (of perfection and bliss).
+
+36. O highminded Ráma! he whose mind always longs after having this
+thing and that, loses the best gain of his manliness (parama
+purushártha) by his avarice, and leaves not even ashes or traces behind.
+
+37. The high-minded man regards the world as a straw, and shuns all its
+concerns as a snake casts off its slough.
+
+38. He whose mind is illumined by the wondrous light of truth, is
+always taken under the protection of the gods, as the mundane egg is
+protected by Brahmá (or rather under the wings of Brahmá’s swan,
+hatching over its egg).
+
+39. Nobody should walk in paths which are long and wearisome, crooked
+and winding, and encompassed by dangers and difficulties; because
+Ráhu—the ascending node, lost its life by its curvilinear course, to
+drink the nectarine beams of the moon.
+
+40. He who abides by the dictates of the true sástras, and associates
+with the best of men, are never subject to the darkness of error.
+
+41. Those who are renowned for their virtues, have the power to bring
+their destiny under their command, convert all their evils to good, and
+render their prosperity perpetual.
+
+42. Those who are unsatisfied with their qualifications (but wish to
+qualify themselves the more), and those who thirst after knowledge and
+are seekers of truth, are truly called as human beings, all others are
+but brutes.
+
+43. Those, the lakes of whose hearts are brightened by the moonbeams of
+fame (_i.e._ whose heart are desirous of fame); have the form of Hari
+seated in their hearts, as in the sea of milk.
+
+44. The repeated desire of enjoying what has been enjoyed, and of
+seeing what has often been seen, is not the way to get rid of the
+world; but is the cause of repeated birth, for the same enjoyments.
+
+45. Continue to abide by the established rule of conduct, act according
+to the sástras and good usages, and break off the bonds of worldly
+enjoyments, which are all but vanities.
+
+46. Let the world resound with the renown of your virtues reaching to
+the skies; because thy renown will immortalize thy name, and not the
+enjoyments thou hast enjoyed.
+
+47. Those whose good deeds shine as moonbeams, and are sung by the
+maidens of heaven, are said to be truly living, while all others
+unknown to fame are really dead.
+
+48. They that aspire to their utmost perfection by their unfailing
+exertions, and act according to the precepts of the sástras, are surely
+successful in their attempt.
+
+49. Abiding patiently by the Sástra, without hastening for success; and
+perfecting one’s self by long practice, produce the ripe fruits of
+consummation.
+
+50. Now Ráma, renounce all your sorrow and fear, your anxieties, pride
+and hastiness; conduct yourself by the ordinances of law and sástras,
+and immortalize your name.
+
+51. 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.
+
+52. Do not allow yourself henceforward to be degraded below the vulgar;
+but consider well the sástras as the best weapons, for defeating the
+dangers and difficulties of the world.
+
+53. Why do you endanger your life in the muddy pit of this world, like
+an elephant falling in a pitfall under the keen arrows of the enemy?
+Avoid only to taste of its enjoyments, and you are free from all danger.
+
+54. Of what avail is wealth without knowledge; therefore devote
+yourself to learning, and consider well your riches to be but trash and
+bubbles.
+
+55. The knowledge of heretical sástras, has made beasts of men, by
+making them only miserable and unhappy by their unprofitable arguments.
+
+56. Now wake and shake off the dullness of your long, deep and
+death-like sleep, like the torpor of the old tortoise lying in the bog.
+
+57. Rise and accept an antidote to ward off your old age and death; and
+it is knowledge of this prescription, that all wealth and property are
+for our evils, and all pleasures and enjoyments, tend only to sicken
+and enervate our frames.
+
+58. Know your difficulty to be your prosperity, and your disrespect to
+be your great gain. Conduct yourself according to the purport of the
+sástras, as they are supported by good usage.
+
+59. Acts done according to the sástras and good usage also, are
+productive of the best fruits of immortality.
+
+60. He who acts well according to good usage, and considers everything
+by good reasons, and is indifferent to the pains and pleasures of the
+world; such a one flourishes like an arbor in the spring, with the
+fruits and flowers of long life and fame, virtues and good qualities
+and prosperity.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+ CONSIDERATION OF EGOISM.
+
+
+Argument. Of good attempts, good company and good studies; also of
+liberation by Renunciation of Egoism and Worldly Bondage.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Seeing the complete success of every undertaking,
+depending on your own exertion at all times and places, you should
+never be slack in your energy at all.
+
+2. See how Nandi gratified the wishes of all his friends and relations
+by his own exertions, and how he became victorious over death itself,
+by his adoration of Mahádeva by the side of a lake.
+
+3. See also, how the Dánavas too got the better of the gods, who were
+fraught with every perfection, by their greater wealth and prowess, as
+the elephants destroy a lake of lotuses.
+
+4. See, how Marutta the King of demons, created another world like that
+of Brahmá, by means of his sacrifice through the great sage Samvarta
+(the law giver).
+
+5. See, how Viswámitra (the military chief) obtained the dignity of
+Bráhmanhood by his great energy and continued exertions. He obtained by
+his austerities what is impossible to be gained by another.
+
+6. See, how the poor and unfortunate Upamanyu, obtained his nectarious
+food of the cake and curdled milk, by his worship of Siva, from the
+milky ocean in days of yore.
+
+7. See how the god Vishnu devoured (destroyed), like a wild fire the
+demons of the triple world, likening the tender filaments of lotuses;
+and how the sage Sweta became victorious over death by means of his
+firm faith in Siva (as it is described in the Linga Purána).
+
+8. Remember, how the chaste Sávitrí, brought back her spouse Satyavána
+from the realm of death, by her prevailing on stern Yama with the
+suavity of her discourse.
+
+9. There is no great exertion of any kind that goes unrewarded in this
+world; all impossibility is thought possible by ardent pursuit after it
+(or to the ardent pursuer, as it is said: Fortune is found by the
+swiftest pursuer).
+
+10. So men having full knowledge of the spirit, and exerting their
+utmost devotion, are enabled to root out their destiny of
+transmigration, which is fraught with so much pain and pleasure (both
+of which are equally hurtful to the soul).
+
+11. All visible things are full of danger to the sight of the
+intelligent. There is no pleasure to be had from anything, without its
+concomitant pain (either preceding or following it).
+
+12. Though it is difficult to know the Supreme Brahma, and facile to
+attain supreme felicity; yet should Brahma be sought at first, as the
+giver of all felicity. (Seek happiness through its giver—the Great God).
+
+13. Forsake your pride, and rely on your unalterable peace of mind;
+consider well your worthiness in your understanding, and stick to your
+attendance on the wise and good.
+
+14. There is no other way for your salvation in this ocean of the
+world, save by your attendance on the wise. All your pilgrimage,
+austerity and learning of the sástras, are of no avail to your
+liberation.
+
+15. He is called the wise, whose greediness, anger and erroneous
+conceptions, are on their wane day by day; and who walks in the path of
+rectitude, as it is inculcated in the Sástra.
+
+16. The society of spiritual guides, serves to dispel the visibles from
+the sight of the devout, as the invisibles are hidden from sight
+(_i.e._ as they are not in being).
+
+17. In the absence of all other objects, there remains the Supreme
+Spirit alone in view, and the human soul having nothing else to rest
+upon, rests at last in the Supreme Soul only.
+
+18. The visibles did not exist before, nor are they produced from
+naught; they are not in existence though seen in our presence, nor are
+they to exist in future. The supreme alone exist for ever without
+change or decay.
+
+19. I have already shown you by various instances the falsehood of the
+visibles (in the book of Genesis); I will now show you the falsity of
+existence, as it is known to the learned.
+
+20. Now that our passive consciousness of the three worlds, being the
+sober truth with the wise, there can be no room for the unrealities of
+matter and _máyá_—illusion, to enter into our belief. (We know nothing
+of the external world, except our inward consciousness of it. Berkeley).
+
+21. Whatever wonders are displayed by the active intellect to the
+inactive soul, the same is thought to be the world. (There is no
+outward world, beside the working of the intellect).
+
+22. The notion of the sphere of the world, is derived from the rays of
+the central intellect, stretching to the circumference of the
+understanding, and there being no difference between the radiating
+point and the radiated circle, acknowledge the identity of the
+radiator, the radii and the periphery. (_i.e._ Of the intellect, its
+intelligence and the world).
+
+23. The twinklings of the intellectual eye in its acts of opening and
+shutting, cause the notions of the appearance and disappearance of the
+world in continued succession.
+
+24. One unacquainted with the true sense of Ego, is blind amidst the
+luminous sphere of the intellect, but he who knows its true meaning,
+finds himself amidst the sphere of spiritual light (or rather loses
+himself in the divine light).
+
+25. He that understands the Divine Ego, does no more retain the notion
+of his own egoism; but mixes with the Supreme soul, as a drop of water
+is lost in the waters of the ocean.
+
+26. In reality there exists no I or thou nor the visible world nor
+anything else; but all these blend upon right reasoning in the One Ego,
+which remains and subsists after all other existences.
+
+27. Even clear understandings are sometimes clouded by false
+apparitions, as those of ogres &c.; when there are no such things, just
+as children are seized with false fear of goblins.
+
+28. As long as the moonlight of the intellect, is obscured by the
+darkness of egoism, so long the lotus lake of spirituality, will not
+come to its bloom.
+
+29. The feeling of egoism being wiped off from the mind, the sense of
+self and selfish passions, will vanish of themselves from the heart;
+and there will be an utter end of the fears of death and hell, as also
+of the desires of heaven and liberation.
+
+30. So long as the egoistic feelings float about, like clouds over the
+sphere of the mind, there will be no end of desires, growing in the
+heart like weeds in the plains.
+
+31. As long as the cloud of egotism continue to overcast the mind and
+obscure its intelligence, the humidity of dullness will fill its
+sphere, and prevent the light of intellect to pierce through it.
+
+32. Egoistic pride is unmannerly in men, and is taken in the light of
+vanity, it is the cause of sorrow and not delight; and is as bug-bears
+to boys.
+
+33. The vain assumption of egoism, is productive of a great many
+errors, it leads to the ambition of gaining an infinity of worlds, as
+it was in the cases of the foolish demons.
+
+34. The conceit that I am such and such (a great man), is an error than
+which there is none other, nor is ever likely to be a greater error to
+lead us to utter darkness.
+
+35. Whatever joy or grief betides us at any time in this changeful
+world, is all the effect of the rotatory wheels of egoism, turning up
+and down at every moment.
+
+36. He who weeds and roots out the germs of egoism from his heart, he
+verily prevents the arbor of his worldliness (_Samsára Vriksha_), from
+jutting out in a hundred branches.
+
+37. Egoism is the sprout of the trees of our lives, in their
+interminable revolutions through the world; and meity or the sense that
+“this is mine,” is the cause that makes them expand in a thousand
+branches. (I am one, but claim many things as mine).
+
+38. Swift as the flight of birds, do our desires and desirable objects
+disappear from us; and upon mature consideration, they prove to be but
+bubbles, bursting on the evanescent waves of our lives.
+
+39. It is for want of the knowledge of the one Ego, that we think
+ourselves as I, thou, this or the other; and it is by shutting out our
+view of the only soul, that we see the incessant revolutions of this
+world and that.
+
+40. As long as the darkness of egoism reigns over the wilderness of
+human life, so long doth the goblin of selfishness infest it with its
+wanton revelry.
+
+41. The vile man that is seized by the avaricious demon of selfishness,
+is at an utter loss of any moral precept, and any _mantra_ of his
+religion to satisfy his wants.
+
+42. Ráma said:—Tell me, O venerable Bráhman, how we may be enabled to
+suppress our egoism or selfishness, for evading the dangers and
+difficulties in our course through the world.
+
+43. Vasishtha replied:—It is by seeking to settle mind in the
+resplendent soul, as it shines in the transparent mirror of the
+intellect, that it is possible for any body to suppress the
+consciousness, of his self or personal existence. (_i.e._ By losing
+one’s self in the self-existence of the Supreme Soul).
+
+44. A closer investigation into human life, proves it to be a maze full
+with the false shows of magic. It is not worth loving or hating, nor
+capable of causing our egoism or pride.
+
+45. He whose soul is free from egoism, and devoid of the impression of
+the phenomenals; whose course of life runs in an even tenor, is the man
+who can have no sense of egoism in him. (Whose life doth in one even
+tenor run, and end its days as it has begun. Pope.)
+
+46. He who knowing his internal self to be beyond the external world,
+and neither desires nor dislikes anything in it, but preserves the
+serenity of his temper at all times, is not susceptible of egoism.
+
+47. Whoso thinks himself to be the inward noumena, and distinct from
+the outward phenomena, and keeps the calm equanimity of his mind, is
+not ruffled by the feeling of his egoism.
+
+48. Ráma said:—Tell me, sir, what is the form of egoism, and whether it
+consists in the body or mind or of both of these, and whether it is got
+rid of with the riddance of the body.
+
+49. Vasishtha replied:—There are three sorts of egoism, Ráma! in this
+triple world, two of which are of superior nature, but the third is of
+a vile kind and is to be abandoned by all.
+
+50. The first is the supreme and undivided Ego, which is diffused
+throughout the world; it is the Supreme soul (Paramátma), beside which
+there is nothing in nature.
+
+51. The feeling of this kind of egoism, leads to the liberation of men,
+as in the state of the living-liberated; but the knowledge of the ego,
+as distinct and apart from all, and thought to be as minute as the
+hundredth part of a hair, is the next form of self-consciousness, which
+is good also.
+
+52. This second form of egoism, leads also to the liberation of human
+souls, even in the present state of their existence, known as the state
+of living-liberation (Jívan-Mukta).
+
+53. The other kind of egoism, which is composed of the knowledge of the
+body, with all its members as parts of the Ego, is the last and worst
+kind of it, which takes the body for the soul or self.
+
+54. This third and last kind, forms the popular belief of mankind, who
+take their bodies as parts of themselves; it is the basest form of
+egoism, and must be forsaken in the same manner, as we shun our
+inveterate enemies.
+
+55. The man that is debased by this kind of egoism, can never come to
+his right sense; but becomes subject to all the evils of life, under
+the thrall of the powerful enemy.
+
+56. Possest with this wrong notion of himself, every man is incessantly
+troubled in his mind by various desires, which expose him to all the
+evils of life.
+
+57. By means of the better egoisms, men transform themselves to gods;
+but the common form of it, debases a man to the state of a beast and
+its attendant evils.
+
+58. That I am not the body, is the certainty arrived at by the great
+and good, who believing themselves to be of the first two kinds, are
+superior to the vulgar.
+
+59. Belief in the first two kinds, raises men above the common level;
+but that in the lower kind, brings every misery on mankind.
+
+60. It was owing to their baser egoism, that the demons Dáma, Vyála and
+others, were reduced to that deplorable state, as it is related in
+their tale.
+
+61. Ráma said:—Tell me, sir, the state of that man, who by discarding
+the third or popular kind of egoism from his mind, attains the well
+being of his soul in both the present and future worlds.
+
+62. Vasishtha replied:—Having cast off this noxious egoism, (which is
+to be got rid of by every body), a man rests in the Supreme Spirit in
+the same manner, as the believers in the two other sorts of it. (_i.e._
+Of the Supreme and superior sorts of spiritual egoisms, consisting in
+the belief of one’s self, as the impersonal or personal soul—the
+undivided or individual spirit).
+
+63. The two former views of egoism, place the egotist in the all
+pervasive or all exclusive spirit (in the Ego of the Divine Unity).
+
+64. But all these egoisms which are in reality but different forms of
+dualism, being lost in the unity, all consciousness of distinct
+personality, is absorbed in the Supreme monism.
+
+65. The good understanding should always strive to its utmost, to get
+rid of its common and gross egotism, in order to feel in itself the
+ineffable felicity of the unity.
+
+66. Renunciation of the unholy belief of one’s self personality in his
+material body, is the greatest good that one can attain to for his
+highest state of felicity _parama padam_.
+
+67. The man that forsakes the feeling of his egoism (or personality)
+from his mind, is not debased nor goes to perdition by either his
+indifference to or management of worldly affairs. (_i.e._ The doing or
+refraining from bodily or worldly actions, is equally indifferent to
+the philosophic mind).
+
+68. The man who has got rid of his egoism by the subsidence of his
+selfishness in himself, is indifferent to pain and pleasure, as the
+satiate are to the taste of sweet or sour.
+
+69. The man detesting the pleasures of life, has his full bliss
+presented before himself; as the mind cleared of its doubts and
+darkness, has nothing hidden from its sight.
+
+70. It is by investigation into the nature of egoism, and forsaking
+this gross selfishness, that a man crosses over the ocean of the world
+of his own accord.
+
+71. The man who having nothing of his own, and knowing himself as
+nothing, yet has all and thinks himself as all in all, and who though
+possessed of wealth and properties, has the magnanimity of his soul to
+disown them to himself; he is verily situated in the Supreme soul, and
+finds his rest in the state of Supreme bliss. (_i.e._ The world is the
+Lord’s, and human soul as a particle of the Divine, has its share in
+all and every thing).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+ END OF THE STORY OF DÁMA AND VYÁLA.
+
+
+Argument. The Gods annoyed by Bhíma and others apply to Hari, who
+thereupon destroys them with Sambara also.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Now, hear me relate to you, what Sambara did after
+the flight of Dáma and his train; and how he remained in his rocky
+stronghold in the infernal region (Pátála).
+
+2. After the complete overthrow of the whole army of Sambara, and their
+downfall from heaven like innumerable rain drops, falling from an
+over-spreading cloud, and afterwards dispersing itself and disappearing
+in autumn:—
+
+3. Sambara remained motionless for many years in his strong citadel, at
+the loss of his forces defeated by the gods; and then thought within
+himself, about the best means of overcoming the celestials.
+
+4. He said, “the demons Dáma and others, that I produced by my
+black-art of exorcism, are all overthrown in battle, by their
+foolishness and vanity of pride and egotism.
+
+5. “I will now produce some other demons by the power of my charm, and
+endue them both with the power of reason and acquaintance with
+spiritual science, in order that they may know and judge for
+themselves.
+
+6. “These then being acquainted with the true nature of things, and
+devoid of false views, will not be subject to pride or vanity, but be
+able to vanquish the deities in combat”.
+
+7. Thinking so in himself, the arch-fiend produced a host of good
+demons by his skill in sorcery; and these creatures of his spell filled
+the space of the sky, as bubbles foam and float on the surface of the
+sea.
+
+8. They were all knowing and acquainted with the knowables; they were
+all dispassionate and sinless, and solely intent on their alloted
+duties, with composed minds and good dispositions.
+
+9. They were known under the different names of Bhíma, Bhása and
+Dridha; and they looked upon all earthly things as straws, by the
+holiness of their hearts.
+
+10. These infernal spirits burst out of the ether and sprang up to the
+upper world, and then spread over the face of the sky as a flight of
+locusts. They cracked as guns, and roared and rolled about as the
+clouds of the rainy season.
+
+11. They fought with the gods for many cycles of years, and yet they
+were not elated with pride, owing to their being under the guidance of
+reason and judgement.
+
+12. For until they were to have the desire of having anything, and
+thinking it as “this is my own”, so long were they insensible of their
+personal existence, such as “this is I, and that one is another”; and
+consequently invincible by any. (Selfishness reduces <one> to slavery and
+subjections).
+
+13. They were fearless in fighting with the gods, from the knowledge of
+their being equally mortal as themselves; and from their want of the
+knowledge of any difference subsisting between one another. (_i.e._
+They regarded themselves and their adversaries with an equal eye of
+indifference, as all were equally doomed to death, and therefore never
+feared to die).
+
+14. They rushed out with a firm conviction that, the unsubstantial body
+is nothing, and the intellect is lodged in the pure soul; and that
+there is nothing which we call as I or another.
+
+15. Then these demons who were devoid of the sense of themselves and
+their fears were necessarily dauntless of the fear of their decease or
+death; and were employed in their present duties, without the thoughts
+of the past and future.
+
+16. Their minds were attached to nothing, they slew their enemies
+without thinking themselves as their slayers; they did their duties and
+thought themselves as no doers of them; and they were utterly free from
+all their desires.
+
+17. They waged the war under the sense of doing their duty to their
+master; while their own nature was entirely free from all passion and
+affection, and of even tenor at all times.
+
+18. The infernal force under the command of Bhíma, Bhása and Dridha,
+bruised and burned and slew and devoured the celestial phalanx, as men
+knead and fry and boil the rice and afterward eat up as their food.
+
+19. The celestial army being harassed on all sides by Bhíma, Bhása, and
+Dridha, fled precipitately from the height of heaven, as the Ganges
+runs down from Himálayan height.
+
+20. The discomfited legion of the deities, then resorted to the god
+Hari, sleeping on the surface of the ocean of milk; as the bodies of
+the clouds of heaven, are driven by the winds to the tops of mountains
+(beyond the region of storm).
+
+21. The god lying folded in the coils of the serpent, as a consort in
+the arms of his mistress; gave the gods their hope of final success in
+future. (Hari or Krishna on the serpent, is typical of Christ’s
+bruising the head of the satanic serpent).
+
+22. The gods kept themselves hid in that ocean, until it pleased the
+lord Hari, to proceed out of it for the destruction of the demons.
+
+23. Then there was a dreadful war between Vishnu and Sambara, which
+broke and bore away the mountains as in an untimely great deluge of the
+earth.
+
+24. The mighty demon being at last overthrown by the might of Náráyana,
+was sent to and settled in the city of Vishnu after his death. (Because
+those that are either saved or slain by Vishnu, are equally entitled to
+his paradise).
+
+25. The demons of Bhíma, Bhása and Dridha, were also killed in their
+unequal struggle with Vishnu, and were extinguished like lamps by the
+wind.
+
+26. They became extinct like flames of fire, and it was not known
+whither their vital flame had fled. Because it is the desire of a
+person that leads him to another state, but these having no wish in
+them, had no other place to go.
+
+27. Hence the wishless soul is liberated, but not the wistful mind;
+therefore use your reason, O Ráma, to have a wishless mind and soul.
+
+28. A full investigation into truth, will put down your desires at
+once; and the extinction of desires, will restore your mind to rest
+like an extinguished candle.
+
+29. Consummate wisdom consists in the knowledge of there being nothing
+real in this world, and that our knowledge of reality is utterly false,
+and that nihility of thing, is the true reality.
+
+30. The whole world is full with the spirit of God, whatever otherwise
+one may think of it at any time; there can be no other thought of it
+except that it is a nihility, and this forms our perfect knowledge of
+it.
+
+31. The two significant words of the will and mind are mere
+insignificant fictions, as head and trunk of the ascending and
+descending nodes of a planet; which upon their right understanding, are
+lost in the Supreme Spirit. (_i.e._ It is only the divine will and
+spirit that is all in all).
+
+32. The mind being accompanied by its desires, is kept confined in this
+world, but when that is released from these, it is said to have its
+liberation.
+
+33. The mind has gained its existence in the belief of men, owing to
+the many ideas of pots and pictures (_ghata-patadí_); and other
+things which are imprinted in it; but these thoughts being repressed,
+the mind also vanishes of itself like the phantoms of goblins
+(yakshas—yakkas).[5]
+
+34. The demons Dáma, Vyála and Kata, were destroyed by reliance on
+their minds (_i.e._ by thinking their bodies as their souls); but
+Bhíma, Bhása and Dridha were saved by their belief in the Supreme soul,
+as pervading all things. Therefore, O Ráma! reject the examples of the
+former, imitate that of the latter.
+
+35. “Be not guided by the example of Dáma, Vyála and Kata,” is the
+lesson that was first delivered to me by Brahmá—the lotus-born and my
+progenitor himself.
+
+36. This lesson I repeat to you, O Ráma, as my intelligent pupil, that
+you may never follow the example of the wicked demons Dáma and others;
+but imitate the conduct of the good spirits, Bhíma and others in your
+conduct.
+
+37. It is incessant pain and pleasure that forms the fearful feature of
+this world, and there is no other way of evading all its pangs and
+pains, save by your apathetic behaviour, which must be your crowning
+glory in this life.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+ DESCRIPTION OF INSOUCIANCE.
+
+
+Argument. On the Abandonment of worldly desires, as conducive to the
+composure of the Mind, and society of the good, accompanied with
+rationality and spiritual knowledge, constituting the _Samádhi_ of the
+soul.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Blessed are the virtuous, who have cleansed their
+hearts from the dirt of ignorance; and victorious are those heroes, who
+have conquered their insatiable and ungovernable minds.
+
+2. It is self-control or the government of one’s own mind, that is the
+only means of wading through all the troubles and distresses, and
+amidst all the dangers and difficulties of this world.
+
+3. Hear the summary of all knowledge, and retain and cultivate
+constantly it in your mind; that the desire of enjoyment (avarice) is
+our bondage in the world, and its abandonment is our release from it.
+
+4. What need is there of many precepts, learn this one truth as the sum
+substance of all, that all pleasures are poisonous and pernicious, and
+you must fly from them as from venomous snakes and a raging fire.
+
+5. Consider well and repeatedly in yourself, that all sensible objects
+are as hydras and dragons; and their enjoyment is gall and poison.
+Avoid them at a distance and pursue after your lasting good.
+
+6. The cupidinous mind is productive of pernicious evils, as the
+sterile ground is fertile only in thorns and brambles. (The vitiated
+mind brings forth but vice, as the vicious heart teems with guilt).
+
+7. The mind devoid of desire, lacks its expansion, as the heart wanting
+its passions and affections, is curbed and contracted in itself.
+
+8. The goodly disposed mind ever teems with virtues, that are opposed
+to wrong acts and vice, as the ground of a good quality, grows only the
+good and useful trees in spite of weeds and bushes.
+
+9. When the mind gains its serenity by culture of good qualities, the
+mist of its errors and ignorance gradually fade and fly away, like
+clouds before the rising sun.
+
+10. The good qualities coming to shine in the sphere of the mind, like
+stars in the moonlight sky, gives rise to the luminary of reason to
+shine over it, like the bright sun of the day.
+
+11. And as the practice of patience grows familiar in the mind, like
+the medicinal _vansa-lochana_ within the bamboo; it gives rise to the
+quality of firmness in the man, as the moon brightens the vernal sky.
+
+12. The society of the good is an arbour, affording its cooling shade
+of peace, and yielding the fruit of salvation. Its effect in righteous
+men, is like that of the stately _sarala_-tree, distilling the juice of
+spiritual joy from the fruitage of samádhi (sang-froid).
+
+13. Thus prepared, the mind becomes devoid of its desires and enmity,
+and is freed from all troubles and anxieties. It becomes obtuse to the
+feelings of grief and joy, and of pain and pleasure also, and all its
+restlessness dies in itself.
+
+14. Its doubts in the truths of the scriptures die away, as the
+ephemerides and all its curiosities for novelties, are put to a stop. Its
+veil of myths and fictions is unveiled, and its ointment of error is
+rubbed out of it.
+
+15. Its attempts and efforts, malice and disdain, distress and disease,
+are all removed from it; and the mist of its grief and sorrow, and the
+chain of affections, are all blown and torn away.
+
+16. It discards the progeny of its doubts, repudiates the consorts of
+its avarice, and breaks loose from the prison-house of its body. It
+then seeks the welfare of the soul, and attains its godly state of
+holiness.
+
+17. It abandons the causes of its stoutness (_i.e._ its nourishments
+and enjoyments), and relinquishes its choice of this thing and that;
+and then remembering the dignity of the soul, it casts off the covering
+of its body as a straw.
+
+18. The elevation of the mind in worldly affairs, tends to its
+destruction, and its depression in these leads to its spiritual
+elevation. The wise always lower their minds (pride); but fools are for
+elevating them (to their ruin).
+
+19. The mind makes the world its own, and ranges all about it; it
+raises the mountains and mounts over them; it is as the infinite
+vacuum, and comprehends all vacuity in itself; and it makes gods of
+friends and foes of others unto us.
+
+20. The understanding being soiled by doubts, and forgetting the true
+nature of the intellect, takes upon it the name of the mind, when it is
+full of all its worldly desires.
+
+21. And the intellect being perverted by its various desires, is called
+the living soul; the animal soul being distinct from the rational soul.
+
+22. The understanding which forgets its intellectuality, and falls into
+the error of its own personality, is what we call the internal
+principle of the mind which is all hollow within.
+
+23. The soul is not the man of the world (_i.e._ no worldly being), nor
+is it the body or its blood. All material bodies are but gross and dull
+matter; but the soul in the body is empty air and intangible.
+
+24. The body being dissected into atoms, and analysed in all its
+particles, presents nothing but blood and entrails as the plantain
+tree, which when cut into pieces, presents naught but its folded rinds.
+
+25. Know the mind and living soul as making a man, and assuming his
+mortal form; the mind takes its form by itself according to his own
+option.
+
+26. Man stretches his own sphere of action by his own option only to
+entrap himself in it, as the silkworm weaves its cocoon for its own
+imprisonment.
+
+27. The soul lays down its error of being the body, when it has to
+forsake the same at some time or other (_i.e._ sooner or later), and
+assume another form as the germ sprouts forth into leaves. (_i.e._ The
+body is not the soul, nor is the soul the same with the body, as the
+materialist would have it; because the soul has its transmigration,
+which the body has not).
+
+28. As is the desire or thought in the mind, so is it born in its next
+state of metempsychosis. Hence the new born babe is given to sleeping,
+because it thinks itself to be dead, and lying in the night-time of his
+death. It is also given to the dreaming of those things, which had been
+the objects of its desire or thought in its previous state or birth.
+(This establishes the doctrine of innate ideas in the dreaming state of
+new-born babies).
+
+29. So sour becomes sweet by mixture with sugar, and the bitter seed
+produces sweet fruits by being sown with honey. So on the contrary,
+sweet becomes bitter by intermixture of gall and wormwood. (This is a
+fact in horticulture.—Áráma Sástra, and applies to the goodness and
+badness of the human mind, according to its good and bad associations).
+
+30. Aiming after goodness and greatness, makes a man good and great; as
+one wishing to be an Indra or a lord, dreams of his lordliness in his
+sleep. (The mind makes the man).
+
+31. Inclination to meanness bemeans a man, and a tendency to vileness
+vilifies his conduct in life; as one deluded by his fancy of devils,
+comes to see their apparitions in his nightly visions.
+
+32. But what is naturally foul or fair, can hardly turn otherwise at
+any time; as the limpid lake never becomes muddy, nor the dirty pool
+ever becomes glassy. (Nature of a thing is unchangeable).
+
+33. The perverted mind produces the fruits of its perversion in all its
+actions, while puremindedness is fraught with the effects of its purity
+everywhere.
+
+34. Good and great men never forsake their goodness and greatness, even
+in their fall and decline; so the glorious sun fills the vault of
+heaven with his glory, even when he is sinking below (the horizon).
+
+35. There is no restriction or freedom of the human soul, to or from
+any action or thing herein; it is a mere passive and neutral
+consciousness, of all that passes before it as a magic scene.
+
+36. The world is a magical city, and as a mirage appearing to sight; it
+is of the nature of the delusive panorama, showing many moons of the
+one, whose unity admits of no duality. So the one Brahma is represented
+as many by delusion. (The Hindus, contrary to Europeans, have many suns
+but one moon. Escas—Chandra).
+
+37. All this is verily the essence of Brahma, and this is the sober
+reality; the substantive world is an unsubstantiality, and peers out to
+view as a hollow phantom. (It is a phantasmagoria of phantasms).
+
+38. That I am not the infinite but an infinitesimal, is the misjudgment
+of the ignorant; but the certitude of my infinity and supremacy, is the
+means of my absorption in the Infinite and Supreme.
+
+39. The belief of one’s individuality in his undivided, all pervasive
+and transparent soul, as “I am this,” is the cause of his bondage to
+his personality, and is a web spun by his erroneous dualism. (Knowledge
+of a separate existence apart from solity, amounts to a dualistic
+creed).
+
+40. Want of the knowledge of one’s bondage or freedom, and of his unity
+or duality, and his belief in the totality of Brahma, is the supreme
+truth of true philosophy.
+
+41. Perfect transparency of the soul, amounting to its nihility, and
+its want of attachment to visible appearances, as also its
+unmindfulness of all that is, are the conditions for beholding Brahma
+in it. There is no other way to this.
+
+42. The purity of the mind produced by acts of holiness, is the
+condition for receiving the sight of Brahma; as it is the whiteness of
+the cloth that can receive any colour upon it.
+
+43. Think thy soul, O Ráma! as same with the souls of all other
+persons, and abstain from all other thoughts, of what is desirable or
+undesirable, what invigorates or enfeebles the body, and what brings
+liberation after bondage, or Salvation after sinfulness. (Since none of
+these states appertains to the universal soul, which is quite free from
+them).
+
+44. The mirror of the mind being cleansed by the knowledge of the
+sástras, and dispassionateness of the understanding, it receives the
+reflexion of Brahma, as the clear crystal reflects the images of things.
+
+45. The sight which is conversant with visible objects and not with
+images and ideas in the mind, is called false vision of what is soon
+lost from view. (_i.e._ Mental sight is more lasting than that of the
+visual organs).
+
+46. When the mind is fixed upon God, by abstracting its sight from all
+mental and ocular visions, it has then the view of the Supreme before
+it. (This is called spiritual vision).
+
+47. The visible sights which are obvious to view, are all but unreal
+phantoms; it is the absorption of the mind in the Divine, that makes it
+identical with the same and no other.
+
+48. The visibles now present before us being absent from our view,
+either before or after our sight of them, must be considered as absent
+in the interim also. Therefore one unacquainted with his mind, is as
+insensible as the man that knows not what he holds in his hand.
+
+49. One having no knowledge that “the world is the same with the
+Supreme spirit,” is always subject to misery; but the negation of the
+visibles as distinct from God, gives us both the pleasure of our
+enjoyments here, and our liberation in future.
+
+50. It is ignorance to say the water is one thing and its wave is
+another; but it shows one’s intelligence, who says they are the one and
+the same thing.
+
+51. The vanities of the world, are fraught with sorrow, therefore
+discard all its appendages from thee. The abandonment of superfluity,
+will conduce to thy attainment of wisdom at last.
+
+52. The mind being composed of vain desires, is an unreality in itself;
+say therefore, O Ráma! why should you sorrow for something which in
+reality is nothing.
+
+53. Do you, O Ráma! look upon all things as traps set to ensnare the
+soul; and regard them with the eye of an unkind kinsman looking upon
+his relatives, with an eye of apathy and unconcern.
+
+54. As the unkind relative is unconcerned with the joys and griefs of
+his relations; so shouldst thou remain aloof from all things, by
+knowing the falsehood of their natures.
+
+55. Rely on that eternal Spirit, which is infinite knowledge and
+felicity, and which is between the viewer and the view (_i.e._ betwixt
+the noumenon and the phenomenon). The mind being fixed to that truth,
+will adhere to it as clay, after the swiftness of its flight is at an
+end.
+
+56. The airy flight of the mind being restrained, the sluggish body
+must cease to run about; and the cloud of the dust of ignorance, will
+no more spread over the city of the world.
+
+57. When the rains of our desires are over, and the calmness of the
+mind is restored; when the shuddering coldness of dulness has fled,
+and when the mud of worldliness is dried up:—
+
+58. When the channel of our thirst is dried up, and the drinking pots
+are sucked up and emptied; when the forest of the heart is cleared, and
+its brambles are rooted out, and the frost of false knowledge has
+disappeared:—
+
+59. It is then that the mist of error vanishes from view, like the
+shadow of night on the approach of dawn; and the frigidity of dullness
+is put to flight, like the poison of snake-bite by the potent charm of
+mantras.
+
+60. Then the rivulets of our desires, do not run down the rock of the
+body; nor do the peacocks of our fleeting wishes, fly and sport on its
+top.
+
+61. The sphere of our consciousness becomes as the clear sky; and the
+luminary of the living soul, shines as brightly over it as the midday
+sun.
+
+62. The cloud of error is dispelled and succeeded by the light of
+reason; and the longings of the soul, being purified of their dross,
+make it shine brilliantly amidst its sphere.
+
+63. Then raptures of serene delight, shoot forth in the soul like
+blooming blossoms in the open air; and a cool light is shed upon it,
+like the cooling beams of the autumnal moon.
+
+64. This ecstacy of the soul, unfolds all prosperity before it, and
+fructifies with abundance the well cultivated ground of the reasoning
+mind. (Truth is the fruit of holy joy in the reasonable mind).
+
+65. It sheds its clear lustre all over the world, and shows the depths
+of the hills and forests, and everything on earth in their clearest
+light. (Heavenly joy unfolds all things to light).
+
+66. It expands the mind and makes it translucent, and the heart as a
+clear lake, renders blooming with blossoms of the lotus of _satva_, and
+without the dust—_rajas_ of egoism. It is never infested by the
+swarming passions of pride or _tamas_.
+
+67. The mind then being purged of its selfishness, turns to universal
+benevolence and philanthropy; and being quite calm in itself without
+any desire of its own, it reigns as lord over the city of its body.
+
+68. The man whose investigation has made him acquainted with all
+things, whose soul is enlightened with truth; whose mind is melted down
+from his highmindedness; who is calm and quiet in his understanding,
+and looks at the unpleasant course of the births and deaths of men with
+pity; he verily lives happily in the realm of his body, without his
+feverish anxieties about anything.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+ DESCRIPTION OF THE INTELLECTUAL SPHERE.
+
+
+Argument. The Intellect as pervading all things, and making us
+acquainted with them.
+
+
+Ráma said:—Tell me O Bráhman! how the mundane system subsists in the
+extra mundane immaterial soul, for the sake of my advancement in
+knowledge.
+
+2. Vasishtha replied:—The worlds having no separate existence (before
+or after their formation) except in the Supreme mind, they are all
+situated in the Divine Intellect, like the unheaving and unseen
+would be waves of the sea.
+
+3. As the all-pervading sky is not to be seen owing to its extreme
+tenuity; so the undivided nature of the all-pervasive intellect, is not
+to be perceived on account of its rarity.
+
+4. As the gem has its brilliancy in it, whether it is moved or unmoved
+by any body, so the unreal world has its potential existence in the
+Divine Spirit, both in its states of action and inactivity. (Hence the
+eternity of the world in the Eternal Mind).
+
+5. As the clouds abiding in the sky, do not touch the sky or have a
+tangible feeling of its vacuity; so the worlds subsisting in the
+receptacle of the Intellectual soul, have no contact with the
+extraneous (pará) intellect, which is unconnected with its contents.
+
+6. As the light residing in the waters of the sea or a pot of water, is
+not connected either with the water or pot, nor is it felt by us but by
+its reflexion; so the intangible soul abides unconnected in its
+receptacle of the body, and reflects itself to our knowledge only.
+
+7. The intellect is devoid of every desire and designation; it is the
+indestructible soul, and is named by our intelligence of it as (Chetya)
+intelligible; or from some one of our intelligible ideas as the living
+soul &c.
+
+8. It is clearer than the translucent air, and finer than it by a
+hundred times; it is known as an undivided whole by the learned; who
+view it as identic with the whole undivided world, which it comprehends
+within itself.
+
+9. As the sea water shows itself in various forms in all its waves, so
+the intellect does not differ from it, in showing us its various
+representations of its own motion.
+
+10. The diversities of our subjective and objective knowledge of myself
+and thyself and these (ego, tu &c.), are like the varieties of waves
+and billows in the ocean of the intellect, these are but erroneous
+notions, since they are representations of the same element, and the
+very same intellect.
+
+11. The various states of the intellect (Chit), intellection (Chintá),
+intelligence (Chittam) and intelligibles (Chetyas), all appertain to
+the main principle of the soul. They are differently conceived by the
+learned and ignorant, but the difference is a mere conceit (Kalpaná).
+
+12. The intellect presents its two different aspects to the wise and
+unwise people; to the ignorant, it shows its unreal nature in the
+realistic conception of the world, while to the learned it exhibits its
+luminous form in the identity of all things (with God).
+
+13. The intellect enlightens the luminous bodies of the sun and stars,
+by its internal (intellectual) light; it gives a relish to things by
+its internal taste; and it gives birth to all beings from its inborn
+ideas of them.
+
+14. It neither rises nor sets, nor gets up nor sits; it neither
+proceeds nor recedes to or fro, it is not here nor is it no where.
+(Omniscience is present everywhere and is ever the same).
+
+15. The pure and transpicuous intellect which is situated in the soul,
+displays in itself the phantasmagoria which is called the world.
+
+16. As a heap of fire emits its flame, and a luminous body blazes with
+its rays; and as the sea swells in surges and breaks in with its arms,
+so the intellect bursts out in its creations. (Omniscience is the cause
+and not percipience of the world—God makes all things, and does not
+perceive them like us).
+
+17. Thus the intellect which is selfmanifest and omnipresent of its
+own nature, developes and envelopes the world by its own manifestation
+and occultation, and by its acts of integration and segregation
+(_sánhára_ and _nirhára_); or the acts of accretion and secretion.
+
+18. It is led by its own error and of its own accord, to forget and
+forsake its state of infinitude; and then by assuming its individual
+personality of egoism (that I am), it is converted to an ignoramus. (So
+men of contracted views turn to be dunces).
+
+19. It falls from its knowledge of generals to that of particulars, by
+its act of specialization; and comes to the discrimination of the
+positive, and negative, and of inclusion and exclusion (or admission or
+rejection).
+
+20. It strives and struggles within the confines of the sensuous body
+(owing to its degradation from spirituality); and it multiplies in
+these bodies like the weeds sprouting out of the bosom of the earth.
+(_i.e._ From its unity becomes a multiplicity in the many animal
+bodies).
+
+21. It is the intellect that stretches the spacious vacuum, to make
+room for the subsistence and growth of every thing; and makes the all
+and ever moving air and the liquid water, for the vitality and
+nourishment of all.
+
+22. It makes the firm earth (terrafirma) and the light-some fire and
+the fixed worlds all around; and employs time by its injunctions and
+prohibitions, (to do or undo any thing).
+
+23. It gives fragrance to flowers, and grows by degrees their filaments
+and pistils; and it makes the moisture of the porous ground, to grow
+vegetables on earth.
+
+24. The rooted trees fructify with fruits, by their juicy saps from
+beneath; and they produce their fruitage, and display their foliage
+with lineaments in them, as their veins and arteries.
+
+25. It renovates the forest with its gifts of various hues, and dyes
+them with the variety of colours in the rainbow of Indra.
+
+26. It bids the folia, fruits and flowers to wait on the flowery season
+of spring; and then brings their fruitage to perfection, under the heat
+of the summer sun.
+
+27. It makes the dark blue clouds of heaven, to wait on the approach of
+the rainy weather; and causes the harvest of fields, to follow in the
+train of autumn.
+
+28. The cold season is decorated with its smiling frost, in its faces
+of the ten sides of the sky; and the dewy weather is made to waft its
+icicles of dew drops, on the pinions of the chilling winds of winter.
+
+29. It makes the ever moving time, to revolve in its rotation of years
+and cycles and Yuga—ages; and causes the tide of creation to roll on in
+its waves of worlds, on its bosom of the ocean of eternity.
+
+30. Its decrees remain fixed with a wonderful stability, and the earth
+(terra or dhara), continues firm (dhíra or sthira), with its quality of
+containing all things. (In this sloka there is both a homonym and
+paronym of similar sound and sense in the word _dhará_ derived from the
+root _dhri_: namely, _dhírá_, _dhará_, = _sthirá_, terra and _dharana_
+and _dharini_).
+
+31. It made the universe teem with fourteen kinds of beings in its as
+many worlds of the chaturdasa-bhuvanas; and these are as different in
+their modes of life as in their forms and figures. (The Atharvan or
+last Veda reckons tri-sapta or thrice seven worlds).
+
+32. These are repeatedly produced from and reduced to nothing, and move
+in their wonted courses for ever, as bubbles in the waterless ocean of
+eternity.
+
+33. Here the miserable multitudes, moving mad in vain struggles after
+their desired objects, and in their imbecility under the subjection of
+disease and death. They are incessantly coming to life and going away
+in their exits, remaining in their living states and acquiring their
+ends, and for ever running to and fro, in their repeated births and
+deaths in this world.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+ UPASAMA. THE SAMENESS OR QUIETISM OF THE SOUL.
+
+
+Argument:—The sameness of the Spirit from its want of perturbation by
+worldly matters; and equanimity of the mind in all circumstances.
+
+
+Vasishtha added:—In this manner are these series of worlds, revolving
+in their invariable course, and repeatedly appearing and disappearing
+in the substantiality of Brahma.
+
+2. 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.
+
+3. But as the motion of the waters on the surface, does not affect the
+waters in the depth of the sea; so the fluctuations of the changing
+scenes of nature, make no alteration in the ever tranquil spirit of
+Brahma.
+
+4. As the desert in summer heat, presents the waters of mirage to the
+clear sky, so the false world, shows its delusive appearances to the
+mind.
+
+5. As the calm soul seems to be giddy in the state of one’s
+drunkenness, so the essence of the intellect which is always the same,
+appears as otherwise in its ignorance.
+
+6. 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.
+
+7. Ráma! that soul of yours whereby you have the perception of form and
+figures and of sound and smell, is the Supreme Brahma pervading all
+things.
+
+8. The pure soul being one in many, and inherent in all external
+objects, cannot be thought as distinct from those, that appear
+otherwise than itself.
+
+9. Ráma! it is the difference of human thoughts, that judges
+differently of the existence and non-existence of things, and of their
+good and bad natures also; it judges the existence of the world, either
+as situated in or without the Divine Spirit.
+
+10. Whereas it is impossible for any thing to exist beside the Spirit
+of God, it was the Spirit that “willed to become many”. And as there
+was nothing beside itself, which it could think of or find for itself,
+it was necessary that it became so of itself, and without the aid of
+any extraneous matter. (Prose).
+
+11. (Prose). Therefore the will to do this or that, or try for one
+thing or other, does not relate to the soul but to the mind. Thus the
+optionless soul, having no will of its own, does nothing except
+cogitating on what is in itself. It is no active agent, owing to the
+union of all agency, instrumentality and objectivity in itself. It
+abides nowhere, being both the recipient and content, or the container
+and the contained of everything in itself. Neither is the will-less
+soul actionless likewise, when the acts of creation are palpable in
+itself (karmaprasidhi). Nor is it possible that there is any other
+cause of them. (_Nanyakartá dvítiryakam. Sruti_).
+
+12. Ráma! you must know the nature of Brahma to be no other
+(_vetara—non alter_) than this; and knowing him as no agent and without
+a second, be free from all anxiety.
+
+13. I will tell you further that:—Though you may continue to do a great
+many acts here, yet tell me in a word, what dost thou do that is worth
+doing. Rely on the want of your own agency, and be quiet as the sapient
+sage. Remain as calm and still, as the clear ocean when unshaken by the
+breeze.
+
+14. Again knowing well, that it is not possible for the swiftest
+runners to reach their goal of perfection, how far so ever they may go.
+You must desist in your mind from pursuing after worldly objects, and
+persist to meditate on the spirituality of your inward and intellectual
+soul.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+ THE SAME QUIETNESS OR QUIETUDE OF THE SPIRIT.
+
+
+Argument. The unconnected Soul being connected with the Mind, is
+believed as the Active Spirit by the unwise. But the quiet spirit
+of the wise, which is unaffected by its actions, is ever free and
+emancipate from the acts.
+
+
+Vasishtha resumed:—(Prose). Such being the state of the wise, the
+actions they are seen to do, whether of goodness or otherwise or
+pleasurable or painful, in and whatsoever they are engaged, are _nil_
+and as nothing, and do not affect them as they do the other worldly
+mortals. (The unconcernedness of the wise, is opposed to the great
+concern of fools in their actions).
+
+2. 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. (Gloss)).
+
+3. The production of an act by appliance of the proper means, and the
+exertion and action of the body in conformity with one’s ability, and
+the completion of the effect compatible with one’s intention, together
+with the enjoyment of the result of such agency, are defined and
+determined as the action of the man. (It is the deliberate and
+voluntary doing of an act, and not the unintentional physical action,
+that constitutes human agency. Gloss).
+
+4. (Verse). Moreover, whether a man is agent or no agent of an action,
+and whether he goes to heaven or dwells in hell, his mind is subject to
+the same feelings, as he has the desires in his heart. (The mind makes
+a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven by its good or bad thoughts.
+Milton).
+
+5. (Prose). Hence the agency of the ignorant, arises from their wishing
+to do a thing, whether they do it or not; but not so of the wise, who
+having no will, are not culpable even for their involuntary actions.
+Untutored minds are full with the weeds of vice, but well cultivated
+souls are quite devoid of them. Gloss. (So: “If good we plant not, vice
+will fill the place: And rankest weeds the richest soils deface”).
+
+6. He who has the knowledge of truth (tatwajnána), becomes relaxed in
+his earthly desires; and though he acts his part well, he does not long
+eagerly for its result as others. He acts with his body but with a
+quiet unconcerned mind. When successful, he attributes the gain to the
+will of God; but the worldly minded arrogate the result to themselves,
+though they could not bring it about.
+
+7. Whatever the mind intends, comes verily to pass, and nothing is
+achieved without the application of the mind; whereupon the agency
+belongeth to the mind and not to the body. (An involuntary action is
+not a deed).
+
+8. The world doth proceed from the Mind (Divine); it is the mind (by
+being a development of it), and is situated in the (infinite and
+eternal) mind; knowing all things as such manifestations of the powers
+of the intellect, the wise man remains in the coolness of his desire or
+luke warmness.
+
+9. 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 _turya—sans souci_ or
+impassibility).
+
+10. This is not the felicity of the _gusto_ of pleasure, nor the dolour
+of sorrow or discontent; it consists not in the liveliness of living
+beings, nor in the torpidity of stones. It is not situated in the midst
+of these antitheses (_i.e._ in the _sandhisthána_ or golden medium
+between these); but in the knowing mind which is _Bhumánanda_—all
+rapture and ravishment. (Neither is _il allegro_ nor _il spinseroso_,
+the true bliss of man).
+
+11. But the ignorant mind (which is unacquainted with this state of
+transport) is transported by its thirst after the moving waters of
+earthly pleasures; as an elephant is misled to the foul pool, where he
+is plunged in its mud and mire, without finding any thing that is
+really good.
+
+12. Here is another instance of it based upon a stanza in the Sruti,
+which says that:—A man dreaming himself to be falling into a pit, feels
+the fear of his fall in his imagination even when he has been sleeping
+in his bed; but another who actually falls in a pit when he is fast
+asleep, is quite insensible of his falls. Thus it is the mind which
+paints its own pleasure and pains, and not the bodily action or its
+inactivity.
+
+13. Hence whether a man is the doer of an action or not, he perceives
+nothing of it, when his mind is engrossed in some other thought or
+action; but he views every thing within himself, who beholds them on
+the abstract meditation of his mind. The thinking mind sees the outward
+objects, as reflexions of his pure intellect cast without him. (The
+spiritualist regards the outward as images of his inward ideas, in
+opposition to the materialist, who considers the internal ideas to be
+but reflexions derived from external impressions).
+
+14. Thus the man knowing the knowable soul, knows himself as
+inaccessible to the feelings of pleasure and pain. Knowing this as
+certain, he finds the existence of no other thing, apart from what is
+contained in the container of his soul, which is as a thousandth part
+of a hair. This being ascertained, he views every thing in himself.
+With this certainty of knowledge, he comes to know his self as the
+reflector of all things, and present in all of them. After these
+ascertainments, he comes to the conclusion that he is not subject to
+pain or pleasure. Thus freed from anxieties, the mind freely exercises
+its powers over all customary duties, without being concerned with them.
+
+15. He who knows the self, remains joyous even in his calamity, and
+shines as the moonlight, which enlightens the world. He knows that it
+is his mind and not hisself, that is the agent of his actions although
+he is the doer of them: and knowing the agency of the mind in all his
+actions, he does not assume to himself the merit of the exercise of his
+limbs, hands and feet, nor expects to reap the rewards of all his
+assiduous labours and acts.
+
+16. Mental actions (thoughts) being brought to practice, tend to
+involve their unguarded agents of ungoverned minds, into the endurance
+of its consequence. Thus the mind is the seed (root) of all efforts and
+exertions, of all acts and actions, of all their results and
+productions, and the source of suffering the consequences of actions.
+By doing away with your mind, you make a clean sweep of all your
+actions, and thereby avoid all your miseries resulting from your acts.
+All these are at an end with the _anaesthesia_ of the mind. It is a
+practice in _Yoga_ to allay (laisser aller), the excitement of the mind
+to its ever varying purposes.
+
+17. Behold the boy is led by his mind (fancy) to build his toy or
+hobby-horse, which he dresses and daubs at his wilfull play, without
+showing any concern or feeling of pleasure or pain, in its making or
+breaking of it at his pleasure. So doth man build his aerial castle,
+and level it without the sense of his gain or loss therein. It is by
+his acting in this manner in all worldly matters, that no man is
+spiritually entangled to them. (Do your duties and deal with all with a
+total unconcernedness and indifference).
+
+18. What cause can there be for your sorrow, amidst the dangers and
+delights of this world, but that you have the one and not the other.
+But what thing is there that is delectable and delightful to be desired
+in this world, which is not evanescent and perishable at the same time,
+save yourself (soul), which is neither the active nor passive agent of
+your actions and enjoyments; though they attribute the actions and
+their fruitions to it by their error.
+
+19. The importance of actions and passions to living beings, is a
+mistake and not veritable truth. Because by the right consideration of
+things, we find no action nor passion bearing any relation to the soul.
+Its attachment or aversion to the senses and sensible actions and
+enjoyments, is felt only by the sensualist, and not by them that are
+unconscious of sensuous affections (as the apathetic ascetics).
+
+20. There is no liberation in this world for the worldly minded, while
+it is fully felt by the liberal minded Yogi, whose mind is freed from
+its attachments to the world, in its state of living liberation.
+(Jívan-mukta).
+
+21. Though the Sage is rapt in the light of his self-consciousness, yet
+he does not disregard to distinguish the unity and duality, the true
+entity from the non-entities, and to view the omnipotence in all
+potencies or powers that are displayed in nature (for these display His
+power and goodness beyond our thought).
+
+22. (Verse). To him there is no bond or freedom, nor liberation nor
+bondage whatever, and the miseries of ignorance are all lost in the
+light of his enlightenment. (Bondage and freedom here refer to their
+causes or acts (কর্ম্ম) by the figure of metonymy; and that
+these bear no relation to the abstracted or spiritualistic Yogi).
+
+23. It is in vain to wish for liberation, when the mind is tied down to
+the earth; and so it is redundant to talk of bondage, when the mind is
+already fastened to it. Shun them both by ignoring your egoism, and
+remain fixed to the true Ego, and continue thus to manage yourself with
+your unruffled mind on earth. (The whole of this is a lesson of the
+Stoical and Platonic philosophic and unimpassioned passivity).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+ ON THE UNITY OF ALL THINGS.
+
+
+Argument. Explanation of Divine Omnipotence, and inability of Vasishtha
+to give full exposition of it.
+
+
+Ráma rejoined:—(Prose) Tell me, O high-minded sage, how could the
+creation proceed from the Supreme Brahma, whom you represent to remain
+as a painting in the tableau of vacuity.
+
+2. Vasishtha replied:—O prince, such is the nature of Brahma, that all
+power incessantly flows from him, wherefore every power is said to
+reside in him. (It is unvedantic to say, that Brahma is omnipotent or
+the reservoir of power, and not omnipotence or identic with all power
+himself).
+
+3. In him resides entity and non-entity, in him there is unity, duality
+and plurality, and the beginning and end of all things. (Because
+omnipotence has the power to be all things, which limited powers cannot
+do).
+
+4. This is one and no other else (_i.e._ it is all that is, and there
+is none else beside it (_Id est non alter_). 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).
+
+5. The density of the Intellect makes the mind, and the mind brings
+forth all the powers of thinking, willing or volition, and of acting or
+action. These it produces, accumulates, contains, shows and then
+absorbs in itself.
+
+6. (Verse) Brahma is the source of all living beings, and of all things
+seen all around us. His power is the cause of exhibiting all things, in
+their incessant course or quiescence.
+
+7. All things spring from the Supreme Spirit, and they reside in his
+all comprehensive mind. They are of the same nature with that of their
+source, as the water of the sweet and saltish lakes.
+
+8. Ráma interrupted here and said:—Sir, your discourse is very dark,
+and I cannot understand the meaning of the words of your speech.
+
+9. There is that nature of Brahma, which you said to be beyond the
+perception of the mind and senses, and what are these perishable
+things, which you say to have proceeded from him. If your reasoning
+comes to this end, I cannot then rely upon it.
+
+10. Because it is the law of production, that anything that is produced
+from something, is invariably of the same nature with that of its
+producer.
+
+11. 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.
+
+12. And so the productions of the immutable Spirit, must also be
+unchangeable and spiritual too in their nature.
+
+13. Beside this the Intellectual Spirit of God, is pure and immaculate;
+while this creation is all impure and gross matter.
+
+14. The great Sage said upon hearing these words:—Brahma is all purity
+and there is no impurity in him; the waves moving on the surface of the
+sea may be foul, but they do not soil the waters of the deep.
+
+15. You cannot conceive Ráma, 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).
+
+16. Ráma rejoined:—Sir, Brahma is devoid of sorrow, while the world is
+full of sorrows. I cannot therefore clearly understand your words; when
+you say this to be the offspring of that. (The maculate equal to the
+immaculate or the perishable to the imperishable is absurd).
+
+17. Válmíki said to Bharadwája:—The great Sage Vasishtha remained
+silent at these words of Ráma; and stopped in his lecture with the
+thoughtfulness of his mind.
+
+18. His mind lost its wonted clearness (in its confusion), and then
+recovering its perspicacity, he pondered within himself in the
+following manner.
+
+19. 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 Ráma.
+
+20. It is no fault of the educated to be doubtful of something, until
+it is explained to them to their full satisfaction, as in the case of
+Rághava. (Relating the identity of the cause and its effect).
+
+21. 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).
+
+22. But he who has come to the sight of transcendental light, and got a
+clear insight of spiritual truths, feels no desire for sensual
+enjoyments; but advances in course of time to the conclusion, that
+Brahma is All in all things (_to pan_).
+
+(The transcendental philosophy of modern German schools, has arrived at
+the same conclusion of Pantheism, _Ho Theos to pan_).
+
+23. The disciple is to be prepared and purified at first, with the
+precepts and practice of quietism and self-control (_Sama_ and _damá_);
+and is then to be initiated in the creed that “All this is Brahma, and
+that thyself art that pure Spirit.”
+
+24. But who so teaches the faith of “all is Brahma” to the half taught
+and the ignorant; verily entangles him in the strong snare of hell.
+(Because they take the visible for the invisible, which leads them to
+nature and idol worships which casts them to hell).
+
+25. The well discerning Sage should tell them, that are enlightened in
+their understandings, whose desire of sensual gratifications has
+abated, and who are freed from their worldly desires, that they are
+purged of the dirt of their ignorance, and are prepared to receive
+religious and spiritual instruction.
+
+26. The spiritual guide who instructs his pupil without weighing well
+his habits and conduct, is a silly pedagogue and sinks into hell and
+has to dwell there until the last day of judgment; (to answer for
+misleading his disciples).
+
+27. The venerable Vasishtha, who was the chief of sages, and like the
+luminous sun on earth, having considered these things, spoke to Ráma as
+follows. (The sages are said to be luminous both from the fairness of
+their Aryan complexions, as also on account of their enlightened
+understandings).
+
+28. Vasishtha said:—I will tell thee Ráma at the conclusion, of this
+lecture, whether the attribution of the dross of gross bodies, is
+applicable to Brahma or not. (_i.e._ How a spiritual body may assume a
+material form &c.).
+
+29. Know now that Brahma is almighty, all pervading, ubiquitous and is
+all himself, because of his omnipotence, which can do and become all
+and every thing of itself.
+
+30. As you see the various practices of magicians and the trickeries of
+jugglers, in producing, presenting, and abstracting many things in the
+sight of men, that are all but unreal shows; so doth Brahma produce,
+present and retract all things from and into himself.
+
+31. The world is filled with gardens as those in fairy lands, and the
+sky is replenished with the airy castles of Gandharvas and the abodes
+of gods; and men are seen to descend from the cloudless sky, to the
+surface of the earth, and rise upwards to heaven (in vimánas or
+balloons).
+
+32. Fairy cities like the palaces of the Gandharvas of the etherial
+regions, are shown on earth, and filled with the fairies of the Fairy
+land. (_i.e._ The courts and palaces of princes, which vie with the
+abodes of gods).
+
+33. Whatever there is or has been or is to be in this world in future,
+are like reflexions of the revolving sky and heavenly bodies, or a
+brazen ball affixed to the top of a tower, and darting its golden light
+below.
+
+34. All these are but exhibitions of the various forms of
+manifestations of the selfsame God. (“These as they change,—these are
+but the varied God.” Thomson. So Wordsworth and the Persian Mystics).
+
+35. Whatever takes place at any time or place and in any form, is but
+the variety of the One Self-existent reality. Why therefore, O Ráma!
+should you give vent to your sorrow or joy, or wonder at any change of
+time or place or nature and form of things, which are full of the
+spirit of God, and exhibit the endless aspects of the Infinitive Mood.
+
+36. Let the intelligent preserve the sameness (_samata_) of their minds
+and dispositions amidst all changes; knowing them as the varying
+conditions of the same unvarying Mind.
+
+37. He who sees his God in all, and is fraught with equanimity, has no
+cause of his wonder of surprise, his grief or delight or any
+fluctuation of his mind, in any change in nature or vicissitude of his
+fortune (because the one Omnipresence is present in all events, and its
+Omnipotence directs all potentialities).
+
+38. The unaltered mind continues to view the varieties of the power of
+his Maker, in all the variations of time and place, and of all external
+circumstances.
+
+39. The Lord proposes these plans in the formation of his creation, and
+exhibits as the sea does its waves in endless varieties and successions
+from the plenitude of his mind.
+
+40. So the Lord manifests the powers situated in himself, as the sea
+does its waves in itself. Or as the milk forms the butter, the earth
+produces the pot (_ghata_), and the thread is woven into the cloth
+(_pata_). So the _bata_ or fig tree brings forth its fruit, and all
+other varied forms are contained in their sources. But these formal
+changes are phenomenal not real. They are mere appearances of the
+spectrum, as those of apparitions and spectres.[6]
+
+41. There is no other agent or object, nor an actor and its act, or any
+thing which is acted upon, nor is there any thing that becomes nothing
+except it by but a variety of the one unity. (_In nihilo riverti
+posse_).
+
+42. The mind that witnesses the spiritual truths, and remains with its
+unimpaired equanimity, and is undepressed by external accidents, comes
+to see the light of truth in itself. (Truth like the sun shineth in the
+inmost soul).
+
+43. (Verse). There being the lamp, there is its light also; and the sun
+shining brings the day with him. Where there is the flower, there is
+its odour likewise; so where there is the living soul, there is the
+light or knowledge of the world in it.
+
+44. The world appearing all around, is as the light of the soul; it
+appears as the motion of the wind, whereof we have no notion of its
+reality or unreality. (So says Herbert Spencer concerning our notion of
+motion. We see the wheel in motion and changing its place, but have no
+idea of its motion).
+
+45. The immaculate Soul, is the prime mobile power of the appearance
+and disappearance of the myriads of gross bodies which like the
+revolving stars of the sky, and the season flowers of the spring,
+appear and reappear to us by turns, like the ups and downs of wheels in
+motion. (We see their revolutions, but neither see their motion nor the
+soul the giver of motion).
+
+46. All things die away when our souls are without us, but how can any
+thing be null when we are in possession of our souls? (Everything
+exists with ourselves, but we lose all, with loss of our souls).
+
+47. All things appear before us in the presence of our souls, and they
+vanish from before us in their absence from the body. (Every thing is
+existent with us with the existence of our souls, and nothing is
+perceived by us without them, as when we are dead).
+
+48. Everything is born with us with our souls, and is lost with loss of
+them. (The living have all, but the dead are lost to view. And the
+human soul, when in conjunction with the Divine, has a clear view of
+everything).
+
+51. The minds of men are endowed with their knowledge at their very
+birth. Then growing big by degrees in course of time, they expand
+themselves in the form of this spacious forest of the world.
+
+52. The wood of the world is the fastening post of the soul, where our
+blooming desires are fraught with fruits of poignant griefs. It
+branches out with gratifications, blossoms with hoary age, and is
+breaking its goodly post, and wandering at large of its free will.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXX.
+
+ BRAHMA IDENTIC WITH THE WORLD
+ or
+ IDENTITY OF THE WORLD WITH BRAHMA.
+
+
+Argument. Production and names of the Varieties of Animal Life and
+their spiritual Natures.
+
+
+Ráma said:—Tell me, sir, about the production of animal beings from
+Brahma, and let me know their different names and natures in full
+length.
+
+2. Vasishtha replied:—The manner in which the different species of
+beings are produced from Brahma, and how they are destroyed afterwards,
+as also how they obtain their liberation at last:—
+
+3. Also the manner of their growth and sustentation, and fitness in the
+world, are all what you must hear me now tell you in brief.
+
+4. 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.
+
+5. The intellection becomes condensed to a certain subtile form, which
+having the powers of conception (_sankalpa_), becomes the principle
+entitled the Mind.
+
+6. The mind then by an effort of its conception (called the Will),
+expands itself to an unreal (ideal) scenery like that of the Fairyland,
+by falling off from the nature of Brahmic Incogitancy.
+
+7. The intellect when remaining in its original state, appears as a
+vacuum or vacancy; but upon manifesting itself in the form of the mind,
+it is seen as the visible sky by men.
+
+8. Taking the conception of the lotus-born, it finds itself in its
+conceived form of the lotus (Brahmá), and then it thinks of creation in
+the form of Prajápati or lord of creatures.
+
+9. He then formed from his thought (chitta) this creation, containing
+the fourteen worlds with all the bustle of living beings in them.
+
+10. The mind itself is a vacuity with a vacuous body; its conception is
+the field of its action, and its sphere is full with the false workings
+of the mind.
+
+11. Here there are many kinds of beings, labouring under great
+ignorance as the beasts and brute creatures. There are some with
+enlightened minds as the sages; and others staggering in the
+intermediate class, as the majority of mankind.
+
+12. Among all living beings that are confined in this earth, it is only
+the human race living in this part (India), that are capable of
+receiving instruction and civilization.
+
+13. But as most of these are subject to diseases and distress, and are
+suffering under the thrall of their ignorance, enmity and fear; it is
+for them that I will deliver my lecture on social and saintly
+conduct—_rájatwikí níti_ (in the 42nd chapter of this book).
+
+14. I will also treat there about the everlasting, imperishable and
+omnipresent Brahma, who is without beginning and end, whose mind is
+without error, and of the form of Intellectual light.
+
+15. How endless beings are put to motion, by the momentum of a particle
+of his motionless body; and resembling the rolling of boisterous waves
+on the surface of the clear and tranquil ocean.
+
+16. Ráma asked:—How sir, do you speak of a part of the infinite Spirit,
+and of the momentum of the motionless God; as also of a change and
+effort of it, that is altogether without them (vikárávikrama).
+
+17. Vasishtha replied:—It is the usual and current mode of expression,
+both in the sástras and language of the people to say, “all this is
+made by or come from Him”, but it is not so in its real and spiritual
+sense.
+
+18. No change or partition, and no relation of space or time, bear any
+reference to the Supreme, who is unchangeable, infinite and eternal;
+nor is there any appearance or disappearance of Him at any time or
+place, who is ever invisible every where.
+
+19. There never was nor can there ever be any way, of representing the
+incomprehensible, except by symbolical expressions; it was therefore in
+accordance to common speech, that I have made use of those words.
+
+20. Whatever words or sentences are used here as symbolical of some
+sense, whether they express as “produced from it _tajja_” or as a
+change of the same—“_tanmaya_”, the same should be used, in that sense
+all along.
+
+21. It is tajja, as when we say “fire proceeds from fire” (meaning, the
+“mundane Brahma comes out of the spiritual Brahma.” Here fire is
+symbolical of Brahma and the world). It is _tanmaya_ in the expression
+“Brahma is the producer and produced” (which means the identity—and
+transformation of the creator to the creation).
+
+22. 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.
+
+23. The expression _idam—anyat_ = _idem alius_ or this is one thing and
+that another, is false, the difference is verbal and not real; because
+there is no proof of it in the nature of God, which is one and all.
+
+24. The mind, by reason of its birth (tajja) from Brahma, is possessed
+both of the power and intelligence of his Intellect, and is enabled to
+accomplish its intended purpose, by means of its intense application.
+
+25. To say that one flame of fire, is the producer of another, is mere
+logomachy, and there is no truth in this assertion. (Because it is no
+other thing produced by another, but the very thing).
+
+26. That one is the producer of another is also a paralogy; because the
+one Brahma being infinite, could produce no other thing, beside
+reproducing himself. (For where and whence could he get another thing
+to create a thing anew beside in himself?).
+
+27. It is the nature of disputation to contradict one another by
+replies and rejoinders; but it is not right to foil the adversary by
+false sophistry.
+
+28. 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.
+
+29. Brahma is the Intellect—_Chit_, Brahma is the mind—_manas_, Brahma
+is intelligence—_Vijnána_, and Brahma is substance—_Vasthu_; He is
+Sound—_sabda_, He is understanding—_chit_, and He is in the principles
+of things—_Dhátus_.
+
+30. The whole universe is Brahma, and yet He is beyond all this. In
+reality the world is a nullity, for all is Brahma alone.
+
+31. 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.
+
+32. The spirit rises as the flame of fire, and this flame is
+significant of the mind. Its tremor signifies the fluctuation of the
+mind, which in reality is not the case, there being no rise or fall of
+the Divine Mind.
+
+33. It is untruth that wavers and equivocates in _double entendres_. It
+prevaricates the truth, as the defective eye views the double moon in
+the sky.
+
+34. Brahma being all (_to pan_) of himself, and all pervading and
+infinite of his own nature, there can be no other thing beside himself,
+and anything that is produced of him, is likewise himself.
+
+35. Beside the truth of the existence of Brahma, there is nothing which
+can be proved as absolutely certain; and it is a scriptural truth which
+says, “verily all this is Brahma.”
+
+36. This also must be the conclusion, which you will arrive at by your
+reasoning, and which I will propound with many instances and tenets in
+the Book of Nirvána or Extinction.
+
+37. There are many things here in connection with this single question
+of which you are ignorant, and all which you will come to know fully in
+future, for dispelling your doubts on the subject.
+
+38. The unreality having disappeared, the reality appears to view, as
+the darkness of night being dispelled, the visible world comes to sight.
+
+39. The spacious world which appears to your false sight of it, will
+vanish, O Ráma! 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.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLI.
+
+ DESCRIPTION OF IGNORANCE.
+
+
+Argument. Delusion the cause of error.
+
+
+Ráma said:—Sir, I feel your speech to be as cooling and shining as the
+water of the milky sea; it is as deep and copious as the vast ocean:—
+
+2. I am sometimes darkened and enlightened at others, by the variety of
+your discourses, as a rainy day is now obscured by the cloud, and again
+shines forth brightly with sunshine.
+
+3. I understand Brahma as infinite and inconceivable, and the life and
+light of all that exists. I know that light never sets; but tell me,
+how they attribute many qualities that are foreign to his nature.
+
+4. Vasishtha replied:—The wording and meaning of my lectures to you,
+are all used in their right and ordinary sense, they are neither
+insignificant or meaningless, equivocal or ambiguous, or contradictory
+of one with another.
+
+5. You will understand the proper import of my phraseology, when the
+eyesight of your understanding becomes clearer, and when the light of
+reason will rise in your mind.
+
+6. Do not mistake the meanings of my words, or the phraseology I have
+used all along, in order to explain the subject of my lectures, and
+purport of the sástras, for your acquaintance with them.
+
+7. When you will come to know the clear Truth of Brahma, you will know
+more regarding the distinctions of significant words, and their
+significations and significates.
+
+8. The distinctive verbal signs are invented for the communication of
+our thoughts, in conveying our instructions to others, and for our
+knowledge of the purport of the sástras.
+
+9. Words and their meanings, phrases and their constructions, are used
+for the instruction of others; they are applied to the use of the
+ignorant, and never apply to those who are acquainted with truth (by
+their intention).
+
+10. There is no attribute, nor imputation, that bears any relation with
+the free and unsullied soul. It is the dispassionate spirit of the
+supreme Brahma, and the same is the soul of the existent world.
+
+11. This subject will again be fully discussed and dilated upon with
+various arguments, on the occasion of our arriving to the conclusion of
+this subject (in the book of Nirvána).
+
+12. I have said so far about verbiology at present, because it is
+impossible to penetrate into the deep darkness of ignorance, without
+the means of verbiage (flux de mots).
+
+13. As conscious ignorance offers herself a willing sacrifice to the
+shrine of knowledge, she bids her adversary—the destroyer of error, to
+take possession of her seat in the bosom of man. (Here is a double
+entendre of the word _avidyá_, the former meaning ignorance as well as
+a concubine, and the latter signifying the wife and knowledge; hence it
+implies the advance of knowledge upon disappearance of her rival
+ignorance).
+
+14. As one weapon is foiled by another, and one dirt is removed by the
+other (_cow dung_ and ashes), and as one poison is destroyed by
+another, and also as one foe is driven out by another enemy (_similes
+curantur_).
+
+15. So Ráma, the mutual destruction of errors, brings joy to the soul.
+It is hard however to detect the error; but no sooner it is found out
+than it is put to destruction. It means the confutation of false
+doctrines by one another.
+
+16. Ignorance obscures our perspicacity, and presents the false and
+gross world before us. We all view this wonderful universe, but know
+not what and how it is.
+
+17. Unobserved it rushes to our view, but being examined with
+attention, it flies upon keen observation. We know it is a phantasm,
+and yet find it appearing with its dimensions and figures before us.
+
+18. O the wonderful enchantment, which has spread out this world, and
+made the unreality to appear as a sober reality, to the knowledge of
+every one of us.
+
+19. This earth is a distinct wide extended superfices, resting on the
+indistinct surface of an unknown substratum. He is the best of beings
+that has stretched this enchantment.
+
+20. When you are enlightened with the thought, that all this is
+inexistent in reality; you will then become the knower of the knowable
+(God), and understand the import of my lectures.
+
+21. So long as you are not awakened to true knowledge, rely upon my
+words, and know this immensity as the creature of the incorrigible and
+immovable ignorance.
+
+22. All this immensity, that appears to sight, is but the picture of
+your mistaken thought; it is all unsubstantial, and a mere
+manifestation of your deluded mind only.
+
+23. He is entitled to liberation, whose mind is certain of the reality
+of Brahma; and knows the moving and unmoving figures without, as the
+thoughts of the mind presented to the sight.
+
+24. The whole scale of the earth, is as a net of birds to catch the
+fleeting mind; it is as false as a landscape in the dream; which
+represents the unreal as real ones to the mind.
+
+25. He who looks upon the world without his attachment to it, is never
+subject to grief or sorrow on any account. And he who thinks all these
+forms as formless, sees the formless spirit.
+
+26. The forms of the formless spirit, is the formation of ignorance,
+and when the blemishes of passions and mutations, do not even belong to
+great souls, how can these attributes relate to the greatest God.
+
+27. The attributes given to the Supreme Spirit, are as dust thrown upon
+the surface of limpid water; it is our thoughts only that attribute
+these qualities to the inconceivable One, as we attribute certain
+meanings to words (that bear no relation to them).
+
+<28.> It is usage that establishes the meanings of words, which continue
+to be inseparably joined with them; and it is usage that determines
+their use in the sástras.
+
+29. As the cloth cannot be thought of without its thread, so the soul
+is unintelligible without the medium of words giving its true
+definition.
+
+30. It is possible to gain the knowledge of the soul from the sástras,
+without one’s self-consciousness of it; as it is possible to get over
+the sea of ignorance, by means of spiritual knowledge.
+
+31. Ráma! it is impossible to arrive at the state of what is called
+imperishable life and bliss, when the soul is any how polluted by the
+blemishes of ignorance.
+
+32. The existence of the world verily depends on the existence of the
+Supreme; know this, and do not question how and whence it came to exist.
+
+33. Let it be for thee to think only how thou shalt get rid of this
+unreality; for it is upon the disappearance of the unreality, that thou
+canst know the real truth.
+
+34. Leave off thinking whence is all this, how it is and how it is
+destroyed at last; believe it to be really nothing, but only appearing
+without being actually seen.
+
+35. How can one know, how the unreality appears as reality by his
+mistake of it, when the error of reality, in the unreal, has taken a
+firm footing in his mind?
+
+36. Try your best to destroy this prejudice of yours, and then you will
+know the truth. And verily such men are the greatest heroes and most
+learned in the world, who are freed from prejudices.
+
+37. Strive to destroy your baneful ignorance, or it is sure to
+overpower on thee as upon the rest of mankind.
+
+38. Take care, lest it should enthral thee to the pain of thy repeated
+transmigrations, and know ignorance to be the root of all evils and
+companion of every vice. It creates a man’s interest in what proves his
+peril.
+
+39. Avoid quickly this false view, the baneful cause of your fears and
+sorrows, and of your diseases and dangers; and the germ of errors in
+the mind; and thereby ford over this perilous ocean of the world.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLII.
+
+ PRODUCTION OF JÍVA OR LIVING SOULS.
+
+
+Argument. Condensation of Desires in the Intellect. And Formation of
+living souls thereby.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Hear now Ráma! the antidote against the wide
+extended malady of Ignorance, and the raging endemic of unreality,
+which vanishes from view upon your close inspection of it.
+
+2. That which was proposed to be said (in chapter XL), concerning the
+sátwika and rájasika qualities. I am now going to expound the same, on
+account of investigating into the powers of the mind.
+
+3. The same Brahma who is all-pervading, undecaying and immortal; is
+known as intellectual light and without beginning and end, and free
+from error.
+
+4. The Intellect, which is body of Brahma, and has its vibration in
+itself, becomes agitated and condensed at intervals, as the translucent
+water of the ocean has its motion of itself, and becomes turbid and
+thickened by its perturbation.
+
+(_i.e._ The mind is possest of motion contrary to dull and motionless
+matter, and it is by its moving force, that it forms the gross bodies,
+as the huge surges of the sea).
+
+5. As the water of the sea, is agitated in itself without any motion or
+excitation from without; so the Almighty power exerts its force in
+itself, throughout all its eternity and infinity. (The water composed
+of the _gases_, is always in motion).
+
+6. As the air stirs in its own bosom of vacuity for ever, so the power
+of the Divine Spirit, exerts itself spontaneously and freely in its own
+sphere of the spirit.
+
+7. And as the flame rises high of its own accord, so the power of the
+spirit, extends in itself in all directions. (It is the nature of the
+flame to rise upward only, but that of the Spirit, is to move in every
+way and all round the great circle of creation).
+
+8. As the sea seems to move with its sparkling waters, reflecting the
+sun and moonbeams upon its surface, so the almighty spirit appears to
+shake with the fleeting reflections of creation in its bosom.
+
+9. As the sea sparkles with the golden beams of the starry frame; so
+the translucent vast soul of God, shines with the light of its own
+intellectual sphere.
+
+10. As chains of pearly rays, glitter to our sight in the empty sky; so
+sundry forms of things fly about in the vast vacuity of the intellect.
+(These are as bubbles in the vast expanse of the Divine Mind).
+
+11. These intellectual images, being pushed forward by the force of
+intellect, they begin to roll in its vacuous sphere like waves in the
+sea. (They are the same in substance, though different in appearance).
+
+12. These images though inseparable from the intellect of the Divine
+spirit, yet they seem to be apart from it, like the light in the holes
+of needles and other cavities. (The glory of God, is the light and life
+of all).
+
+13. The universal Omnipotence exhibits itself in those particular
+forms, as the moon shows her various horns in her different phases.
+
+14. Thus the intellectual power of the Supreme spirit, coming to shine
+forth as light, refracts itself in various forms as the very many
+semblances of that great light.
+
+15. The Supreme spirit, though conscious of its nature of infinity and
+indivisibility, yet assumes to itself the state of its individuality,
+in every separate and limited form of created beings.
+
+16. When the supreme Entity takes upon itself these several forms, it
+is immediately joined by a train of qualities and properties, with
+quantity, modality and the like as followers in its train.
+
+17. The unsubstantial intellect, deeming itself as a substance by its
+being separated from the supreme soul; becomes divided into infinity
+like the waves of the sea water (which is one and many).
+
+18. As there is no material difference of the armlet and bracelet, from
+their matter of the same gold; so it is the intellect and the soul the one
+and same thing. It is the thought that makes the difference in their
+different modes.
+
+19. As there is no difference between one lamp and the others, that are
+lighted from the same light; so it is of all souls and intellects,
+which are alike in their nature, but differ only in their particular
+attributes—_upadhis_.
+
+20. The Intellect, being put to action by the force of the soul on
+particular occasions, pursues its desires and the objects of its fancy.
+
+21. The same intellect also, taking its volitive and active forms at
+different times and places; is styled the embodied soul or spirit, and
+known as _Kshetrajna_.
+
+22. It is so named from its familiarity with the body or _Kshetra_, and
+its knowledge of the inward and outward actions of it (or from its
+knowing its person and personality).
+
+23. This being fraught with its desires, is designated as Egoism or
+selfishness; and this again being soiled by its fancies, takes the name
+of the understanding.
+
+24. The understanding leaning to its wishes, is termed the mind; which
+when it is compacted for action, takes the name of the senses or
+sensation.
+
+25. The senses are next furnished with their organs called the organs
+of sense, which being joined with the organs of action, the hands and
+feet are jointly denominated the body.
+
+26. Thus the living soul being tied to its thoughts and desires, and
+being entrapped in the net of pain and sorrow, is termed _Chitta_ or
+heart.
+
+27. Thus the gradual development of the intellect, produces its
+successive results (or phases as said above); so these are the
+different states or conditions of the living soul, and not so many
+forms of it, but all these are the impurities of the soul.
+
+28. The living soul becomes associated with egoism in its embodied
+state, and this being polluted by its egoistic understanding, it is
+entangled in the net of selfish desires, which becomes the mind.
+
+29. The concupiscent mind becomes eager to engraft itself in its
+consorts and offspring, and to secure the false possessions of the
+world to itself and without a rival.
+
+30. The tendencies of the mind, pursue their desired objects, as the
+cow follows the lusty bull; and the mind runs after its objects only to
+be polluted by them, as the sweet stream of the river, meets the sea to
+become bitter and briny.
+
+31. Thus the mind being polluted by its selfishness, loses the freedom
+of its will; and becomes bound to its desires, as the silkworm is
+enclosed in the cocoon.
+
+32. It is the mind that exposes the body to confinement, by its pursuit
+after its desires, until it comes to feel the gall of its own thraldom,
+and the bitter regret of the conscious soul.
+
+33. Knowing itself to be enslaved, it bids farewell to the freedom of
+its thought and knowledge; and begets within itself the gross
+ignorance, which rages and ranges free in the forest of this world,
+with its horribly monstrous appearance.
+
+34. The mind containing within it the flame of its own desires, is
+consumed to death like the fettered lion in a fire.
+
+35. It assumes to itself the agency of all its various acts, under its
+subjection to a variety of desires; and thus exposes itself to the
+changes of its state, in this life and all its future births.
+
+36. It labours continually under all its octuple state of
+understanding; namely that the knowledge, intelligence and activity
+or active agency, and its egoism or selfishness, all of which are
+causes of all its woe.
+
+37. It is sometimes styled the _prakriti_ or character, and at others
+the _máyá_ or seat of self delusion. The mind—_manas_ is often
+converted to _malas_ or foulness, and very often to _karman_ or
+activity.
+
+38. It is sometimes designated as bondage, and is often synonymous with
+the heart; it is called also as _avidyá_ or ignorance, and frequently
+identified with the will or volition likewise.
+
+39. Know Ráma, the heart is tied to the earth by a chain of sorrow and
+misery; it is brimful of avarice and grief, and the abode of passions.
+
+40. It is living dead with the cares of age and the fear of death, to
+which the world is subject; it is troubled with desire and disgust, and
+stained by its ignorance and passions.
+
+41. It is infested by the prickly thorns of its wishes, and the
+brambles of its acts; it is quite forgetful of its origin, and is beset
+by the evils of its own making.
+
+42. It is confined as the silkworm in its own cell, where it is doomed
+to dwell with its sorrow and pain; and though it is but a minim in its
+shape, it is the seat of endless hell-fire. (A hair as heart. Pope. The
+heart is hell &c. Milton).
+
+43. It is as minute as the soul, and yet appears as huge as the highest
+hill; and this world is a forest of wild poisonous trees, branching out
+with their fruits of decay and death.
+
+44. The snare of desire is stretched over the whole world; its fruits
+are as those of the Indian fig trees, which has no pith or flavour
+within.
+
+45. The mind being burnt by the flame of its sorrow, and bitten by the
+dragon of its anger; and being drowned in the boisterous sea of its
+desires, has entirely forgotten its Great Father.
+
+46. It is like a lost stag straying out of its herd, and like one
+demented by his sorrows; or more like a moth singed by the flame of
+world affairs.
+
+47. It is torn away as a limb from its place in the Spirit, and thrown
+in an incongenial spot; it is withering away like a lotus plant plucked
+from its root.
+
+48. Being cast amidst the bustle of business, and among men who are
+inimical or as dumb pictures to him, every man is groveling in this
+earth amidst dangers and difficulties.
+
+49. Man is exposed to the difficulties of this dark and dismal world,
+like a bird fallen in the waters of the sea; he is entangled in the
+snare of the world, like one snatched to the fairy land in the sky.
+
+50. The mind is carried away by the current of business, like a man
+borne by the waves of the sea. Lift it, O brave Ráma! from this pit, as
+they do an elephant sinking in the mud.
+
+51. Lift up thy mind by force, O Ráma! like a bullock from this
+delusive puddle (_palvala_) of the world, where it is shorn of its
+brightness and is weakened in its frame.
+
+52. Ráma! the man whose mind is not troubled in this world, with
+successive joy and grief, and the vicissitudes of decrepitude, disease
+and death, is no human being: but resemble a monstrous Rákshasa,
+although he may have the figure of a man on him. (It is not humanity to
+<be> devoid of human feeling).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+ THE REPOSITORIES OF LIVING SOULS.
+
+
+Argument. The Transmigrations of Souls by virtue of their Acts, and the
+way of their salvation.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Thus the living soul being derived from Brahma,
+assumes to itself the form of the mind, and is tossed about with the
+thoughts and cares of the world. It is then changed into thousands and
+millions of forms, as it figures to itself in its imagination.
+
+2. It has undergone many prior births, and is in the course of
+migrating into many more; it will transmigrate into many more also,
+which are as multitudinous as the flitting particles of a water-fall
+(splitting to many atoms).
+
+3. These atomic souls of living beings, being subjected to their
+desires by the great variety of their wishes; are made to wander under
+many forms, to which they are bound by their desires.
+
+4. They rove incessantly to different directions, in distant countries
+both by land and water; they live or die in those places, as the
+bubbles blow out but to float and burst, and then sink in the water
+below.
+
+5. Some are produced for the first time in a new _kalpa_ age, and
+others are born a hundred times in it; some have had only two or three
+births, while the births of others are unnumbered (in a kalpa).
+
+6. Some are yet unborn and are to be born yet on earth, and many others
+have passed their births by attainment of their liberation at last.
+Some are alive at present, and others are no more to be born.
+
+7. Some are born again and again, for myriads of kalpas, some remaining
+in one state all along, and many in various states repeatedly changing
+their forms and natures.
+
+8. Some are subjected to the great misery of hell, and some are
+destined to a little joy on earth; some enjoying the great delights of
+the gods in heaven, and others raised to the glory of heavenly bodies
+above.
+
+9. Some are born as Kinnaras and Gandharvas and others as Vidyádharas
+and huge serpents; some appear in the forms of Sol, Indra and Varuna
+(Ouranas), and others in those of the triocular Siva and the lotus-born
+Brahmá.
+
+10. Some become the Kushmánda and Vetála goblins, and others as Yaksha
+and Rákshasa cannibals; some again become the Brahmánas and the ruling
+class, and others become Vaisyas and Súdras. (The four tribes of
+Indo-Aryans).
+
+11. Some become Swapacha and Chandála (eaters of dog and hog-flesh),
+and others as Kirátas and Puskasa (eaters of rotten bodies); some
+become the grass and greens on earth, and others as the seeds of fruits
+and roots of vegetables, and as moths and butterflies in the air.
+
+12. Some are formed into varieties of herbs and creeping plants, and
+others into stones and rocks; some into _Jáma_ and _Kadamba_ trees, and
+others into _Sála_, _Tála_ and _Tamála_ forests.
+
+13. There are some placed in prosperous circumstances, and become as
+ministers and generals and rulers of states; while others are clad in
+their rags and remain as religious recluses, munis and taciturn hermits
+in the woods.
+
+14. Some are born as snakes and hydras, worms, insects and ants; whilst
+there are others in the forms of great lions, big buffaloes, stags and
+goats, the bos guavas and fleet antelopes in forests.
+
+15. Some are begotten as storks and cranes, ruddy geese and cuckoos;
+and others are become their pastures in the shapes of lotuses and water
+lilies, the nilumbium and other aquatic shrubs and flowers.
+
+16. Some are brought forth as elephants and their cubs, and as wild
+boars, bulls and asses; and others come into being as bees and beetles,
+flies and gadflies, gnats and musquitoes.
+
+17. Many are born to difficulties and dangers, and many to prosperity
+and adversity; some are placed in hell pits and others in their
+heavenly abodes.
+
+18. Some are situated in the stars, and some in the hollows of trees;
+some move upon the wings of the winds, and others rest in the still air
+above or fly freely in the sky.
+
+19. Many dwell in the sunlight of the day, and many subsist under the
+moonbeams at night; while there be others subsisting upon the beverage,
+which they draw from the herbaceous plants.
+
+20. Some are liberated in their life-time, and rove about freely in
+this earth; while others live in their blissful states (in holy and
+lonely hermitage). Some are altogether emancipate in their reliance in
+the Supreme Spirit.
+
+21. There are some that require long periods for their blessed and
+ultimate liberation; and others there are that disbelieve the
+intellectuality and spirituality of mankind, and dislike their being
+reduced to the solity of the soul, or to be reduced to their oneness or
+unity with the Supreme soul—Kaivalya.
+
+22. Some become regents of the skies above, and others roll down in the
+form of mighty streams; some become females of beautiful appearances,
+and others as ugly hermaphrodites and abnormalities.
+
+23. Some are of enlightened understandings, and some are darkened in
+their minds. Some are preachers and lecturers of knowledge, and others
+in their ecstatic trance of Samádhi.
+
+24. 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.
+
+25. They rove about the world, now flying up and then falling down in
+their hopes and fears; and are incessantly tossed up and down, like
+playing balls flung on all sides, by the relentless hands of playful
+Death.
+
+26. Entrapped in the hundred fold snare of desire, and converted to the
+various forms of their wishes, they pass from one body to another, as
+the birds fly from one tree to alight on another.
+
+27. The endless desires of the living soul, bred and led by the false
+imaginations of the mind, have spread this enchanted snare of magic or
+máyá, which is known by the name of the great world.
+
+28. So long are the stupefied souls doomed to rove about in the world,
+like the waters in a whirlpool; as they do not come to understand the
+true nature of their selves, as selfsame with the Supreme-Self.
+
+29. Having known and seen the true Self, by forsaking their false
+knowledge of it, they come to their consciousness of themselves, as
+identic with the divine Self; and having attained this in process of
+time, they are released from their doom of revisiting this world of
+pain and sorrow.
+
+30. There are however some insensible beings, who notwithstanding their
+attainment of this knowledge, are so perverted in their natures, that
+they have to return again to this earth, after passing into a hundred
+lives in it in various shapes (owing to their disbelief in the self).
+
+31. Some there are who after having attained to higher states, fall
+down again by the lowness of their spirits, and appearing in the shapes
+of brute creatures, have to fall into hell at last.
+
+32. There are some great minded souls, who having proceeded from the
+state of Brahma, have to pass here a single life, after which they are
+absorbed in the Supreme soul. (Such were the sage Janaka and the sagely
+Seneca).
+
+33. There are multitudes of living beings in other worlds also, some of
+whom have become as the lotus-born Brahmá, and others as Hara (the
+Horus of the Egyptian trinity).
+
+34. There are others who have become as gods and brute creatures in
+them, and there are snakes and other reptiles also in them as well as
+in this earth. (Astronomers have descried kine in the moon, and Hindoos
+have found it to abound in deer, whence the moon is called mrigánka by
+them. So are the constellations in the heavens).
+
+35. There are other worlds as obvious to view as this earth (in the
+starry heavens), and there are many such worlds that have gone by, and
+are yet to appear (in the immensity of space).
+
+36. There are various other creatures of different shapes, produced by
+various unknown causes in the other worlds also, which have their
+growths and deaths like those of this earth.
+
+37. Some are produced as Gandharvas, and others as Yakshas (the Yakkas
+at Ceylon); and some are generated as Suras (Sorians); and some others
+as Asuras (Assyrians) and Daityas (demons).
+
+38. The manners and modes of life of the peoples in other parts of the
+globe, are as those of the men living in this part of the earth.
+
+39. All creatures move according to their own natures and mutual
+relations for ever more, as the waves and currents of a river move
+forward, following and followed by others in regular succession.
+
+40. 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.
+
+41. In this manner do the multitudes of living beings, proceed from the
+Supreme Spirit, who with the consciousness of their self-existence,
+rise from and fall at last into it. (The consciousness of the universal
+soul, is divided into the individual souls of beings, that are derived
+and detached from it).
+
+42. All created beings are detached from their source, like the light
+from the lamp and the solar rays from the sun; they are like sparks of
+red hot iron, and the scintillation of fire.
+
+43. They are as the particles (or minute moments) of time, and the
+flying odours of flowers; or as the cold icicles and the minutial of
+rain water, borne by breeze and cooling the air all around.
+
+44. So the flitting particles of life, flying from one spot to another,
+and filling different bodies with animation, are at last absorbed in
+the main spring of vitality whence they had risen.
+
+45. The particles of vital air, being thus spread out and scattered
+over the universe, come to assume the various forms of animated beings
+in all the worlds, but they are all mere creations of our ignorance,
+and are in reality like the rolling waves of water in the vast ocean of
+eternity.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+ THE INCARNATION OF HUMAN SOULS IN THE WORLD.
+
+
+Argument. Discussion about incarnation of the spirit, and its
+extinction by death and liberation.
+
+
+Ráma asked:—I understand now how the particles of the Divine Spirit,
+take the forms of the living souls; but I cannot conceive how it
+assumes the corporeal body composed of bones and ribs.
+
+2. Vasishtha replied:—Why don’t you know it Ráma, when I have explained
+it to you before? Where have you lost your deductive reasoning of
+arriving to the conclusion from those premises.
+
+3. All these corporeal bodies in the world, and all these moving and
+unmoving persons and things, are but false representations, rising
+before us as the visions in our dreams.
+
+4. The phenomenal world differs only in its being but a longer and more
+delusive dream; it is as the sight of the double moon by optical
+deception, and of a mountain in the delusion of darkness.
+
+5. The enlightened mind which is cleared of its drowsiness of
+ignorance, and is freed from the fetters of its desire, views the world
+to be no more than a dream.
+
+6. 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.
+
+7. The fleeting essence of the soul, is like the eddy of waters; or
+like the germ of the seed, or more like the leaflet of a sprout.
+
+8. And as the flower is contained in the branch, and the fruit within
+its flowers; so this creation of the imagination, is contained in the
+receptacle of the mind.
+
+9. As the ever-changing form of the chameleon, exhibits but a
+particular hue at a time; so the ever-varying mind shows only the
+figure, which is prominent in its thought for the time being (and this
+inward figure is reflected by the visual organs).
+
+10. The same thought assumes a visible form, as the clay takes the form
+of a pot; and the good thoughts and actions of the prior state of life,
+serve to give the soul a goodly form in its next birth on earth.
+
+11. We see the mighty lotus-born Brahmá situated in the cell of that
+flower, and find it to be the effect of the good thoughts he had in his
+mind.
+
+12. This unlimited creation is the false fabrication of imagination;
+whereupon the living soul in conjunction with the mind, obtained the
+state of Virinchí the Brahmá (vir inchoatious or _incipiens_ the
+primary man, otherwise called _ádima-purusha_—Adam or the first male).
+
+13. Ráma said:—I require, Sir, to be fully informed, whether all other
+beings sprang from the same cause as Brahmá—the lotus-born.
+
+14. Vasishtha answered:—Hear me tell you, O long-armed Ráma, the manner
+of Brahmá’s having the body; and from his instance, you will learn
+about the existence of the world.
+
+15. The Supreme soul, which is unlimited by time or space, takes of his
+own will, and by the power of his Omnipotence, the limited forms of
+time and space upon himself.
+
+16. The same becomes the living soul, and is fraught with various
+desires in itself, of becoming many:—_aham bahu syáma_.
+
+17. When this limited power which is Brahmá, thinks on the state of his
+having been the Hiranyagarbha, in his former state of existence in the
+prior Kalpa; he is immediately transformed to that state which is in
+his mind, and which is ever busy with its thoughts and imaginations.
+
+18. It thinks first of the clear sky, the receptacle of sound, and
+which is perceptible by the auditory organs; and this thought being
+condensed in the mind, makes it vibrate as by the wind of the air.
+
+19. It thinks then on the vibrations of air, which are the objects of
+feeling, through the porous skin and the mind; and is moved by the
+thoughts of air and wind to assume that form, which are invisible to the
+naked eye.
+
+20. The condensation of the elements of air and wind together, produced
+the idea of light which is the cause of sight, and which has the
+colours and figures for its objects; and thus the mind being actuated
+by its triple thoughts of air, wind and light, produced the property of
+fire.
+
+21. These joined immediately to produce the idea of coldness the
+property of water; and the mind then came to form the quadruple ideas
+of the four elements of air, wind, fire and water.
+
+22. 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 (_panchabhautika_)).
+
+23. It saw this body shining as a spark of fire in the sky, which
+joined with its egoism and understanding, formed its personality.
+
+24. This is called the spiritual body (lingasaríra),—the embodying
+octuple, which is situated as the bee in the pericarp of the lotus like
+heart, and which gives growth to the outer body by its inner working
+(as the inner seed grows the outer tree).
+
+25. It is thickened by the action of the heart of its internal process
+of calefaction, like the bel fruit or woodapple. And the outer body
+receives the qualities of the inner mind, as the jewel shines with the
+lustre of the little particle of gold, which is infused in the melted
+state of the metal in the crucible.
+
+26. The quality of the inner soul or mind, manifests itself in the
+outer body, as the quality of the seed appears in the form and taste of
+its fruit. The mind then dwells upon the thoughts of its actions, which
+have their display in the several organs, and members of the bodily
+actions, which are produced by the motions of the inner thoughts and
+acts, as the leaves and branches of trees are projected by the inner
+process and operations of the seed.
+
+27. Its thoughts of upside and below, lifts and lowers its head and
+feet upward and down-ward; and its thought of both sides, extends its
+two arms to the right and left.
+
+28. Its thoughts of the backward and forward, places its back behind,
+and its breast and belly before it; and the hairs on the head and
+fingers of the hands, are as the filaments and twigs of trees.
+
+29. In this manner did Brahmá, who is called a _muni_ or mental being,
+from his having sprung <from> the mind of Brahma, produced the several
+parts of his body, according to his thoughts of their usefulness to it.
+
+30. He brought the body and its limbs to compactness, as the seasons
+bring their fruits and grains to perfection. Thus is every thing
+perfected in time, and all beings have their beautiful bodies and
+figures.
+
+31. He, the lord Brahmá was the progenitor of all beings, and fraught
+with the qualities of strength and understanding, activity, dignity and
+knowledge. (The Smriti attributes the _Siddhi chatushtaya_ or quadruple
+perfections to him).
+
+32. Being begotten by the vacuous Brahma, he resides in the lap of
+vacuity; and is of the form of melted gold, like every other luminous
+body in the heavens.
+
+33. Though situated in the Supreme, yet the mind of Brahmá is liable to
+the mistakes of its own making; and at times it quite forgets its
+having no beginning, middle nor end, like its source.
+
+34. Sometimes the lord thinks himself, as identic with the waters which
+existed before creation in his mind; and at another as the mundane egg,
+which was as bright as the fire of universal destruction (see Manu I).
+
+35. Sometimes the lord thought himself as the dark wood, which covered
+the earth before creation of living animals, and them as the lotus bed
+(wherein he was born). Afterwards he became of many forms at each phase
+and epoch of creation. (These epochs are called _kalpas_ or periods, in
+which the divine mind manifested itself according to its wish within
+the different stages of creation).
+
+36. Thus Brahmá 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).
+
+37. When Brahmá was first begotten, he remained in his happy state of
+insensibility and forgetfulness (of his former existence); but being
+delivered from his torpor in the womb, he came to see the light.
+(_i.e._ He saw the light of heaven, after his delivery from the
+darkness of the womb).
+
+38. He took a corporeal body, with its breathings and respirations
+(pránápána); it was covered with pores of hair, and furnished with gums
+of two and thirty teeth. It had the three pots of the thighs, backbone,
+and bones, standing on the feet below; with the five air, five
+partitions, nine cavities, and a smooth skin covering all the limbs.
+(The five airs are pránápána &c. The five partitions are, the head, the
+legs, the breast, belly and the hands).
+
+40. It is accompanied by twice ten fingers and their nails on them; and
+with a couple of arms and palms and two or more hands and eyes (in the
+cases of gods and giants).
+
+41. The body is the nest of the bird of the mind, and it is hole of the
+snake of lust; it is the cave of the goblin of greediness, and the den
+of the lion of life.
+
+42. It is a chain at the feet of the elephant of pride, and a lake of
+the lotuses of our desire; The lord Brahmá looked upon his handsome
+body, and saw it was good.
+
+43. Then the lord thought in himself, from his view of the three times
+of the past, present and future, and from his sight of the vault of
+heaven, with a dark mist as a group of flying locusts.
+
+44. “What is this boundless space, and what had it been before. How
+came I to being?” Thus pondering in himself, he was enlightened in his
+soul. (Thus did Adam inquire about his birth, and the production of the
+world in Milton’s Paradise Lost).
+
+45. He saw in his mind the different past creations, and recollected
+the various religions and their various sects, which had grown upon
+earth one after the other.
+
+46. He produced the holy Vedas as the spring does its flowers; and
+formed with ease all varieties of creatures from their archetypes in
+his mind.
+
+47. He set them in their various laws and customs, as he saw them in
+the city of his mind, for the purpose of their temporal and spiritual
+welfare.
+
+48. He thought upon the innumerable varieties of sástras which had
+existed before, and all of which came to exist on earth in their
+visible forms, from their prototypes in his eternal mind; like the
+flowers springing from the womb of the vernal season.
+
+49. Thus O Ráma! did Brahmá take upon him the form of the lotus-born,
+and create by his activity, all the different creatures upon their
+models existent in his mind, which took their various forms in the
+visible world at his will. (So the Sufi and Platonic doctrine of the
+phenomenal, as a copy of the noumena, or the _suari zahiri_ as but a
+shadow of the _suvari manavi_ or _catini_. See Allami).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLV.
+
+ DEPENDANCE OF ALL ON GOD.
+
+
+Argument. The mind being a finite production, its product of the world,
+is as unreal as the thoughts of the mind.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—The world appearing as substantial, has nothing
+substantive in it; it is all a vacuity and mere representation of the
+imageries and vagaries of the mind.
+
+2. Neither is time nor space filled by any world at all, but by the
+great spirit, who has no form except that of vacuum. (The spirit of God
+fills the infinite vacuity from all eternity).
+
+3. This is all imaginary, and as visionary as a city seen in a dream;
+whatever is seen any where is fallacy, and existing in the infinite
+vacuity. (All is void amidst the great void of Brahma’s Mind).
+
+4. It is a painting without its base, and a vision of unrealities; it
+is an uncreated creation, and a variegated picture in empty air
+(without its canvas).
+
+5. It is the imagination of the mind, that has stretched the three
+worlds, and made the many bodies contained in them. Reminiscence is the
+cause of these creations, as the eyesight is the cause of vision.
+
+6. The pageantry of the world is an erroneous representation, like the
+elevations and depressions in a painting; they are not distinct from
+the supreme spirit, in which they are situated as buildings stand on
+their foundation. (Or as statues in bas-relief).
+
+7. The mind has made the body for its own abode, as some worms make
+their cortices or coatings, and the soul also has its sheaths or koshas
+(namely the _annamaya kosha &c._).
+
+8. There is nothing which the mind can not get or build in its empty
+imagination, however difficult or unattainable it may appear to be.
+
+9. What impossibility is there of the same powers residing in
+Omnipotence, which are possessed by the mind in its secluded cell? (The
+spiritual powers must be greater than the mental).
+
+10. It is not impossible, O Ráma! for any thing to be or not to be at
+any time or always, when there is the omnipotent Lord, who can create
+or annihilate all things at his will. (The positive and the negative
+are co-eternal with the eternal Mind, though it is an impossibility in
+the order of nature, as; “It is impossible for the same thing to be,
+and not to be at the same time.” Locke).
+
+11. Mind that, when the mind is empowered to make its own body, and to
+form others in its imagination, how much more is the power of the
+almighty to make and unmake all things at his will.
+
+12. It is divine will that has brought the gods, the demigods and all
+mankind into existence; and it is by the cessation of the (creative)
+will, that they cease to exist as the lamp is extinguished for want of
+its oil.
+
+13. Behold the sky and all things under it to be displayed by the
+divine will, and understand the universe as the visionary scene of thy
+dream laid open to thy sight.
+
+14. There is nothing that is born or dies here at any time, because
+every thing is a nullity in its true sense.
+
+15. There is also nothing, that becomes more or less in any wise when
+there is nothing in existence; for how can that (soul) have a body when
+it is bodyless, and can it be parted, when it is an undivided
+whole?
+
+16. Ráma! seeing by thy keen sightedness, that all these bodies are
+bodiless (_i.e._ only imaginary beings), why shouldst thou fall into
+the error (of taking them for realities?).
+
+17. As the mirage is made to appear by the heat of the sun, so do these
+false appearances seem as true to thee from the certainty of thy mind.
+So also are Brahmá and others but creatures of thy fancy.
+
+18. They are as false as the sight of two moons in the sky by thy false
+imagination, it is the great fallacy of thy mind, that represents these
+false forms of the world before thee.
+
+19. As the passenger in a boat sees the fixed objects on earth to be
+moving about him, so these varieties of visible objects offer
+themselves to thy view.
+
+20. Know the world as an enchanted scene, presented by the magic of thy
+error (_máyá_); it is a fabrication of the working of thy mind, and is
+a nullity though appearing as a reality.
+
+21. All this world is Brahma, what else is there beside him? What other
+adjunct can he have, what is that? Whence did it come, and where is it
+situated?
+
+22. That this is a mountain and that is a tree, are appendages affixed
+by our error and mistake, it is the prejudgment of the mind, that makes
+the unreality appear as a reality.
+
+23. The world is the creation of error and idol of fools; shun your
+fond desire and thoughts of it, Ráma, and think of thy unworldly soul.
+
+24. It is as false as the visionary scene of a prolonged dream, and an
+aerial building of the fancies of the mind.
+
+25. Shun this grand display of the world, which is so substantial to
+sight, and so inane when felt; It is the den of the dragons of desire,
+foaming with the poison of their passions.
+
+26. Knowing the world as unreal, try to regard it as nothing; because
+the wise will never go after a mirage knowing it such.
+
+27. The foolish man that runs after some imaginary object of his
+heart’s desire, is surely exposed to trouble and disappointment for his
+folly.
+
+28. Whoever desires to have any thing in this world, after knowing it
+as an unreality, surely perishes with his soul for his forsaking the
+reality.
+
+29. It is only that error of the mind, which makes it mistake a rope
+for a snake; and it is the variety of the thoughts and pursuits of men,
+that makes them roll about in the world.
+
+30. When some vain thought labors in the mind, like the moon appearing
+to move under the water; it beguiles little children only, and not the
+wise as yourself.
+
+31. He who pursues the virtues for his future happiness, surely kindles
+the fire of his intelligence to destroy the frost of his ignorance.
+
+32. All the gross bodies that are seen here in this world, are all the
+creatures of the working of the mind, as the building of aerial castles
+in our thought.
+
+33. It is the heart’s desire that produces these things, as it is want
+of desire that destroys them all. The unrealities appear as true as the
+fairylands appearing to view. (Fairy cities like the sight of
+castles in the icebergs).
+
+34. Know Ráma, that nothing that is existent is lost on the dissolution
+of the world, nor what is inexistent of its nature, can ever come into
+existence.
+
+35. Say Ráma, what things you call as entire or broken, or to be
+growing or decaying, when these ideas are but the formations of your
+sound or unsound mind or the working of your fancy.
+
+36. As children make and break their toy-dolls of clay at will, so the
+mind raises and erases its thoughts of all things in the world (by its
+repeated recollections and oblivions of them).
+
+37. 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
+(samsára ságara).
+
+38. The unrealities being all untrue, it is true that nothing is lost
+by their loss. Hence there is no cause for our joy or sorrow in this
+unreal world. (Why sorrow, when a fragile is broken, or a mortal is no
+more).
+
+39. If the world is altogether an unreality, I know not what may be
+lost in it; and if nothing whatever is really lost in it, what reason
+can there be for the wise to sorrow for it?
+
+40. 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 any thing whatever.
+
+41. If the unreality can never come to existence, it cannot have its
+growth also. What cause is there of our sorrow for their want of growth
+or existence?
+
+42. Thus every thing is but unreal and mere cause of our delusion, what
+is there that may be reckoned as the best boon for us, that the wiseman
+can have to desire. (No real bliss is to be found on earth).
+
+43. But all this when taken in the sense of their being full with the
+Divine Spirit, what thing is there so very trifling for the wise man to
+dispose or refuse to take?
+
+44. But he who considers the world as an unreality, is never subject to
+joy or sorrow at his gain or loss of any thing. It is only the ignorant
+that is elated or depressed at the one or the other.
+
+45. That which was not before nor will remain afterwards, is likewise
+the same nihility at present; therefore who so desires the nullity, is
+said in the Sruti to be null himself. (The Sruti says: Nothing there
+was, nothing there is, and nothing will last in the end except the
+being of God).
+
+46. What was before and what will be in the end, the same is in being
+(_in esse_) even at present; therefore, what is always _in esse_, it is
+that entity alone that is seen everywhere and at all times.
+
+47. There are the unreal sky and moon and stars, seen underneath the
+water; it is only the deluded boys that like to look at them, but never
+the wise (who look at the reality and not at its shadow).
+
+48. Children take a liking for light, empty and gaudy baubles; which
+are of no good or use to them nor any body at all, and are rather led
+to sorrow at their loss, than derive any good from their gain whatever.
+
+49. Therefore act not as a child, O lotus-eyed Ráma! but conduct
+yourself as the wise, and by looking at these fleeting baubles as ever
+evanescent, rely in the Everlasting alone.
+
+50. Ráma! be not sad or sorry to learn, that all these with thyself and
+myself are nothing in reality; nor be glad or joyous to know, that all
+these and ourselves are real entities. But reckon alike whether these
+be or not be; because it is the One Being, that becomes and unbecomes
+anything, it is the only Being, and all things that becomes.
+
+51. Válmíki said:—As the sage was saying in this manner, the day glided
+away to its dusk; the sun departed to his even tide and evening service,
+and with him the assembly parted to their evening ablutions and rest,
+after which they assembled again to the court with the rising sun.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+ DESCRIPTION OF LIVING LIBERATION.
+
+
+Argument. The emancipation of Living souls from the thraldom of the
+World.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—No man knows sorrow as long as he is in possession of
+his pleasant home, family and wealth; but why should he be sorrowful
+upon their disappearance, knowing them as a short-lived enchantment and
+accompaniment.
+
+2. What pleasure or pain can one derive, either from the grandeur or
+destruction of his aerial castle, and what cause of joy can he have in
+his ignorant children, or of sorrow upon their death? (An ignorant son
+is sorrow to his father. Solomon).
+
+3. What joy is there in the increase of our wealth or family, seeing
+them as the increasing mirage of water which can never satisfy the
+thirsty. (The thirst for riches is never satisfied. Lat. _Auri sacra
+fames._ Verg.).
+
+4. 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. (Care follows increasing wealth. Little wealth little care).
+
+5. The abundance of carnal enjoyments, which are delightsome to the
+ignorant voluptuary, is quite distasteful and disgusting to the
+abstemious, wise and learned. (Carnal pleasures are brutish, but mental
+delights are relished by the wise).
+
+6. What joy is there in the possession of temporary wealth and family
+to the wise, that seek their lasting welfare, and are quite indifferent
+about these?
+
+7. Therefore, O Ráma! be truly wise in thy conduct in this world; shun
+the transient as they are transitory, and lay hold on whatever offers
+of itself unto thee. (Be content with what thou gettest).
+
+8. Inappetency of what is ungotten, and enjoyment of what is in present
+possession; are the true characteristic of the wise and learned.
+(Contentment is abundance; and a contented mind as a continued feast).
+
+9. Take care of this bewildering world, where thy enemies are lurking
+in many a deceitful shape; and conduct thyself as the wise man, evading
+the dangers that wait upon the unwise. (The enemies are of seven
+shapes, viz.: a swordsman, a poisoner, an incendiary, a curser, an
+exorcist, a backbiter and an adulterer).
+
+10. They are great fools who do not look deeply into the things, and
+think the world to be without any fraud or guile. (The credulous are
+most imposed upon).
+
+11. Fools are led by the deceitful speech of cheats, to fall into the
+temptations of the world; but men of right understanding place no
+reliance in them, nor plunge themselves into the pit of errors. (It is
+cunningness to keep from the cunning).
+
+12. He who knowing the unrealities, place no reliance in anything; is
+said to have mastered all knowledge, and is never liable to error.
+(Discrimination of truth and untruth, and of right and wrong,
+constitute the highest wisdom of man).
+
+13. Who so knowing himself as frail as any thing in this frail world,
+has his faith in neither, is never liable to fall into the error of
+taking either of them for real.
+
+14. Placed between the unreality and reality of this and next life, you
+must have the good sense of sticking to the Truth, and neither wholly
+reject or stick to this or the next. (The text says, stick not to the
+outward or inward alone: _i.e._ either to the outer world or <the>
+inner spirit entirely, but attend to your interests in both of them).
+
+15. Though engaged in business, yet you must remain, O Ráma! quite
+indifferent to all things; because the apathetic and inappetent are
+truly happy in this world.
+
+16. He who has nothing to desire or leave, but lives as he is obliged
+to live, has his intellect as unsullied as the lotus-leaf, to which the
+laving waters never stick.
+
+17. Let thy accessory organs manage thy outward affairs or not; but
+keep thy apathetic soul quite unconcerned with all. (_i.e._ The body
+and mind may attend to business; but the soul must remain aloof from
+all).
+
+18. Let not thy mind be plunged in and deeply engaged with the objects
+of sense, by thinking them in vain to be thy properties and
+possessions; but manage them or not with utter indifference of thy
+mind. (_i.e._ Observe a stoical indifference in all thy worldly
+concerns).
+
+19. When thou comest to feel, Ráma! 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.
+
+20. The embodied or disembodied soul whether living or dead, that has
+ceased to have any taste for sensuous enjoyments, has attained its
+liberation without its wishing for it.
+
+21. Try Ráma! by your superior intelligence, to separate your mind from
+its desires, as they extract the perfume from flowers.
+
+22. They that have not been swept away by the waves of their desires,
+to the midst of the ocean of this world, are said to have got over it;
+but the others are no doubt drowned and lost in it. (This is the first
+time that I found the word _budita_ to occur in Sanskrit in the sense
+of drowned. See the vernacular Bengali _dubita_ also).
+
+23. 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.
+
+24. Move about as those who have attained to true knowledge, and
+elevated their minds with true wisdom; and do not act as the ignorant
+worldling: who is mindful of the present state, and unmindful of the
+future.
+
+25. In conducting yourself in this world, you should imitate them that
+are liberated in their life time, who are great in their souls and
+understandings, and who are ever satisfied with themselves, and not
+follow the examples of the greedy and wicked.
+
+26. Those having the knowledge of both worlds, neither slight nor
+adhere to the customs of their country, but follow them like other
+people during their life time. (_i.e._ Act in harmony and conformity
+with approved custom and usage).
+
+27. Great men knowing the truth, are never proud of their power or good
+qualities, nor of their honour or prosperity like the vulgar people.
+
+28. Great men are not depressed by adversity, nor elated by prosperity;
+but remain fixed like the sun in the sky without anything to support it.
+
+29. Great minds like warriors ride in the chariots of their bodies,
+clad in the armour of their knowledge; they have no desire of their
+own, but conduct themselves according to the course of the time.
+
+30. You too Ráma! have gained your extensive learning in philosophy,
+and it is by virtue of your prudence, that you can manage yourself with
+ease.
+
+31. Suppress the sight of the visibles, and avoid your pride and
+enmity; then roam wherever you will, and you will meet with success.
+
+32. Be sedate in all circumstances, unattached to the present, and
+wishing to know all other things in future; have the calm composure of
+your mind, and go where you will.
+
+33. Válmíki said:—Ráma, being advised in this manner by the pure
+doctrines of the sage, brightened in his countenance; and being full
+within himself with the ambrosia of his knowledge; shone forth like the
+ambrosial moon with her cooling beams.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+ DESCRIPTION OF THE WORLDS AND THEIR DEMIURGI.
+
+
+Argument. Relation of many past and Future Worlds, and of the gods and
+other beings contained in them.
+
+
+Ráma 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.
+
+2. I am never satiate with hearing your speech, which is equally
+copious, clear and elegant.
+
+3. You have said sir, of the birth of Brahmá in course of your lecture
+on the productions of the satva and rájasa qualities. I want you to
+tell me more on that subject.
+
+4. Vasishtha answered:—There have been many millions of Brahmás and
+many hundreds of Sivas and Indras, together with thousands of
+Náráyanas, that have gone by (in the revolution of ages).
+
+5. There have been various kinds of beings also in many other worlds,
+having their manners and customs widely differing from one another.
+
+6. There will also be many other productions in the worlds, synchronous
+with others, and many to be born at times remotely distant from one
+another.
+
+7. Among these, the births of Brahmá and the other gods in the
+different worlds, are as wonderful as the productions of many things in
+a magic show.
+
+8. Some creations were made with Brahmá as the first born, others with
+Vishnu and some with Siva as the next created beings. There were some
+other (minor productions), having the munis for the patriarchs. (These
+are the different periods of the formation of the world under the
+different Demiurgi).
+
+9. One Brahmá was lotus-born, another was produced from the water; and
+a third was born of an egg, and the fourth was produced in the air.
+(These are named as the Padmaja, Náráyana, Andaja and Maruta).
+
+10. In one egg the sun was born with all his eyes, and in another
+Vásava—the Indra; in some one was born the lotus-eyed Vishnu, and in
+another he with his three eyes as Siva.
+
+11. In one age was born the solid earth, having no holes for the growth
+of vegetables, in another it was overgrown with verdure; it was again
+filled with mountains, and at last covered by living creatures.
+
+12. The earth was full of gold in some place, and it was hard ground at
+others; it was mere mud in many places, and incrusted with copper and
+other metals in some.
+
+13. There are some wondrous worlds in the universe, and others more
+wondrous still than they; some of them are luminous and bright, and
+others whose light have never reached unto us.
+
+14. There are innumerable worlds scattered in the vacuum of Brahma’s
+essence, and they are all rolling up and down like waves in the ocean.
+(Here the infinite vacuity, is represented as the body of Brahma, and
+the sole substance of all other bodies).
+
+15. The splendours of worlds, are seen in the SUPREME like waves in
+the sea, and as the mirage in the sandy desert; they abide in Him as
+flowers on the mango tree.
+
+16. It may be possible to count the particles of the solar rays, but
+not the number of worlds abounding in the Supreme Spirit.
+
+17. These multitudes of worlds rise and fall in the Universal Spirit,
+like gnats flying and following others in swarms in the rainy season.
+
+18. 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.
+
+19. They have been rolling without beginning like the billows of the
+sea; those that are past and gone had their previous ones, and they
+their prior ones also.
+
+20. 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.
+
+21. There are series of mundane worlds like the egg of Brahmá, which
+pass away by thousands like the hours in course of the year.
+
+22. There are many such bodies revolving at present, in the spacious
+mind of Brahma; beside the mundane system of Brahmá (Brahmánda).
+
+23. There will grow many more mundane worlds in the infinity of the
+divine mind, and they will also vanish away in course of time, like the
+evanescent sounds in the air. (The sounds are never lost, but remain in
+the air. _Sabdonityam_).
+
+24. 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. (Here Brahma is made the material
+cause of all).
+
+25. So long doth the glory of the three worlds appear to the sight, as
+long as it is not seen in the intellect, in the manner as it exists in
+the divine mind.
+
+26. The rising and falling of worlds are neither true nor wholly false;
+they are as the _fanfaronade_ of fools, and as orchids of the air.
+
+27. All things are of the manner of sea waves, which vanish no sooner
+than they appear to view, and they are all of the nature of paintings,
+which are impressed in the mind.
+
+28. 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.
+
+29. The learned in divine knowledge, consider the creations proceeding
+from the Spirit of God, as showers of rain falling from the waters
+contained in the clouds.
+
+30. The visible creation is no more distinct from God, than the sea
+water exuding from the earth and the earth itself, and the leaves and
+seeds of the _Simul_ tree from the tree itself.
+
+31. 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.
+
+32. Sometimes the subtile air is solidified in the form of the
+atmosphere, and therefrom is produced the great Brahmá, thence called
+the air-born lord of creatures.
+
+33. Sometimes the atmospheric air is condensed into a solid form, and
+that gives birth to a Brahmá; under the title of the atmospheric lord
+of creation.
+
+34. At another time it is light that is thickened to a luminous body,
+and thence is born another Brahmá, bearing the appellation of the
+luminous lord of all creatures.
+
+35. Again the water being condensed at another time, produced another
+Brahmá designated the aqueous lord of creation.
+
+36. Sometimes the particles of earth take a denser form, and produce a
+Brahmá known as the terrene Brahmá. (Such was Adam made out of the dust
+of the ground).
+
+37. It is by extraction of the essences of these four Brahmás, that a
+fifth is formed under the name of the quintuple Brahmá, who is the
+creation of the present world.
+
+38. It is sometimes by the condensation of water, air or heat, that a
+being is produced in the form of a male or female.
+
+39. It is sometimes from the speaking mouth of this being, and from his
+feet and back and the eyes, that different men are produced under the
+appellations of Bráhmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Súdras. (These
+Kshatriyas are born from the arms and eyes according to Manu).
+
+40. Sometimes the great Being causes a lotus to grow out of his navel;
+in which is born the great Brahmá known as the lotus-born.
+
+41. All these theories of creation (in the different sástras) are idle
+dreams, and as false as the dreams in our sleeping state; they are the
+reveries of fancy like the eddies of water.
+
+42. Tell me what do you think of these theories in your own judgment;
+do they not appear as the tales told to boys?
+
+43. Sometimes they imagine a being produced in the pure vacuity of the
+Divine mind, this they call the golden and mundane egg, which gave
+birth to the egg-born Brahmá.
+
+44. It is said also that the first and divine Male, casts his seed in
+the waters, which grows up to a lotus-flower which they call the great
+world.
+
+45. This lotus is the great womb of the birth of Brahmá, and at another
+time of the sun also; sometimes the gods Varuna and Vayu also are born
+of it, and are thence called oviparous.
+
+46. Thus Ráma, are the different accounts of the production of
+Brahmá—the creator, so various also is the description of this unsolid
+and unsubstantial creation.
+
+47. I have related to you already about the creation of one of these
+Brahmás, and mentioned about the production of others without
+specifying their several works.
+
+48. It is agreed by all, that the creation is but the development of
+divine mind; although I have related for your acquaintance, the various
+processes of its production.
+
+49. The sátwika and other productions, of which I told you before, have
+all come to existence, in the manner I have narrated to you.
+
+50. Now know the endless succession of all things in the world;
+creation is followed by destruction as pleasure by pain; and as
+ignorance is followed by knowledge, and bondage by liberation.
+
+51. Past creations and objects of affection being gone, others come to
+rise in future, as the lamps are lighted and extinguished by turns at
+home.
+
+52. The production and destruction of all bodies, are as those of
+Brahmá and the lamps, they assume their forms in their time, but become
+an undistinguishable mass after death.
+
+53. The four ages of the world, namely, the Satya, Tretá, Dwápara and
+Kali Yugas, revolve in endless rotation, like the wheel of the potter
+or of any other engine.
+
+54. The Manvantaras and Kalpa cycles succeed one another, as the day
+and night, the morning and evening, and the times of work follow those
+of rest by turns.
+
+55. All worlds and things are under the subjection of time. They are
+subject to repeated successions, and there is nothing without its
+rotation.
+
+56. They all proceed of their nature from the vacuum of Divine
+Intellect, as the sparks of fire scintillate from the red-hot iron.
+
+57. All things once manifest, are next concealed in the divine mind;
+just as the season fruits and flowers, disappear after their appearance
+in season.
+
+58. All productions are but fluctuations of the mind of the Supreme
+spirit; their appearances to our view, are as the sight of two moons to
+infirm eyes.
+
+59. It is the intellect alone, which exhibits these appearances to our
+view; they are always situated in the intellect, though they appear
+without it like the beams in the inner disk.
+
+60. Know Ráma, the world to be never in existence; it is a motionless
+show of that power, which resides only in the Supreme spirit.
+
+61. 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.
+
+62. What the world exists since the _mahá kalpa_ or great will of God,
+and there is no more any other world to come into existence in future,
+is the conclusion of the learned holds good to the present time. (This
+belief is based on the holy text, “_so aikshata_—God willed—‘Let there
+be’, and there was all”).
+
+63. All this is Brahma to the intelligent, and there is no such thing
+as the world, which is a mere theory (upapádya) of the unintelligent.
+
+64. The insapient consider the world as eternal, from the continued
+uniformity of its course; but it is the effect of the everlasting
+error, which raises the false supposition of the world.
+
+65. It is their theory of repeated transmigrations, that they cannot
+say anything otherwise; but must conclude the world as such, in order
+to keep pace with their doctrine. (The doctrine of perpetual
+metempsychosis of the Mímámsaka materialists, naturally makes them
+suppose the eternity of the world).
+
+66. 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. (They flash as momentary lightenings in their appearance, to be
+extinguished into nothingness soon after).
+
+67. So others (the Sánkhyas) seeing the continuous course of the sun
+and moon, and the stability of mountains and seas all about, come to
+the conclusion of the indestructibility of the world from these false
+analogies.
+
+68. There can be nothing whatever, which does not reside in the wide
+expanse of the Divine mind; but as these are but the conceptions of the
+mind, they can never have any visible or separate form or existence.
+
+69. All these appear in repetition, and so repeated is the course of
+our births and deaths; as those of pain and pleasure succeeding one
+another, and our rest and actions, following each other for evermore.
+
+70. This same vacuum and these quarters of the sky, with all these seas
+and mountains, appear in the recurrent course of creation with their
+various hues, like those of the solar rays seen through the chink of a
+wall.
+
+71. The gods and demigods appear again and again, and all people come
+and depart by turns, bondage and liberation are ever recurrent, and
+Indras and Somas ever reappear to view.
+
+72. The god Náráyana and the demigods appear by turns, and the sky is
+always revolving with the regents of all its sides, the sun and moon,
+clouds and winds.
+
+73. The heaven and earth appear again like the lotus-flower full open
+to view, and having the mount Meru for its pericarp, and the Sahya peak
+for its filament.
+
+74. The sun resumes his course in the maze of the sky like a lion, and
+destroys the thick darkness with his rays, as the lion kills the huge
+elephant with his beaming nails.
+
+75. See again the moving moon shining with her bright beams, resembling
+the white filaments of flowers; and anointing the countenances of the
+etherial goddesses, with sweet ambrosial light, and borne by the air
+and breezes of heaven.
+
+76. Again the holy arbour of heaven sheds its heap of flowers, on the
+deserts of meritorious men, as rewards of their virtuous acts.
+
+77. Behold again the flight of time, riding as the eagle on its two
+wings of acts and actions, and passing with the noise of _pat-pat_ over
+the vast maze of creation.
+
+78. See another Indra appearing, after the by-gone lords of gods have
+passed away; and taking his seat on the lotus-like throne of heaven
+like a contemptible bee. (The passing lords of gods and men are as
+fleeting flies on flowers).
+
+79. Again the wicked age of Kali appears to soil the holy _satya yuga_,
+as the black body of Náráyana fills the clear waters of the deep, or as
+a blast of wind sweeps the dust of the earth on its pellucid surface.
+
+80. Again doth time form the plate of the earth like a potter, and turn
+his wheel incessantly, to bring on the revolutions of his creations in
+successive _kalpas_.
+
+81. Again doth the veteran time, who is skilled in the work of
+renovation, wither away the freshness of creation, as the autumnal
+winds blast the foliage of a forest, in order to produce them anew.
+
+82. 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.
+
+83. Again the _pushkara_ and _ávartaka_ clouds, poured down their rain
+water, deluging the tops of the boundary mountains, and filling the
+face of the earth with foaming froth, swimming on the surface of one
+sheet of water.
+
+84. And after the waters had subsided and the winds had ceased to blow;
+the world appeared as a vast vacuum void of all beings.
+
+85. Again we see living beings filling the earth, and feeding for some
+years upon the moisture of its verdure, leaving their decayed bodies,
+and being mixed up with their souls in the universal spirit.
+
+86. Again the Divine Mind stretches out other creations at other times,
+and these are drawn like pictures of fairylands (airy castles) in the
+canvas of vacuum.
+
+87. Again the creation appears to view, and again it is submerged in
+the water of deluvion, both of which follow one another like the axles of
+a wheel.
+
+88. Now consider, O Ráma! if there is any stability of any thing in
+this revolutionary world, beside its being a maze of continuous
+delusion.
+
+89. The revolution of the world resembles the hallucination of Dásúra’s
+mind; it is a phantasia without any solidity in it.
+
+90. The world appearing so extensive and thickly peopled, is but a
+fancied unreality like the erroneous appearance of two moons in the
+sky. It is made of unreality though appearing as real, and is not worth
+reliance by our ignorance of its nature.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+ STORY OF DÁSÚRA.
+
+
+Argument. Description of the vanity of worldly enjoyments, illustrated
+in the tale of Dásúra.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—All worldly men that are engaged in a variety of
+business, and are perverted in their understandings with a desire of
+opulence and enjoyments; can never learn the truth, until they get rid
+of their worldliness.
+
+2. He only who has cultivated his understanding, and subdued his
+sensual organs, can perceive the errors of the world, as one knows a
+_bel_ fruit held in his hand (_i.e._ as one knows the places on earth
+in a small globe).
+
+3. Any rational being, who scans well the errors of the world, forsakes
+his delusion of egoism, as a snake casts off his slough.
+
+4. Being thus paralysed (unconscious) of his selfishness, he has no
+more to be born; as a fried grain can never germinate, though it is
+sown in the field, and lies for ever in it.
+
+5. How pitiable is it that ignorant men take so much pains for the
+preservation of their bodies, which are ever subject to diseases and
+dangers; and liable to perish to-day or to-morrow at the expense of
+their souls.
+
+6. Do not therefore, O Ráma! take so much care for the dull body like
+the ignorant; but regard only for the welfare of thy soul.
+
+7. Ráma said:—Tell me Sir, the story of Dásúra, which is illustrative
+of the visionary and air-drawn form of this rotatory universe, which is
+all hollow within.
+
+8. Vasishtha replied:—Hear me rehearse to you, O Ráma! the narrative of
+Dásúra, in illustration of the delusive form of the world, which is no
+more than the air-built utopia of our brains.
+
+9. There is on the surface of this land, the great and opulent province
+of Magadha, which is full of flower trees of all kinds.
+
+10. There is a forest of wide extending kadamba groves, which was the
+pleasant resort of charming birds of various sorts and hues.
+
+11. Here the wide fields were full of corns and grains, and the skirts
+of the land were beset by groves and arbours; and the banks of rivulets
+were fraught with the lotuses and water lilies in their bloom.
+
+12. The groves and alcoves resounded with the melodious strains of
+rustic lasses, and the plains were filled with blades of blossoms,
+bedewed by the nightly frost, and appearing as arrows of the god of
+love, _Káma_.
+
+13. Here at the foot of a mountain, decked with _karnikara_ flowers,
+and beset by rows of plantain plants and kadamba trees, was a secluded
+spot over-grown with moss and shrubs.
+
+14. It was sprinkled over with the reddish dust of crimson flowers
+borne by the winds, and was resonant to the warblings of water fowls,
+singing in unison with the melodious strains of aquatic cranes.
+
+15. On the sacred hill overhanging that spot, there rose a kadamba
+arbor, crowded by birds of various kinds; and there dwelt on it a holy
+sage of great austerity.
+
+16. He was known by the name of Dásúra, and was employed in his austere
+devotion; sitting on a branch of his kadamba tree with his exalted
+soul, and devoid of passions.
+
+17. Ráma said:—I want to know Sir, whence and how that hermit came to
+dwell in that forest, and why he took his seat on that high _kadamba
+tree_.
+
+18. Vasishtha replied:—He had for his father, the renowned sage
+_Saraloman_, residing in the same mountain, and resembling the great
+Brahmá in his abstract meditation.
+
+19. He was the only son of that sire, like Kacha the only progeny of
+Brihaspati, the preceptor of the gods, with whom he came to dwell in
+the forest from his boyhood.
+
+20. Saraloma having passed many years of his life in this manner, left
+his mortal frame for his heavenly abode, as a bird quits its nest to
+fly into the air.
+
+21. Dásúra being left alone in that lonely forest, wept bitterly and
+lamented over the loss of his father, with as loud wailings as the
+shrieks of a heron upon separation from its mate.
+
+22. Being bereft of both his parents, he was full of sorrow and grief
+in his mind; and then he began to fade away as the lotus blossom in
+winter.
+
+23. He was observed in this sad plight by the sylvan god of that wood,
+who taking compassion on the forlorn youth, and accosted him unseen in
+an audible voice and said:—
+
+24. O sagely son of the sage! why weepest thou as the ignorant, and why
+art thou so disconsolate, knowing the instability of worldly things?
+
+25. It is the state of this frail world, that everything is unstable
+here; and it is the course of nature that all things are born to live
+and perish afterwards into nothingness.
+
+26. Whatever is seen here from the great Brahmá down to the meanest
+object, is all doomed to perish beyond a doubt.
+
+27. Do not therefore wail at the demise of thy father, but know like
+the rising and falling sun, every thing is destined to its rise and
+fall. (Here sun—the lord of the day—_ahah-pati_, is spelt _aharpati_ by
+a _várttika_ of Kátyáyna).
+
+28. Hearing this oracular voice, the youth wiped his eyes red hot with
+weeping; and held his silence like the screaming peacock at the loud
+sound of the clouds. (The pea-cock is said to cry at the sight, but to
+be hushed at the sound of a rainy cloud).
+
+29. He rose up and performed the funeral ceremonies of his sire, with
+devoutness of his heart; and then set his mind to the success of his
+steady devotion.
+
+30. He was employed in the performance of his austerities according to
+the Bráhmanic law, and engaged himself in discharging his ceremonial
+rites by the Srauta ritual, for the accomplishment of his sundry vows.
+
+31. But not knowing the knowable (Brahma), his mind could not find its
+rest in his ceremonial acts, nor found its purity on the surface of the
+stainless earth. (The earth appears sullied to the tainted soul, but it
+is all unstained to the taintless soul, which views it full with the
+holy spirit of God).
+
+32. Not knowing the fulness of the world with divine spirit, and the
+holiness of the earth in every place, he thought the ground polluted
+(by the original sin), and did not find his repose any where.
+
+33. Therefore he made a vow of his own accord, to take his seat on the
+branch of a tree, which was untainted with the pollution of the earth.
+(Because the Lord said, “Cursed is the ground for thy sake”; but not so
+the trees growing upon it).
+
+34. Henceforth said he, “I will perform my austerities on these
+branching arbours, and repose myself like birds and sylvan spirits, on
+the branches and leaves of trees.”
+
+35. Thus sitting on high, he kindled a flaming fire beneath him, and
+was going to offer oblations of living flesh on it, by paring bits of
+his shoulder blade (mixed with blood).
+
+36. When the god of fire thought in himself that, as fire is the mouth
+whereby the gods receive their food, the offering of a Bráhman’s flesh
+to it, would wholly burn down their faces. (Fire is the mouth of gods,
+says Veda, because the gods of early Aryans were distinguished from the
+savages for their taking cooked food and meat, while the latter took
+them raw for want of their knowledge of kindling fire. Again all flesh
+was palatable to the gods, except that of their brotherhood—Bráhmans).
+
+37. Thinking so, the god of fire appeared before him in his full blaze,
+as the luminous sun appeared before the lord of speech—Brihaspati or
+Jupiter.
+
+38. He uttered gently and said, “Accept young Bráhman your desired boon
+from me, as the owner of a store, takes out his treasure from the chest
+in which it is deposited”.
+
+39. Being thus accosted by the god, the Bráhman boy saluted him with a
+laudatory hymn; and after adoring him with suitable offerings of
+flowers, addressed him in the following manner.
+
+40. “Lord! I find no holy place upon earth, which is full of iniquity
+and sinful beings; and therefore pray of thee to make the tops of
+trees, the only places for my abode.”
+
+41. Being thus besought by the Bráhman boy, the god pronounced “Be it
+so” from his flaming mouth, and vanished from his sight.
+
+42. As the god disappeared from before him, like the day-light from the
+face of the lotus-flower; the son of the sage being fully satisfied
+with his desired boon, shone forth in his face like the orb of the full
+moon.
+
+43. Conscious of the success of his desire, his gladdened countenance
+brightened with his blooming smiles; just as the white lotus blushes
+with its smiling petals, no sooner it perceives the smiling moonbeams
+falling upon it.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+ DESCRIPTION OF DÁSÚRA’S KADAMBA FOREST.
+
+
+Argument. Comparisons of the Kadamba tree, and its branches, leaves,
+fruits and flowers and birds.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Thus Dásúra remained in the forest reaching to the
+region of the clouds, and forming a stage for the halting of the tired
+horses of the meridian sun at midday. (_i.e._ As high as to reach the
+sphere of the sun at noon).
+
+2. Its far stretching boughs spread a canopy under the vault of heaven
+on all sides, and it looked to the skies all around with its full blown
+blossoming eyes.
+
+3. The gentle winds were shedding the fragrant dust from the tufts of
+its hanging hairs, which studded with swarms of fluttering bees, and
+its waving leaves like palms of its hands, were brushing over the face
+of its fairy welkin.
+
+4. The banks with their long shrubbery, and the crimson filaments of
+their milk-white blossoms, were smiling like the fair faces of
+beauties, with their teeth tinged with reddish hue of betel leaves.
+
+5. The creeping plants were dancing with delight, and shedding the dust
+from the pistils of their flowers, which were clustered in bunches and
+beaming with the lustre of the full bright moon.
+
+6. The earth with its thickening thickets, and the warbling chakoras as
+amongst them, appeared as the milky path of heaven studded with stars
+singing their heavenly strains.
+
+7. Groups of peacocks sitting on the tops of branching trees, appeared
+with variegated trains, like rainbows amidst the verdant foliage,
+seeming as bluish clouds in the azure sky.
+
+8. The white _chauri_ deer with half of their bodies hidden under the
+coverts of the woods, and their fore parts appearing without the
+thickets, appeared as so many moons with their dark and bright sides in
+the sky.
+
+9. The warbling of _chataks_, joined with the trill of _cuckoos_, and
+the whistling of _chakoras_, filled the groves with a continuous
+harmony.
+
+10. Flocks of white herons sitting on their nestling boughs, seemed as
+bodies of _siddha_ sylphs, sitting quietly beside their coverts in
+heaven.
+
+11. Waving creepers with their ruddy leaflets shaking with the breeze,
+and their blooming blossoms beset by bees, resembled the Apsaras of
+heaven, flapping their rosy palms and looking at the skies.
+
+12. The clusters of Kumuda or blue lotuses, moving on the sky-blue
+waters with their yellow filaments, and shedding their golden dust
+around, appeared as the rainbow and lightings, darting their radiance
+in the azure sky.
+
+13. The forest with thousands of uplifted branches, seemed as the god
+Visva-rúpa lifting his thousand arms on high, and dancing with the
+breeze, with the pendant orbs of the sun and moon, suspended as the
+earrings to both his ears.
+
+14. The groups of elephants lying underneath the branches, and the
+clusters of stars shining above them, gave the woodlands an appearance
+of the sky, with its dark clouds moving below the blazing stars above.
+
+15. The forest was as the store house of all sorts of fruits and
+flowers, as the god Brahmá was the reservoir of all sorts of
+productions.
+
+16. The ground glistened with the falling florets and the farina of the
+flowers, as the firmament glittered with the lustre of solar and
+stellar light.
+
+17. The flights of birds flying on the boughs of trees, and those
+fluttering about their nests, and the flocks of fowls feeding on the
+ground, made the forest appear as a city with its people above, below
+and all about it.
+
+18. Its bowers resembled the inner apartments of houses, with the
+blossoms waving as flags over them, and strewn over with the white
+farina of flowers, as they decorate the floors with flowers and
+powders, and hung flowers over them, as upon the windows of houses.
+
+19. There was the joint harmony of the humming bees and buzzing
+beetles; the twittering of _chakoras_ and parrots, and cooing of
+_cokilas_ in the deep coverts of the woods; and issuing out of their
+holes like the music of songstresses, coming out in unison from the
+hollows of windows.
+
+20. Birds of various kinds hovered about the coverts of the sylvan
+goddesses; as they were the only guests of their lonely retreats.
+
+21. The bees were continually humming over the farinaceous pistils of
+flowers, and sounding water-falls were incessantly exuding from the
+high hills in its neighbourhood.
+
+22. Here the gentle zephyrs were continually playing with the waving
+flowers; and the hoary clouds overtopped the lofty trees, as they do
+the tops of mountains.
+
+23. The sturdy woods resembling high hills, were rubbed by the scabby
+cheeks of elephants, and stood unmoved though they were incessantly
+dashed by their huge legs and feet. (See kumára Sambhava).
+
+24. Birds of variegated plumage that dwelt in the hollows of the trees,
+were as the various races of beings dwelling in the person of Vishnu.
+(Vishnu means the residence of beings like Viráta).
+
+25. With the movements of their painted leaves, resembling the fingers
+of their palms, the trees seemed to keep time with the dancing
+creepers, and point out the modes of their oscillation.
+
+26. They danced also with delight with their branching arms and
+clasping armlets of the creepers, to think on the subsistence, that
+every part of their body affords to all kinds of living beings. (The
+produce of trees supplies the supportance of all living creatures).
+
+27. And thinking how they are the support of thousands of creeping
+plants, which entwine round them as their consorts, they sing their
+joyous chime in the buzzing of the bees about them.
+
+28. The flowers dropped down by the kind _siddha_ (sylphs) from the
+trees, were hailed by the bees and cuckoos with their joyous notes and
+tunes.
+
+29. The _kadamba_ tree seemed by its blooming blossoms, to laugh to
+derision, the five woody arbors on the skirts which do not bear their
+flowers. (These are the banian, bata and ficus religiosus, the mango,
+the fig tree and frondos. (_i.e._ বটাশ্বত্থ, অম্র, উডুম্বর, and পলাস called
+বনস্পতি or lords of woods)).
+
+30. With its uplifted head reaching to the sky, and the flight of birds
+flying over it like the hairs on its head, it seemed to defy the
+_párijata_ tree of Indra’s heaven.
+
+31. The body of bees thronging all about its person, gave it the
+appearance of the thousand eyed Indra, with whom it vied in the greater
+number of its eyes.
+
+32. It had a tuft of flowers on some part of its head, appearing as the
+hood of a snake decorated with gems, and seeming as the infernal
+serpent had mounted its top with his crowned head, in order to survey
+the wonders of heaven.
+
+33. Besmeared with the pollen of its flowers, it appeared as the god
+Siva anointed with his powdered ashes; while its shady bowers overhung
+with luscious fruits, refreshed the passing travellers with rest and
+repast.
+
+34. The _kadamba_ arbour appeared as the garden of paradise, having
+alcoves under its thickening boughs, and grottos formed by the flowery
+creepers below it; while the birds of heaven hovered about it as its
+perpetual inhabitants.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER L.
+
+ DÁSÚRA’S SURVEY OF THE HEAVENS.
+
+
+Argument. Dásúra surveys all the sky from his seat on the Kadamba tree.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Dásúra remained in this flowery arbour, as if he
+dwelt on a hill of flowers; and he felt in his mind the delight, which
+the flowery spring and its fruitage could infuse in the heart.
+
+2. He mounted and sat over the high and airy top of the tree, and
+looked on all sides like the god Vishnu surveying the worlds.
+
+3. There sitting on a branch which reached to the sky, he was employed
+in his devotion, devoid of fear and desire.
+
+4. From this his leafy and easy couch of repose, he cast his curious
+eyes to view the wonders of nature on all sides.
+
+5. He beheld a river at a distance glittering as a necklace of gold,
+and the summits of distant hills rising as nipples on the breast of the
+earth. The fair face of the sky appeared as the face of a fairy,
+covered under the blue veil of a cloud.
+
+6. The verdant leaves of trees were as the green garb of this fairy,
+and the clusters of flowers were as garlands on her head; the distant
+lakes appearing as water-pots, were decorated by their aquatic plants
+and flowers.
+
+7. The fragrance of the blooming lotuses, seemed as the sweet breathing
+of the fairy; and the gurgling of the waterfalls, sounded as the
+trinkets fastened to her feet.
+
+8. The trees touching the skies; were as the hairs on her body, the
+thick forests resembled her thighs, and the orbs of the sun and moon,
+were as earrings pendant on her ears.
+
+9. The fields of corn seemed as pots of her sandal paste, and the
+rising hills were as her breasts, covered by the cloudy mantle on their
+tops.
+
+10. The seas with their lucent waters were as her mirrors, to reflect
+the rays of her jewels of the starry frame. (The stars are explained in
+the gloss as drops of sweat on her person).
+
+11. The season fruits and flowers were as embroideries on her bodice,
+and the rays of the sun and moon were as powders over her body, or as
+the pasted sandal on her person.
+
+12. The clouds covering the landscape were as her garment, and the
+trees and plants on the borders, were as the fringes or the skirts of
+her raiment. In this manner he beheld all the ten sides of heaven as
+full with the form of a fairy queen.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LI.
+
+ DÁSÚRA’S BEGETTING A SON.
+
+
+Argument:—Mental sacrifices of Dásúra, and his production and
+Instruction of a son begotten by the sylvan goddess.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Thence forward Dásúra remained as an ascetic in his
+hermitage, in that forest, and was known as the Kadamba Dásúra, and a
+giant of austere devotion.
+
+2. There sitting on the leaves of the creepers growing on the branch of
+that tree, he looked up to heaven, and then placing himself in the
+posture of _padmásana_, he called back his mind to himself.
+
+3. Unacquainted with spiritual adoration, and unpracticed to the
+ceremonial ritual, he commenced to perform his mental sacrifice, with a
+desire of gaining its reward.
+
+4. Sitting on the leaves of the creepers in his aerial seat, he
+employed his inward spirit and mind, in discharging his sacrificial
+rites, of the sacred fire and horse sacrifice.
+
+5. He continued there for the space of full ten years, in his acts of
+satisfying the gods with his mental sacrifices of the bull, horse and
+human immolations, and paying their honorariums in his mind.
+
+6. In process of time, his mind was purified and expanded, and he
+gained the knowledge of the beatification of his soul. (It is believed
+that ceremonial acts, lead to the knowledge productive of spiritual
+bliss).
+
+7. His ignorance being dispelled, his heart became purified of the dirt
+of worldly desires; and he came to behold a sylvan goddess, standing
+beside his leafy and mossy seat.
+
+8. She was a body of light and dressed in a robe of flowers; her form
+and face were beautiful to behold, and her large bright eyes turned
+wistfully towards him.
+
+9. Her body breathed the fragrance of the blue lotus, and her figure
+charmed his inmost soul. He then spoke to the goddess, standing before
+him with her down cast looks.
+
+10. What art thou, O tender dame! That lookest like a creeper fraught
+with flowers, and defiest the god Cupid with thy beauteous form and
+eyes, resembling the petals of the lotus.
+
+11. Why standest thou as Flora, the befriending goddess of flowering
+creepers? Thus accosted, the dame with deer-like eyes and protuberant
+bosom replied to him.
+
+12. She said to the hermit with a sweet and charming voice in the
+following manner:—“Mayst thou prosper in obtaining the objects of thy
+wishes”:—
+
+13. “For any thing which is desirable and difficult of attainment in
+this world, is surely obtainable when sought after with proper exertion
+by the great”:—
+
+14. “I am, O Bráhman! a sylvan goddess of this forest, which is so full
+of creeping plants, and decorated by the beautiful _kadamba_ trees.
+
+15. “Here I strayed to witness the festive mirth of the sylvan
+goddesses, which always takes place on this thirteenth day of the lunar
+month of chaitra in this forest.
+
+16. “I saw here my companions enjoying their festival of love, and felt
+myself sorry to think of my childlessness among them.
+
+17. “Finding thee accomplished in all qualifications, I have resorted
+hither with my suit of begetting a son by thee.
+
+18. “Please Sir, to procreate a son in me, or else I will put my person
+in the flames, to get rid of my sorrow of childlessness.”
+
+<19.> Hearing the sylvan dame speaking in this manner, the hermit smiled
+at her, and spoke kindly to her with presenting her a flower with his
+own hand, and said:—
+
+20. Depart O damsel! and betake thyself to the worship of Siva for a
+whole month, and then thou shalt like a tender creeper, beget a boy as
+beautiful as a bud by this time of the year.
+
+21. But that son of thine, whom thou didst desire of me at the
+sacrifice of thy life, will betake himself to austerities like mine,
+and become a seer like myself (because he will be born of my blessing
+to thee).
+
+22. So saying the sage dismissed the suppliant dame now gladdened in
+her face, and promised to perform the necessary for her blessing’s sake.
+
+23. The lotus-eyed dame then retired from him, and went to her abode;
+and the hermit passed his months, seasons and years in his holy
+meditation.
+
+24. After a long time the lotus-eyed dame returned to the sage with her
+boy, now grown up to the twelfth year of his age.
+
+25. She made her obeisance and sat before him with her boy of the moon
+bright face; and then uttered her words, sweet as the murmur of the
+humble bee, to the stately Ámra tree.
+
+26. This sir, is the would be son (bhávya) of both of us, who has been
+trained up by me in all the branches of learning. (The Veda and its
+branches. The future _bhávya_—would be, should be the preter
+_bhávita_—was to be).
+
+27. He is only untaught in the best knowledge, which releases the soul
+from its return to this world of troubles. (By the best or _subha_
+knowledge, is meant the _para_—superior or spiritual learning).
+
+28. Do you now my lord! deign to instruct him in that knowledge, for
+who is there that should like to keep his own boy in ignorance (of his
+future and best welfare)?
+
+29. Being thus besought by her, he bespoke to the tender mother, to
+leave the child there and depart her own way.
+
+30. She being gone, the boy remained submissive to his father, and
+dwelt by his side as his pupil, like Aruna (Ouranus) waiting upon the
+sun.
+
+31. Inured in austerity, the boy continued to receive his best
+knowledge from the various lectures of his father, and passed a long
+time with him in that place, under the name of the sage’s son.
+
+<32.> The boy was taught in various narratives and tales, and with many
+examples and ocular instances; as also in historical accounts and
+evidences of the Veda and Vedánta (for his best knowledge of
+spirituality).
+
+33. The boy remained attendant on the lecture of his father, without
+feeling any anxiety; and formed his right notions of things by means of
+their antecedents. (The antecedent or preliminary causes of right
+judgements are, perceptions, inferences, comparisons and testimony or
+authoritative statements of sástras. (These are originally termed as
+pratyaksha, anumiti, Upamiti and Sabda or Sabda-bodha)).
+
+34. The magnanimous father thus instilled true knowledge into the mind
+of his boy, by means (of the quadruple process) of right reasoning and
+correct diction, rather than regarding the elegance of expression; as
+the cloud indicates the approaching rain to the peacock by its hoarse
+sounds. (The quadruple process as mentioned above.)
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LII.
+
+ GRANDEUR OF THE AIR-BORN KING.
+
+
+Argument. Description of Dominions of the Air-born King, and the
+Frailty of Worldly possessions.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—It was on one occasion that I passed by that
+(Dásúra’s) way in my invisible body, to bathe in the heavenly stream of
+_mandákiní_ (milky way) in the etherial regions.
+
+2. After my departure from that region by the way of the Pleiades
+(saptarshi), I arrived to the spot where Dásúra dwelt on his high
+Kadamba tree.
+
+3. 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.
+
+4. Attend my intelligent son! said he, to a narrative that I will
+relate unto thee by way of a simile of worldly things, and it is
+pleasant to hear.
+
+5. There is a very powerful King renowned in all the three worlds for
+his great prosperity. His name is Khottha or Air-produced, and able to
+grasp the whole world. (Like the air whereof he was born. Kha, Khao and
+Khavi yet un, is empty air in Sanskrit, Hebrew and Arabic, and Khali in
+Persian and Urdu).
+
+6. All the lords of the earth bend their heads lowly under his rule,
+and bear the badge of their submission to him with as great an honour,
+as poor men are proud to carry about a bright gem on the head.
+
+7. 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.
+
+8. His unnumbered acts and exploits, are fraught with successive pain
+and pleasure; and they are as interminable as the continuous waves of
+the sea.
+
+9. No one has been able to check the prowess of that mighty brave by
+force of fire or sword, as none hath ever been able to press the air or
+wind in his hand.
+
+10. Even the gods Indra, Upendra and Hara, have fallen short of
+following his steps in his ambitious pursuits, and the splendid
+inventions of his imagination.
+
+11. With his triple form of the sátwika, rájasika and támasika
+qualities, he encompasses the world, and is enabled to accomplish all
+sorts of actions. (These are the qualities of goodness, moderation and
+excess, or the three states of deficiency, mediocrity and excess of
+moral acts, according to the text of Aristotelean Ethics. But I would
+prefer to call them the positive, comparative and superlative virtues,
+or rather the minimum, mean and maximum states of virtues).
+
+12. He is born in the extensive vacuity (of the spirit of Brahma), with
+his triple body as that of a bird (viz; the flesh and bones and the
+feathers, and remains in vacuum as the air and the sound).
+
+13. He has built a city in that unlimited space of the Universe, having
+fourteen provinces (_chaturdasa Bhuvana_) (the planetary spheres), in
+its triple divisions (tribhuvana) of the earth and regions above and
+below it.
+
+14. It is beautified with forests and groves and pleasure-lawns and
+hills, and bounded by the seven lakes of pearly waters on all sides.
+(The city signifies the earth and the lakes the seven oceans in it).
+
+15. 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, as those of righteous and nefarious people. (The original
+words, as the courses _divá_, and _nisácharas_ or the day and
+nightfarers).
+
+16. The king has peopled this great city of his with many selfmoving
+bodies (animals), which move in their spheres quite ignorant of
+themselves (_i.e._ of their origin, their course and their fates).
+
+17. Some of these are appointed in higher and some in lower spheres,
+and others move in their middle course; some destined to live a longer
+time, and others doomed to die in a day (as the ephemerids).
+
+18. These bodies are covered with black skins and hairs (as thatched
+huts), and furnished with nine holes (as their doors or windows); which
+are continually receiving in and carrying out the air to keep them
+alive.
+
+19. They are supplied with five lights of sensation and perceptions and
+supported by three posts of the two legs and the back bone, and a frame
+work of white bones for the beams and bamboo rafters. It is plastered
+over with flesh as its moistened clay (or mud wall), and defended by
+the two arms as latches on door way.
+
+20. The Great king has placed his sentinel of the Yaksha of egoism as a
+guard of this house; and this guard is as ferocious as a Bhairava in
+dark (ignorance), and as timorous as a _Bhairava_ by the day (i.e.
+egoism brags in ignorance, but flies before the day-light of reason).
+
+21. The masters of these locomotive bodies, play many pranks in them,
+as a bird plays its frolics in its own nest.
+
+22. This triformed prince (the mind) is always fickle, and never steady
+in any; he resides in many bodies and plays his gambles there with his
+guard of egoism, and leaves one body for another at will, as a bird
+alights from one branch upon another.
+
+23. This fickle minded prince is ever changeful in his will; he resides
+in one city and builds another for his future habitation.
+
+24. 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.
+
+25. The Mind sometimes wishes to destroy its former frame and remove to
+another, and effects its purpose at will.
+
+26. It is produced again as the wave of the sea, after it had subsided
+to rest; and it pursues slowly and gradually a different course in its
+renewed course of life.
+
+27. 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.
+
+28. He is sometimes dejected by sorrow and at others elated by success,
+like the current of a river, now going down in the hot season, and
+again overflowing its banks in the rains.
+
+29. This king is led by his hobbies like the waters of the sea by the
+winds; it puffs and swells, falls and rises, runs fast and ceases to
+flow at once as in a calm.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LIII.
+
+ DESCRIPTION OF THE MUNDANE CITY.
+
+
+Argument. Interpretation of the Parable of the Air-born prince,
+and exposition of the Universe as the production of our Desires.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—The boy then asked his holy sire, who was sitting
+reclined on his sacred Kadamba tree, in the midst of the forest of the
+great Jambudvípa in the gloom of the night.
+
+2. 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.
+
+3. You said sir, that this prince constructs for himself a new abode,
+whilst residing in his present body; and removes to the same after he
+has left the old frame. This seems impossible to me, as the joining of
+one tense with another, the present with the future.
+
+4. Dásúra replied:—Hear me tell you my son, the meaning of this
+parable, which will explain to you the nature of this revolutionary
+world in its true light.
+
+5. I have told you at first that a non-entity sprang in the beginning
+from the entity of God, and this non-entity being stretched out
+afterwards (in the form of illusion), gave rise to this illusory world
+called the cosmos.
+
+6. The vacuous spirit of the Supreme Deity, gives rise to his formless
+will, which is thence called Air-born (or the mind). It is born of
+itself in its formless state from the formless Spirit, and dissolves
+itself into the same; as the wave rising from and falling in the bosom
+of the sea. (Thus in the beginning was the Will and not the Word, and
+the Will was in God, and the will was God; and it rises and sets in the
+Spirit of God).
+
+7. It is the will which produces every thing, 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. (The will of the willful mind, dwells on some subject or
+other while it is living; but it perishes when it has no object to
+think upon, and melts into insensibility; or else it continues to
+transmigrate with its thoughts and wishes for ever).
+
+8. Know the gods Brahmá, Vishnu, Indra, Siva and the Rudras, as
+offspring of the willful Mind; as the branches are the offshoots of the
+main tree, and the summits are projections of the principal mountain.
+
+9. This Mind builds the city of the triple world, in the vacuum of
+Brahma (like an air-drawn castle); by reason of its being endowed
+with intelligence from Omniscience, in its form of Virinchi
+(vir-incho-ativus).
+
+10. This city is composed of fourteen worlds (planetary spheres)
+containing all their peoples; together with chains of their hills and
+forests and those of gardens and groves.
+
+11. It is furnished with the two lights of the sun and moon, (to shine
+as two fires by day and night); and adorned with many mountains for
+human sports. (Hence the mountainous Gods of old, are said to be the
+sportive _Devas_; _divi deváh divayanti_).
+
+12. Here the pearly rivers are flowing in their winding courses, and
+bearing their swelling waves and rippling billows, shining as chains of
+pearls under the sunbeams and moonlight.
+
+13. The seven oceans appear as so many lakes of limpid waters, and
+shining with their submarine fires, resembling the lotus-beds and mines
+of gems beneath the azure sky.
+
+14. It is a distinguished place of gods, men and savages, who make
+their commerce here, with commodities (of virtue and vice), leading
+either to heaven above or to the hell below.
+
+15. The self-willed King (the mind), has employed here many persons (as
+dramatis personae), to act their several parts before him for his
+pleasure.
+
+16. Some are placed high above this stage to act as gods and deities,
+and others are set in lower pits of this earth and infernal regions, to
+act their miserable parts—as men and Nágas. (The Nágas are snakes and
+snake worshippers, living in subterraneous cells like the serpentine
+race of Satan. The Bara and Chhotá Naghores, and the Naga hill people
+of Assam are remnants of this tribe).
+
+17. Their bodies are made of clay, and their frame work is of white
+bones; and their plastering is the flesh under the skin as a pneumatic
+machine.
+
+18. Some of these bodies have to act their parts for a long while,
+while others make their exits in a short time. They are covered with
+caps of black hairs, and others with those of white and grey on their
+heads.
+
+19. All these bodies are furnished with nine crevices, consisting of
+the two earholes, two sockets of the eyes, and two nostrils with the
+opening of the mouth, which are continually employed in inhaling and
+exhaling cold and hot air by their breathings. (These airs are the
+oxygen and nitrogen gases).
+
+20. The earholes, nostrils and the palate, serve as windows to the
+abode of the body; the hands and feet are the gate ways, and the five
+inner organs are as lights of these abodes.
+
+21. The mind then creates of its own will the delusion of egoism, which
+like a _yaksha_ demon takes possession of the whole body, but flies
+before the light of knowledge.
+
+22. The mind accompanied by this delusive demon, takes great pleasure
+in diverting itself with unrealities (until it comes to perceive their
+vanity by the light of reason).
+
+23. Egoism resides in the body like a rat in the barn-house, and as a
+snake in the hollow ground. It falls down as a dew drop from the blade
+of a reed, upon advance of the sunlight of reason.
+
+24. It rises and falls like the flame of a lamp in the abode of the
+body, and is as boisterous with all its desires, as the sea with its
+ceaseless waves.
+
+25. The Mind constructs a new house for its future abode, by virtue of
+its interminable desires in its present habitation; and which are
+expected to be realized and enjoyed in its future state.
+
+26. But no sooner it ceases to foster its desires, than it ceases to
+exist, and loses itself in that state of Supreme bliss of which there
+can be no end. (Freedom from desire, is freedom from regeneration).
+
+27. But it is born and reborn by its repeated desires, as the child
+sees the ghost by its constant fear of it. (Every desire rises as a
+spectre to bind).
+
+28. It is egoism (or the belief of one’s real entity), 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. (Without the subjective
+there can be no knowledge of the objective).
+
+29. It is by one’s own attempt in this way, that he exposes himself to
+the miseries of the world; and then he wails at his fate like the
+foolish monkey, that brought on its own destruction, by pulling out the
+peg from the chink of the timber (which smashed its testes. See
+Hitopadesa).
+
+30. The mind remains in eager expectation of the enjoyment of its
+desired objects, as the stag stood with its lifted mouth, to have a
+drop of honey fall into it, from a honey-comb hanging on high.
+
+31. The wistful mind now pursues its desired objects, and now it
+forsakes them in disgust; now it longs for joy, and then grows sulky at
+its failure like a fretful child.
+
+32. Now try diligently, my boy, to extricate thy mind from all outward
+objects, and fix thy attention to the inward object of this meditation.
+
+33. The willful mind takes at its will its good, bad and moderate or
+sober forms; known under the names of _satva_, _rajas_ and _tamas_ (as
+defined before).
+
+34. The bad or vitiated form of the mind delights in worldliness, and
+by bemeaning itself with all its greedy appetites, reduces itself to
+the state of worms and insects in its future births.
+
+35. The good disposition of the mind is inclined towards virtuous
+deeds, and the acquisition of knowledge; and by these means advances
+both to its soleness and self enjoyment (_i.e._ to its full liberation
+and the state of the highest Brahma).
+
+36. In its form of moderation, it is observant of the rules and laws of
+society, and conducts itself in the world in the company of friends and
+members of the family.
+
+37. After relinquishment of all these three forms, and abdication of
+egoism and desires, it reaches to the state of the absolute Supreme
+Being.
+
+38. Therefore shun the sight of the visibles, and repress your fleeting
+mind by your sober intellect; and diminish your desires for all
+internal as well as external goods. (_i.e._ Both mental qualifications
+and outward possessions).
+
+39. For though you may practice your austerities for a thousand years,
+and crush your body by falling from a precipice upon stones;—
+
+40. Or although you burn your body alive on a flaming pyre, or plunge
+yourself into the submarine fire; or if you fall in a deep and dark pit
+or well, or rush upon the edge of a drawn and sharp sword;—
+
+41. Or if you have Brahmá himself or even Siva for your preceptor, or
+get the very kind and tender hearted ascetic for your religious
+guide;—(The _guru_ of this nature probably alludes to Buddha, or Jina
+according to some, or to Dattátreya or Durvásá according to others.
+Gloss).
+
+42. Whether you are situated in heaven or on earth, or in the regions
+of pátála—the antipodes below; you have no way of liberation, save by
+keeping your desires under subjection.
+
+43. Exert your manliness therefore, in domineering over your
+irresistible and violent desires and passions, which will secure to you
+the pure and transcendent joy of peace and holiness.
+
+44. All things are linked together under the bandage of cupidity; and
+this band being broken asunder, makes the desired objects vanish into
+nothing.
+
+45. 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.
+
+46. As the mind conceives a thing to be, so it perceives the same in
+actuality; therefore have no conception of anything, if you want to
+know the truth of it.
+
+47. Do you act as the world goes, without your liking or disliking of
+any thing; and thus the desires being at an end, the intellect will
+rise to the inscrutable beyond the knowledge of the mind.
+
+48. The mind which having sprung from the Supreme Soul in the form of
+goodness, is inclined afterwards towards the unrealities of the world;
+surely alienates itself from the Supreme, and exposes itself to all
+sorts of misery.
+
+49. We are born to the doom of death, but let us not die to be reborn
+to the miseries of life and death again. It is for the wise and learned
+to betake themselves to that state, which is free from these pains.
+
+50. First learn the truth, and attain to the true knowledge of your
+soul; and then abandon all your desire and dislike of the world. Being
+thus prepared with a dead-like insensibility of your internal feelings,
+you will be enabled to come to the knowledge of that transcendental
+state, which is full of perfect bliss and blessedness.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LIV.
+
+ CORRECTIVE OF DESIRES.
+
+
+Argument. The rise, progress and decline of Human Wishes.
+
+
+The Son asked:—What is this desire, father? how is it produced and
+grown, and how is it destroyed at last?
+
+2. Dásúra replied:—The desire or will is situated in the mind or mental
+part of the one eternal, universal and spiritual substance of God.
+
+3. It gets the form of a monad from a formless unit, and then by its
+gradual expansion extends over the whole mind, and fills it as a flimsy
+cloud soon covers the sky.
+
+4. 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.
+
+5. The desire is produced by the desiring of something, and it
+increases of itself both in its size and quantity, for our trouble
+only, and to no good or happiness at all.
+
+6. It is the accretion of our desires which forms the world, as it is
+the accumulation of waters which makes the ocean; you have no trouble
+without your desire, and being free from it, you are freed from the
+miseries of the world (wherein one has to buffet as in the waves and
+waters of the sea).
+
+7. It is by mere chance, that we come to meet with the objects of our
+desire; as it is by an act of unavoidable chance also, that we are
+liable to lose them. They appear before us as secondary luminaries in
+the sky, and then fly away as the mirage vanishes from view.
+
+8. As a man who has the jaundice by eating a certain fruit, sees every
+thing as yellow as gold with his jaundiced eye; so the desire in the
+heart of man, pictures the unreal as a reality before him.
+
+9. Know this truth that you are an unreality yourself, and must become
+an unreality afterwards. (Because there is but one self-existent
+entity, and all besides is but suppositions not entities).
+
+10. He who has learnt to disbelieve his own existence and that of all
+others, and knows the vanity of his joy and grief, is not troubled at
+the gain or loss of any thing (which is but vanity of vanities, the
+world is vanity).
+
+11. 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.
+
+12. Do not entertain your desires, nor think of anything which is
+nothing; it is by your living in this manner, that you may be wise and
+happy.
+
+13. Try to relinquish your desire, and you will evade all difficulties;
+and cease to think of anything, and your desire for it will disappear
+of itself.
+
+14. Even the crushing of a flower is attended with some effort, but it
+requires no effort to destroy your desire, which vanishes of itself for
+want of its thought.
+
+15. You have to expand the palm of your hand, in laying hold of a
+flower; but you have nothing to do in destroying your frail and false
+desire.
+
+16. He that wants to destroy his desire, can do it in a trice, by
+forgetting the thought of his desired object.
+
+17. The thoughts being repressed from other objects, and fixed in the
+Supreme Spirit, will enable one to do what is impossible for others to
+effect.
+
+18. Kill your desire by desiring nothing, and turn your mind from all
+things, by fixing it in the Supreme, which you can easily do of
+yourself.
+
+19. Our desires being quieted, all worldly cares come to a stand still,
+and all our troubles are put to a dead lock.
+
+20. Our wishes constitute our minds, hearts, lives, understandings and
+all our desiderative faculties; all which are but different names for
+the same thing without any difference in their signification.
+
+21. There is no other business of our lives than to desire and to be
+doing, and when done to be desiring again: and as this restless craving
+is rooted out of the mind, it sets it free from all anxiety.
+
+22. The world below is as empty, as the hollow sky above us; both of
+those are empty nothings, except that our minds make something or other
+of them, agreeably to its desire or fancy.
+
+23. All things are unsubstantial and unsubstantiated by the
+unsubstantial mind; thus the world being but a creation of our fancy a
+desideratum, there is nothing substantial for you to think about.
+
+24. 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.
+
+25. The nice discernment of things, will preserve you from the excess
+of joy and grief, and the knowledge of the Vanity of things, will keep
+out your affection for or reliance on any person or thing.
+
+26. The removal of reliance upon the world, removes our attachment to
+it; and consequently prevents our joy or sorrow at the gain or loss of
+any thing.
+
+27. The mind which becomes the living principle, stretches out his city
+of the world by an act of its imagination; and then turns it about as
+the present, past, and future worlds, (_i.e._ the mind produces,
+destroys and reproduces the world, as it builds and breaks and rebuilds
+its aerial castles).
+
+28. The mind being subject to the sensational, emotional and volitive
+feelings; loses the purity of its intellectual nature, and plays many
+parts by its sensuousness.
+
+29. The living soul also forgets the nature of the universal soul from
+which it is derived, and is transformed to a puny animalcule in the
+heart of man, where it plays its pranks like an ape in the woods.
+
+30. Its desires are as irrepressible, as the waves of the ocean, and
+they rise and fall by turns like the waves, in expectation of having
+every object of the senses.
+
+31. Our desire like fire, is kindled by every straw; and it burns and
+blows out in its invisible form within the mind.
+
+32. Our desires are as fickle as flashes of lightning, and proceed from
+the minds of the ignorant, as the lightning darts itself from the
+watery clouds (জলদ); they are equally fleeting and
+misguiding, and must be speedily avoided by the wise.
+
+33. 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.
+
+34. The knowledge of the unreality of the world, quickly cures the
+disease of desire; but the certainty of worldly knowledge, makes it as
+incurable as the impossibility, of removing the blackness of a coal.
+
+35. What fool will attempt to wash a coal white, or convert a
+materialist to a spiritualist? Or turn a raven or Negro to whiteness?
+
+36. But the mind of a man, is as a grain of rice covered under its
+husk, which is soon unhusked upon the threshing-floor.
+
+37. The worldliness of the wise, is as soon removed as the husk of
+rice, and the blackness of a cooking kettle.
+
+38. The blemishes of a man, are blotted out by his own endeavours;
+wherefore you must try to exert yourself to action at all times.
+
+39. He who has not been able to master over his vain desires, and hobby
+whims in this world, will find them vanish of themselves in course of
+time, as nothing false can last for ever.
+
+40. The light of reason removeth the false conception of the world, as
+the light of the lamp dispels the darkness from the room at sight, and
+night vision removes the secondary moon (of optical deception).
+
+41. The world is not yours, nor are you of this world; there is no body
+nor anything here akin to you, nor are you so to any; never think
+otherwise, nor take the false for true.
+
+42. Never foster the false idea in your mind, that you are master of
+large possessions and pleasant things; for know yourself and all
+pleasant things, are for the delight of the Supreme Maker and Master of
+all.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LV.
+
+ MEETING OF VASISHTHA AND DÁSÚRA.
+
+
+Argument. Dásúra’s reception of Vasishtha, their conversation and
+Parting.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Hear me, Ráma, that art the delight of Raghu’s race,
+and shinest as the moon in the firmament of Raghu’s family; that after
+I heard the conversation that was going on between Dásúra and his son:—
+
+2. 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.
+
+3. I beheld Dásúra there, sitting as a giant by subduing the organs of
+his body, and shining with the lustre of his devotion, as the fire
+blazing with its flame.
+
+4. The lustre issuing from his body, had strewn his seat with purple
+gold, and lighted that spot, as the sun-beams emblazon the world.
+
+5. Seeing me presenting myself before him, Dásúra spread a leafy seat
+for me to sit down, and then honoured me according to the rules of
+ceremonial law.
+
+6. Then I joined with the luminous Dásúra in continuation of his
+discourse, which was meant for the edification of his son, and
+salvation of mankind from the miseries of life.
+
+7. I then with permission of Dásúra, looked into the hollow of the
+tree, and the herds of stags pasturing fearlessly about it, and grazing
+and gathering about it.
+
+8. It was as delightful as a bower overhung with creepers, where the
+smiling flowers were shedding their light, and breathing their
+fragrance to the winds.
+
+9. The choury deer flapped their long hairy and moon-bright tails,
+against the herbaceous arbour, as the white flimsy clouds sweep over
+the sky.
+
+10. The tree was adorned with fringes of pearly dewdrops, and arrayed
+all over with the flowery garb of his blossoms.
+
+11. Smeared with the dust of its flowers, it appeared to be anointed
+with sandal paste; while its blowsy bark mantled it in roseate red.
+
+12. Decorated with flowers, the tree seemed to stand in its bridal
+attire; and resembled the bridegroom in mutual embrace with the twining
+brides.
+
+13. 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 (or banners) in festivity.
+
+14. Shaken by the stages in the act of rubbing their bodies, the trees
+darted their flowers in abundance upon the ground; and the border-lands
+were as shattered, as if they were broken by the horns of fighting
+bulls.
+
+15. Peacocks daubed with dust of flowers, and flying on the top of the
+adjacent hill, appeared as evening clouds gliding over it.
+
+16. 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.
+
+17. The closing buds resembling her eyelids, were lulled to sleep by
+the forest breeze, breathing incessantly with the fragrance of the
+flowers. The clusters of flowers forming her breasts, were hid under
+the bodice of leaves.
+
+18. She sat at the window of her alcove, formed by the twining plants
+and creepers, and was dressed in the purple garb of the flying farina
+of flowers.
+
+19. She swang in her swinging cradle of bluish blossoms, and was
+adorned with various floral ornaments from her head to foot.
+
+20. She moved about the flowers in the garb of the sylvan goddess and
+looking with her cerulean eyes of fluttering blue-bees on all sides;
+and sang to them in the sweet notes of the black kokila in the arbours.
+
+21. 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.
+
+22. The couples of bees dwelling in the cells of flowers, and giddy
+with sipping the honey of the flower cups; were humming their love
+tunes to one another.
+
+23. 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.
+
+24. The sages then beheld with their down cast looks on moon-beams,
+which were spread like a sheet of fine linen on the blades of grass
+upon the ground below.
+
+25. They beheld the beautiful antelopes, which slept in their leafy
+beds on the ground, below the stretching boughs of shady trees, as if
+they were the progeny of their native forest.
+
+26. They saw the fearless birds chirping upon the branches, and others
+sleeping confident in their nests; and they beheld the ground covered
+by living creatures, feasting on the ripe fruits fallen below.
+
+27. They saw the long lines of black-bees, lying mute on the ground
+like strings of beads, and blackening it with their sable bodies.
+
+28. 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
+ambergrees, and the Kadamba fruits covered the face of the land.
+
+29. What need is there of saying more, than that there was no part of
+the tree, which was not useful to living beings.
+
+30. Here the deer were sleeping on the fallen leaves and there were
+others resting on the barren ground; the birds sat on the banks and
+beaches of the rivulets all about that lofty tree.
+
+31. As they were viewing in this manner the beauties of the forest, the
+night passed away as soon as a night of festivity.
+
+32. The son of the hermit kept conversing with me on many subjects, and
+derived many useful instructions from my teaching.
+
+33. As we had been conversing with one another on different subjects,
+the night passed away as soon as that of a conjugal pair.
+
+34. 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.
+
+35. I then took my departure, and was followed by the hermit and his
+son to some distance from their Kadamba tree, where I left them for my
+aerial course to the heavenly stream.
+
+36. There having performed my holy ablution, I came down under the
+vault of heaven, and then entered the celestial region of the sages,
+which is situated in the midway sky.
+
+37. Now I have related to you, Ráma, this story of Dásúra, 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).
+
+38. It was for this reason, that I have given you the narrations of
+Dásúra, by way of explanation of the phenomenal world, as a shadow of
+the noumenal.
+
+39. Now therefore know the Spirit like Dásúra, and imitate his example
+in the magnanimity of your soul. Forsake the unreal, and pursue the
+reality for your permanent delight.
+
+40. 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.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LVI.
+
+ ON THE SOUL AND ITS INERTNESS.
+
+
+Argument. Consideration of the activity and inactivity of the Soul, and
+the Vanity of the Visibles.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Knowing the world as a nihility, you must cease to
+take any delight in it; for what reasonable being is there in it that
+would delight in its unreality.
+
+2. 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.
+
+3. Or if you know it to be a temporary existence, why then should you
+take any interest in what is so frail and unstable, rather than care
+for your immortal soul?
+
+4. 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. (And which is refracted into all
+individual minds as in prismatic glasses).
+
+5. The world is neither an agent itself, nor is it the act of any agent
+at all; it is simply the reflexion of the noumenal, without any agency
+of its own.
+
+6. Whether the world is with or without an agent, or has a maker or
+not, yet you can not tell it as a real substance, except that it
+appears so to your mind.
+
+7. The soul is devoid of all organs of action, and with all its
+activity, it remains motionless and without action, as anything that is
+inactive and immovable.
+
+8. The world is the production of a fortuitous chance (Kákatáliya
+Sanyoga), and none but boys place any reliance in it. (The world here
+means our existence in it, which is an act of chance).
+
+9. 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.
+
+10. It is neither everlasting, nor is it a momenting thing; its
+constant mutability contradicts its firmness; and its nihility, (as
+stated before) is opposed to its temporarity. (The dictum of the Veda
+of the eternity of _asat_—nullity, nullifies its temporariness).
+
+11. If the soul is the active power without its organs of action, it
+must be unfailing and entire; because the continuance of its inorganic
+operations can not weaken its powers. (_i.e._ The performance of bodily
+actions debilitates the body; but the immaterial mind is not impaired
+by its activity).
+
+12. Therefore there is an irresistible destiny, which is absolutely
+overruling; it is existence and inexistence itself, it is sedate and
+continuous, and all visible perturbations are but false appearances.
+
+13. The limit of a hundred years of human life, is but a very small
+portion of unlimited duration; it is therefore very astonishing that
+any one should be concerned with this small portion of his existence,
+here (in utter disregard of his eternal life).
+
+14. Granting the durability of worldly affairs, yet they are not
+deserving of your reliance; for what faith can you rely on the union of
+two such opposites as the mind and matter? (The one being sensible and
+the other insensible, the one being infinite and imperishable, and the
+other a finite and frail substance).
+
+15. But if the state of worldly things be unsteady and uncertain, it
+can not be deserving of your confidence. Say, can you be sorry at the
+dissolving of the foam and froth of the milk or water, then why should
+you lament at the loss of the perishable? (So said the Grecian
+philosopher: yesterday I saw a fragile breaking, and today I saw a
+mortal die).
+
+16. Know, O strong armed Ráma! that reliance on the world, is the
+fetter of the soul to it; it does not behove any body to join the
+perishable and imperishable together like the water and its froth. (The
+one being lasting and the other a transient thing).
+
+17. Although the soul is the agent (or source) of all actions, yet it
+remains as no agent at all; it is unconnected with its actions, as the
+lamp with its light. (The mind being the doer of actions and not the
+soul).
+
+18. Doing all it does nothing, but like the sun directs the business of
+the day without doing anything by itself. It moves like the sun without
+moving from its place, but retains its station in its own orbit. (The
+sun is the causal agent of diurnal duties, but men are the active
+agents of their actions).
+
+19. There is some other hidden cause guiding the course of the world,
+beside the soul and body; as there is an unknown cause of the course of
+the Aruna river, notwithstanding its being blocked by stones.
+
+20. When you have known this for certain, O Ráma by your own
+proficience, and have well ascertained this truth by its clearest
+evidence:—
+
+21. You ought no more to place any reliance on material things, which
+are as false as an ambient flame, or a vision in dream, or as any
+falsehood whatever.
+
+22. As a stranger is not to be taken into your friendship, on his first
+appearance; so you must never trust or rely on anything of this world
+through your ignorance.
+
+23. 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.
+
+24. Do you look upon this ideal world (which is born of your brain), as
+you view a creature of your conception, a vision in your dream, or an
+apparition or the appearance of two moons in the sky, by your visual
+deception.
+
+25. Shun your reliance on the fair creation of your imagination (the
+objects of sight &c.), and without minding what you are, conduct
+yourself cheerfully in your sphere.
+
+26. Shun your desires and the thought of your agency, even when you are
+doing any thing at all. (The soul residing in the body, is yet aloof
+from all its acts, though its presence in the body, justifies its being
+accessary to if not the accomplice of them. (Gloss)).
+
+27. 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. (An involuntary action is no less the act of the
+actor than a voluntary one).
+
+28. Look at the _kurchi_ tree blooming and blossoming under the
+influence of heavy clouds, and not of its own accord. So it is destined
+for the three worlds to appear to sight, under the influence of the
+Supreme Being (though he may not will or ordain it so). (So also the
+presence of matter, effects the work by material laws, without the
+special behest or employment of the matter to the performance of same.
+Gloss).
+
+29. As the appearance of the sun in the sky, employs all beings to
+their diurnal duties without his will or injunction, so the
+omnipresence of God causes the actions of all beings of their own
+spontaneity, and without his will, act or fiat. (This is called the
+overruling and universal destiny).
+
+30. And as a bright gem reflects its light, without any will on its
+part; so the mere existence of the Deity, causes the existence of all
+worlds (as they are in attendance upon His presence).
+
+31. Thus are causality and its want also both situated in your soul,
+which is thence called the cause of your actions, because of its
+presence in the body; and as no cause likewise owing to its want of
+will (which is the property of the mind; and not of the soul).
+
+32. The entity of the soul being beyond the perception of sense, it is
+neither the agent nor recipient of any action; but being confined in
+the sensible body, it is thought to be both an active and passive agent.
+
+33. 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.
+
+34. But by firmly believing yourself to be situated in the body, and
+your doing of actions without thinking yourself as their author, will
+save you from the culpability of all your acts.
+
+35. The man that does not employ his mind to his actions, becomes
+indifferent (virága) to the world; and he is freed from it, who is
+certain of his being no agent of his actions.
+
+36. Whether a man is fond of his enjoyments, or forsakes them in
+disgust; it is all the same to him, if he but think himself to be no
+actor of them. (Set not your mind to act, if you want to be set free in
+fact).
+
+37. But if you wish to remain, Ráma, with your high ambition of doing
+every thing in the world, that is also good, and you may try to do the
+same.
+
+38. But if I do not fall to so great an error, as to have this high
+aspiration of yours, I am never liable to the passions of anger and
+enmity, and other violent emotions in this world.
+
+39. The bodies that we bear, are nourished by some and immolated by
+others: such being the state of our own being; we have no cause for our
+joy or sorrow in it.
+
+40. Knowing ourselves to be the authors of our own happiness and
+misery, and as causes of the rise and dissolution of the world from our
+view, we have no reason to be joyous or sorry in it.
+
+41. Then there is an end of the joys and sorrows of our own making,
+when we have that sweet composure, which is a balm to all the diseases
+in our soul.
+
+42. Fellow feeling to all living beings, makes the best state of the
+mind; and the soul that is so disposed, is not subject to
+transmigration.
+
+43. Or make this the best lesson, Ráma! for your conduct in life, that
+with all your activities, you continue to think yourself as no actor at
+all. (Because the belief of one’s agency, leads him to the fruition of
+this act in repeated births).
+
+44. Remain quiet and steady as thou art, by resigning all things to
+themselves; and never think that it is thou that dost or undoest
+anything (which is destined to be so or otherwise by the Divine will).
+
+45. But if you look to the different modes of your doing one thing or
+the other, you can have no rest or quiet, but must run in the way
+leading to the trap of perpetual toil and misery.
+
+46. The belief of a man’s corporeality, that he is a destructible body,
+and no spiritual being, is to him but a bed of thorns; it must
+therefore be avoided by all means, in order to evade the danger of his
+imminent destruction.
+
+47. Corporeality is to be shunned as a hell-hound feeding on canine
+meat; and after disappearance of the cloud of corporeity from view, the
+light of spirituality will appear before the sight.
+
+48. The pure light of spirituality; presents the appearance of the
+bright moon-beams of holiness, after dispersion of clouds of corporeal
+desires; and it is by the help of this light, that the spiritualist is
+enabled to steer across the ocean of this world.
+
+49. Do you, O Ráma, remain in that best and blessed state, wherein the
+wisest, best and holiest of men have found their rest; and it is the
+constant habit of thinking yourself as nothing nor doing anything; or
+that you are all things and doing every thing; as the Supreme soul
+knows itself to be; and that you are some person, having a personality
+of your own, and yet no body (_i.e._ not the body in which thou dost
+abide); but a spiritual and transcendent being.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LVII.
+
+ NATURE OF VOLLEITY AND NOLLEITY.
+
+
+Argument. The bondage of volition causing our perdition, and the
+freedom of Nolition as leading to salvation.
+
+
+Ráma said:—Thy words, O Bráhman! are true and well spoken also. I
+find the soul to be the inactive agent of actions, and the impassive
+recipient of their effects, as also the spiritual cause of the
+corporeal.
+
+2. I find the soul to be the sole lord of all, and ubiquitous in its
+course; it is of the nature of intelligence and of the form of
+transparency. It resides in all bodies, as the five elements compose
+the terraqueous bodies.
+
+3. I now come to understand the nature of Brahma, and I am as pacified
+by thy speech, as the heated mountain is cooled by rain waters.
+
+4. From its secludedness and nolleity, it neither does nor receives any
+thing; but its universal pervasion, makes it both the actor and
+sufferer.
+
+5. 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.
+
+6. Tell me Sir, whence proceed these dualities, as the reality of one
+and the unreality of the other, and that this is I and this not myself.
+And if the soul is one and indivisible, how is this one thing and that
+another.
+
+7. There being but one self-existent and self-evident soul from the
+beginning, how comes it to be subjected to these oppositions, as the
+bright disk of sun comes to be obscured under the clouds.
+
+8. Vasishtha answered:—Ráma! 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.
+
+9. You will not be able, Ráma! to comprehend my answers to these
+queries of yours, until you come to be acquainted with my solution of
+the question of liberation.
+
+10. As it is the adult youth only, who can appreciate the beauty of a
+love-song; so it is the holy man only, who can grasp the sense of my
+sayings on these abstruse subjects.
+
+11. Sayings of such great importance, are as fruitless with ignorant
+people, as a work on erotic subjects is useless to children.
+
+12. There is a time for the seasonableness of every subject to men, as
+it is the season of autumn which produces the harvest and not the
+vernal spring.
+
+13. 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.
+
+14. I have ere while mentioned something, which may serve to answer
+your question, although you have not fully comprehended its meaning, to
+remove your present doubts.
+
+15. 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.
+
+16. I will fully expound to you the subject matter of your inquiry, at
+the conclusion of my argument; when you shall have arrived to a better
+knowledge of these things.
+
+17. The spiritualist knows the spirit in his own spirit; and it is the
+good grace of the Supreme spirit, to manifest itself to the spirit of
+the spiritualist.
+
+18. I have already related to you Ráma! the argument concerning the
+agency and inertness of the soul, yet it is your ignorance of this
+doctrine, that makes you foster your doubts.
+
+19. 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 (as you
+are then perfectly free yourself).
+
+20. Forsake first your foul (támasi) desires, and then be freed from
+your desire of worldly possessions; foster your better wishes next, and
+at last incline to your pure and holy leanings.
+
+21. After having conducted yourself with your pure desires, get rid of
+these even at the end; and then being freed from all desires, be
+inclined to and united with your intellect (_i.e._ knowing all and
+longing for nothing).
+
+22. Then renounce your intellectual propensity, together with your
+mental and sensible proclivities; and lastly having reached to the
+state of staid tranquility, get rid of your mind also in order to set
+yourself free from all other desires.
+
+23. Be an intellectual being, and continue to breathe your vital breath
+(as long as you live); but keep your imagination under controul, and
+take into no account the course of time, and the revolution of days and
+nights.
+
+24. 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.
+
+25. Drive away all feelings and thoughts from your heart and mind; for
+he that is free from anxieties, is superior to all, (who labour under
+anxious thoughts and cares).
+
+26. Let a man practice his hybernation 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.
+
+27. The man devoid of desires, has no need of his observance or
+avoidance of pious acts; the freedom of his mind from its dependence on
+anything, is sufficient for his liberation.
+
+28. A man may have well studied the sástras, and discussed about them
+in mutual conversation; yet he is far from his perfection, without his
+perfect inappetency and taciturnity.
+
+29. There are men who have examined every thing and roved in all parts
+of the world; yet there are few among them that have known the truth.
+
+30. Of all things that are observed in the world, there is nothing
+among them which may be truly desirable, and is to be sought after by
+the wise.
+
+31. All this ado of the world, and all the pursuits of men, tend only
+towards the supportance of the animal body; and there is nothing in it,
+leading to the edification of the rational soul.
+
+32. Search all over this earth, in heaven above and in the infernal
+regions below; and you will find but few persons, who have known what
+is worth knowing. (The true nature of the soul and that of God, is
+unknown to all finite beings every where).
+
+33. It is hard to have a wise man, whose mind is devoid of its firm
+reliance on the vanities of the world; and freed from its desire or
+disgust of something or others, as agreeable or disagreeable to its
+state.
+
+34. A man may be lord of the world, or he may pierce through the clouds
+and pry in heaven (by his Yoga); yet he can not enjoy the solace of his
+soul without his knowledge of it.
+
+35. I venerate those highminded men, who have bravely subdued their
+senses; it is from them that we can have the remedy to remove the curse
+of our repeated births. (It is by divine knowledge alone that we can
+avoid the doom of transmigration).
+
+36. I see every place filled by the five elements, and a sixth is not
+to be seen any where in the world. Such being the case every where,
+what else can I expect to find in earth or heaven or in the regions
+below.
+
+37. The wise man relying on his own reason and judgment, outsteps the
+abyss of this world, as easily as he leaps over a ditch; but he who has
+cast aside his reason, finds it as wide as the broad ocean. (The
+original word for the ditch is _gospada_—the cove of a cows hoof—a
+_cul-de-sac_).
+
+38. The man of enlightened understanding, looks upon this globe of the
+earth, as the bulb of a Kadamba flower, round as an apple or a
+ball—_teres atque rotundus_; he neither gives nor receives nor wants of
+aught in this world.
+
+39. Yet fie for the foolish that fight for this mite of the earth, and
+wage a warfare for destruction of millions of their fellow creatures.
+
+40. What, if any one is to live and enjoy the blessings of this world
+for a whole Kalpa when, he can not escape the sorrow, consequent on the
+loss of all his friends during that period.
+
+41. He who has known the self, has no craving for heavenly bliss within
+himself; because he knows his gain of all the three worlds, can never
+conduce to the strengthening of his soul.
+
+42. But the avaricious are not content with all they have, and like the
+body of this earth, is not full with all its hills and mountains and
+surrounding seas. (The earth is never full with all its fullness).
+
+43. There is nothing in this earth or in the upper and lower worlds,
+which is of any use to the sage acquainted with spiritual knowledge.
+
+44. The mind of the self-knowing sage, is one vast expanse like the
+spacious firmament, it is tranquil and sedate and unconscious of itself.
+
+45. It views the body as a net work of veins and arteries, pale and
+white as frost, and all cellular within.
+
+46. It sees the mountains floating as froth, on the surface of the
+pellucid ocean of Brahma; it looks upon the intellect blazing as
+brightly as the sun, over the mirage of existence.
+
+47. It finds the nature of the soul, to be as extensive as the vast
+ocean, containing the creations as its billows; and it considers the
+all-pervasive soul as a big cloud, raining down in showers of sástras
+or knowledge.
+
+48. The fire, moon and the sun, appear as the fuel in a furnace,
+requiring to be lighted by the blaze of the intellect, as every opaque
+atom in nature.
+
+49. All embodied souls of men, gods and demigods, rove in the
+wilderness of the world, for feeding upon their fodder of food, as the
+deer graze in their pasturage.
+
+50. The world is a prison house, where every one is a prisoner with his
+toilsome body. The bones are the latches of this dungeon, the head is
+its roof, and the skin its leather; and the blood and flesh of the
+body, are as the drink and food of the imprisoned.
+
+51. Men were as dolls covered with skin for the amusement of boys, and
+they are continually roving in quest of sustenance, like the cattle
+running towards their pasture grounds.
+
+52. But the high minded man is not of this kind; he is not moved by
+worldly temptations, as the mountain is not to be shaken by the gentle
+breeze.
+
+53. The truly great and wise man, rests in that highest state of
+eminence; where the stations of the sun and moon, are seen as the
+nether regions.
+
+54. It is by the light of the Supreme Spirit, that all the worlds are
+lighted, and the minds of all are enlighted. But the ignorant are
+immerged in the ocean of ignorance, and nourish their bodies only in
+disregard of their souls.
+
+55. No worldly good can allure the heart of the wise, who have tested
+the vanity of temporal things; and no earthly evil can obscure their
+souls, which are as bright as the clear sky which no cloud can darken.
+
+56. No worldly pleasure can gladden the soul of the wise man, as the
+dance of monkeys can give no joy to the heart of Hara, that delights in
+the dancing of Gaurí.
+
+57. No earthly delight can have its seat in the heart of the wise, as
+the sun-light is never reflected in a gem hidden under a bushel.
+
+58. The material world appears as a solid rock to the stolid ignorant;
+but it seems as the evanescent wave to the wise. The ignorant take a
+great pleasure in the transitory enjoyments of the world; but the wise
+take them to no account, as the swan disdains to look upon the moss of
+the lake.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LVIII.
+
+ THE SONG OF KACHA.
+
+
+Argument. The Pantheistic views of the soul as the one in all, is shown
+in the song of Kacha.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—On this subject I will tell you, Ráma! the holy song
+which was sung of old by Kacha, the son of Vrihaspati—the preceptor of
+the gods.
+
+2. As this son of the divine tutor, resided in a grove in some part of
+the mount Meru (the Altain chain—the homestead of the gods); he found
+the tranquility of his spirit in the Supreme soul; by means of his
+holy devotion.
+
+3. His mind being filled with the ambrosial draughts of divine
+knowledge, he derived no satisfaction at the sight of the visible
+world, composed of the five elemental bodies.
+
+4. Being rapt in his mind with the vision of the Holy Spirit, he saw
+nothing else beside him, and then fervently uttered to himself in the
+following strain.
+
+5. What is there for me to do or refuse or to receive or reject, and
+what place is there for me to resort or refrain from going to, when
+this whole is filled by the Divine Spirit (_to pan_), as by the water
+of the great deluge.
+
+6. I find pleasure and pain inherent in the soul, and the sky and all
+its sides contained in the magnitude of the soul. Thus knowing all
+things to be full of the holy spirit, I forget and sink all my pains in
+my spirit.
+
+7. The spirit is inside and outside of all bodies, it is above and
+below and on all sides of all. Here, there and every where is the same
+spirit, and there is no place where it is not.
+
+8. The spirit abides every where and all things abide in the spirit;
+all things are self-same with the spirit, and I am situated in the same
+spirit.
+
+9. There is nothing intelligent or insensible which is not the spirit,
+all is spirit and so am I also. The spirit fills the whole space and is
+situated in every place.
+
+10. I am as full of that spirit and its ineffable bliss, as the all
+encompassing water of the great deluge. In this manner was Kacha musing
+in himself in the bower of the golden mountain. (The Altain chain is
+called the golden mountain for its abounding in gold mines).
+
+11. He uttered the sound Om (_on_ or amen), and it rang on all sides as
+the ringing of a bell; he first uttered a part of it the vocal part—o,
+and then the nasal—n, which tops it as a tuft of hair. He remained
+meditating on the spirit in his mind, not as situated in or without it
+(but as the all pervasive soul).
+
+12. Thus Ráma! did Kacha continue to muse in himself and chant his holy
+hymn, being freed from the foulness of flesh, and rarefied in his
+spirit like the breath of the wind. His soul was as clear as the
+atmosphere in autumn, after dispersion of the dark clouds of the rainy
+season.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LIX.
+
+ WORKS OF BRAHMÁ’S CREATION.
+
+
+Argument. Vanity of the World born of Brahmá’s conception. Its
+Disappearance and Liberation.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—There is nothing in this world except the
+gratification of the carnal appetites, and the pleasure of eating,
+drinking and concupiscence with the vulgar; but it is the lasting good
+of men, which is desired by the good and great.
+
+2. The crooked and creeping beings and things, and beasts and wicked
+men and ignorant people only are gratified with carnal pleasures; they
+are all fond of everything conducing to their bodily enjoyments.
+
+3. They are human asses, who dote on the beauty of female bodies, which
+are no better than lumps of flesh, blood and bones.
+
+4. This may be desirable to dogs and devouring animals, but not to man
+(who is a rational and spiritual being). All animals have their fleshy
+bodies, as the trees have their trunks of wood, and the minerals their
+forms of earth.
+
+5. There is the earth below and the sky above, and nothing that is
+extraordinary before us; the senses pursue the sensible objects, but
+human reason finds no relish in them.
+
+6. The consciousness (or intuition) of men, leads them only to error;
+and true happiness, which is desired by all is situated beyond all
+sensible objects and gratifications.
+
+7. The end of worldly pleasure is sorrow and misery, as the product of
+a flame is soot and blackness; and the functions of the mind and
+senses, are all fleeting having their rise and fall by turns. All
+enjoyments are short lived, owing to the fugacity of the objects, and
+the decay of the powers of our enjoying.
+
+8. Prosperity fades away as plant encircled by a poisonous viper; and
+our consorts die away as soon as anything born of blood and flesh.
+(Fortune is fleeting and life a passing dream).
+
+9. The delusion of love and lust, makes one body to embrace another,
+both of which are composed of impure flesh and blood. Such are the
+acts, O Ráma! that delight the ignorant.
+
+10. Wise men take no delight in this unreal and unstable world, which
+is more poisonous than poison itself, by infecting them that have not
+even tasted the bitter gall.
+
+11. Forsake therefore your desire of enjoyment, and seek to be united
+with your spiritual essence; because the thought of your materiality
+(or being a material body), has taken possession of your mind (and
+separated you from yourself and the spirit of God).
+
+12. Whenever the thought of making the unreal world, rises in the mind
+of Brahmá the creator, he takes an unreal body upon him of his own will.
+
+13. It becomes as bright as gold by his own light, and then he is
+called Virinchi (_virincipiens_) on account of his will; and Brahmá
+also for his being born of Brahmá. (He is represented as of red colour,
+as Adam is said to be made of red earth).
+
+14. Ráma asked:—How does the world become a solid substance, from its
+having been of a visionary form in the spirit or mind of God?
+
+15. Vasishtha replied:—When the lotus-born male (Brahmá), rose from his
+cradle of the Embryo of Brahmá, he uttered the name of Brahmá whence he
+was called Brahmá. (The word Brahm answers the Hebrew Brahum—create
+them, and corresponds with the Latin _ficet_—bhuya ভুযাৎ).
+
+16. He then had the conception (Sankalpa) of the world in his own
+imagination, and the same assumed a visible and solid form by the power
+of his will, called the conceptional or conceived world. (Sankalpasrí).
+
+17. He conceived at first luminous idea of light, which having assumed
+a visible form spread on all sides, as a creeping plant is outstretched
+all about in autumn. (Light was the first work of creation).
+
+18. The rays of this light pierced all sides like threads of gold; they
+shone and spread themselves both above and below.
+
+19. Concealed amidst this light, the lotus-born Hiranyagarbha,
+conceived in his mind a figure like his luminous form, and produced it
+as the four faced Brahmá.
+
+20. Then the sun sprung forth from that light, and shone as a globe of
+gold amidst his world encircling beams.
+
+21. He held the locks of his flaming hair on his head, which flashed as
+fire all around him; and filled the sphere of heaven with heat and
+light.
+
+22. The most intelligent Brahmá, produced afterwards some other
+luminous forms from portions of that light, which proceeded from it
+like the waves of the ocean (and these are thence called the Maríchis or
+rays, who were the first patriarchs of other created beings).
+
+23. These most potent and competent beings, were also possessed of
+their concepts and will, and they produced in a moment the figures as
+they thought of and willed.
+
+24. They conceived the forms of various other beings also, which they
+produced one after the other, as they desired and willed.
+
+25. Then did Brahmá bring to his recollection the eternal vedas and the
+many ceremonial rites, which he established as laws in his house of
+this world.
+
+26. Having taken the gigantic body of Brahma, and the extensive form of
+the mind—manas, he produced the visible world as his own
+offspring—Santati. (Brahmá means _brihat_—great; and _santate_ derived
+from the root tan. Latin—_leoreo_ means continuation of race).
+
+27. He stretched the seas and mountains, and made the trees and upper
+worlds. He raised the Meru on the surface of the earth, and all the
+forests and groves upon it.
+
+28. It was he who ordained happiness and misery, birth and death and
+disease and decay; and he created the passions and feelings of living
+beings, under their threefold divisions of satva, rajas and tamas.
+
+29. Whatever has been wrought by the hands (faculties) of the mind of
+Brahma before, the same continues to be still perceived by our deluded
+vision.
+
+30. He gave the mind and laws to all beings, and makes the worlds anew
+as they are situated in his mind.
+
+31. It is error, that has given rise to the erroneous conception of the
+eternity of the world, whereas it is the conception of the mind alone
+that creates the ideal forms. (The world is neither material nor
+substantial, but a conceptual and ideal creation of the mind).
+
+32. The acts of all things in the world, are produced by their
+conception and wishes; and it is the concept or thought, that binds the
+gods also to their destiny.
+
+33. The great Brahmá that was the source of the creation of the world,
+sits in the meditative mood, contemplating on all that he has made.
+
+34. It was by a motion of the mind, that the wonderful form of the
+living principle was formed; and it was this that gave rise to the
+whole world, with all its changeful phenomena.
+
+35. It made the gods Indra, Upendra and Mahendra and others, and also
+the hills and seas in all the worlds above and below us, and in the ten
+sides of the heaven above:—
+
+36. Brahmá then thought in himself, “I have thus stretched out at large
+the net work of my desire, I will now cease from extending the objects
+of my desire any further”.
+
+37. Being so determined, he ceased from the toil of his creation, and
+reflected on the eternal spirit in his own spirit. (According to the
+Sruti:—the spirit is to be reflected in the spirit).
+
+38. By knowing the spirit, his mind was melted down by its effulgence,
+and reclined on it with that ease, as one finds in his soft sleep after
+long labour.
+
+39. Being freed from his selfishness and egoism, he felt that perfect
+tranquility which the soul receives by resting in itself, and which
+likens the calmness of the sea by its subsidence in itself.
+
+40. The Lord sometimes leaves off his meditation, as the reservoirs of
+water sometimes overflow their banks and boundaries.
+
+41. He beholds the world as a vale of misery, with very little of
+happiness in it; and where the soul is fast bound to its alternate
+passions, and led by the changes of its hopes and fears.
+
+42. He takes pity on the miserable condition of man, and with a view of
+their welfare, promulgates the sacred sástras and rites, which are full
+of meaning for their guidance.
+
+43. He propounds the Vedas and their branches—the Vedángas, which are
+fraught with spiritual knowledge, and precepts of wisdom, and he
+revealed the Puránas and other sástras for the salvation of mankind.
+
+44. Again the spirit of Brahmá reclined on the supreme spirit, and was
+relieved from its toil; and then remained as tranquil as the becalmed
+ocean, after its churning by the Mandara.
+
+45. Brahmá having observed the efforts of mankind on earth, and
+prescribed to them the rules of their conduct, returned to himself,
+where he sat reclined on his lotus seat.
+
+46. He remains some times entirely devoid of all his desires; and at
+others he takes upon him his cares for mankind from his great kindness
+to them.
+
+47. He is neither simple in his nature, nor does he assume or reject
+his form in the states of his creation and cessation. He is no other
+than intelligence, which is neither present in nor absent from any
+place.
+
+48. He is conversant with all states and properties of things, and is
+as full as the ocean without intermixture of any crude matter in him.
+
+49. Sometimes he is quite devoid of all attributes and desires, and is
+only awakened from his inertness, by his own desire of doing good to
+his creatures.
+
+50. I have thus expounded to you concerning the existence of Brahmá
+(Bráhmi Sthiti), and his real states of Sátwika, Vidhyanika and
+Suranikas creation. (The first is the creation of his intellectual
+nature, and the second that of his mind or will or mental form).
+
+51. The intellectual creation is what rises of itself in the Spirit of
+Brahma, and the mental is the result of his mind and will. The first is
+the direct inspiration of Brahmá into the Spirit of Brahmá.
+
+52. After creation of the material world by the _rájasika_ nature of
+Brahmá, there rises the visible creation in the air by the will of the
+creator. (This is called the _madhyanika_, because it is the
+intermediate creation, between the elemental and animal creations).
+
+53. In the next step of animal creation, some were born as gods
+(angels) and others as Yakshas—demigods, and this is called the
+_suranika_, because the suras or gods were created in it.
+
+54. Every creature is born in the shape of its inherent nature, and
+then it is either elevated or degraded, according to the nature of its
+associations. It lays also the foundation of its future state of
+bondage to birth or liberation, by its acts, commenced in the present
+life.
+
+55. In this manner, O Ráma! has the world come to existence. Its
+creation is evidently a work of labour, as it is brought to being by
+various acts of motion and exertion of the body and mind; and all these
+products of the god’s will, are sustained also by continuous force and
+effort on his part.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LX.
+
+ PRODUCTION OF LIVING BEINGS.
+
+
+Argument. Production of the bodies of Living Beings, according to the
+degrees of their Reason.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—O strong armed Ráma! after the great father of
+creation, he took himself to his activity, he formed and supported the
+worlds by his energy and might.
+
+2. All living and departed souls, are tied like buckets by the rope of
+their desire, and made to rise and fall in this old well of the world,
+by the law of their predetermined destiny (or Fate that binds Siva or
+Jove himself).
+
+3. All beings proceeding from Brahmá, and entering the prison house of
+the world, have to be concentrated into the body of the air-born
+Brahmá; as all the waters of the sea have to be whirled into the
+whirlpool in the midst of the sea. (All things were contained in and
+produced from Brahmá the Demiurge).
+
+4. Others are continually springing from the mind of Brahmá, like
+sparks of fire struck out of a red-hot iron; while many are flying to
+it as their common centre.
+
+5. Ráma! all lives are as the waves in the ocean of the everlasting
+spirit of Brahma; they rise and fall in him according to his will.
+
+6. They enter into the atmospheric air, as the smoke rises and enters
+the clouds, and are at last mixed up together by the wind, in the
+spirit of Brahma.
+
+7. They are then overtaken by the elementary particles, or atoms flying
+in the air, which lay hold on them in a few days; as the demons seize
+the host of gods with violence. (These become the living and embodied
+souls, joined with the many properties of the elements).
+
+8. Then the air breathes the vital breath in these bodies; which
+infuses life and vigour in them.
+
+9. Thus do living beings manifest themselves on earth, while there are
+other flyings in the form of smoke as living spirits. (So the
+spiritualists view the spirits in the etherial clouds).
+
+10. Some of them appear in their subtle elemental forms in their airy
+cells in the sky, and shine as bright as the beams of the luminous
+moon. (These are _lingadehas_ or individual spiritual bodies).
+
+11. Then they fall upon the earth like the pale moonbeams falling upon
+the milky ocean.
+
+12. There they alight as birds in the groves and forests, and become
+stiffened by sipping the juice of fruits and flowers.
+
+13. Then losing their aerial and bright forms of the moon-beams, they
+settle on those fruits and flowers: and suck their juice like infants
+hanging upon the breasts of their mothers. (These are the protozoa, the
+first and embryonic state of living beings).
+
+14. The protozoa are strengthened by drinking the juice of the fruits,
+which are ripened by the light and heat of the sun, and then they
+remain in a state of insensibility; until they enter the animal body.
+
+15. The animated animalcules, remain in the womb with their undeveloped
+desires; in the same manner as the unopening leaves, are contained in
+the seed of the _bata_ or Indian fig tree.
+
+16. All lives are situated in the Great God, as fire is inherent in the
+wood, and the pot resides in the earth; and it is after many processes
+that they have their full development.
+
+17. One that has received no bodily form, and yet moves on without
+manifesting itself, is said to be a _satya_ or spiritual being, and has
+a large scope of action (as the gods).
+
+18. He is said to have a _sátvika_ birth, who gets his liberation in or
+after his life-time; but whoever is obliged to be reborn by his acts,
+is said to belong to the _rájas-sátvika_ class.
+
+19. Any one of this class who is born to rule over others, becomes
+giddy with pride (tamas), he is said to be of the nature of ignorance
+_támasika_, and I will now speak of this class of beings.
+
+20. Those who are born originally with their sátwika nature, are pure
+in their conduct and have never to be born again.
+
+21. Men of rája-sátwika temperament have to be reborn on earth; but
+being elevated by their reasoning powers, they have no more to be born
+in this nether world.
+
+22. Those who have directly proceeded from the Supreme Spirit (without
+any intermixture of these natures), are men fraught with every quality,
+and are very rare on earth.
+
+23. The various classes of _támasa_ creatures of ignorance, are both
+insensible and speechless; and are of the nature of immovable
+vegetables and minerals, that need no description.
+
+24. How many among the gods and men, have been reborn to the cares of
+the world, owing to the demerit of their past action; and I myself
+though fraught with knowledge and reason, am obliged to lead a life of
+the rájasa-sátwika kind (owing to my interference in society).
+
+25. It is by your ignorance of the Supreme, that you behold the vast
+extension of the world; but by considering it rightly you will soon
+find all this to be but the One Unity.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+NOTES ON THE SURANIKA, SÁTWIKA &C.
+
+1. The _Vidhyanika_; is the sphere of the eternal laws of God,
+presided over by Brahmá, who is thence styled the Vidhi or dispensator
+of the laws of the creation of the mundane system.
+
+2. The _Suranika_; is the sphere of the Supernatural powers or the
+divine agencies, governing and regulating the management of created
+nature. This is the angelic sphere of deities.
+
+3. _Naráníka_; is the sphere of human being, consisting also of the
+subordinate orders of beings, placed under the dominion of man. This is
+the sublunary sphere wherewith we are concerned.
+
+4. The Sátwika; are righteous men, endued with the quality of goodness.
+
+5. The Rájasika; is the body politic, guided by the laws of society.
+
+6. The Támasika; is the ignorant rabble, and infatuated people.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LXI.
+
+ ON BIRTH, DEATH AND EXISTENCE.
+
+
+Argument. The Liberation of the Rájasa-sátwika natures, and
+description of knowledge and Indifference.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Those that are born with the nature of
+_Rájasa-sátwika_, remain highly pleased in the world, and are as
+gladsome in their faces, as the face of the sky with the serene light
+of the moon-beams.
+
+2. Their faces are not darkened by melancholy, but are as bright as the
+face of heaven; they are never exposed to troubles, like the lotus
+flowers to the frost of night.
+
+3. They never deviate from their even nature, but remain unmoved as the
+immovable bodies; and they persist in their course of beneficence, as
+the trees yield their fruits to all.
+
+4. Ráma! the rája and sátva natured man, gets his liberation in the
+same manner, as the disk of the moon receives its ambrosial beams.
+
+5. He never forsakes his mildness, even when he is in trouble; but
+remains as cool as the moon even in her eclipse. He shines with the
+lovely virtue of fellow-feeling to all.
+
+6. Blessed are the righteous, who are always even tempered, gentle and
+as handsome as the forest trees, beset by creepers with clusters of
+their blossoms.
+
+7. They keep in their bounds, as the sea remains within its boundaries,
+and are meek like yourself in their even tempers. Hence they never
+desire nor wish for any thing in the world.
+
+8. You must always walk in the way of the godly, and not run to the sea
+of dangers; thus you should go on without pain or sorrow in your life.
+
+9. Your soul will be as elevated as the rájasa and sátwika states, by
+your avoiding the ways of the ungodly, and considering well the
+teachings of the sástras.
+
+10. Consider well in your mind the frail acts, which are attended with
+various evils; and do those acts which are good for the three worlds,
+both in their beginning and end, and forever to eternity.
+
+11. The intelligent think that as dangerous to them, and not otherwise;
+by reason of their being freed from narrow views, and the false
+spectres—the offspring of ignorance.
+
+12. You should always consider in yourself for the enlightenment of
+your understanding, and say: O Lord! what am I, and whence is this
+multiplicity of worlds?
+
+13. By diligently considering these subjects in the society of the wise
+and righteous, you must neither be engaged in your ceremonial acts, nor
+continue in your unnecessary practices of the rituals.
+
+14. You must look at the disjunction of all things in the world from
+you (_i.e._ the temporaneousness of worldly things); and seek to
+associate with the righteous, as the peacock yearns for the rainy
+clouds.
+
+15. Our inward egoism, outward body and the external world, are the
+three seas encompassing us one after the other. It is right reasoning
+only which affords the raft to cross over them, and bring us under the
+light of truth.
+
+16. By refraining to think of the beauty and firmness of your exterior
+form, you will come to perceive the internal light of your intellect
+hid under your egoism; as the thin and connecting thread is concealed
+under a string of pearls. (The hidden thread underlying the links of
+souls, is termed _Sútrátmá_.)
+
+17. It is that eternally existent and infinitely extended blessed
+thread, which connects and stretches through all beings; and as the
+gems are strung to a string, so are all things linked together by the
+latent spirit of God.
+
+18. The vacuous space of the Divine Intellect, contains the whole
+universe, as the vacuity of the air, contains the glorious sun; and as
+the hollow of the earth, contains an emmet.
+
+19. As it is the same air which fills the cavity of every pot on earth,
+so it is the one and the same intellect and spirit of God, which fills,
+enlivens and sustains all bodies in every place. (The text says, “The
+Intellect knows no difference of bodies, but pervades alike in all”).
+
+20. As the ideas of sweet and sour are the same in all men, so is the
+consciousness of the Intellect alike in all mankind (_i.e._ we are all
+equally conscious of our intellectuality, as we are of the sweetness
+and sourness of things).
+
+21. There being but one and only one real substance in existence, it is
+a palpable error of your ignorant folks to say, “this one exists, and
+the other perishes or vanishes away”. (Nothing is born or extinct, but
+all exist in God. So is Malebranche’s opinion of seeing all things in
+God).
+
+22. There is no such thing, Ráma, which being once produced, is
+resolved into naught at any time; all these are no realities nor
+unrealities, but representations or reflexions of the Real One.
+
+23. Whatever is visible and of temporary existence, is without any
+perceptible substantiality of its own; it is only an object of our
+fallacy, beyond which it has no existence. (Hence they are no more than
+unrealities).
+
+24. Why, O Ráma! should any body suffer himself to be deluded by these
+unrealities? All these accompaniments here, being no better than causes
+of our delusion.
+
+25. The accompaniment of unrealities, tends only to our delusion here;
+and if they are taken for realities, to what good do they tend than to
+delude us the more. (It is better to let the unreal pass as unreal,
+than to take them for real, and be utterly deceived at last).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LXII.
+
+ SPEECH OF THE DIVINE MESSENGER.
+
+
+Argument. Relation of the virtues of Ráma as dictated in the sástras,
+and of the advancement of others, by means of good company and
+self-exertion.
+
+
+The diligent and rationalistic inquirer after truth, has a natural
+aptitude to resort to the society of the sapient and good natured Guru,
+and discusses on matters of the sástras by the rules of the sástras he
+has learnt before and not talk at random.
+
+2. It is thus by holding his argumentation on the abstruse science of
+yoga, with the good and great and unavaricious learned, that he can
+attain to true wisdom.
+
+3. The man that is thus acquainted with the true sense of the Sástra,
+and qualified by his habit of dispassionateness in the society of holy
+men, shines like yourself as the model of intelligence.
+
+4. Your liberal mindedness and self-reliance, combined with your
+cool-headedness and all other virtues, have set you above the reach of
+misery and all mental affliction; and also freed you from future
+transmigration, by your attainment of liberation in this life.
+
+5. Verily have you become as the autumnal sky, cleared of its gloomy
+clouds; you are freed from worldly cares, and fraught with the best and
+highest wisdom.
+
+6. He is truly liberated, whose mind is freed from the fluctuations of
+its thoughts, and the flights and fumes of its thickening fancies, and
+ever crowding particulars. (The ultimate generalization of particulars
+into unity, is reckoned the highest consummation of man).
+
+7. Henceforward will all men on earth, try to imitate the noble
+disposition of the equanimity of your mind, which is devoid of its
+passions of love and hatred, as also of affection and enmity.
+
+8. Those who conform with their customs of the country, and conduct
+themselves in the ordinary course of men in their outward demeanour,
+and cherish their inward sentiments in the close recesses of their
+bosoms, are reckoned as truly wise, and are sure to get over the ocean
+of the world on the floating raft of their wisdom.
+
+9. The meek man who has a spirit of universal toleration like thine, is
+worthy of receiving the light of knowledge; and of understanding the
+import of my sayings.
+
+10. Live as long as you have to live in this frail body of yours, and
+keep your passions and feelings under the sway of your reason; act
+according to the rules of society, and keep your desires under
+subjection.
+
+11. Enjoy the perfect peace and tranquility of the righteous and wise,
+and avoid alike both the cunning of foxes and silly freaks of boys.
+
+12. Men who imitate the purity of the manners and conduct of those,
+that are born with the property of goodness, acquire in process of time
+the purity of their lives also. (Men become virtuous by imitation of
+virtuous examples).
+
+13. The man who is habituated in the practice of the manners, and the
+modes of life of another person, is soon changed to that mode of life,
+though it be of a different nature, or of another species of being.
+(Habit is second nature).
+
+14. The practices of past lives accompany all mankind in their
+succeeding births, as their preordained destiny; and it is only by our
+vigorous efforts that we are enabled to avert our fates, in the manner
+of princes overcoming the hostile force, by greater might of their own.
+
+15. It is by means of patience only, that one must redeem his good
+sense; and it is by patient industry alone, that one may be advanced to
+a higher birth from his low and mean condition.
+
+16. It is by virtue of their good understanding, that the good have
+attained their better births in life; therefore employ yourself, O
+Ráma! to the polishing of your understanding.
+
+17. The godfearing man is possessed of every good, and exerts his
+efforts for attainment of godliness; it is by means of manly efforts
+only, that men obtain the most precious blessings.
+
+18. Those of the best kind on earth, long for their liberation in
+future, which also requires the exertion of devotion and meditation for
+its attainment.
+
+19. There is nothing in this earth, below, or in the heaven of the
+celestials above, which is unattainable to the man of parts, by means
+of his manly efforts.
+
+20. It is impossible for you to obtain the object of your desire,
+without the exercise of your patience and dispassionateness, and the
+exertion of your prowess and austerities of _Brahmacharya_. Nor is it
+possible to succeed in any without the right use of reason.
+
+21. Try to know yourself, and do good to all creatures by your
+manliness; employ your good understanding to drive all your cares and
+sorrows away; and you will thus be liberated from all pain and sorrow.
+
+22. O Ráma! that art fraught with all admirable qualities, and endued
+with the high power of reason; keep thyself steady in the acts of
+goodness, and never may the erroneous cares of this world betake thee
+in thy future life.
+
+
+
+
+ YOGA VÁSISHTHA.
+
+ BOOK V.
+
+ THE UPASAMA KHANDA ON QUIETISM.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+
+ THE ÁHNIKA OR DAILY RITUAL.
+
+
+Argument. The Book on calm quiet and rest, necessarily follows those of
+Creation and sustentation; as the sleeping time of night succeeds the
+working time of the Day, and as the rest of God followed his work of
+Creation and supportance.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Hear me, Ráma, now propose to you the subject of
+quietude or rest, which follows that of Existence and sustentation of
+the universe; and the knowledge of which will lead you to _nirvána_ or
+final extinction (as the evening rest, leads to sound sleep at night,
+and quietude is followed by quietus).
+
+2. Válmíki says:—As Vasishtha was delivering his holy words, the
+assembly of the princes remained, as still as the starry train, in the
+clear sky of an autumnal night.
+
+3. The listening princes looking in mute gaze, at the venerable sage
+amidst the assembly, resembled the unmoving lotuses looking at the
+luminous sun from their breathless beds.
+
+4. The princesses in the harem forgot their joviality, at hearing the
+sermon of the sage; and their minds became as cool and quiet as in the
+long absence of their consorts.
+
+5. The fanning damsels with flappers in their hands, remained as still
+as a flock of flapping geese resting on a lotus-bed; and the jingling
+of the gems and jewels on their arms, ceased like the chirping of birds
+on the trees at night.
+
+6. The princes that heard these doctrines, sat reflecting on their
+hidden meanings, with their index fingers sticking to the tip of their
+noses in thoughtfulness; and others pondered on their deep sense, by
+laying the fingers on their lips.
+
+7. The countenance of Ráma flushed like the blushing lotus in the
+morning, and it brightened by casting away its melancholy, as the sun
+shines by dispelling the darkness of night.
+
+8. The king of kings—Dasaratha felt as delighted in hearing the
+lectures of Vasishtha, as the peacock is gladdened at the roaring of
+raining clouds.
+
+9. Sarana the king’s minister removed his apish fickle mind from his
+state affairs, and applied it intensely to attend to the teachings of
+the sage.
+
+10. Laxmana who was well versed in all learning, shone as a digit of
+the bright crescent moon, with the internal light of Vasishtha’s
+instructions, and the radiance of his Spiritual knowledge.
+
+11. Satrughna the subduer of his enemies, was so full of delight in his
+heart at the teaching of the sage; that his face glowed with joy, like
+the full moon replete with all her digits.
+
+12. The other good ministers, whose minds were absorbed in the cares of
+state affairs; were set at ease by the friendly admonition of the sage,
+and they glowed in their hearts like lotus-buds expanded by the
+sunbeams.
+
+13. All the other chiefs and sages, that were present in that assembly,
+had the gems of their hearts purged of their dross by the preachings of
+Vasishtha; and their minds glowed with fervour from his impressive
+speech.
+
+14. At this instant there rose the loud peal of conch shells,
+resembling the full swell of the sounding main, and the deep and
+deafening roar of summer clouds, filling the vault of the sky, and
+announcing the time of midday service. (The _trisandhya_ services are
+performed at the rising, setting and vertical sun).
+
+15. The loud uproar of the shells, drowned the feeble voice of the
+_muni_ under it, as the high sounding roar of rainy clouds, puts down
+the notes of the sweet cuckoo. (It is said, the cuckoo ceases to sing
+in the rains. भद्रं कृतं कृतं मैनं कोकिलेः जलदागमे ।)
+
+16. The _muni_ stopped his breath and ceased to give utterance <to> his
+speech; because it is in vain to speak where it is not heeded or
+listened to. (The wise should hold their tongue, when it has lost its
+power to hold people by their ears).
+
+17. Hearing the midday shout, the sage stopped for a moment, and then
+addressed to Ráma! after the hubbub was over and said:—
+
+18. Ráma! I have thus far delivered to you my daily lecture for this
+day; I will resume it the next morning, and tell you all that I have to
+say on the subject.
+
+19. It is ordained for the twice born classes to attend to the duties
+of their religion at midday; and therefore it does not behove us to
+swerve from discharging our noonday services at this time.
+
+20. Rise therefore, O fortunate Ráma! and perform your sacred ablutions
+and divine services, which you are well acquainted with, and give your
+alms and charities also as they are ordained by law.
+
+21. Saying so, the sage rose from his seat with the king and his
+courtiers, and resembled the sun and moon, rising from the eastern
+mountain with their train of stars.
+
+22. Their rising made the whole assembly to rise after them, as a
+gentle breeze moves the bed of lotuses, with their nigrescent eyes of
+the black bees sitting upon them.
+
+23. The assembled princes rose up with their crowned heads, and they
+marched with their long and massive arms like a body of big elephants
+of the Vindhyan hills with their lubberly legs.
+
+24. The jewels on their persons rubbed against each other, by their
+pushing up and down in hurry, and displayed a blaze like that of the
+reddened clouds at the setting sun.
+
+25. The jingling of the gems on the coronets, resembled the humming of
+bees; and the flashing rays of the crowns, spread the various colours
+of the rainbow around.
+
+26. The beauties in the court hall resembling the tender creepers, and
+holding the chouri flappers like clusters of blossoms in their
+leaf-like palms, formed a forest of beauties about the elephantine
+forms of the brave princes. (It means the joint egress of a large
+number of damsels employed to fan the princes in the Court hall).
+
+27. The hall was emblazoned with the rays of the blazing bracelets, and
+seemed as it was strewn over with the dust of _mandára_ flowers, blown
+away by the winds.
+
+28. There were crystal cisterns of pure water, mixed with ice and
+pulverized camphor; and the landscape around was whitened by the _kusa_
+grass and flowers of autumn.
+
+29. The gems hanging down the head-dresses of the princes, cast a
+reddish colour over the hollow vault of the hall; and appeared as the
+evening twilight preceding the shade of night, which puts an end to the
+daily works of men.
+
+30. The fair faces of the fairy damsels, were like lotuses floating on
+the watery lustre of the strings of pearls pendant upon them; and
+resembling the lines of bees fluttering about the lotuses; while the
+anklets at their feet, emitted a ringing sound as the humming of bees.
+
+31. The large assemblage of the princes, rose up amidst the assembled
+crowds of men; and presented a scene never seen before by the admiring
+people.
+
+32. The rulers of the earth bowed down lowly before their sovereign,
+and departed from his presence and the royal palace in large bodies;
+likening the waves of the sea, glistening as rainbows by the light of
+their gemming ornaments.
+
+33. The chief minister Sumantra and others, that were best acquainted
+with royal etiquette, prostrated themselves before their king and the
+holy sage, and took their way towards the holy stream; for performance
+of their sacred ablutions.
+
+34. The Rishis Vámadeva, Viswámitra and others, stood in the presence
+of Vasishtha; and waited for his leave to make their departure.
+
+35. King Dasaratha honored the sages one by one, and then left them to
+attend to his own business.
+
+36. The citizens returned to the city, and the foresters retired to
+their forests, the aerials flew in the air, and all went to their
+respective abodes for rejoining the assembly on the next morning.
+
+37. The venerable Viswámitra, being besought by the king and Vasishtha,
+stayed and passed the night at the abode of the latter.
+
+38. Then Vasishtha being honoured by all the princes, sages and the
+great Bráhmanas, and adored by Ráma and the other princes of king
+Dasaratha’s royal race:—
+
+39. Proceeded to his hermitage, with the obeisance of the assembled
+crowd on all sides; and followed by a large train, as the god Brahmá is
+accompanied by bodies of the celestials.
+
+40. He then gave leave to Ráma and his brother-princes, and to all his
+companions and followers, to return to their abodes from his hermitage
+in the woods.
+
+41. He bade adieu to the aerial, earthly and the subterraneous beings,
+that kept company with him with their encomiums on his merits; and then
+entering his house, he performed his Bráhmanical rites with a duteous
+disposition.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+
+ RÁMA’S RECAPITULATION OF VASISHTHA’S LECTURES.
+
+
+Argument. Performance of Daily Rites, and Ráma’s Reflection of
+Vasishtha’s Teaching at night.
+
+
+Válmíki continued his relation to Bharadwája and said:—After the
+moon-bright princes had got to their residence, they discharged their
+daily services according to the diurnal ritual.
+
+2. Even Vasishtha and the other saints, sages, and Bráhmans not
+excepting the king and the princes, were all engaged in their holy
+services at their own houses.
+
+3. They bathed in the sacred streams and fountains, filled with
+floating bushes of lotuses and other aquatic plants, and frequented by
+the ruddy geese, cranes and storks on their border.
+
+4. After they had performed their ablutions, they made donations of
+lands and kine, of seats and beddings and of sesamum grains, with gold
+and gems, and food and raiments to the holy Bráhmans.
+
+5. They then worshipped the gods Vishnu and Siva in their temples, and
+made oblations to the sun and regents of the skies in their own houses,
+with offerings of gold and gems; which are sacred to particular deities
+and the planets. (Particular gems and metals are sacred to their
+presiding divinities).
+
+6. After their offerings were over, they joined with their sons and
+grandsons, friends, and relatives, and their guests also, in partaking
+of their lawful food. (Unlawful food is hateful to the faithful).
+
+7. Shortly after this, the daylight faded away at the eighth watch
+(yamárdha) of the day; and the charming scene of the city began to
+disappear from sight.
+
+8. The people then employed themselves to their proper duties at the
+decline of the day, and betook to their evening service with the
+failing beams of the setting sun.
+
+9. They recited their evening hymn (Sandhyá), repeated their
+_japamantras_, and uttered their prayer for the forgiveness of sins
+(_agha marshana_); they read aloud their hymns and sang their evening
+song of praise.
+
+10. Then rose the shade of night to allay the sorrow of lovelorn
+damsels, as the moon arose from the milky ocean of the east, to cool
+the heat of the setting sun.
+
+11. The princes of Raghu’s race then reclined on their downy and
+flowery beds, sprinkled over with handfuls of camphor powder, and
+appearing as a sheet of spreading moon-light.
+
+12. The eyes of all men were folded in sleep, and they passed the
+live-long night as a short interval; but Ráma kept waking in his bed,
+meditating on all things he had heard from the sage.
+
+13. Ráma continued to reflect on the lectures of Vasishtha, which
+appeared as charming to him, as the cry of the parent elephant, is
+gladsome to its tender young (karabha).
+
+14. What means this wandering of ours, said he, in this world, and why
+is it that all these men and other animals, are bound to make their
+entrances and exits in this evanescent theatre?
+
+15. What is the form of our mind and how is it to be governed? What is
+this illusion (Máyá) of the world, whence hath its rise and how is it
+to be avoided?
+
+16. What is the good or evil of getting rid of this illusion, and how
+does it stretch over and overpower on the soul, or is made to leave it
+by any means in our power?
+
+17. What does the _muni_ say with regard to the means, and effect of
+curbing the appetites of the mind? What does he say regarding the
+restraining of our organs, and what about the tranquility of the soul?
+
+18. Our hearts and minds, our living souls and their delusion, tend to
+stretch out the phenomenal world before us; and our very souls make a
+reality of the unreal existence.
+
+19. All these things are linked together in our minds, and are weakened
+only by the weakening of our mental appetites. But how are these to be
+avoided in order to get rid of our misery.
+
+20. The slender light of reason is over-shadowed, like a single crane
+in the air, by the dark cloud of passions and appetites; how am I then
+to distinguish the right from wrong, as the goose separates the milk
+from the water?
+
+21. It is as hard to shun our appetites on the one hand, as it is
+impossible to avoid our troubles here, without the utter annihilation
+of our appetency. Here is the difficulty in both ways.
+
+22. Again the mind is the leader to our spiritual knowledge on the one
+hand, and our seducer also to worldliness on the other. We know not
+which way to be led by it. The difficulty is as great as a man’s
+mounting on a mountain, or a child’s escaping from the fear of a yaksha.
+
+23. All worldly turmoil is at an end, upon one’s attainment of true
+felicity; as the anxieties of a maiden are over, after she has obtained
+a husband.
+
+24. When will my anxieties have their quietism, and when will my cares
+come to an end? When will my soul have its holiness, and my mind find
+its rest from acts of merit and demerit?
+
+25. When shall I rest in that state of bliss, which is as cooling and
+complete in itself; as the full-moon with all her digits, and when
+shall I rove about the earth at large, free from worldly cares and ties?
+
+26. When will my fancy stop from its flight, and concentrate into the
+inward soul? When will my mind be absorbed in the Supreme soul, like
+the turbulent wave subsiding in the breast of the quiet sea?
+
+27. When shall I get over this wide ocean of the world, which is
+disturbed by the turbulent waves of our desires, and is full of the
+voracious crocodiles of our greedy avarice, and get rid of this
+feverish passion?
+
+28. When shall I rest in that state of complete quiescence and
+unfeelingness of my mind, which is aimed at by the seekers of
+liberation, and the all-tolerant and indifferent philosopher.
+
+(It is the sullen apathy of stoicism, which constitutes the true wisdom
+and happiness of asceticism also).
+
+29. Ah! when will this continuous fever of my worldliness abate, which
+has irritated my whole body by its inward heat, and deranged my humours
+out of their order!
+
+30. When will this heart of mine cease to throb from its cares, like
+the light of the lamp ceasing to flutter without the wind; and when
+will my understanding gain its light, after dispersion of the gloom of
+my ignorance.
+
+31. When will these organs and members of my body, have their respite
+from their incessant functions; and when will this parched frame of
+mine get over the sea (flame?) of avarice, like the phœnix rising from
+its ashes.
+
+32. When will the light of reason like the clear atmosphere of the
+autumnal sky, dispel this dark cloud of my ignorance, that envelopes my
+heavenly essence under the veil of this sorry and miserable form.
+
+33. Our minds are filled with the weeds of the mandára plants of the
+garden of paradise (_i.e._ desiring the enjoyments of heaven). But my
+soul pants for its restitution in the Supreme spirit.
+
+34. The dispassionate man is said to be set in the pure light of
+reason; it is therefore that passionless state of my mind which I long
+to attain.
+
+35. But my restless mind has made me a prey to the dragon of despair,
+and I cry out in my sorrow, O my father and mother! help me to get out
+of this difficulty.
+
+36. I exclaim also saying:—O my sister understanding! condescend to
+comply with the request of thy poor brother; and consider well the
+words of the wise sage for our deliverance from misery.
+
+37. I call thee also, O my good sense to my aid, and beg of thee, O
+progeny of thy virtuous mother! to remain firm by my side, in my
+struggle of breaking the bonds of the world.
+
+38. Let me first of all reflect on the sayings of the sage on
+Resignation (Vairágya), and then on the conduct of one who longs for
+his liberation, and next about the creation of the world, (in the
+Srishti Prakarana).
+
+39. Let me remember afterwards all that he has said on the Existence of
+the universe (Sthiti Prakarana), together with its beautiful
+illustrations; all of which are replete with sound wisdom and deep
+philosophy.
+
+40. Although a lesson may be repeated a hundred times over, it proves
+to be of no effect, unless it is considered with good understanding and
+right sense of its purport. Otherwise it is as the empty sound of
+autumn clouds without a drop of rain.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+
+ DESCRIPTION OF THE ROYAL ASSEMBLY.
+
+
+Argument. The Meeting of the next morning, and the concourse of
+attendants.
+
+
+Válmíki continued:—Ráma passed in this manner the live-long night, in
+his lengthened chain of reflection; and in eager expectation of dawn,
+as the lotus longs for the rising sun at day break.
+
+2. Gradually the stars faded away at the appearance of aurora in the
+east, and the face of the sky was dimly pale, before it was washed over
+with the white of twilight.
+
+3. The beating of the morning and the alarm of trumpets, roused Ráma
+from his reverie; and he rose with his moonlike face, blooming as the
+full-blown lotus in its leafy bed.
+
+4. He performed his morning ablution and devotion, and joined with his
+brothers and a few attendants, in order to repair to the hermitage of
+the sage Vasishtha.
+
+5. Having arrived there, they found the sage entranced in his
+meditation in his lonely solitude; and lowly bent down their heads
+before him from a respectful distance.
+
+6. After making their obeisance, they waited on him in the compound,
+until the twilight of morning brought the day-light over the face of
+the sky.
+
+7. The princes and chiefs, the saints, sages and Bráhmans, thronged in
+that hermitage, in the manner of the celestials meeting at the empyrean
+of Brahmá.
+
+8. Now the abode of Vasishtha was full of people, and the crowds of the
+cars, horses and elephants waiting at the outside, made it equal to a
+royal palace in its grandeur.
+
+9. After a while the sage rose from his deep meditation, and gave
+suitable receptions to the assembled throng that bowed down before him.
+
+10. Then Vasishtha accompanied with Viswámitra, and followed by a long
+train of _munis_ and other men, came out of the hermitage, and ascended
+and sat in a carriage, in the manner of the lotus-born Brahmá sitting
+on his lotus seat.
+
+11. He arrived at the palace of Dasaratha, which was surrounded by a
+large army on all sides, and alighted there from his car, as when
+Brahmá descends from his highest heaven to the city of Indra, beset by
+the whole host of the celestials.
+
+12. He entered the grand court hall of the king, and was saluted by the
+courtiers lowly bending down before him; as when the stately gander
+enters a bed of lotuses, amidst a body of aquatic birds (all staring at
+him).
+
+13. The king also got up, and descended from his high throne; and then
+advanced three paces on barefoot to receive the venerable sage.
+
+14. Then there entered a large concourse of chiefs and princes, with
+bodies of saints and sages and Bráhmans and hori, potri priests.
+
+15. The minister Sumantra and others came next with the learned pandits
+Saumya and others; and then Ráma and his brothers followed them with
+the sons of royal ministers.
+
+16. Next came the ministerial officers, the ministerial priests
+(hotripotris), and the principle citizens, with bodies of the Málava
+wrestlers and servants of all orders, and townsmen of different
+professions.
+
+17. All these took their respective seats, and sat in the proper order
+of their ranks, and kept looking intently on the sage Vasishtha, with
+their uplifted heads and eyes.
+
+18. The murmur of the assembly was hushed, and the recitation of the
+panegyrists was at a stop; the mutual greetings and conferences were at
+an end, and there ensued a still silence in the assembly.
+
+19. The winds wafted the sweet fragrance from the cups of full blown
+lotuses; and scattered the dulcet dust of the filaments in the spacious
+hall.
+
+20. The clusters of flowers hung about the hall, diffused their odours
+all around; and the whole court house seemed, as it were sprinkled over
+with perfumes of all sorts.
+
+21. The queens and princesses sat at the windows, and upon their
+couches in the inner apartment, which was strewn over with flowers, and
+beheld the assemblage in the outer hall.
+
+22. They saw everything by the light of the sun, which shed upon their
+open eyes through the net-work on the windows; and also by the radiance
+of the gems, which sparkled on their delicate persons. The attendant
+women remained silent, and without waving their fans and chouries (for
+fear of the sounding bracelets on their arms).
+
+23. The earth was sown with orient pearls by the dawning sun-beams, and
+the ground was strewn over with flowers glistening at the sun-light.
+The lightsome locusts did not light upon them, thinking them to be
+sparks of fire, but kept hovering in the midway sky as a body of dark
+and moving cloud.
+
+24. The respectable people sat in mute wonder, to hear the holy
+lectures of Vasishtha; because the agreeable advice, which is derived
+from the society of the good, is beyond all estimation.
+
+25. The Siddhas, Vidyádharas, saints, Bráhmans and respectable men,
+gathered from all sides of the sky and forests, and from all cities and
+towns round about Vasishtha, and saluted him in silence, because deep
+veneration is naturally mute and wanting in words.
+
+26. The sky was strewn over with the golden dust, borne by the
+fluttering bees from the cups of farinaceous lotuses; wherein they were
+enclosed at night; and the soft airs blew sonant with the tinkling
+sounds of ringing bells, hanging in strings on the door ways of houses.
+(The Gloss says: it is usual in Nepal and at Deccan, to suspend strings
+of small bells over the gate ways).
+
+27. The morning breeze was now blowing with the fragrance of various
+flowers, and mixing with the perfume of the sandal paste; and making
+the bees fly and flutter on all sides, with their sweet humming music.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+
+ INQUIRIES OF RÁMA.
+
+
+Argument. Dasaratha’s Praise of Vasishtha’s speech, and Ráma’s Queries
+by behest of the sage.
+
+
+Válmíki continued:—Then king Dasaratha made this speech to the chief
+of sages, and spoke in a voice sounding as a deep cloud, and in words
+equally graceful as they were worthy of confidence.
+
+2. Venerable sir, said he, your speech of yesterday bespeaks of your
+intellectual light, and your getting over all afflictions by your
+extremely emaciating austerities.
+
+3. Your words of yesterday, have delighted us by their perspicacity and
+gracefulness, as by a shower of enlivening ambrosia.
+
+4. The pure words of the wise, are as cooling and edifying of the
+inward soul; as the clear and nectarious moon-beams, serve both to cool
+and dispel the gloom of the earth.
+
+5. The good sayings of the great, afford the highest joy resulting from
+their imparting a knowledge of the Supreme, and by their dispelling the
+gloom of ignorance all at once.
+
+6. The knowledge of the inestimable gem of our soul, is the best light
+that we can have in this world; and the learned man is as a tree beset
+by the creepers of reason and good sense.
+
+7. The sayings of the wise serve to purge away our improper desires and
+doings, as the moon-beams dispel the thick gloom of night.
+
+8. Your sayings, O sage, serve to lessen our desires and avarice which
+enchain us to this world, as the autumnal winds diminish the black
+clouds in the sky.
+
+9. Your lectures have made us perceive the pure soul in its clear
+light, as the eye-salve of antimony (collyrium antigoni nigrum); makes
+the born-blind man to see the pure gold with his eyes.
+
+10. The mist of worldly desires, which has overspread the atmosphere of
+our minds, is now beginning to disperse by the autumnal breeze of your
+sayings.
+
+11. Your sayings of sound wisdom, O great sage! have poured a flood of
+pure delight into our souls, as the breezy waves of nectarious water,
+or the breath of mandára flowers infuse into the heart.
+
+12. O my Ráma! those days are truly lightsome, that you spend in your
+attendance on the wise; otherwise the rest of the days of one’s
+life time, are indeed darksome and dismal.
+
+13. O my lotus-eyed Ráma! propose now what more you have to know about
+the imperishable soul, as the sage is favourably disposed to
+communicate everything to you.
+
+14. After the king had ended his speech, the venerable and high-minded
+sage Vasishtha, who was seated before Ráma, addressed him saying:—
+
+15. Vasishtha said:—O Ráma—the moon of your race, do you remember all
+that I have told you ere this, and have you reflected on the sense of
+my sayings from first to the last.
+
+16. Do you recollect, O victor of your enemies? the subject of
+creation, and its division into the triple nature of goodness &c.; and
+their subdivision into various kinds?
+
+17. Do you remember what I said regarding the One in all, and not as
+the all, and the One Reality ever appearing as unreality; and do you
+retain in your mind the nature and form of the Supreme Spirit, that I
+have expounded to you?
+
+18. Do you, O righteous Ráma, that art deserving of every praise, bear
+in your mind, how this world came to appear from the Lord God of all?
+
+19. Do you fully retain in your memory the nature of illusion, and how
+it is destroyed by the efforts of the understanding; and how the
+Infinite and Eternal appears as finite and temporal as space and time?
+(These though infinite appear limited to us).
+
+20. Do you, O blessed Ráma! keep in your mind, that man is no other
+than his mind, as I have explained to you by its proper definition and
+arguments?
+
+21. Have you, Ráma! considered well the meanings of my words, and did
+you reflect at night the reasonings of yesterday in your mind? (As it
+behoves us to reflect at night on the lessons of the day).
+
+22. It is by repeated reflection in the mind, and having by heart what
+you have learnt, that you derive the benefit of your learning, and not
+by your laying aside of the same in negligence.
+
+23. You are then only the proper receptacle of a rational discourse and
+a holy sermon, when you retain them like brilliant pearls in the chest
+of your capacious and reasoning breast.
+
+24. Válmíki said:—Ráma being thus addressed by the sage—the valiant
+progeny of the lotus-seated Brahmá, found his time to answer him in the
+following manner. (Vasishtha’s valour is described in his services to
+king Sudása).
+
+25. Ráma replied:—You Sir, who are acquainted with all sástras and
+creeds have expounded to me, the sacred truths, and I have, O noble
+Sir, fully comprehended their purport.
+
+26. I have deposited every thing verbatim that you said in the casket
+of my heart, and have well considered the meaning of your words during
+the stillness of my sleepless nights.
+
+27. Your words like sun-beams dispel the darkness of the world, and
+your radiant words of yesterday, delighted me like the rays of the
+rising sun.
+
+28. O great sir, I have carefully preserved the substance of all your
+past lectures in my mind, as one preserves the most valuable and
+brilliant gems in a casket.
+
+29. What accomplished man is there, that will not bear on his head the
+blessings of admonitions, which are so very pure and holy, and so very
+charming and delightful at the same time?
+
+30. We have shaken off the dark veil of the ignorance of this world,
+and have become as enlightened by your favor, as the days in autumn
+after dispersion of rainy clouds.
+
+31. Your instructions are sweet and graceful in the first place (by the
+elegance of their style); they are edifying in the midst (by their good
+doctrines); and they are sacred by the holiness they confer at the end.
+
+32. Your flowery speech is ever delightsome to us, by the quality of
+its blooming and unfading beauty, and by virtue of its conferring our
+lasting good to us.
+
+33. O sir, that are learned in all sástras, that art the channel of the
+holy waters of divine knowledge, that art firm in thy protracted vows
+of purity, do thou expurgate us of the dross of our manifold sins by
+your purifying lectures.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+
+ LECTURE ON TRANQUILLITY OF THE SOUL AND MIND.
+
+
+Argument. The existence of the world in ignorant minds, and
+tranquility of the spirit.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Now listen with attention the subject of quietism
+for your own good, wherein you will find the best solutions (of many
+questions adduced before).
+
+2. Know Ráma, this world to be a continuous illusion, and to be upheld
+by men of _rájasa_ and _támasa_ natures, consisting of the properties
+of action and passions or ignorance, that support this illusory fabric,
+as the pillars bear up a building.
+
+3. Men born with the _sátwika_ nature of goodness like yourself, easily
+lay aside this inveterate illusion, as a snake casts off its time-worn
+skin (slough).
+
+4. But wise men of good dispositions (or sátwika natures), and those of
+the mixed natures of goodness and action (rájasa-sátwika), always think
+about the structure of the world, and its prior and posterior states
+(without being deluded by it).
+
+5. The understandings of the sinless and which have been enlightened by
+the light of the sástras, or improved in the society of men or by good
+conduct, become as far sighted as the glaring light of a torch.
+
+6. It is by one’s own ratiocination, that he should try to know the
+soul in himself; and he is no way intelligent, who knows not the
+knowable soul in himself.
+
+7. The intelligent polite, wise and noble men, are said to have the
+nature of rájasa-sátwika (or the mixed nature of goodness and action)
+in them; and the best instance of such a nature is found, O Ráma! in
+thy admirable disposition.
+
+8. Let the intelligent look into the phenomena of the work themselves,
+and by observing what is true and untrue in it, attach themselves to
+the truth only.
+
+9. That which was not before, nor will be in being at the end, is no
+reality at all but what continues in being both at first and last, is
+the true existence and naught besides.
+
+10. He whose mind is attached to aught, which is unreal both at first
+and at last, is either an infatuated fool or a brute animal, that can
+never be brought to reason.
+
+11. It is the mind that makes the world and stretches it as in its
+imagination; but upon a comprehensive view (or closer investigation) of
+it, the mind is in its nothingness.
+
+12. Ráma said:—I am fully persuaded to believe, sir, that the mind is
+the active agent in this world, and is subject to decay and death (like
+the other organs of sensation).
+
+13. But tell me sir, what are the surest means of guarding the mind
+from illusion, because you only are the sun to remove the darkness of
+Raghu’s race.
+
+14. Vasishtha replied:—The best way to guard the mind from delusion, is
+first of all the knowledge of the sástras, and next the exercise of
+dispassionateness, and then the society of the good, which lead the
+mind towards its purity.
+
+15. The mind which is fraught with humility and holiness, should have
+recourse to preceptors who are learned in philosophy.
+
+16. The instruction of such preceptors, makes a man to practice his
+rituals at first, and then it leads the mind gradually to the abstract
+devotion of the Most-Holy.
+
+17. When the mind comes to perceive by its own cogitation, the presence
+of the supreme spirit in itself; it sees the universe spread before it
+as the cooling moonbeams.
+
+18. A man is led floating as a straw on the wide ocean of the world,
+until it finds its rest in the still waters under the coast of reason.
+
+19. Human understanding comes to know the truth by means of its
+reasoning, when it puts down all its difficulties, as the purewater
+gets over its sandy bed.
+
+20. The reasonable man distinguishes the truth from untruth, as the
+goldsmith separates the gold from ashes; but the unreasonable are as
+the ignorant, incapable to distinguish the one from the other.
+
+21. The divine Spirit is imperishable after it is once known to the
+human soul; and there can be no access of error into it, as long as it
+is enlightened by the light of the holy spirit.
+
+22. The mind which is ignorant of truth, is ever liable to error, but
+when it is acquainted with truth, it becomes freed from its doubts; and
+is set above the reach of error.
+
+23. O ye men! that are unacquainted with the divine spirit, you bear
+your souls for misery alone; but knowing the spirit, you become
+entitled to eternal happiness and tranquility.
+
+24. How are ye lost to your souls by blending with your bodies, expand
+the soul from under the earthly frame, and you will be quite at rest
+with yourselves.
+
+25. Your immortal soul has no relation to your mortal bodies, as the
+pure gold bears no affinity to the earthen crucible in which it is
+contained.
+
+26. The Divine Spirit is distinct from the living soul, as the lotus
+flower is separate from the water which upholds it; as a drop of water
+is unattached to the lotus-leaf whereon it rests. My living soul is
+crying to that Spirit with my uplifted arms, but it pays no heed to my
+cries.
+
+27. The mind which is of a gross nature, resides in the cell of the
+body, like a tortoise dwelling in its hole; it is insensibly intent
+upon its sensual enjoyments, and is quite neglectful about the welfare
+of the soul.
+
+28. It is so shrouded by the impervious darkness of the world, that
+neither the light of reason, nor the flame of fire, nor the beams of
+the moon, nor the gleams of a dozen of zodiacal suns, have the power to
+penetrate into it.
+
+29. But the mind being awakened from its dormancy, begins to reflect on
+its own state; and then the mist of its ignorance flies off, like the
+darkness of the night at sun-rise.
+
+30. As the mind reclines itself constantly on the downy bed of its
+meditation, for the sake of its enlightenment; it comes to perceive
+this world to be but a vale of misery.
+
+31. Know Ráma! the soul to be as unsullied by its outer covering of the
+body, as the sky is unsoiled by the clouds of dust which hide its face;
+and as the petals of the lotus are untainted by the dew-drops, falling
+upon them at night. (No liquid is attached to the oily surface of
+lotus-leaves).
+
+32. As dirt or clay clinging to the outer side of a gold ornament,
+cannot pierce into the inside; so the gross material body is attached
+outside the soul, without touching its inside.
+
+33. Men commonly attribute pleasure and pain to the soul; but they are
+as separate from it, as the rain drops and the flying dust, are afar
+and apart from the sky.
+
+34. Neither the body nor the soul is subject to pain or pleasure, all
+which relate to the ignorance of the mind; and this ignorance being
+removed, it will be found that they appertain to neither. (The mind
+alone is subject to both through its ignorance; but the philosophic
+mind knows all partial evils sarvárti, to be universal good).
+
+35. Take not to your mind O Ráma! the pain or pleasure of either; but
+view them in an equal light, as you view things in the tranquility of
+your soul.
+
+36. All the outspreading phenomena of the world, which are beheld all
+about us, are as the waves of the boundless ocean of the Divine Spirit;
+or as the gaudy train of the peacock, displayed in the sphere of our
+own souls. (So the mind displays its thoughts in a train).
+
+37. The bright substance of our soul, presents to us the picture of
+creation, as a bright gem casts its glare to no purpose; but by its own
+nature. (And so the mind deals with its dreams in vain).
+
+38. The spirit and the material world, are not the same thing; the
+spirit is the true reality, and the duality of the world, is only a
+representation or counterpart of the Spirit.
+
+39. But Brahma, is the whole totality of existence, and know the
+universe as the expansion of the universal soul; therefore O Ráma! give
+up your error of the distinction of one thing from another (lit.: such
+as I am this one, and the other is another).
+
+40. There can be no distinction, Ráma, in the everlasting and all
+extensive plenum of Brahma; as there is no difference in the whole body
+of water of the wide extended ocean.
+
+41. All things being one and alike in the self-same substratum of the
+Supreme Soul, you cannot conceive of there being any other thing (a
+duality) in it, as you cannot imagine a particle of frost to abide in
+the fire.
+
+42. By meditating on the Supreme Soul in yourself, and by contemplation
+of the intelligent Spirit in your own intellect, you will find the
+glory of the Supreme Spirit, shining brightly in your pure spirit.
+
+43. Therefore ease your mind, O Ráma! and know that there is no mistake
+nor error in your believing the all as one; and that there is no
+new-birth or a new born being (in the world), but all that is or <has>
+come to existence, is ever existent in the Supreme.
+
+44. Ease yourself, O Ráma! by knowing that there is no duality (save
+the Unity of God); and that there is no contrariety of things (as that
+of heat and cold), except their oneness in the Divine moniety. Then
+knowing yourself as a spiritual being, and situated in the purity of
+Divine essence, you shall have no need of devotion or adoration (in
+order to appease or unite yourself with the Deity). And knowing also
+that you are not separated from God, forsake all your sorrow (to think
+of your helpless state).
+
+45. Be tolerant, composed and even-minded; remain tranquil, taciturn
+and meek in your mind; and be as a rich jewel, shining with your
+internal light. Thus you will be freed from the feverish vexations of
+this worldly life.
+
+46. Be rational and dispassionate and calm in your desire; remain sober
+minded and free from ardent expectations; and rest satisfied with what
+you get of your own lot, in order to be freed from the feverish heat of
+worldliness.
+
+47. Be unimpassioned and unperturbed with earthly cares; be pure and
+sinless, and neither be penurious nor prodigal, if you will be freed
+from the fever heat of this world.
+
+48. Be free from all anxiety, O Ráma! by your obtaining of that good
+which the world cannot give, and which satisfies all our earthly wants.
+Have this supermundane bliss, O Ráma, and be as full as the ocean, and
+free from the feverish cares of this world.
+
+49. Be loosened from the net of thy loose desires, and wipe off the
+unguent of delusive affections from thy eyes: let thy soul rest
+satisfied with thyself, and be freed from the feverish anxieties of the
+world.
+
+ बिकल्पजाल निर्म्मुक्त मायाञ्जनार्ब्बर्जितः ।
+ आत्मनात्मनितृप्तात्मविज्वरोभबराघव ॥ ४६ ॥
+
+50. With your spiritual body reaching beyond the unbounded space, and
+rising above the height of the highest mountain, be freed from the
+feverish and petty cares of life.
+
+51. By enjoyment of what you get (as your lot), and by asking of naught
+of any body anywhere; by your charity rather than your want or asking
+of it, you must be free from the fever of life.
+
+52. Enjoy the fulness of your soul in yourself like the sea, and
+contain the fulness of your joy in your own soul like the full moon. Be
+self-sufficient with the fulness of your knowledge and inward bliss.
+
+53. Knowing this world as unreal as a pseudoscopic sight, no wise man
+is misled to rely in its untruthful scenes. So you Ráma, that are
+knowing and visionary, and are sane and sound headed, and of
+enlightened understanding, must be always charming with your perfect
+ease from sorrow and care.
+
+54. Now Ráma! reign over this unrivalled sovereignty, by the direction
+of your sovran Sire, and manage well everything under your own
+inspection. This kingdom is fraught with every blessing, and the rulers
+are all loyal to their king. Therefore you must neither leave out to do
+what is your duty, nor be elated with your happy lot of royalty.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+
+ LECTURE ON THE DISCHARGE OF DUTY.
+
+
+Argument. Effect of Acts, Transmigration of souls and their Liberation
+in Life time.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—In my opinion, a man is liberated who does his
+works from a sense of his duty, and without any desire of his own or
+sense of his own agency in it. (Here subjection to allotted duty, is
+said to be his freedom; but that to one’s own desire or free choice, is
+called to be his bondage and slavery).
+
+2. Who so having obtained a human form, is engaged in acts out of his
+own choice and with a sense of his own agency, he is subjected to his
+ascension and descension to heaven and hell by turns (according to the
+merit or demerit of his acts, while there is no such thing in the doing
+of his duty).
+
+3. Some persons who are inclined to unduteous (or illegal) acts, by
+neglecting the performance of their destined (or legal) duties, are
+doomed to descend to deeper hells, and to fall into greater fears and
+torments from their former states.
+
+4. Some men who are fast bound to the chain of their desires, and have
+to feel the consequences of their acts, are made to descend to the
+state of vegetables from their brutal life, or to rise from it to
+animal life again.
+
+5. Some who are blessed with the knowledge of the Spirit, from their
+investigation of abstruse philosophy, rise to the state of moniety
+(Kaivalya); by breaking through the fetters of desire. (_Kaivalya_ is
+the supreme bliss of God in his solity, to which the divine sage
+aspires to be united. Or it is the complete unity with oneself
+irrespective of all connections).
+
+6. There are some men, who after ascending gradually in the scale of
+their creation in former births, have obtained their liberation in the
+present life of _rájas-sátwika_ or active goodness.
+
+7. Such men being born again on earth, assume their bright qualities
+like the crescent moon, and are united with all prosperity, like the
+Kurchi plant which is covered with blossoms in its flowering time of
+the rainy season. (The good effects of former acts, follow a man in his
+next birth).
+
+8. The merit of prior acts follows one in his next state, and the
+learning of past life meets a man in his next birth, as a pearl is born
+in a reed. (A particular reed is known to bear pearly seeds within
+them, well known by the name of _Vansalochana_).
+
+9. The qualities of respectability and amiableness, of affability and
+friendliness, and of compassion and intelligence, attend upon these
+people like their attendants at home. (_i.e._ He becomes master of
+them).
+
+10. Happy is the man who is steady in the discharge of his duties, and
+is neither overjoyed nor depressed at the fruition or failure of their
+results. (Duties must be done, whether they repay or not).
+
+11. The defects of the dutiful and their pain and pleasure, in the
+performance of duties, are all lost under the sense of their
+duteousness; as the darkness of night, is dispelled by the light of the
+day, and the clouds of the rainy season, are dispersed in autumn.
+
+12. The man of a submissive and sweet disposition, is liked by every
+body; as the sweet music of reeds in the forest, attracts the ears of
+wild antelopes. (The deer and snakes, are said to be captivated by
+music of pipe).
+
+13. The qualities of the past life, accompany a man in his next birth;
+as the swallows of the rainy weather, attend on a dark cloud in the
+air. (This bird is called a hansa or hernshaw by Shakespeare; as, when
+it is autumn, I can distinguish a swallow from a hernshaw).
+
+14. Being thus qualified by his prior virtues, the goodman has
+recourse to an instructor for the development of his understanding, who
+thereupon puts him in the way to truth.
+
+15. The man with the qualities of reason and resignation of his mind,
+beholds the Lord as one, and of the same form as the imperishable soul
+within himself.
+
+16. It is the spiritual guide, who awakens the dull and sleeping mind
+by his right reasoning; and then instils into it the words of truth,
+with a placid countenance and mind.
+
+17. They are the best qualified in their subsequent births, who learn
+first to awaken their worthless and dormant minds, as they rouse the
+sleeping stags in the forest.
+
+18. It is first by diligent attendance on good and meritorious guides
+(or gurus), and then by cleansing the gem of their minds by the help of
+reasoning that the pure hearted men come to the light of truth, and
+perceive the divine light shining in their souls.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+
+ ON ATTAINMENT OF DIVINE KNOWLEDGE.
+
+
+Argument. Attainment of knowledge by Intuition, compared to the falling
+of a fruit from heaven.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—I have told you Ráma, the usual way to knowledge
+for mankind in general; I will now tell you of another method distinct
+from the other.
+
+2. Now Ráma! we have two ways which are best calculated for the
+salvation of souls, born in human bodies on earth: the one is by their
+attainment of heavenly bliss, and the other by that of their final
+beatitude (apavarga).
+
+3. And there are two methods of gaining these objects; the one being
+the observance of the instructions of the preceptor, which gradually
+leads one to his perfection in the course of one or reiterated births.
+
+4. The second is the attainment of knowledge by intuition, or by self
+culture of a partly intelligent being; and this is as the obtaining of
+a fruit falling from heaven.
+
+5. Hear now of the attainment of intuitive knowledge, as that of
+getting a fruit fallen from the sky, from the old tale which I will now
+recite to you.
+
+6. Hear the happy and holy story, which removes the fetters of our good
+and evil deeds, and which the last born men (now living), must taste
+with a zest for their enlightenment, as others relish a fruit fallen
+from heaven for their entertainment.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ SONG OF THE SIDDHAS OR HOLY ADEPTS.
+
+
+Argument. Wandering of Janaka in a Vernal garden, and hearing the Song
+of Siddhas.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—There lives the mighty king of the Videhas
+(Tirhutians) Janaka by name, who is blessed with all prosperity and
+unbounded understanding.
+
+2. He is as the ever fruitful _kalpa_ tree to the host of his suitors,
+and as the vivifying sun to his lotus-like friends; he is as the genial
+spring to the florets of his relatives, and as the god Cupid to females.
+
+3. Like the dvija-rája or changeful moon, he gives delight to the
+dvija—or twice born Bráhmans, as that luminary gives the lilies to
+bloom; and like the luminous sun he destroys the darkness of his gloomy
+enemies. He is an ocean of the gems of goodness to all, and the support
+of his realm, like Vishnu the supporter of the world.
+
+4. He chanced on a vernal eve to wander about a forest, abounding in
+young creepers with bunches of crimson blossoms on them, and resonant
+with the melody of mellifluous _kokilas_, warbling in their tuneful
+choirs.
+
+5. He walked amidst the flowery arbours, resembling the graceful
+beauties with ornaments upon them, and sported in their bowers as the
+god Vásava disports in his garden of _Nandana_. (Eden or Paradise).
+
+6. Leaving his attendants behind him, he stepped to a grove standing on
+the steppe of a hill, in the midst of that romantic forest, which was
+redolent with the fragrance of flowers borne all about by the playful
+winds.
+
+7. He heard in one spot and within a bower of _támala_ trees, a mingled
+voice as that of some invisible aerial spirits (siddhá), proceeding
+from it.
+
+8. I will now recite to you, O lotus-eyed Ráma! the songs of the
+siddhas, residing in the retired solitudes of mountainous regions, and
+dwelling in the caverns of hills, and which relate principally to their
+spiritual meditations.
+
+9. The siddhas sang:—We adore that Being which is neither the
+subjective nor objective (not the viewer nor the view); and which in
+our beliefs is the positive felicity, that rises in our souls, and has
+no fluctuation in it.
+
+10. Others chanted:—We adore that Being which is beyond the triple
+states of the subject, its attribute and its object; (who is neither
+the sight, seeing and the seer). It is the light of that soul, or
+spiritual light which exists from before the light of vision, which is
+derived from the light of the sun. (Sruti: The light of the Spirit
+shone before the physical lights of the sun, moon, stars, lightning and
+fire).
+
+11. Others chanted:—We adore that Being, which is in the midst of all
+what is and what is not (_i.e._ between existence and non-existence);
+and that spiritual light, which enlightens all lightsome objects.
+
+12. Some sang:—We adore that real existence which is all, whose are all
+things, and by whom are all made, from whom have all sprung, for whom
+they exist, in whom they subsist, unto whom do all return, and into
+which they are all absorbed.
+
+13. Some caroled:—We adore that Spirit, which begins with the letter
+_a_ and ends in _h_ with the dot _m_ (_i.e._ _aham_ or _ego_); and
+which we continually inspire and respire in our breathings. (Aham)
+hansah.
+
+14. Others said:—Those who forsake the God—Isha, that is situated
+within the cavity of their hearts (hrid), and resort to others, that
+are without them, are verily in search of trifles by disregarding the
+gem _kaustabha_ (philosopher’s stone); which is placed in their hands.
+
+15. Others again declared:—It is by forsaking all other desires, that
+one obtains this object of his wish; and this being had, the poisonous
+plants of all other desires, are entirely uprooted from the heart.
+
+16. Some of them pronounced saying:—The foolish man who knowing the
+insipidity of all worldly things, attaches his mind to earthly object,
+is an ass and no human being.
+
+17. Others said:—The sensual appetites, which incessantly rise as
+snakes from the cavities of the body, are to be killed by the cudgel of
+reason, as Indra broke the hills by his thunderbolts.
+
+18. At last they said:—Let men try to secure the pure happiness of
+quietism, which serves to give tranquility to the minds of the
+righteous. The sober-minded that are situated in their real and natural
+temperament, have their best repose in the lap of undisturbed and
+everlasting tranquility.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+
+ REFLECTIONS OF JANAKA.
+
+
+Argument. Abstraction of Janaka’s mind, from the Vanities of the World.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Upon hearing these sonatas of the Siddhas (holy
+spirits), Janaka was dejected in his mind, like a coward at the noise
+of a conflict.
+
+2. He returned homeward, and conducted himself in silence to his
+domicile, as a stream glides in its silent course under the beachening
+trees, to the bed of the distant main.
+
+3. He left behind all his domestics in their respective dwellings
+below, and ascended alone to the highest balcony, as the sun mounts on
+the top of a mountain.
+
+4. Hence he saw the flights of birds, flying at random in different
+directions; and reflected on the hurrying of men in the same manner,
+and thus bewailed in himself on their deplorable conditions.
+
+5. Ah me miserable! that have to move about in the pitiable state of
+the restless mob, that roll about like a rolling stone (or ball),
+pushed backward and forward by another.
+
+6. I have a short span of endless duration, alloted to my share of
+lifetime; and yet I am a senseless fool to rely my trust in the hope of
+its durability.
+
+7. Short is the duration of my royalty also, which is limited to the
+period of my lifetime only; how is it then that I am secure of its
+continuance as a thoughtless man.
+
+8. I have an immortal soul lasting from before, and to continue even
+after my present existence, the present life is a destructible One, and
+yet I am a fool to rely in it, like a boy believing the painted moon as
+real.
+
+9. Ah! what sorcerer is it that hath thus bewitched me by his magic
+wand, as to make me believe I am not spell-bound at all.
+
+10. What faith can I rely in this world which has nothing substantial
+nor pleasant, nor grand nor real in it; and yet I know not why my mind
+is deluded by it.
+
+11. What is far from me (_i.e._ the object of sense), appears to be
+near me by my sensation of the same; and that which is nearest to me
+(_i.e._ my inmost soul), appears to be farthest from me (by my want of
+its perception). Knowing this I must abandon the outward (sensible
+objects), in order to see the inward soul.
+
+12. This hurry of men in their pursuits, is as impetuous and transient
+as the torrent of a whirlpool. It precipitates them to the depth of
+their dangers, and is not worth the pain it gives to the spirit.
+
+13. The years, months, days and minutes, are revolving with succession
+of our pains and pleasures; but these are swallowed up, by the repeated
+trains of our misery (rather than that of happiness).
+
+14. I have well considered everything, and found them all perishable
+and nothing durable or lasting; there is nothing to be found here
+worthy of the reliance of the wise.
+
+15. Those standing at the head of great men to-day, are reduced low in
+the course of a few days; what worth is there in giddy and thoughtless
+greatness, which is deserving of our estimation.
+
+16. I am bound to the earth without a rope, and am soiled herein
+without any dirt (in my person); I am fallen though sitting in this
+edifice. O my soul! how art thou destroyed while thou art living.
+
+17. Whence has this causeless ignorance over-powered my intelligent
+soul, and whence has this shadow overspread its lustre, as a dark cloud
+overshades the disk of the sun?
+
+18. Of what avail are these large possessions and numerous relations to
+me, when my soul is desponding in despair, like children under the fear
+of ghosts and evil spirits.
+
+19. How shall I rest any reliance in my sensual enjoyments which are
+the harbingers of death and disease, and what dependence is there on my
+possessions, which are fraught only with anxieties and cares?
+
+20. It matters not whether these friends, the feeders on my fortune,
+may last or leave me at once; my prosperity is but a bubble and a false
+appearance before me.
+
+21. Men of greatest opulence and many good and great men and our best
+friends and kindest relatives, that have gone by, now live in our
+remembrance only.
+
+22. Where are the riches of the monarchs of the earth, and where the
+former creations of Brahmá. The past have given way to the present, and
+these are to be followed by future ones; hence there is no reliance in
+anything.
+
+23. Many Indras have been swallowed up like bubbles in the ocean of
+eternity; hence the like expectation of my longevity, is ridiculous to
+the wise.
+
+24. Millions of Brahmás have passed away, and their productions have
+disappeared under endless successions; the kings of earth have fled
+like their ashes and are reduced to dust; what is the confidence then
+in my life and stability?
+
+25. The world is but a dream by night, and the sensuous body is but a
+misconception of the mind. If I rely any credence on them I am really
+to be blamed.
+
+26. My conception of myself and perception of other things, are false
+imaginations of my mind. It is my egoism that has laid hold of me, as a
+demon seizes an idiot.
+
+27. Fool that I am, that seeing I do not see, how the span of my life
+is measured every moment by the imperceptible instants of time, and
+their leaving but a small portion behind.
+
+28. I see the juggler of time seizing on Brahmás, Vishnus and Rudras,
+and making playthings of them on his play ground of the world, and
+flinging them as balls all about.
+
+29. I see the days and nights are incessantly passing away, without
+presenting me an opportunity which I can behold the true imperishable
+one.
+
+30. The objects of sensual enjoyment, are larking in the minds of men,
+like cranes gabbling in the lakes, and there is no prospect of the true
+and best object in the mind of any body.
+
+31. We meet with one hardship after another, and buffet in the waves of
+endless miseries in this earth; and yet are we so shameless, as not to
+feel ourselves disgusted with them.
+
+32. We see all the desirable objects to which we attach our thoughts,
+to be frail and perishing; and yet we do not seek the imperishable one,
+and our everlasting good in the equanimity of the Soul.
+
+33. Whatever we see to be pleasant in the beginning (as pleasures), or
+in the middle (as youth), or in the end (as virtuous deeds), and at all
+times (as earthly goods), are all unholy and subject to decay.
+
+34. Whatever objects are dear to the hearts of men, they are all found
+to be subject to the changes of their rise and fall (_i.e._ their
+growth and decay).
+
+35. Ignorant people are everywhere enclined to evil acts, and they
+grow day by day more hardened in their wicked practices. They repent
+every day for their sins, but never reprove themselves for the better.
+
+36. Senseless men are never the better for anything, being devoid of
+sense in their boyhood, and heated by their passions in youth. In their
+latter days, they are oppressed with the care of their families, and in
+the end thy are overcome by sorrow and remorse.
+
+37. Here the entrance and exit (_i.e._ the birth and death), are both
+accompanied with pain and sorrow (for men come to and go away from the
+world with crying). Here every state of life is contaminated by its
+reverse (as health by disease, youth by age, and affluence by poverty).
+Everything is unsubstantial in this seeming substantial world, and yet
+the ignorant rely in its unreal substantiality.
+
+38. The real good that is derived here by means of painful austerities,
+are the arduous sacrifices of _rájasúyá asvamedha_ and others, or the
+attainment of heaven; which has no reality in it, by reason of its
+short duration of the small portion of a _kalpa_ compared with
+eternity. (The Hindu heaven is no lasting bliss).
+
+39. What is this heaven and where is it situated, whether below or
+above us or in this nether world; and where its residents are not
+overtaken by multitudes of locust-like evils? (The Sruti says: “Evil
+spirits infest the heavens and they drove the gods from it.” So we read
+of the Titan’s and Satan’s band invading heaven).
+
+40. We have serpents creeping in the cells of our hearts, and have our
+bodies filled with the brambles of diseases and dangers, and know not
+how to destroy them.
+
+41. I see good is intermixed with evil, and pain abiding with pleasure;
+there is sorrow seated on the top (excess) of joy, so I know not
+whereto I shall resort.
+
+42. I see the earth full of common people, who are incessantly born and
+dying in it in multitudes; but I find few honest and righteous men in
+it.
+
+43. These beautiful forms of women, with their eyes like lotuses, and
+the gracefulness of their blandishments, and their charming smiles, are
+made so soon to fade and die away.
+
+44. Of what note am I among these mighty beings (as Brahmá and Vishnu),
+who at the twinkling of their eyes, have created and destroyed the
+world; and yet have succumbed to death at last. (This last passage
+shows that the Hindu gods were mortal heroes of antiquity).
+
+45. You are constantly in search of what is more pleasant and lasting
+than others, but never seek after that highest prosperity, which is
+beyond all your earthly cares.
+
+46. What is this great prosperity in which you take so much delight,
+but mere vexation of your spirit, which proves this vanity to be your
+calamity only.
+
+47. Again what are these adversities which you fear so much, they may
+turn to your true prosperity, by setting you free from earthly broils
+and leading you to your future felicity.
+
+48. The mind is broken to pieces by its fears, like the fragments of
+the moon, floating on the waves of this ocean of the world. Its
+selfishness has tossed it to and fro, and this world being got rid of,
+it is set at perfect ease (from all vicissitudes of fortune).
+
+49. There is an unavoidable chance (necessity), actuating our worldly
+affairs and accidents; it is impudence therefore to welcome some as
+good, and to avoid others as evil.
+
+50. We are prone to things that are pleasant to the sight, but bear a
+mortal flame in them, and consume us like poor moths in the flames,
+which it is bright to see but fatal to feel.
+
+51. It is better to roll in the continual flame of hell-fire to which
+one is habituated, than rise and fall repeatedly in the furnace of this
+world, as from the frying pan into the fire.
+
+52. This world is said by the wise, to be a boundless ocean of woes
+(vale of tears); how then can any body who has fallen amidst it, expect
+any happiness herein?
+
+53. Those who have not fallen in the midst and been altogether drowned
+in woe, think the lesser woes as light and delight, as one condemned to
+be beheaded, is glad to escape with a light punishment.
+
+54. I am grown as the vilest of the vile, and resemble a block of wood
+or stone; there is no difference in me from the ignorant clown, who has
+never had the thought of his eternal concerns in his head.
+
+55. The great arbour of the world, with its very many branches and
+twigs and fruits, hath sprung from the mind and is rooted in it. (The
+outer world has its existence in the sensitive mind only; because the
+insensible bodies of the dead and inanimate things, have no
+consciousness of it).
+
+56. It is the conception (sankalpa) of the world, in my mind, that
+causes its existence and presents its appearance before me, I will now
+try to efface this conception from my mind, and forget this world
+altogether. (This doctrine of idealism was derived, by Janaka from his
+own Intuition (Svena-Jnátena)).
+
+57. I will no longer allow myself to be deluded like monkeys with the
+forms of things, which I know are not real; mere ideal, but changeful
+and evanescent. (Here also Janaka learns by intuition not to rely on
+concrete forms, but to have their general and abstract ideas).
+
+58. I have woven and stretched out the web of my desires, and collected
+only my woes and sorrows; I fell into and fled from the snare of my own
+making, and am now resolved to take my rest in the soul.
+
+59. I have much wailed and bitterly wept, to think of the depravity and
+loss of my soul, and will henceforth cease to lament, thinking that I
+am not utterly lost.
+
+60. I am now awakened, and am glad to find out the robber of my soul;
+it is my own mind, and this I am determined to kill, as it had so long
+deprived me of the inestimable treasure of my soul.
+
+61. So long was my mind at large as a loose and unstrung pearl, now
+will I pierce it with the needle of reason, and string it with the
+virtues of self-controul and subjection to wisdom.
+
+62. The cold icicle of my mind, will now be melted down by the sun-heat
+of reason; and will now be confined in the interminable meditation of
+its Eternal Maker (from where it cannot return. Sruti).
+
+63. I am now awakened to my spiritual knowledge, like these holy
+Siddhas, saints and sages; and will now pursue my spiritual inquiries,
+to the contentment of my soul.
+
+64. Having now found my long-lost soul, I will continue to look upon
+its pure light with joy in my lonely retirement; and will remain as
+quiet and still in contemplation of it, as a motionless cloud in autumn.
+
+65. And having cast away the false belief of my corporeality (_i.e._ of
+being an embodied being), and that these possessions and properties are
+mine, and having subdued my force by mighty enemy of the Mind, I will
+attain the tranquility of my soul by the help of my reason.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER X.
+
+ SILENT AND SOLITARY REFLECTIONS OF JANAKA.
+
+
+Argument. Janaka though employed in Ritual service, continues firm in
+his meditation, and comes to the conclusion of his immortality.
+
+
+Vasishtha related:—While Janaka was thus musing in his mind, there
+entered the chamberlain before him, in the manner of Aruna standing
+before the chariot of the sun.
+
+2. The Chamberlain said:—O sire! thy realm is safe under thy protecting
+arms; now rise to attend to the daily rites, as it becomes your majesty.
+
+3. There the maidservants are waiting with their water pots, filled
+with water perfumed with flowers, camphor and saffron for your bathing,
+as the nymphs of the rivers, have presented themselves in person before
+you.
+
+4. The temples are decorated with lotuses and other flowers, with the
+bees fluttering upon them; and hung over with fine muslin, as white as
+the fibers of lotus stalks.
+
+6. The altars are filled with heaps of flowers, aromatic drugs and
+rice; and adorned with every decoration in the princely style.
+
+7. The Bráhmans are waiting there for your majesty’s presence, after
+making their sacred ablution and purifications, and offering their
+prayers for the remission of sins; and are expecting to get their
+worthy gifts from thee.
+
+8. The hand-maids are attending to their duties, graced with flappers
+(chámaras) in their hands; and the feasting ground is cleansed with
+sandal paste and water.
+
+9. Rise therefore from thy seat, and be it well with thee to perform
+the prescribed duties; because it does not become the best of men, to
+be belated in the discharge of their duties.
+
+10. Though thus besought by the head chamberlain, yet the king remained
+in his meditative mood, thinking on the wonderful phenomena of nature.
+
+11. This royalty and these duties of mine, said he, are for a very
+short time; I do not require these things that are so transitory in
+their nature.
+
+12. I must leave these things, that are at best but waters of the
+mirage; and remain close to myself in my lonesome seclusion, like a
+calm and solitary lake or sea.
+
+13. These pleasures of the world, that are displayed around us, are
+entirely useless to me; I will leave them with promptness on my part,
+and remain in my happy retirement.
+
+14. Abandon, O my heart! thy shrewdness in pursuing after the objects
+of thy desire; in order to avoid the snares of disease and death (which
+have been set on thy way).
+
+15. In whatever state or condition of life, the heart is set to hanker
+for its delight; it is sure to meet with some difficulty, distress or
+disappointment coming out of the same.
+
+16. Whether your heart is engaged in, or disengaged from the objects of
+sense, you will never find any one of them, either in act or thought,
+conducing to the true happiness of your soul.
+
+17. Forsake therefore the thoughts of the vile pleasure of your senses,
+and betake yourself to those thoughts, which are fraught with the true
+happiness of the soul.
+
+18. Thinking in this manner, Janaka remained in mute silence, and his
+restless mind became as still, as it made him sit down like a picture
+in painting or as a statue.
+
+19. The chamberlain uttered not a word any more, but stood silent in
+mute respect through fear of his master, from his knowledge of the
+dispositions of kings.
+
+20. Janaka in his state of silent meditation, reflected again on the
+vanity of human life, with cool calmness of his mind, and said:—
+
+21. Now must I be diligent to find out the best and most precious
+treasure in the world, and know what is that imperishable thing, to
+which I shall bind my soul as its surest anchor.
+
+22. What is the good of my acts or my cessation from them, since
+nothing is produced of anything, which is not perishable in its nature.
+(Thence the product of acts is perishing, and its want is a lasting
+good).
+
+23. It matters not whether the body is active or inactive, since all
+its actions end in utter inaction at last as all force is reduced to
+rest. It is the pure intellect within me that is always the same
+(_i.e._ ever active and undecaying), and which loses nothing from the
+loss of the body or by want of bodily actions. (The body is a dead mass
+without the active principle of the mind).
+
+24. I do not wish to have what I have not, nor dare leave what I have
+already got; I am content with myself; so let me have what is mine and
+what I have. (The Yogis like Stoics, were fatalists and content with
+their lot).
+
+25. I get no real good by my acts here, nor lose anything by refraining
+from them. What I get by my acts or want of action, is all _Nil and
+Null_ of Vanity or Vanities, and nothing to my purpose or liking.
+
+26. Whether I am doing or not doing, and whether my acts are proper or
+improper; I have nothing to desire here, nor anything desirable that I
+have to expect from them. (Hence no exertion will bring on the desired
+object, unless it is given by our lot).
+
+27. I have got what was due to my past actions, and this body is the
+result of my former acts. It may be in its motion and action, or it may
+be still and fade away, which is the same thing to me.
+
+28. The mind being set at ease by want of its action or passion, the
+actions of the body and its members, are alike in their effects to
+those of not doing them. (Involuntary actions done without the will are
+of no account).
+
+29. The acts of men are reckoned as no acts of theirs, which happen to
+take place as the results of their destiny or previous actions. (The
+action or passion relates to the mind only, but the doing of destiny
+being involuntary, such action of men is accounted as no action of
+theirs).
+
+30. The impression which the inward soul bears of its past actions and
+passions, the same gives its colour to the nature and character of the
+actions of men afterwards. Now that my soul has obtained its
+imperishable state of spirituality, I am freed from the mutabilities of
+the transmigrations of my body and mind.
+
+Commentary:—Janaka arrives after all his previous reasonings and
+deductions, to the conclusion of the certainty of his being an
+intellectual and spiritual being, endowed with an immortal soul, and
+entitled to everlasting life, after the destruction of the frail body
+and the changeful mind with it.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XI
+
+ SUBJECTION OF THE MIND.
+
+
+Argument. Janaka’s Discharge of his Daily Rites, and Admonition to his
+Mind.
+
+
+Vasishtha related:—Having thought so, Janaka rose up for performance of
+his daily rites as usual, and without the sense of his agency in them.
+He did his duty in the same manner as the sun rises every day to give
+the morn, without his consciousness of it.
+
+2. He discharged his duties as they presented themselves to him,
+without any concern or expectation of their rewards. He did them
+awaking as if it were in his sleep. Gloss:—He did his acts by rote, but
+wot not what he did in his insensibility of them; and such acts of
+insensibility are free from culpability or retribution.
+
+3. Having discharged his duties of the day and honoured the gods and
+the priests, he passed the night absorbed in his meditations.
+
+4. His mind being set at ease, and his roving thoughts repressed from
+their objects, he thus communed with his mind at the dead of night, and
+said:—
+
+5. O my mind that art roving all about with the revolving world, know
+that such restlessness of thine, is not agreeable to peace of the soul;
+therefore rest thou in quiet from thy wanderings abroad.
+
+6. It is thy business to imagine many things at thy pleasure, and as
+thou thinkest thou hast a world of thoughts present before thee every
+moment. (For all things are but creations of the imaginative mind).
+
+7. Thou shootest forth in innumerable woes by the desire of endless
+enjoyments, as a tree shoots out into a hundred branches, by its being
+watered at the roots.
+
+8. Now as our births and lives and worldly affairs, are all productions
+of our wistful thoughts, I pray thee therefore, O my mind! to rest in
+quiet by abandonment of thy earthly desires.
+
+9. O my friendly mind! weigh well this transient world in thy thoughts,
+and depend upon it, shouldst thou find aught of substantiality in it.
+
+10. Forsake thy fond reliance on these visible phenomena; leave these
+things, and rove about at thy free will without caring for any thing.
+
+11. Whether this unreal scene, may appear to or disappear from thy
+sight, thou shouldst not suffer thyself to be affected by it in either
+case.
+
+12. Thou canst have no concern with the visible objects (phenomenal
+world); for what concern can one have with any earthly thing which is
+inexistent of itself as an unsubstantial shadow?
+
+13. The world is an unreality like thyself, hence there can be no true
+relation between two unrealities. It is but a logomachy to maintain the
+relation of two negatives to one another.
+
+14. Granting, thou art a reality and the world is unreal, still there
+can be no agreement between you, as there is none between the living
+and the dead, and between the positive and negative ideas.
+
+15. Should the mind and the world be both of them realities and
+co-existent for ever, then there can be no reason for the joy or sorrow
+of the one at the gain or loss of the other.
+
+16. Now therefore avoid the great malady of worldliness, and enjoy the
+silent joy in thyself, like one sitting in the undisturbed depth of the
+Ocean, with the rolling tide and waves above his head.
+
+17. Do not consume like a puppet in pyrotechnics with the fiery remorse
+of worldliness, nor be burnt down to the darkness of despair in this
+gloomy scene of the world.
+
+18. O wicked mind! there is nothing here so good and great, whereby
+thou mayest attain thy high perfection, except by the forsaking of all
+frivolities and dependance on thy entire resignation to the
+unchangeable One.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XII.
+
+ ON THE GREATNESS OF INTELLIGENCE.
+
+
+Argument. The Living Liberation of Janaka, and the pre-eminence of
+reason and intelligence.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Janaka having expostulated in his manner with his
+mind, attended to the affairs of the state without shrinking from them
+by his mental abstraction.
+
+2. He was however not gladdened by the gladsome tasks and tidings, but
+was indifferent to them as in his slumber of fixed mindedness in his
+maker.
+
+3. Hence forward, he was not intently employed in his duties, nor
+forsook them altogether; but attended unconcernedly to the business
+which presented itself to him.
+
+4. His constant habit of reasoning, enabled him to understand the
+eternal verity; and preserved his intellect from blunders, as the sky
+is untouched by the flying dust.
+
+5. By his cultivation of reasoning, his mind was enlightened and
+fraught with all knowledge.
+
+6. Unaccustomed to duality, his mind had learnt to know the sole unity
+only; and his intelligent soul shone within him, as the full bright sun
+in the sky. (He felt a flood of light in himself, as the believer finds
+in his inmost soul. Gloss).
+
+7. He became acquainted with the Soul, that is inherent in all bodies,
+and beheld all things abiding in the omnipotence of the Intellect, and
+identic with the infinite.
+
+8. He was never too joyous nor exceedingly sorrowful, but preserved his
+equanimity amidst the conflicts of his soul and sensible objects
+(between spirituality and materiality).
+
+9. The venerable Janaka, became liberated in his living state since
+that time; and is since renowned as a veteran theosophist among mankind.
+
+10. He continues thence forward to reign over the land of the Videha
+people, without being subject to the feelings of joy or sorrow for a
+moment.
+
+11. Knowing the causes of good and evil, he is neither elated nor
+dejected at any favourable or unfavourable circumstances of his life,
+nor does he feel glad or sad at the good or bad accident relating the
+state.
+
+12. He did his duties without setting his mind to them, which was
+wholly employed in his intellectual speculations.
+
+13. Remaining thus in his hypnotic state of sound sleep (abstraction),
+his thoughts are quite abstracted from all objects about him.
+
+14. He is unmindful of the past, and heedless about the future; and
+enjoys the present moment only, with a gladsome heart and cheerful mind.
+
+15. He obtained the obtainable what is worthy to be obtained, by his
+own ratiocination (or self-reflection), and not O lotus-eyed Ráma! by
+any other desire (_i.e._ by abandoning all his worldly desires).
+
+16. Therefore we should reason (or reflect) in our minds, so long as we
+succeed to arrive at the conclusion of the subject.
+
+17. The presence of the Holy Light, is not to be had either by the
+lectures of a preceptor, or the teaching of the sástras; it is not the
+result of meritorious acts, nor of the company of the holy men; but the
+result of your own intellection.
+
+18. A good understanding assisted by the power of its accompanying
+percipience (prajaná), leads to the knowledge of that highest state,
+which the acts of your piety cannot do.
+
+19. He who has set before his sight the keen light of the lamp of his
+percipience, is enabled to see both the past and future in his
+presence; and no shadow of ignorance intercepts his vision.
+
+20. It is by means of his percipience, that one is enabled to cross
+over the sea of dangers; as a passenger goes across a river in a boat
+or raft.
+
+21. The man that is devoid of his prescience, is overtaken even by
+small mishaps; as a light straw is blown away by the slightest breeze.
+
+22. One who is endued with foresight, passes over the eventful ocean of
+the world, without the assistance of friends and guidance of the
+sástras.
+
+23. The man with foreknowledge, sees the result of his actions
+beforehand; but one without his prevision, is at a loss to judge of the
+imminent events.
+
+24. Good company and learning, strengthen the understanding; as the
+watering of a plant, tends towards its growth and fructification.
+
+25. The infant understanding like a tender shoot, takes a deep root in
+time; and having grown up like a tree, bears the sweet fruit in its
+season; like the cooling moonbeams at night.
+
+26. Whatever exertions are made by men for the acquisition of external
+properties, the same should be more properly devoted for the
+improvement of their understandings at first. (_i.e._ Intellectual
+improvement should precede that of outward circumstances).
+
+27. Dullness of the understanding, which is the source of all evils,
+and the storehouse of misery, and the root of the arbour of
+worldliness, must be destroyed first of all.
+
+28. Great minded men get in their understandings, whatever good they
+may expect to find in this earth, in heaven above and in the nether
+world. (The mind is the seat of all treasures).
+
+29. It is by means of one’s good understanding only, that he can get
+over the ocean of the world; and not by his charities, pilgrimages or
+religious austerities.
+
+30. The divine blessing attending on mortal men on earth, is the sweet
+fruit of the tree of knowledge. (Here is a contrast with the mortal
+taste of the forbidden fruit of knowledge).
+
+31. Wisdom nips with its sharp nails, the heads of the elephantine
+(gigantic) bonds of giddiness, with as much ease as the lion kills the
+deer, or as if it were destroying a strong lion by a weak jackal. (Weak
+wisdom having the power of destroying the wild worldliness).
+
+32. An ordinary man is often seen to become the ruler of men, by means
+of his greater knowledge than others; and the wise and discreet are
+entitled to glory in both worlds.
+
+33. Reason overcomes all its adversaries, dealing in diverse forms of
+sophistry; as a disciplined warrior, overpowers on a host of untrained
+savage people.
+
+34. Reasoning is as the philosopher’s stone, which converts the base
+metals to gold; and is hidden in the casket of rational souls as the
+best treasure. It yields the desired fruits of men like the kalpa plant
+of Paradise at a thought.
+
+35. The right reasoner gets across the wide ocean of the world, by
+means of his reasoning, while the unreasonable rabble are born away by
+its waves; as the skillful boat-man cuts across the current, while the
+unskilled waterman is tossed about by the waves.
+
+36. A well directed understanding leads to the success of an
+undertaking, but the misguided intellect goes to the rack and ruin; the
+one sails to the shore before the wind; but the other is tossed in his
+wrecked vessel over the wide gulph of the world.
+
+37. The keen sighted and unbiassed wise man, is never over-come by the
+evils arising from his desires: as the arrows of the adversary, do not
+pierce the body of a soldier in armour.
+
+38. The sapience of a man, gives him an insight into every thing in the
+world and, the all knowing man, is neither subjected to dangers nor
+reverses of his fortune.
+
+39. The dark and wide-stretching cloud of blind egoism, which
+overshadows the sun-light of the Supreme Spirit within us, is driven
+away by the breath of intelligence.
+
+40. The improvement of the understanding, is the first requisite
+towards the knowledge of the Supreme soul; as the cultivation of the
+ground, is of primary importance to the farmer, desirous of reaping a
+rich harvest.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ GOVERNMENT OF THE MIND.
+
+
+Argument. Reasons and Rules of Restraining the Mind from the
+instance of Janaka’s _insouciance_.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Now Ráma! Reflect on the Supreme spirit, in thy
+own spirit like Janaka; and know the object of the meditation of the
+wise, without any difficulty or failing.
+
+2. The wise men of the latter genus _rájasa-sátvika_ or active
+goodness, obtain their desired objects by themselves (of their own
+institution), like Janaka and other holy sages.
+
+3. As long as you continue to restrain your organs of sense from their
+objects, so long will the divine soul grace your own inward soul with
+its presence.
+
+4. The Lord God and Supreme soul, being thus gracious to thee; thou
+shalt see a halo of light cast over all things, and dispersing all thy
+woes from thy sight.
+
+5. The sight of the Supreme spirit, will remove the plentiful seeds of
+bias from thy mind; and it will drive away the woeful sights of misery,
+pouring upon thy view in copious showers.
+
+6. Continue like Janaka in the wilful discharge of thy duties, and
+prosper by placing thy intellectual sight, on the divine light shining
+in thy inward spirit.
+
+7. It was by his inward cogitations, that Janaka found the
+transitoriness of the world; and by placing his faith in the
+unchangeable Spirit, he found its grace in time.
+
+8. Hence neither the pious acts of men, nor their riches nor friends,
+are of any use to them for their salvation from the miseries of life,
+unless it be by their own endeavor for the enlightenment of their soul.
+
+9. They who rely their faith in the gods, and depend upon them for
+fulfilment of their desires and future rewards, are perverted in their
+understandings, and cannot be heirs of immortality.
+
+10. It is by reliance in one’s reasoning and resignation, and by his
+spiritual vision of the Supreme spirit, that he is saved from his
+misery in this ocean of the world.
+
+11. The attainment of this blessed knowledge of intuition, which
+removeth our ignorance, is as what they call thy getting of fruit
+fallen from heaven (_i.e._ a heavenly and accidental fruit).
+
+12. The intelligence which looks into itself as Janaka’s, finds the
+soul developing of itself in it, as the lotus-bud opens of itself in
+the morning.
+
+13. The firm conviction of the material world, melts into nothing under
+the light of percipience; as the thick and tangible ice, dissolves into
+fluidity under the heat of the sun.
+
+14. The consciousness that this is I (_i.e._ one’s self-consciousness),
+is as the shade of night, and is dispelled at the rise of the sun of
+intellect, when the Omnipresent light appears vividly to sight.
+
+15. No sooner one loses his self-consciousness that ‘this is himself,’
+than the All-pervading Soul opens fully to his view.
+
+16. As Janaka has abandoned the consciousness of his personality,
+together with his desires also; so do you, O intelligent Ráma, forsake
+them by your acute understanding and of the mind discernment.
+
+17. After the cloud of egoism is dispersed, and the sphere is cleared
+all around; the divine light appears to shine in it, as brightly as
+another sun.
+
+18. It is the greatest ignorance to think of one’s egoism (or
+self-personality); this thought being relaxed by the sense of our
+nothingness, gives room to the manifestation of holy light in the soul.
+
+19. Neither think of the entity nor non-entity of thyself or others;
+but preserve the tranquility of thy mind from both the thoughts of
+positive and negative existences; in order to get rid of thy sense of
+distinction between the producer and the produced (_i.e._ of the cause
+and effect, the both of which are identic in Vedánta or spiritual
+philosophy).
+
+20. Again your fostering a fondness for something as good, and a hatred
+to others as bad; is but a disease of your mind for your uneasiness
+only. (Since all things are good in their own kinds, and nothing bad in
+its nature, and in the sight of God, who pronounced all things good).
+
+21. Be not fond of what you think to be beautiful, nor disgusted at
+what appears hateful to you, get rid of these antagonist feelings, and
+be even-minded by fixing it on One, before whom all things are alike
+and equally good: (all partial evil is universal good. Pope.)
+
+22. They that view the desirable and the detestable in the same light,
+are neither fond of the one nor averse to the other.
+
+23. Until the fancy of the desirableness of one thing and dislike of
+the other, is effaced from the mind, it is as hard to have the good
+grace of equanimity, as it is difficult for the moonlight to pierce
+through the cloudy sky.
+
+24. The mind which considers one thing as some thing à propos, and
+another as nothing to the purpose (the one as desirable and the other
+worthless); is deprived of the blessing of indifference, as the brier
+_sákota_ is despised, not standing with all its fruits and flowers.
+
+25. Where there is a craving for the desirable, and an aversion to what
+is unseemly, and when there is a cry for gain and an outcry at one’s
+loss; it is impossible for even mindedness, dispassionateness and
+tranquility of the mind, to abide then and there in that state.
+
+26. There being only the essence of one pure—Brahma diffused throughout
+the universe, how very improper is it to take the one as many, and
+among them something as good or bad; (when the Maker of all has made
+all things good).
+
+27. Our desires and dislike, are the two apes abiding on the tree of
+our hearts; and while they continue to shake and swing it with their
+jogging and jolting, there can be no rest in it.
+
+28. Freedom from fear and desire, from exertions and action, together
+with sapience and equanimity, are the inseparable accompaniments of
+ease and rest.
+
+29. The qualities of forbearance and fellow feeling, accompanied with
+contentment and good understanding, and joined with a mild disposition
+and gentle speech, are the indispensable companions of the wise man,
+who has got rid of his desires and the feelings of his liking or
+dislike.
+
+30. The mind running to meanness, is to be repressed by restraining the
+passions and appetites; as the current of water running below, is
+stopped by its lock gate.
+
+31. Shun the sight of external things, which are the roots of error and
+fallacy; and consider always their internal properties both when you
+are awake and asleep, and also when you are walking about or sitting
+down.
+
+32. Avaricious men are caught like greedy fishes, in the hidden net of
+their insatiable desires, and which is woven with the threads of
+worldly cares, and is under the waters of worldly affairs.
+
+33. Now Ráma! cut the meshes of this net, with the knife of thy good
+understanding; and disperse it in the water, as a tempest rends the
+thick cloud and scatters it about the air.
+
+34. Try O gentle Ráma! to uproot the root of worldliness, which sprouts
+forth in the weeds of vice, with the hatchet of your perseverance and
+the eliminating shovel of your penetration.
+
+35. Employ your mind to hew down the cravings <of> your mind, as they use
+the axe to cut down a tree, and you will then rest in quiet as you
+arrive at the state of holiness.
+
+36. Having destroyed the former state of your mind by its present
+state, try to forget them both by your heedless mind in future, and
+manage yourself unmindful of the world. (There is a play of the word
+mind in the original).
+
+37. Your utter oblivion of the world, will prevent the revival of your
+mind; and stop the reappearance of ignorance which is concomitant with
+the mind.
+
+38. Whether you are waking or sleeping or in any other state of your
+life; you must remember the nihility of the world, and resign your
+reliance in it.
+
+39. Leave off your selfishness (mamatá or _mei tatem_), O Ráma! and
+rely in the disinterestedness of your soul; lay hold on what ever
+offers of itself to you and without seeking for it all about.
+
+40. As the Lord God doth every thing, and is yet aloof from all; so
+must thou do all thy acts outwardly, and without thyself mixing in any.
+
+41. Knowing the knowable, one finds himself as the increate soul and
+Great Lord of all; but being apart from that soul, he views only the
+material world spread before him.
+
+42. He who has the sight of the inner spirit, is freed from the
+thoughts of the external world, and is not subjected to the joy or
+grief or sorrow and other evils of his life.
+
+43. He is called a Yogi who is free from passions and enmity, and looks
+on gold and rubbish in the same light; he is joined with his Joy in his
+Yoga, and disjoined from all worldly desires.
+
+44. He enjoys the fruit of his own acts, and minds not what he wastes
+or gives away; he has the evenness of his mind in every condition, and
+is unaltered by pain or pleasure. (The Sanskrit _sukh-dukkha_ means
+also prosperity and adversity, and good and evil of every kind).
+
+45. He who receives what he gets, and is employed with whatever offers
+of itself to him, without considering the good or evil that he is to
+gain by it, is not plunged into any difficulty.
+
+46. He who is certain of the truth of the spiritual essence of the
+world, pants not for its physical enjoyments, but he is even-minded at
+all times.
+
+47. The dull mind follows the active intellect in accomplishing its
+objects, as the carnivorous cat or fox follows the lion in quest of
+meat.
+
+48. As the servile band of the lion feeds on the flesh acquired by his
+prowess, so the mind dwells upon the visible and sensible object, which
+it perceives by power of the intellect.
+
+49. Thus the unsubstantial mind, lives upon the outer world by the help
+of the intellect; but as it comes to remember its origination from the
+intellect, it recoils back to its original state.
+
+50. The mind which is moved and lighted, by the heat and light of the
+lamp of the intellect; becomes extinct without its physical force, and
+grows as motionless as a dead body.
+
+51. The nature of the intellect is known to exclude the idea of motion
+or pulsation from it; and the power which has vibration in it, is
+called intellection or the mind in the sástras.
+
+52. The breathing (or vibration) of the mind, like the hissing of a
+snake, is called its imagination (kalpana); but by knowing the
+intellect as the Ego, it comes to the true knowledge of the inward soul.
+
+53. The intellect which is free from thoughts (_chetyas_), is the ever
+lasting Brahma; but being joined with thought, it is styled the
+imaginative principle or Mind.
+
+54. This power of imagination having assumed a definite form, is termed
+the mind; which with its volition and options, is situated in the heart
+of living beings.
+
+55. With its two distinct powers of imagination and volition, it is
+employed in the acts of discriminating and choosing the agreeable from
+what is disagreeable to it. (_i.e._ The imagination and volitive
+faculties of the mind, supply it with the power of discrimination and
+option, between what is fit or unfit for or suitable to it).
+
+56. The intellect being seated in the heart with its thoughts and
+volitions, forgets its spiritual nature, and remains as a dull material
+substance (_i.e._ the passivity of the heart as opposed to the activity
+of the mind).
+
+57. The intellect being thus confined in the hearts of all animals in
+this world, continues in utter oblivion of its nature; until it is
+awakened of itself, either by its intuition or instruction of
+preceptors &c.
+
+58. So it is to be wakened by means of instruction, derived from the
+sástras and preceptors; as also by the practice of dispassionateness,
+and subjection of the organs of sense and action.
+
+59. When the minds of living beings, are roused by learning and
+self-control; they tend towards the knowledge of the Great Brahma, or
+else they rove at random about the wide world.
+
+60. We must therefore awaken our minds, which are rolling in the pit of
+worldliness, through the inebriety of the wine of error, and which are
+dormant to divine knowledge.
+
+61. As long as the mind is unawakened, it is insensible of every thing
+(in its true light); and though it perceives the visibles, yet this
+perception of them is as false as the sight of a city in our fancy.
+
+62. But when the mind is awakened by divine knowledge, to the sight of
+the supreme Being; it presents every thing in itself, as the inward
+fragrance of flowers pervades the outer-petals also. (_i.e._ The inward
+sight of God, comprehends the view of every thing in it).
+
+63. Though the intellect has the quality of knowing every thing,
+contained in all the three worlds; yet it has but a little knowledge of
+them from the paucity of its desire of knowing them. (_i.e._ Though the
+capacity of the intellect is unlimited, yet its knowledge is
+proportionate to its desire of gaining it).
+
+64. The mind without the intellect is a dull block of stone; but it is
+opened by divine light, like the lotus-bud expanding under the light of
+the sun.
+
+65. The imaginative mind is as devoid of understanding, as a statue
+made of marble, is unable to move about by itself.
+
+66. How can the regiments drawn in painting, wage a war in a mutual
+conflict, and how can the moon-beams, make the medicinal plants emit
+their light? (_i.e._ As it is life that makes the armies fight, so it
+is the intellect that actuates the mind to its operations. And as the
+plants shine by night by the sun-beams, which are deposited in them
+during day, so shines the mind by means of its intellectual light).
+
+67. Who has seen dead bodies besmeared with blood to run about on the
+ground, or witnessed the fragments of stones in the woods to sing in
+musical strains?
+
+68. Where does the stone idol of the sun, dispel the darkness of the
+night; and where does the imaginary forest of the sky spread its shade
+on the ground?
+
+69. Of what good are the efforts of men, who are as ignorant as blocks
+of stones, and are led by their error in many ways; except it be to
+endanger themselves by the mirage of their minds? (The exertions of the
+ignorant are as vain as the labour of a Sisyphus).
+
+70. It is the imagination that displays the non-existent as existent in
+the soul, as it is the sun-beams, which exhibit the limpid main in the
+mazy sands.
+
+71. It is the moving principle in the body, which the sophists
+designate as the mind; but know it as a mere force of the winds, like
+the vital breath of living beings.
+
+72. Those whose self-consciousness is not disturbed, by the currents of
+their passions and desires; have their spiritual souls like an
+unperturbed stream (of psychic fluid).
+
+73. But when this pure consciousness is befouled by the false fancies
+of this and that, and that this is I and that is mine; then the soul
+and the vital principle, are both taken together to form a living being.
+
+74. The mind, the living soul and understanding, are all but fictitious
+names of an unreality, according to the conceptions of false thinkers,
+and not of them that know the true spirit.
+
+75. There is no mind nor understanding, no thinking principle, nor the
+body in reality; there is the only reality of the One universal spirit,
+which is ever existent everywhere. (So says the Sruti:—All else are but
+transitory creations of imagination, and so pass into nothing).
+
+76. It is the soul, which is all this world, it is time and all its
+fluctuations, it is more transparent than the atmosphere, and it is
+clear as it is nothing at all.
+
+77. It is not always apparent, owing to its transparency; yet it is
+ever existent, owing to our consciousness of it. The spirit is beyond
+all things, and is perceived by our inward perception of it.
+
+78. The mind vanishes into nothing, before our consciousness of the
+Supreme Soul; just as darkness is dispelled from that place, where the
+sunshine is present.
+
+79. When the transparent and self-conscious soul, raises other figures
+of its own will; then the presence of the soul is forgotten, and hid
+under the grosser creations of the mind.
+
+80. The Volitive faculty of the Supreme Spirit, is denominated the
+mind; but it is unmindedness and want of volition on our part, which
+produces our liberation. (_i.e._ Our submission to the Divine Will,
+sets us free from all liability, as it is said in the Common prayer:
+“Let thy will (and not mine) be done”).
+
+81. Such is the origin of the mind which is the root of creation; it is
+the faculty of the volition of the principle of our consciousness,
+otherwise called the soul. (The mind is the volitive faculty of the
+Spirit, see 80).
+
+82. The intellectual essence being defiled by its desires, after
+falling from its state of indifference; becomes the principle of
+production or producing the desired objects. (This is called the mind
+or the creative power, and is represented as the first male or the
+agent of procreation).
+
+83. The mind becomes extinct, by loss of the vital power; as the shadow
+of a thing disappears, by removal of the substance. (This passage
+establishes the extinction of the mind, with all its passions, feelings
+and thoughts upon the death of a man).
+
+84. The living body perceives in its heart, the notion of a distant
+place which exists in the mind, and this proves the identity of the
+vital breath and the thinking mind. (Again the communication of the
+passions and feelings between the heart and mind, proves them to be the
+same thing). (Hence the word _antah-karana_ or inward sense, is applied
+both to the heart as well as mind).
+
+85. It is therefore by repressing the mind, that the vital breath is
+also repressed, to produce longevity and healthiness. (It is done by
+the following methods, viz; by dispassionateness, suppression of
+breathing, by yoga meditation, and by cessation from bodily labour in
+the pursuit of worldly objects).
+
+86. The stone has the capability of mobility, and the fuel of
+inflammability; but the vital breath and mind, have not their powers of
+vibration or thinking (without the force of the intellect and the
+spirit).
+
+87. The breath of life is inert by itself, and its pulsation is the
+effect and composed of the surrounding air; so the action of the mind,
+is owing to the force of the intellect; whose pellucidity pervades all
+nature.
+
+88. It is the union of the intellectual and vibrating powers, which is
+thought to constitute the mind. Its production is as false, as the
+falsity of its knowledge. (All mental phenomena are erroneous).
+
+89. The mental power is called error and illusion also, and these in
+ignorance of the Supreme Brahma, produce the knowledge of this
+poisonous world (which springs from illusion of the mind).
+
+90. The powers of the intellect and vibration, combined with those of
+imagination and volition which constitute the mind, are productive of
+all worldly evils, unless they are weakened and kept under restraint.
+
+91. When the intellect thinks on or has the perception by the pulsation
+caused by the air. The wind of breath gives pulsation to the intellect,
+and causes its power of intellection; and this intellectual power gives
+rise to all the thoughts and desires of the mind.
+
+92. The percussive intellect which extends over the undivided sphere of
+the universe, is verily the thinking power, the mind is a false
+imagination like the ghost of infants.
+
+93. The intellect is the power of intellection, which cannot be
+intercepted by any thing else, like the mind any where; as there is no
+power to rise in contest against the almighty Indra. (The Intellect or
+_chit_ being the Divine mind).
+
+94. Thus there being no relation between intellection and the mind, it
+is wrong to attribute the mind with the power of thinking, which is not
+related with it.
+
+95. How can this union of the intellect with its vibration only, be
+styled the mind with its multifarious functions. The commander alone
+cannot be called an army without its component parts of horse,
+elephants and others.
+
+96. Hence there is no such thing as a good or bad mind in any of the
+three worlds (when there is no mind at all). The bias of its existence
+will be utterly removed by full knowledge of spirituality (tatwajnana).
+(That there is but one Spirit only).
+
+97. It is in vain and to no purpose, that they imagine the being of the
+mind. It is proved to be an unreality and having no substantiality of
+its own.
+
+98. Therefore, O magnanimous Ráma! never give rise to false
+imaginations of any kind, and particularly that of the mind which never
+exists any where.
+
+99. False phantasies rise as the mirage, from want of a full knowledge
+of things; they spring in the heart which is as barren as a desert, for
+want of the rain of full knowledge.
+
+100. The mind is a dead thing owing to its want of a form or activity,
+and yet it is a wonder as it is idolized in the circles of common
+people.
+
+101. It is a wonder that the mind, having no soul nor essence, nor a
+body nor size or support of its own, should spread its net over all
+ignorant minds.
+
+102. One who falls a victim to his unarmed and impotent mind, likens a
+man who says, he is hurt in his body by the falling of a lotus-flower
+upon it.
+
+103. The man that is undone by his inert, dumb and blinded mind (that
+neither sees nor seizes nor talks to him); is as one who complains of
+his being burnt by the cool full-moon-beams.
+
+104. People are verily killed by an antagonist, who is present before
+them; but it is a wonder that the ignorant are foiled by the inexistent
+mind of their own making.
+
+105. What is the power of that thing, which is a creation of mere
+fancy, and an unreal presentation of ignorance; and which being sought
+after, is no where to be found.
+
+106. It is a great wonder, that men should be overcome by their
+impotent minds, dealing in their delusions only.
+
+107. It is ignorance that is ever exposed to dangers, and the ignorant
+are always the victims of error. Know the unreal world to be the
+creation of ignorance and of the ignorant only.
+
+108. Oh! the misery of miseries, that the ignorant make of this
+creation of their ignorance to themselves, and that they fabricate a
+living soul for their sufferings only. (A separate living soul
+_jívátmá_, is denied in Vedánta).
+
+109. I weet this frail world to be a creation of the false imagination
+of the ignorant, and this earth to be as fragile as to be broken and
+borne away by the waves of the ocean.
+
+110. It is like the dark collyrium, which is broken down by the
+surrounding waters or seas, serving as its grinding mill; and yet men
+are maddened with it, as those struck by moon-beams. (Moonstruck
+lunatics).
+
+111. The visible world disappears at the sight of reason, as a man
+flies from the sight of his foe; and the train of imaginary creations
+fly before it, like hosts of demons vanquished by the gods.
+
+112. Thus is this world, which is a false creation of fancy, and exists
+nowhere except in the idle brains of the ignorant, lost into nothing at
+the sight of reason.
+
+113. He who is not able to govern his mind, and efface the thoughts of
+this false world, arising in the minds of the ignorant only; is not
+worthy of being advised in the abstruse doctrines of spirituality.
+
+114. Those who are confirmed in their belief of the visibles, and are
+self-sufficient in their knowledge of these; are unable to grasp the
+subtile science of abstract philosophy, and are therefore unfit to
+receive spiritual instruction.
+
+115. These men are insensible of the soft tunes of the lute who are
+accustomed to the loud beatings of drum, and they are startled at
+seeing the face of a sleeping friend (_i.e._ their hidden soul).
+
+116. They who fly with fear from the loud songs (preachings) of false
+preachers, cannot have the patience to listen to the silent lesson of
+their inward monitor; and they who are deluded by their own minds, can
+hardly be reclaimed by any other.
+
+117. Those who are tempted to taste the gall of worldly pleasures for
+sweet, are so subdued by its effects on their understandings, that they
+lose the power of discerning the truth altogether; and it is therefore
+useless to remonstrate with them.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+
+ ASCERTAINMENT OF THE THINKING PRINCIPLE.
+
+
+Argument. People unworthy of persuasion, their transmigrations, and
+purification of the mind.
+
+
+Vasishtha said: These multitudes of men, that are carried away by the
+waves of the torrents of the sea of worldly pursuits; are deaf and dumb
+to the admonitions of their spiritual instructors.
+
+2. They are not fit to derive the benefit of the spiritual knowledge,
+which I have propounded in this yogasástra by my rational discourses.
+
+3. They who are born blind and can see nothing, are not to be presented
+with the picture of a garden, portrayed with blooming blossoms and
+beautiful flowers by the intelligent artist.
+
+4. There is no such fool that would present fragrant odours to one,
+whose nostrils are snorting under some nasal disease (pinasa. Polypus),
+nor so great a dolt, that would consult an ignorant man on spiritual
+matters.
+
+5. What lack-wit is there, that would refer a question on law or
+religious subjects, to one of ungoverned passions and organs of sense,
+or whose eyeballs are rolling with the intoxication of wine.
+
+6. Who asks of the dead the way he should go, or one in the grave about
+the concourse in the city; and what witless man is there that resorts
+to an idiot to clear his doubts.
+
+7. Of what good is it to advise a witling, whose serpentine mind is
+coiling and creeping in the cave of his heart; and though it lies there
+in silence and sightless, is yet ungovernably wild?
+
+8. Know there is no such a thing as a well governed mind, for though
+you may fling it at a distance from you, yet it is never lost or
+annihilated. (The unsubdued mind recurs to us in repeated births).
+
+9. The simpleton who does not bear his sway over his false and delusive
+mind, is tormented to death by its venomous smart, as if stung by a
+deadly reptile.
+
+10. The learned know the vital powers, and the operations of the organs
+of action, to depend on the action and force of the soul; say then, O
+Ráma, what is that thing which they call the mind. (The three functions
+of motion, thought and organic action, being conducted by force of the
+vital breath, it is in vain to suppose the existence of the mind).
+
+11. The vital breath gives the force for bodily actions, and the soul
+produces the power of knowledge; the organs act by their own force, and
+the supreme spirit is the main source of all.
+
+12. All forces are but parts of the omnipotence of the supreme Spirit;
+their different appellations are but inventions of men.
+
+13. What is it that they call the living soul, and which has
+blindfolded the world; and what they term as the mind, is really an
+unreality and without any power of its own.
+
+14. Ráma! I have seen the continued misery arising from their false
+conception of the unreal mind; and my pity for them has caused my
+incessant sorrow.
+
+15. But why should I sorrow for the ignorant rabble, who bring their
+woe by their own error? The common herd is born to their misery like
+beasts and brutes.
+
+16. The ignorant rabble are born in their dull material bodies, for
+their destruction only. They are born to die away incessantly, like the
+waves of the ocean.
+
+17. What pity shall I take for them, that are seen every day to perish
+under the jaws of death, like numbers of animals immolated in the
+shambles.
+
+18. For whom shall I sorrow, when I see billions and trillions of gnats
+and moths, are destroyed day by day, by gusts of wind (which is their
+element and support).
+
+19. Whom shall I sorrow for, when I observe on every side the millions
+of deer and beasts of chase, that are killed every day in the hills and
+forests, by their hunters and sportsmen.
+
+20. Whom shall I feel for, when I find innumerable shoals of small
+fishes, that are devoured every day in the waters, by the bigger ones!
+
+21. I see an infinite number of animalcules, to be eaten up by flies
+and fleas; which in their turn, are devoured by the voracious spiders
+and scorpions.
+
+22. The frog feeds on flies, and is on its turn devoured by snakes. The
+birds of prey swallow the snake, and the weasel preys upon them.
+
+23. The weasel is killed by the cat, which is killed again by the dog;
+the bear destroys the dog, and is at last destroyed by the tiger.
+(জীবস্যজীবনাহার:—One animal is food to another.)
+
+24. The lion overcomes the tiger, and is overcome on its turn by the
+sarabha (a fabulous beast with eight feet). The sarabha is overthrown
+by its fall on rocky steeps, in its attempt to jump over the gathering
+clouds.
+
+25. The clouds are worsted by tempests, and these again are obstructed
+by the rising rocks and mountains. The mountains are split by thunder
+claps, and the thunderbolts of heaven are broken by the thundering
+Sakra (Jove).
+
+26. This Sakra or Indra is vanquished by Upendra or Vishnu (his younger
+brother), and Vishnu is made to undergo his incarnations in the shapes
+of men and beasts. He is subjected to the vicissitudes of pain and
+pleasure, and to the conditions of disease, decay and death. (Change is
+the order of nature.)
+
+27. Big-bodied beasts are fed upon by the leeches and fleas that stick
+to their bodies to suck their blood; and men fraught with knowledge and
+armed with weapons, are infested by their bloodsucking bugs and gnats.
+
+28. Thus the whole host of living bodies, are continually exposed to
+feed upon and to be fed by one another, with remorseless voracity.
+
+29. There is an incessant growth of leaches, fleas and ants, other
+small insects and worms on the one hand; and a continued dissolution of
+both the big and puny bodies in every place on earth.
+
+30. The womb of the waters, bears the breed of fishes, whales,
+hippopotami and other aquatic animals; and the bowels of the earth,
+produce the multitudes of worms and reptiles to infinity.
+
+31. The air teems with the brood of birds of various kinds, and the
+woods abound with wild beasts, and lions and tigers, the fleet deer and
+other brutes.
+
+32. There are inborn worms growing in the intestines, and upon the skin
+of animal bodies; and parasitical insects and animalcules, feeding upon
+the bark and leaves of trees.
+
+33. Insects are seen to be born in the crusts of stones, as frogs,
+vajrakítas and others; and many kinds of worms and insects, are found
+to grow in and subsist upon the faeces and excrements of animals.
+
+34. In this manner an endless number of living beings, are being born
+and perishing for ever and ever; and it is of no avail to them, whether
+kind hearted men are joyous or sorrowful at their births and deaths.
+
+35. The wise can have no cause for their joy or grief, in this
+continued course of incessant births and deaths of the living world.
+
+36. Such is the nature of all the different series of animal beings,
+that they incessantly grow to fall off like the leaves of trees. (These
+are known as the ephemerids and the heirs and poor pensioners of a day).
+
+37. The kind-hearted man, who wishes to remove the sorrows of the
+ignorant by his advice, attempts an impossibility, as that of shrouding
+the allpervasive sunshine, by means of his umbrella.
+
+38. It is useless to give advice to the ignorant, who are no better
+than beasts in their understandings; as it is fruitless to talk to a
+rock or block of wood or stone in the wilderness.
+
+39. The dull-headed ignorant, who are no better than beasts, are
+dragged by their wilful minds, like the cattle by their halters.
+
+40. It would make even the stones to melt into tears, to see the
+ignorant plunged in the slough of their perverted minds, and employed
+in acts and rites for their own ruin. (The ruin of their souls caused
+by ritualistic observances.)
+
+41. Men of ungoverned minds, are always exposed to dangers and
+difficulties; but the expurgated minds of the wise, are free from the
+evils and mishaps of life.
+
+42. Now Ráma, consider well the miseries of ungoverned minds; and
+betake yourself to the knowledge of the knowable One. (_i.e._ The One
+alone that is worthy of being known).
+
+43. Never entertain in your imagination the vain bugbear of a mind,
+which has no real existence of its own; and beware of this false
+belief, which may betray you like the ideal ghost of children.
+
+44. As long as you are forgetful of the soul, you must remain in utter
+ignorance; and so long will you continue to be tortured by the dragon,
+residing in the recess of your heart.
+
+45. Now you have known the whole truth, as I have expounded to you;
+that it is your imagination only, that presents you with the idea of
+your mind, of which you must get rid for ever.
+
+46. If you rely in the visibles, you are subject to the delusion of
+your mind; but no sooner, you shun your reliance in them, than you are
+liberated from your illusion of it.
+
+47. The visible world is a combination, of the three qualities of
+_satva_, _rajas_ and _tamas_; and it is exposed before you, by your
+_máyá_ or illusion only, as a snare is spread for entanglement of
+beasts.
+
+48. Think of the inexistence both of the subjective-self and the
+objective world; and remain as firm as a fixed rock on earth, and
+behold the Lord only, in the form of infinite space in thy heart. (This
+is Vasishtha’s Vacuism).
+
+49. Shun, Ráma, the false thoughts of thy self-existence, and that of
+the visible world also; and forsake thy belief in the duality, in order
+to settle thyself in the infinite unity.
+
+50. Continue to meditate on the soul, as it is situated between the
+subjective viewer, and the objective view of this world; and as it is
+existent in thy vision, which lies between the two. (_i.e._ Between
+yourself and the visible object, which is empty space).
+
+51. Forsake the ideas of the subject and object of your taste (_i.e._
+of the taster and tastable); and thinking on their intermediate state
+of gustation or tasting, be one with the soul.
+
+52. Ráma, place yourself in the position of your thought or power of
+thinking, which lieth betwixt the thinker and thinkables; support your
+soul on the supportless soul of all, and remain steady in your
+meditation.
+
+53. Forsake the cares of the world, and be exempt from the thoughts of
+existence and non-existence; meditate on the universal soul and be
+settled with thy soul in that soul.
+
+54. When you have learnt to think on the thinkable one, by
+relinquishing the thought of your own existence; you shall then arrive
+to that state of the unconsciousness, which is free from misery (or the
+state of supreme bliss).
+
+55. Know your thoughts to be your fetters, and your self-consciousness
+as your binding chain; therefore O Ráma! loosen the lion of your soul,
+from the prison house of your mind.
+
+56. By departing from the state of the Supreme Soul, and falling to the
+thoughts of the mind, you will be crowded by your imaginations, and see
+only the objects of your thought all about you.
+
+57. The Knowledge, that intellection or thinking power is distinct from
+the soul, introduces the existence of the unhappy mind, which must be
+got rid of for the sake of true happiness. (by knowing them as the one
+and same thing).
+
+58. When you become conscious of the Supreme soul in you, and as
+permeated throughout all nature, you will then find the thinker and his
+thinking, the thinkables and their thoughts, vanish into nothing.
+
+59. The thought that “I have a soul and a living soul also,” brings on
+us all the miseries to which we are exposed to all eternity. (_i.e._
+consciousness of a personal entity, causes the woes which personality
+is ever liable to).
+
+60. The consciousness that “I am the one soul, and not a living being
+or distinct existences;” (because all things distinct from the
+universal soul are nothing at all); is called the tranquility of the
+spirit and its true felicity.
+
+61. When you are certain, O Ráma! that the world is the universal soul
+itself, you will find the false distinctions of your mind and living
+soul, to be nothing in reality.
+
+62. When you come to perceive that all this is your very self, your
+mind will then melt away into the soul, as the darkness dissolved in
+the sunlight, and the shadow disappears in the air.
+
+63. As long as you cherish the snake of your mind within yourself, you
+are in danger of catching its poison; but this being removed by your
+yoga meditation, you escape the danger at once.
+
+64. Be bold, O Ráma! to destroy the mighty demon of the deep rooted
+error of your mind, by the power of incantation (_mantras_) of your
+perfect knowledge.
+
+65. Upon disappearance of the demon of the mind from the dwelling of
+your body, as when a Yaksha disappears in the air, you will be free
+from every disease, danger, care and fear.
+
+66. Dispassionateness, and disinterestedness, joined with the knowledge
+of unity, melt down the substance of the mind, and confer the best and
+highest state of felicity and rest in the Supreme spirit; and bring on
+that state of tranquility which is the main aim of every body. May all
+these blessings attend upon you.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER. XV.
+
+ ON AVARICE.
+
+
+Argument. Description of avarice as the Root of all Evils.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—The soul by following the unholy essence of the
+mind, which is the source of the world, is led to fall into the snare,
+which is laid by it for all living beings.
+
+2. The soul then loses the brightness of its spiritual form, and takes
+the gross shape of the senses: it waits upon the guidance of the mind,
+and indulges in its impure imaginations.
+
+3. It falls into avarice, which like a poisonous plant makes it
+senseless, and spreads a fearful anesthesia over it.
+
+4. Avarice like a dark night, hides the soul under the gloom of
+oblivion, and produces endless pangs to the soul.
+
+5. The god Siva withstood the flame of the kalpa conflagration, but no
+body can withstand the fierce fire of avarice.
+
+6. It bears a form as formidable as that of a long, sharp and sable
+dagger; which is cold in appearance, but very injurious in her effects.
+
+7. Avarice is an evergreen plant, bearing bunches of plenteous fruits
+on high; which when they are obtained and tasted, prove to be bitter
+and galling.
+
+8. Avarice is a voracious wolf, prowling in the recess of the heart;
+and feeding unseen on the flesh and blood and bones of its sheltering
+body.
+
+9. Avarice is as a rainy stream, full of foul and muddy water now
+overflowing and breaking down its banks, and then leaving empty its
+dirty bed.
+
+10. The man stricken with avarice, remains niggardly and broken hearted
+at all times; his spirits are damped, and his sordid soul is debased
+before mankind. He is now dejected, and now he weeps and lays himself
+down in despair.
+
+11. He who has not this black adder of greediness, burrowing in the
+recess of his heart, has the free play of his vital breath, which is
+otherwise poisoned by the breath of the viper rankling in his breast.
+
+12. The heart which is not darkened by the gloomy night of greediness,
+feels the rays of humanity sparkling in it, like the glancing of the
+bright moon-beams.
+
+13. The heart that is not eaten up by the corroding cares of avarice,
+is as an uncankered tree, blooming with its blossoms of piety.
+
+14. The current of avarice, is ever running amidst the wilderness of
+human desires, with ceaseless torrents and billows, and hideous
+whirlpools and vortices around.
+
+15. The thread of avarice, like the long line of a flying kite or
+tossing top, whirls and furls and pulls mankind, as its toys and
+playthings.
+
+16. The rude, rough and hard-hearted avarice, breaks and cuts down the
+tender roots of virtues, with the remorseless axe of its hardihood.
+
+17. Foolishmen led by avarice, fall into the hell pit, like the
+ignorant deer into the blackhole; by being enticed by the blades of
+grass, scattered upon its covering top.
+
+18. Men are not so much blinded by their aged and decayed eyesight, as
+they are blinded by the invisible avarice seated in their hearts.
+
+19. The heart which is nestled by the ominous owl of avarice, is as
+bemeaned as the god Vishnu, who became a dwarf in begging a bit of
+ground from Bali.
+
+20. There is a divine power, which hath implanted this insatiable
+avarice in the heart of man; which whirls him about, as if tied by a
+rope, like the sun revolving round its centre in the sky.
+
+21. Fly from this avarice, which is as heinous as the venomous snake.
+It is the source of all evils, and even of death in this mortal world.
+
+22. Avarice blows on men as the wind, and it is avarice that makes them
+sit still as stones; avarice makes some as sedate as the earth, and
+avarice ransacks the three worlds in its rapid course.
+
+23. All this concourse of men, is impelled to and fro by avarice, as if
+they are pulled by ropes; it is easy to break the band of ropes, but
+not the bond of avarice. (There is a play of words here, as that of
+band, bond and bondage).
+
+24. Then Ráma, get rid of avarice by forsaking your desires; because it
+is ascertained by the wise, that the mind dies away by want of its
+desires (to dwell upon).
+
+25. Never observe the distinctions of my, thy and his in all thy
+wishes, but wish for the good of all alike; and never foster any bad
+desire (which is foul in its nature).
+
+26. The thought of self in what is not the self, is the parent of all
+our woe; when you cease to think the notself as the self you are then
+reckoned among the wise.
+
+27. Cut off your egoism, O gentle Ráma! and dwell in thy unearthly self
+by forgetting yourself, and by dispelling your fear from all created
+being. (Here is an alliteration of the letter bh ভ in the
+last line, as ভু, ভব, ভয়).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+
+ HEALING OF AVARICE.
+
+
+Argument. The way to forsake the desires, and become liberated in this
+life and the next.
+
+
+Ráma said:—It is too deep for me sir, to understand what you say to me,
+for the abandonment of my egoism and avarice.
+
+2. For how is it possible, sir, to forsake my egoism, without forsaking
+this body and every thing that bears relation to it?
+
+3. It is egoism which is the chief support of the body, as a post or
+prop is the support of a thatched house.
+
+4. The body will surely perish without its egoism, and will be cut
+short of its durability, as a tree is felled by application of the saw
+to its root.
+
+5. Now tell me, O most eloquent sir, how I may live by forsaking my
+egoism (which is myself); give me your answer, according to your right
+judgment.
+
+6. Vasishtha replied:—O lotus-eyed and respectful Ráma! abandonment of
+desires, is said to be of two kinds by the wise, who are well
+acquainted with the subject; the one is called the _jneya_ or knowable
+and the other is what they style the thinkable (or dhyeya).
+
+7. The knowledge that I am the life of my body and its powers, and
+these are the supports of my life, and that I am something.
+
+8. But this internal conviction being weighed well by the light of
+reason, will prove that neither am I related with the external body,
+nor does it bear any relation with my internal soul.
+
+9. Therefore the performance of one’s duties, with calmness and
+coolness of his understanding, and without any desire of fruition, is
+called the abandonment of desire in thought.
+
+10. But the understanding which views things in an equal light, and by
+forsaking its desires, relinquishes the body without taking any concern
+for it, and is called the knowing abandonment of desires. (_i.e._ Of
+which the Yogi has full knowledge).
+
+11. He who foregoes with ease the desires arising from his egoism, is
+styled the thinking abjurer of his desires, and is liberated in his
+life time.
+
+12. He who is calm and even-minded, by his abandonment of vain and
+imaginary desires; is a knowing deserter of his desires, and is
+liberated also in this world.
+
+13. Those who abandon the desires in their thought, and remain with
+listless indifference to everything, are like those who are liberated
+in their life time.
+
+14. They are also called the liberated, who have had their composure
+(_insouciance_) after abandonment of their desires, and who rest in the
+Supreme Spirit, with their souls disentangled from their bodies. (This
+is called the disembodied liberation বিদেহ মুক্তি).
+
+15. Both these sorts of renunciation are alike entitled to liberation,
+both of them are extricated from pain; and both lead the liberated
+souls to the state of Brahma.
+
+16. The mind whether engaged in acts or disengaged from them, rests in
+the pure spirit of God, by forsaking its desires. (There is this
+difference only between them, that the one has an active body, while
+the other is without its activity).
+
+17. The former kind of yogi is liberated in his embodied state, and
+freed from pain throughout his life time; but the latter that has
+obtained his liberation in his bodiless state after his demise, remains
+quite unconscious of his desires. (The liberated soul is freed from
+desire after death. Their desires being dead with themselves, they have
+nothing to desire).
+
+18. He who feels no joy nor sorrow at the good or evil, which befalls
+to him in his life time, as it is the course of nature, is called the
+living liberated man.
+
+19. He who neither desires nor dreads the casualties of good or evil,
+which are incidental to human life; but remains quiet regardless of
+them as in his dead sleep, is known as the truly liberated man.
+
+20. He whose mind is freed from the thoughts, of what is desirable or
+undesirable to him, and from his differentiation of mine, thine and his
+(_i.e._ of himself from others), is called the truly liberated.
+
+21. He whose mind is not subject to the access of joy and grief, of
+hope and fear, of anger, boast and niggardliness, is said to have his
+liberation.
+
+22. He whose feelings are all obtundent within himself as in his sleep,
+and whose mind enjoys its felicity like the beams of the fullmoon, is
+said to be the liberated man in this world.
+
+23. Válmíki says:—After the sage had said so far, the day departed to
+its evening service with the setting sun. The assembled audience
+retired to their evening ablutions, and repaired again to the assembly
+with the rising sun on the next day.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+
+ ON THE EXTIRPATION OF AVARICE.
+
+
+Argument. Liberation of Embodied or Living Beings.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—It is difficult O Ráma! to describe in words the
+inexplicable nature of the liberation of disembodied souls; hear me
+therefore relate to you further about the liberation of living beings.
+
+2. The desire of doing one’s duties without expectation of their
+reward, is also called the living liberation, and the doers of their
+respective duties, are said to be the living liberated.
+
+3. The dependance of beings on their desires, and their strong
+attachment to external objects, are called to be their bondage and
+fetters in this world, by the doctors in divinity.
+
+4. But the desire of conducting one’s self according to the course of
+events, and without any expectation of fruition, constitutes also the
+liberation of the living; and is concomitant with the body only
+(without vitiating the inner soul).
+
+5. The desire of enjoying the external objects, is verily the bondage
+of the soul; but its indifference to worldly enjoyments, is what
+constitutes one’s freedom in his living state.
+
+6. Want of greediness and anxiety prior to and on account of some gain,
+and absence of mirth and change in one’s disposition afterwards (_i.e._
+after the gain); is the true freedom of men.
+
+7. Know, O high-minded Ráma! that desire to be the greatest bondage of
+men, which is in eager expectation of the possession of anything.
+(Lit.: that such things may be mine).
+
+8. He who is devoid of desire of everything, whether existent or
+inexistent in the world; is the truly great man, with the greatest
+magnanimity of his soul.
+
+9. Therefore, Ráma! forsake the thoughts both of thy bondage and
+liberation, and also of thy happiness and misery; and by getting rid of
+thy desire of the real and unreal, remain as calm as the undisturbed
+ocean.
+
+10. Think thyself, O most intelligent Ráma! to be devoid of death and
+decay, and do not stain thy mind with the fears of thy disease or death
+(because thy soul is free from them).
+
+11. These substances are nothing, nor are you any of these things that
+you see; there is something beyond these, and know that you are that
+very thing (which is the soul or a spiritual being).
+
+12. The phenomenon of the world is an unreality, and every thing here
+is unreal, that appears real in thy sight; knowing then thyself to be
+beyond all these, what earthly thing is there that thou canst crave for?
+
+13. All reasoning men, O Ráma! consider themselves in some one of these
+four different lights in their minds, which I shall now explain to you
+in brief.
+
+14. He who considers his whole body (from his head to foot), as the
+progeny of his parents (_i.e._ devoid of his spiritual part), is surely
+born to the bondage of the world. (This is the first kind).
+
+15. But they who are certain of their immaterial soul, which is finer
+than the point of a hair, are another class of men; who are called the
+wise and are born for their liberation. (This is the second).
+
+16. There is a third class of men, who consider themselves as same with
+the universal soul of the world; such men O support of Raghu’s race,
+are also entitled to their liberation. (These belong to the third kind.)
+
+17. There is again a fourth class, who consider themselves and the
+whole world to be as inane as the empty air (or vacuum); these are
+surely the partakers of liberation.
+
+18. Of these four kinds of beliefs, the first is the leader to bondage;
+while the three others growing from purity of thought, lead to the path
+of liberation.
+
+19. Among these, the first is subject to the bondage of avarice; but
+the other three proceeding from pure desire, are crowned with
+liberation.
+
+20. Those of the third kind, who consider themselves same with the
+universal soul, are in my opinion never subject to sorrow or pain.
+
+21. The magnitude of the Supreme spirit, extends over and below and
+about all existence; hence the belief of “all in One, or One in all”
+never holds a man in bondage.
+
+22. The fourth kind—vacuists (or _súnyavádís_), who believe in the
+vacuum, and maintain the principles of nature or illusion, are in
+ignorance of divine knowledge, which represents God as Siva, Isha,
+male, and eternal soul.
+
+23. He is all and everlasting, without a second or another like him;
+and he is pervaded by his omniscience, and not by the ignorance called
+_máyá_ or illusion.
+
+24. The spirit of God fills the universe, as the water of the ocean
+fills the deep (pátála); and stretches from the highest heaven
+(empyrean), to the lowest abyss of the infernal regions.
+
+25. Hence it is his reality only which is ever existent, and no unreal
+world exists at any time. It is the liquid water which fills the sea,
+and not the swelling wave which rises in it.
+
+26. As the bracelets and armlets are no other than gold, so the
+varieties of trees and herbs, are not distinct from the Universal
+Spirit.
+
+27. It is the one and same omnipotence of the Supreme spirit, that
+displays the different forms in its works of the creation.
+
+28. Never be joyous nor sorry for anything belonging to thee or
+another, nor feel thyself delighted or dejected at any gain or loss,
+that thou mayest happen to incur. (For know everything to be the Lord’s
+and nothing as thine own. Or: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken
+away”. Job).
+
+29. Be of an even disposition, and rely on thy essence as one with the
+Supreme soul. Attend to thy multifarious duties, and thus be observant
+of unity in thy spiritual concerns, and dualities in thy temporal
+affairs.
+
+30. Take care of falling into the hidden holes of this world, in your
+pursuit after the varieties of objects; and be not like an elephant
+falling into a hidden pit in the forest.
+
+31. O Ráma of great soul! There cannot be a duality, as it is thought
+in the mind; nor O Ráma of enlightened soul; can there be any unity or
+duality of the soul. The true essence is ever existent with out its
+unity or duality, and is styled the all and nothing particular, and as
+itself—Svarúpa or suiform. (The soul is not unity, because one is the
+prime number of all others by addition with itself; nor is it a
+duality, having no second or another like it. It is the indefinite all
+or whole: and no definite that this or so says the Sruti:
+तस्मात्तत् सर्ब्बमभवत् नेह नानास्ति किञ्चन ।)
+
+32. There is no ego or thy subjective-self, nor the objective worlds
+that thou seest. All this is the manifestation of the eternal and
+imperishable omniscience, and know this world as neither an entity nor
+non-entity by itself.
+
+33. Know the Supreme being to be without beginning and end, the
+enlightener of all lights, the undecaying, unborn and incomprehensible
+one. He is without part, and any change in him. He is beyond
+imagination and all the imaginary objects all about us.
+
+34. Know for certain in thy mind, that the Lord is always present in
+the full light of thy intellect. He is the root of thy consciousness,
+and is of the nature of thy inward soul. He is conceivable in the
+intellect, and is the Brahma—the all and everlasting, and the
+all pervading, the subjective I, and the objective thou and this world.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+ LIVING LIBERATION OR TRUE
+ FELICITY OF MAN IN THIS LIFE.
+
+
+Argument. The True Enfranchisement of the Soul, in the Living state of
+man in this world.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—I will now relate to you, O Ráma! the nature of
+those great men, who conduct themselves in this world, with their
+desires under their subjection, and whose minds are not blemished by
+evil inclinations.
+
+2. The sage whose mind is freed in his life-time, conducts himself
+unconcerned in this world; he smiles secure at its occurrences, and is
+regardless of the first, last and middle stages of his life (namely:
+the pains of his birth and death, and the whole course of his life).
+
+3. He is attentive to his present business, and unmindful of every
+other object about him; he is devoid of cares and desires, and his
+thought is of his internal cogitations only.
+
+4. He is free from anxiety in all places, who tolerates whatever he
+happens to meet with; he sees the light of reason in his soul, and
+walks in the romantic groves of his musings.
+
+5. He rests in that transcendental bliss, with prospects as bright as
+the cooling beams of the full-moon, who is neither elated nor depressed
+in any state of his life, nor droops down under any circumstance.
+
+6. Whose generosity and manliness do not forsake him, even when he is
+beset by his bitterest enemies; and who is observant of his duties to
+his superiors, such a man is not crest-fallen in this world.
+
+7. Who neither rejoices nor laments at his lot, nor envies nor hankers
+after the fortune of another; but pursues his own business in quiet
+silence, is the man that is never down-cast in this world.
+
+8. Who, when asked, says what he is doing, but unasked remains as a
+dead block; and is freed from desire and disgust; he is never depressed
+in his heart and mind. (The Urdu poet expresses this sort of unconcern,
+more beautifully, when he says:—Should one ask you of aught, look to
+his face and reply him not. _Koi kuch’h puchhe to munh dekh kar chup
+rahjana_ &c. And who so understands the hearts of men, is never sick at
+his heart).
+
+9. He speaks agreeably to every one, and utters gently what he is
+required to say; he is never put out of countenance, who understands
+the intentions of others. (Speaking agreeably or his questioners means
+what pleases every body, be it good or bad for him as it is said
+in Chánakya’s excerpta: सत्यं ब्रुयात् प्रियम्ब्रुयात्, न ब्रुयात् सत्यमप्रियं. Because says
+Bháraví: ‘It is rare to have a useful saying, which is delectable also
+at the same time’. हितं मनोहारिचदुर्लमवचस).
+
+10. He sees the right and wrong dealings of men, and the acts of the
+depraved desires of their minds; but knowing all human affairs as
+clearly as in a mirror in his hand, he holds his peace with every one.
+
+11. Standing on his firm footing (of nonchalance), and knowing the
+frailty of worldly things, he smiles at the vicissitudes of nature with
+the cold frigidity (sang froid) of his heart (like the laughing
+philosopher).
+
+12. Such is the nature, Ráma, of the great souls, who have subdued
+their minds, and know the course of nature, as I have described to you.
+
+13. I am unable to describe to you, the fond beliefs of the minds of
+the ignorant populace, who are plunged in the mud of their sensual
+enjoyments (like earthly worms). (Who are of ungoverned minds).
+
+14. Women, devoid of understanding, and graced with their personal
+charms, are the idols of these people; who are fond of their golden
+forms, without knowing them to be the flames of hell fire.
+
+15. Wealth, the fond object of the foolish people, is fraught with
+every ill and evil desire; its pleasure is poison and productive of
+misery, and its prosperity is replete with dangers.
+
+16. Its use in the doing of meritorious deeds, and various acts of
+piety, is also fraught with a great many evils, which I have not the
+power to recount. (The works of merit being productive of pride and
+passions, and those of piety being the source of transmigration).
+
+17. Therefore Ráma! keep your sight on the full view (clairvoyance) of
+your spirit, by retracting it from the external visibles and internal
+thoughts; and conduct yourself in this world as one liberated in his
+life-time.
+
+18. Being free from all your inward passions and feelings of affection,
+and having given up all your desires and expectations; continue in the
+performance of your outward duties in this world.
+
+19. Follow all your duties in life with a noble pliability of your
+disposition; but preserve the philosophic renunciation of everything in
+your mind, and conduct yourself accordingly in this world.
+
+20. Think well on the fleeting states of all earthly things, and fix
+your mind in the lasting nature of your soul; and thus conduct yourself
+in this transitory stage, with the thoughts of eternity in your mind.
+
+21. Conduct yourself, Ráma, with your inward indifference and want of
+all desire: but show your outward desire for whatever is good and
+great. Be cold blooded within yourself but full of ardour in your
+external demeanour.
+
+22. Conduct yourself among men, O Ráma! with a feigned activity in your
+outward appearance, but with real inaction in your mind; show yourself
+as the doer of your deeds, but know in your mind to be no actor at all.
+
+23. Conduct yourself such, O Ráma! with your full knowledge of this
+world, as if you are acquainted with the natures of all beings herein;
+and go wherever you please with your intimate acquaintance of
+everything there.
+
+24. Demean yourself with mankind, with a feigned appearance of joy and
+grief, and of condolence and congratulation with others, and an assumed
+shape of activity and action among mankind.
+
+25. Manage yourself, O Ráma! with full possession of your mind, and
+untinged by pride and vanity, as if it were as clear as the spotless
+sky.
+
+26. Go on through your life unshackled by the bonds of desire, and join
+in all the outward acts of life, with an unaltered evenness of your
+mind under every circumstance.
+
+27. Do not give room to the thoughts of your bondage or liberation in
+this world, nor of the embodiment or release of your soul here; but
+think the revolving worlds to be a magic scene, and preserve perfect
+tranquility of your mind.
+
+28. Know all this as an illusion, and it is ignorance only, that
+presents the false appearance of the world to sight; and yet we take
+them for true, as you view the water in the burning beams of the sun in
+a desert.
+
+29. The unobstructed, uniform and all pervading soul, can have no
+restriction or bondage; and what is unrestricted in itself, cannot have
+its release also.
+
+30. It is want of true knowledge, that presents the false view of the
+world before us; but the knowledge of truth disperses the view; as the
+knowledge of the rope, dispels the fallacy of the snake in it.
+
+31. You have known the true essence of your being by your right
+discernment (that it is He—the Sat); you are thereby freed from the
+sense of your personality, and are set free as the subtile air.
+
+32. You have known the truth, and must give up your knowledge of
+untruth, together with the thoughts of your friends and relatives, all
+which are unreal in their natures.
+
+33. Such being the case, you must consider yourself (your soul), as
+something other than those: and that you have received the same, from
+the Supreme source of all.
+
+34. This soul bears no relation to your friends or possession, to your
+good or evil actions, or to anything whatever in this world;
+
+35. When you are convinced that this very soul constitutes your
+essence; you have nothing to fear from the erroneous conception of the
+world, which is no more than a misconception.
+
+36. You can have no concern, with the weal or woe of a friend or foe,
+who is not born so to you; for every one being born for himself, you
+have no cause of joy or grief for any body (whether he is friendly or
+not to you).
+
+37. If thou knowest that thou hadst been before (creation), and shalt
+be so for everafterwards (to eternity); you are truly wise.
+
+38. Shouldst thou feel so much for the friends, by whom thou art beset
+in this life; why dost thou then not mourn for them, that are dead and
+gone in thy present and past lives?
+
+39. If thou wert something otherwise than what thou art at present, and
+shalt have to be something different from what now thou art, why then
+shouldst thou sorrow for what has not its self-identity? (_i.e._ the
+body which is changed in all its transmigrations).
+
+40. If thou art to be born no more, after thy past and present births
+(_i.e._ if there be no further transmigration of thy soul), then thou
+hast no cause for sorrow, being extinct thyself in the Supreme Spirit.
+
+41. Therefore there is no cause of sorrow, in aught that occurs
+according to the course of nature; but rather be joyous in pursuing the
+duties of thy present life (for want of thy knowledge of thy past and
+future states).
+
+42. But do not indulge the excess of thy joy or grief, but preserve thy
+equanimity everywhere; by knowing the Supreme Spirit to pervade in all
+places.
+
+43. Know thyself to be the form of the infinite spirit, and stretching
+wide like the extended vacuum; and that thou art the pure eternal
+light, and the focus of full effulgence.
+
+44. Know thy eternal and invisible soul, to be distinct from all
+worldly substances; and to be a particle of that universal soul, which
+dwells in and stretches through the hearts of all bodies; and is like
+the unseen thread, running through the holes and connecting the links
+of a necklace (or like the string in the beads of a rosary). (This
+connecting soul is denominated the Sútrátmá, which fills, bounds,
+connects and equals all).
+
+45. That the continuation of the world, is caused by the reproduction
+of what has been before, is what you learn from the unlearned; and not
+so from the learned (who know the world to be nothing). Know this and
+not that, and be happy in this life.
+
+46. The course of the world and this life, is ever tending to decay and
+disease. It is ignorance that represents them to be progressing to
+perfection. But you who are intelligent, knowest their real natures (of
+frailty and unreality).
+
+47. What else can be the nature of error but falsehood, and what may
+the state of sleep be, but dream and drowsiness? (So is this world a
+mistaken existence, and this life a mere dream of unreal appearance,
+which so vividly shines before you).
+
+48. Whom do you call your good friend, and whom do you say your great
+enemy? They all belong to the Sole One, and proceed alike from the
+Divine will.
+
+49. Everything is frail and fickle, and has its rise and fall from and
+into the Supreme Spirit; it likens the wave of the sea, rising and
+falling from and into the same water.
+
+50. The worlds are rolling upward and going down again, like the axis
+and spokes of a wheel. (The rotations of the planets in their circuits
+above and below the sun).
+
+51. The celestials sometimes fall into hell, and the infernals are
+sometimes raised to heaven; animals of one kind are regenerated in
+another form, and the people of one continent and island are reborn in
+another (as men are led from one country and climate to another, and
+settle there).
+
+52. The opulent are reduced to indigence, and the indigent are raised
+to affluence; and all beings are seen to be rising and falling in a
+hundred ways.
+
+53. Who has seen the wheel of fortune, to move on slowly in one
+straight forward course for ever, and not tumbling in its ups and
+downs, nor turning to this side and that in its winding and uneven
+route. Fixedness of fortune is a fiction, as that of finding the frost
+in fire.
+
+54. Those that are called great fortunes, and their components and
+appendages as also many good friends and relations; are all seen to fly
+away in a few days of this transient life.
+
+55. The thought of something as one’s own and another’s, and of this
+and that as mine, thine, his or others’, are as false as the appearance
+of double suns and moons in the sky.
+
+56. That this is a friend and this other a foe, and that this is myself
+and that one is another, are all but false conceptions of your mind,
+and must be wiped off from it (since the whole is but the one Ego).
+
+57. Make it thy pleasure however to mix with the blinded populace, and
+those that are lost to reason; and deal with them in thy usual
+unaltered way. (Mix with the thoughtless mob, but think with the
+thoughtful wise. So says Sadi: I learnt morals from the immoral,
+_adabaz bedabanamokhtam_).
+
+58. Conduct thyself in such a manner in thy journey through this world,
+that thou mayst not sink under the burden of thy cares of it.
+
+59. When thou comest to thy reason, to lay down thy earthly cares and
+desires; then shalt thou have that composure of thy mind, which will
+exonerate thee from all thy duties and dealings in life.
+
+60. It is the part of lowminded men, to reckon one as a friend and
+another as no friend; but noble minded men do not observe such
+distinctions between man and man. (Lit. Their minds are not clouded by
+the mist of distinction).
+
+61. There is nothing wherein I am not (or where there is not the Ego);
+and nothing which is not mine (_i.e._ beyond the Ego: the learned who
+have considered it well, make no difference of persons in their minds).
+
+62. The intellects of the wise, are as clear as the spacious firmament,
+and there is no rising nor setting of their intellectual light, which
+views everything as serenely as in the serenity of the atmosphere and
+as plainly as the plain surface of the earth.
+
+63. Know Ráma! all created beings, are friendly and useful to you, and
+there is no body nor any in the world, wherewith you are not related in
+some way on your part. (No body is a unit himself, but forms a part of
+the universal whole).
+
+64. It is erroneous to look <on> any one as a friend or foe, among the
+various orders of created beings in the universe; which in reality may
+be serviceable to you, however unfriendly they may appear at first.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+
+ ON HOLY KNOWLEDGE.
+
+
+Argument. Story of Punya and Pávana, and the instruction of the former
+to the latter.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—I will now set before you an example on the
+subject (of the distinction of friend and foe), in the instance of two
+brothers, who were born of a sage on the banks of Ganges, going in
+three directions of _tripatha_ or _trisrot_ as _trivia_.
+
+2. Hear then this holy and wonderful tale of antiquity, which now
+occurs to my mind on the subject of friends and enemies, which I have
+been relating to you.
+
+3. There is in this continent of Jambudvípa (Asia), a mountainous
+region beset by groves and forests, with the high mount of Mahendra
+rising above the rest.
+
+4. It touched the sky with its lofty peaks, and the arbour of its kalpa
+trees; spread its shadow over the hermits and kinnaras that resorted
+under its bower.
+
+5. It resounded with the carol of the sages, who chaunted the Sámaveda
+hymns on it, in their passage from its caverns and peaks to the region
+of Indra (the god of the vault of heaven).
+
+6. The fleecy clouds which incessantly drizzled with rain water from
+its thousand peaks; and washed the plants and flowers below, appeared
+as tufts of hair hanging down from heaven to earth.
+
+7. The mountain re-echoed to the loud roars of the impetuous octopede
+Sarabhas, with the thunder claps of kalpa clouds from the hollow mouths
+of its dark and deep clouds. (So Himálaya is said to warble to the
+tunes of Kinnaras from its cavern mounts).[7]
+
+8. The thundering noise of its cascades falling into its caverns from
+precipice to precipice, has put to blush the loud roar of the Surges of
+the sea.
+
+9. There on tableland upon the craggy top of the mountain, flowed the
+sacred stream of the heavenly Ganges, for the ablution and beverage of
+the hermits.
+
+10. There on the banks of the trivious river—tripatha—Gangá, was a
+gemming mountain, sparkling as bright gold, and decorated with
+blossoming trees.
+
+11. There lived a sage by name of Dirghatapas, who was a
+personification of devotion, and a man of enlightened understanding; he
+had a noble mind, and was inured in austerities of devotion.
+
+12. This sage was blessed with two boys as beautiful as the full moon,
+and named Punya and Pávana (the meritorious and holy), who were as
+intelligent as the sons of Brihaspati, known by the names of the two
+Kachas.
+
+13. He lived there on the bank of the river, and amidst a grove of
+fruit trees, with his wife and the two sons born of them.
+
+14. In course of time the two boys arrived to their age of discretion,
+and the elder of them named Punya or meritorious, was superior to the
+other in all his merits.
+
+15. The younger boy named Pávana or the holy, was half awakened in his
+intellect, like the half blown lotus at the dawn of the day; and his
+want of intelligence kept him from the knowledge of truth, and in the
+uncertainty of his faith.
+
+16. Then in the course of the all destroying time, the sage came to
+complete a century of years, and his tall body and long life, were
+reduced in their strength by his age and infirmity.
+
+17. Being thus reduced by decrepitude in his vitality, he bade adieu to
+his desires in this world, which was so frail and full of a hundred
+fearful accidents to human life (namely, the pains attending upon
+birth, old age and death, and the fears of future transmigration and
+falling into hell fire).
+
+18. The old devotee Dirghatapas, quitted at last his mortal frame in
+the grotto of the mount; as a bird quits its old nest for ever, or as a
+water-bearer lays down the log of his burthen from his shoulders.
+
+19. His spirit then fled like the fragrance of a flower to that vacuous
+space, which is ever tranquil, free from attributes and thought, and is
+of the nature of the pure intellect.
+
+20. The wife of the sage finding his body lying lifeless on the ground,
+fell down upon it, and remained motionless like a lotus flower nipt
+from its stalk.
+
+21. Having been long accustomed to the practice of yoga, according to
+the instruction of her husband; she quitted her undecayed body, as a
+bee flits from an unfaded flower to the empty air.
+
+22. Her soul followed her husband’s, unseen by men, as the light of the
+stars disappears in the air at the dawn of the day.
+
+23. Seeing the demise of both parents, the elder son Punya was busily
+employed in performing their funeral services; but the younger Pávana
+was deeply absorbed in grief at their loss.
+
+24. Being overwhelmed by sorrow in his mind, he wandered about in the
+woods; and not having the firmness of his elder brother, he continued
+to wail in his mourning.
+
+25. The magnanimous Punya performed the funeral ceremonies of his
+parents, and then went in search of his brother mourning in the woods.
+
+26. Punya said:—Why my boy, is thy soul overcast by the cloud of thy
+grief; and why dost thou shed the tears from thy lotus-eyes, as
+profusely as the showers of the rain, only to render thee blind.
+
+27. Know my intelligent boy, that both thy father and mother, have gone
+to their ultimate blissful state in the Supreme Spirit, called the
+state of salvation or liberation.
+
+28. That is the last resort of all living beings, and that is the
+blessed state of all self subdued souls; why then mourn for them, that
+have returned to and are reunited with their own proper nature.
+
+29. Thou dost in vain indulge thyself in thy false and fruitless grief,
+and mournest for what is not to be mourned for at all: (rather rejoice
+at it owing to their ultimate liberation).
+
+30. Neither is she thy mother nor he thy father; nor art thou the only
+son of them, that have had numerous offspring in their repeated births.
+
+31. Thou hadst also thousands of fathers and mothers in thy by-gone
+births, in as much as there are the streams of running waters in every
+forest.
+
+32. Thou art not the only son of them, that had innumerable sons before
+thee; for the generations of men, have passed away like the currents of
+a running stream.
+
+33. Our parents also had numberless offspring in their past lives, and
+the branches of human generation are as numerous, as the innumerable
+fruits and flowers on trees.
+
+34. The numbers of our friends and relatives in our repeated lives in
+this world, have been as great, as the innumerable fruits and flowers
+of a large tree, in all its passed seasons.
+
+35. If we are to lament over the loss of our parents and children, that
+are dead and gone; then why not lament also for those, that we have
+lost and left behind in all our past lives?
+
+36. It is all but a delusion, O my fortunate boy, that is presented
+before us in this illusive world; while in truth, O my sensible child,
+we have nobody, whom we may call to be our real friends or positive
+enemies in this world.
+
+37. There is no loss of any body or thing in their true sense in the
+world; but they appear to exist and disappear, like the appearance of
+water in the dry desert.
+
+38. The royal dignity that thou seest here, adorned with the stately
+umbrella and flapping fans; is but a dream lasting for a few days.
+
+39. Consider these phenomena in their true light, and thou wilt find my
+boy, that none of these nor ourselves nor any one of us, are to last
+for ever: shun therefore thy error of the passing world from thy mind
+for ever.
+
+40. That these are dead and gone, and these are existent before us, are
+but errors of our minds, and creatures of our false notions and fond
+desires, and without any reality in them.
+
+41. Our notions and desires, paint and present these various changes
+before our sight; as the solar rays represent the water in the mirage.
+So our fancies working in the field of our ignorance, produce the
+erroneous conceptions, which roll on like currents in the eventful
+ocean of the world, with the waves of favorable and unfavorable
+events to us.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XX.
+
+ REMONSTRATION OF PÁVANA.
+
+
+Argument. Punya’s relation of his various transmigrations and their
+woes to Pávana.
+
+
+Punya said:—Who is our father and who our mother, and who are our
+friends and relatives, except our notion of them as such; and these
+again are as the dust raised by the gusts of our airy fancy?
+
+2. The conceptions of friends and foes, of our sons and relations are
+the products of our affection and hatred to them; and these being the
+effects of our ignorance, are soon made to disappear into airy nothing,
+upon enlightenment of the understanding.
+
+3. The thought of one as a friend, makes him a friend, and thinking one
+as an enemy makes him an enemy; the knowledge of a thing as honey and
+of another as poison, is owing to our opinion of it.
+
+4. There being but one universal soul equally pervading the whole,
+there can be no reason of the conception of one as a friend and of
+another as an enemy.
+
+5. Think my boy in thy mind what thou art, and what is that thing which
+makes thy identity, when thy body is but a composition of bones, ribs,
+flesh and blood, and not thyself.
+
+6. Being viewed in its true light, there is nothing as myself or
+thyself; it is a fallacy of our understanding, that makes me think
+myself as Punya and thee as Pávana.
+
+7. Who is thy father and who thy son, who thy mother and who thy
+friend? One Supreme-self pervades all infinity, whom callest thou the
+self, and whom the not self (_i.e._ thine and not thine).
+
+8. If thou art a spiritual substance (linga saríra), and hast undergone
+many births, then thou hadst many friends and properties in thy past
+lives, why dost not think of them also?
+
+9. Thou hadst many friends in the flowery plains, where thou hadst thy
+pasture in thy former form of a stag; why thinkest not of those
+deer, who were once thy dear companions?
+
+10. Why dost thou not lament for thy lost companions of swans, in the
+pleasant pool of lotuses, where thou didst dive and swim about in the
+form of a gander?
+
+11. Why not lament for thy fellow arbors in the woodlands, where thou
+once stoodest as a stately tree among them?
+
+12. Thou hadst thy comrades of lions on the rugged craigs of mountains,
+why dost not lament for them also?
+
+13. Thou hadst many of thy mates among the fishes, in the limpid lakes
+decked with lotuses; why not lament for thy separation from them?
+
+14. Thou hadst been in the country of Dasárna (confluence of the ten
+rivers), as a monkey in the grey and green woods: a prince hadst thou
+been in land of frost; and a raven in the woods of Pundra.
+
+15. Thou hadst been an elephant in the land of Haihayas, and an ass in
+that of Trigarta; thou hadst become a dog in the country of Salya, and
+a bird in the wood of sarala or sál trees.
+
+16. Thou hadst been a pípal tree on the Vindhyan mountains, and a wood
+insect in a large oak (bata) tree; thou hadst been a cock on the
+Mandara mountain, and then born as a Bráhman in one of its caverns (the
+abode of Rishis).
+
+17. Thou wast a Bráhman in Kosala, and a partridge in Bengal; a horse
+hadst thou been in the snowy land, and a beast in the sacred ground of
+Brahmá at Pushkara (Pokhra).
+
+18. Thou hadst been an insect in the trunk of a palm tree, a gnat in a
+big tree, and a crane in the woods of Vindhya, that art now my younger
+brother.
+
+19. Thou hadst been an ant for six months, and lain within the thin
+bark of a _bhugpetera_ tree in a glen of the Himálayan hills, that art
+now born as my younger brother.
+
+20. Thou hadst been a millepede in a dunghill at a distant village;
+where thou didst dwell for a year and half, that art now become my
+younger brother.
+
+21. Thou wast once the youngling of a Pulinda (a hill tribe woman), and
+didst dwell on her dugs like the honey sucking bee on the pericarp of a
+lotus. The same art thou now my younger brother.
+
+22. In this manner my boy, wast thou born in many other shapes, and
+hadst to wander all about the Jambudvípa, for myriads of years: And now
+art thou my younger brother.
+
+23. Thus I see the post states of thy existence, caused by the
+antecedent desires of thy soul; I see all this by my nice discernment,
+and my clear and all-viewing sight.
+
+24. I also remember the several births that I had to undergo in my
+state of (spiritual) ignorance, and then as I see clearly before my
+enlightened sight.
+
+25. I also was a parrot in the land of Trigarta, and a frog at the
+beach of a river; I became a small bird in a forest, and was then born
+in these woods.
+
+26. Having been a Pulinda huntsman in Vindhya, and then as a tree in
+Bengal, and afterwards a camel in the Vindhya range, I am at last born
+in this forest.
+
+27. I who had been a chátaka bird in the Himálayas, and a prince in the
+Paundra province; and then as a mighty tiger in the forests of the
+sahya hill, am now become your elder brother.
+
+28. He that had been a vulture for ten years, and a shark for five
+months and a lion for a full century; is now thy elder brother in this
+place.
+
+29. I was a chakora wood in the village of Andhara, and a ruler in the
+snowy regions; and then as the proud son of a priest named Sailáchárya
+in a hilly tract.
+
+30. I remember the various customs and pursuits of different peoples on
+earth, that I had to observe and follow in my repeated transmigrations
+among them.
+
+31. In these several migrations, I had many fathers and mothers, and
+many more of my brothers and sisters, as also friends and relatives to
+hundreds and thousands.
+
+32. For whom shall I lament and whom forget among this number; shall I
+wail for them only that I lose in this life? But these also are to be
+buried in oblivion like the rest, and such is the course of the world.
+
+33. Numberless fathers have gone by, and unnumbered mothers also have
+passed and died away; so innumerable generations of men have perished
+and disappeared, like the falling off of withered leaves.
+
+34. There are no bounds, my boy, of our pleasures and pains in this
+sublunary world; lay them all aside, and let us remain unmindful of all
+existence (whether past, present or future)!
+
+35. Forsake thy thoughts of false appearances, and relinquish thy firm
+conviction of thy own egoism, and look to that ultimate course which
+has led the learned to their final beatitude.
+
+36. What is this commotion of the people for, but a struggling for
+rising or falling (to heaven or hell); strive therefore for neither,
+but live regardless of both like indifferent philosopher (and permit
+thyself to heaven).
+
+37. Live free from thy cares of existence and inexistence, and then
+thou shalt be freed from thy fears of decay and death. Remember
+unruffled thyself alone, and be not moved by any from thy self
+possession by the accidents to life like the ignorant.
+
+38. Know thou hast no birth nor death, nor weal or woe of any kind, nor
+a father or mother, nor friend nor foe anywhere. Thou art only thy pure
+spirit, and nothing of an unspiritual nature.
+
+39. The world is a stage presenting many acts and scenes; and they only
+play their parts well, who are excited neither by its passions and
+feelings.
+
+40. Those that are indifferent in their views, have their quietude
+amidst all the occurrences of life; and those that have known the True
+One, remain only to witness the course of nature.
+
+41. The knowers of God do their acts, without thinking themselves their
+actors; just as the lamps of night witness the objects around, without
+their consciousness of the same.
+
+42. The wise witness the objects as they are reflected in the mirror of
+their minds, just as the looking glass and gems receive the images of
+things.
+
+43. Now my boy, rub out all thy wishes and the vestiges of thy
+remembrance from thy mind, and view the image of the serene spirit of
+God in thy inmost soul. Learn to live like the great sages with the
+sight of thy spiritual light, and by effacing all false impressions
+from thy mind.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+
+ REPRESSION OF DESIRES BY MEANS OF YOGA-MEDITATION.
+
+
+Argument. Desires are the shackles of the soul, and release from them
+leading to its liberation.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Pávana being admonished by Punya in the said
+manner, became as enlightened in his intellect, as the landscape at the
+dawn of day.
+
+2. They continued henceforward to abide in that forest, with the
+perfection of their spiritual knowledge, and they wandered about in the
+woods to their hearts content.
+
+3. After a long time they had both their extinction, and rested in
+their disembodied state of _nirvána_; as the oilless lamp wastes away
+of itself.
+
+4. Thus is the end of the great boast of men, of having large trains
+and numberless friends in their embodied states of lifetime, of which
+alas! they carry nothing with them to their afterlife, nor leave
+anything behind, which they can properly call as theirs.
+
+5. The best means of our release from the multifarious objects of our
+desire, is the utter suppression of our appetites, rather than the
+fostering of them.
+
+6. It is the hankering after objects, that augment our appetite, as our
+thinking on something increases our thoughts about it. Just so as the
+fire is emblazoned by supply of the fuel, and extinguished by its want.
+
+7. Now rise O Ráma! and remain aloft as in thy aerial car, by getting
+loose of your worldly desires; and looking pitifully on the miseries of
+grovelling mortals from above.
+
+8. This is the divine state known as the position of Brahma, which
+looks from above with unconcerned serenity upon all. By gaining this
+state, the ignorant also are freed from misery.
+
+9. One walking with reason as his companion, and having his good
+understanding for his consort, is not liable to fall into the dangerous
+trap-doors, which lie hid in his way through life.
+
+10. Being bereft of all properties, and destitute of friends, one has
+no other help to lift him up in his adversity, beside his own patience
+and reliance in God.
+
+11. Let men elevate their minds with learning and dispassionateness,
+and with the virtues of self-dignity and valour, in order to rise over
+the difficulties of the world.
+
+12. There is no greater good to be derived by any other means, than by
+the greatness of mind. It gives a security which no wealth nor earthly
+treasure can confer on men.
+
+13. It is only men of weak and crazy minds, that are often made to
+swing to and fro, and to rise and sink up and below, in the tempestuous
+ocean of the world.
+
+14. The mind that is fraught with knowledge, and is full with the light
+of truth in it, finds the world filled with ambrosial water, and moves
+over it as easily, as a man walking on his dry shoes, or on a ground
+spread over with leather.
+
+15. It is the want of desire, that fills the mind more than the
+fulfilment of its desires; dry up the channel of desire, as the
+autumnal heat parches a pool.
+
+16. Else it empties the heart (by sucking up the heart blood), and lays
+open its gaps to be filled by air. The hearts of the avaricious are as
+dry as the bed of the dead sea, which was sucked up (drained), by
+Agasti (son of the sage Agastya).
+
+17. The spacious garden of human heart, doth so long flourish with the
+fruits of humanity and greatness, as the restless ape of avarice does
+not infest its fair trees. (The mental powers are the trees, and the
+virtues are the fruits and flowers thereof).
+
+18. The mind that is devoid of avarice, views the triple world with the
+twinkling of an eye. The comprehensive mind views all space and time as
+a minim, in comparison to its conception of the infinite Brahma with
+itself.
+
+19. There is that coolness (sangfroid) in the mind of the unavaricious
+man, as is not to be found in the watery luminary of the moon; nor in
+the icy caverns of the snow-capt Himálayas. And neither the coldness of
+the plantain juice nor sandal paste, is comparable with the
+cool-headedness of inappetency.
+
+20. The undesirous mind shines more brightly, than the disk of the full
+moon, and the bright countenance of the goddess of prosperity (Lakshmí).
+
+21. The urchin of appetence darkens the mind in the same manner, as a
+cloud covers the disk of the moon, and as ink-black obliterates a fair
+picture.
+
+22. The arbour of desire stretches its branches, far and wide on every
+side, and darkens the space of the mind with their gloomy shadow.
+
+23. The branching tree of desire being cut down by its root, the plant
+of patience which was stinted under it, shoots forth in a hundred
+branches.
+
+24. When the unfading arbour of patience, takes the place of the
+uprooted desires; it produces the tree of paradise, yielding the fruits
+of immortality. (Patience reigns over the untransmuted ill).
+
+25. O well-intentioned Ráma! if you do not allow the sprouts of your
+mental desires, to germinate in your bosom, you have then nothing to
+fear in this world.
+
+26. When you become sober-minded after moderating your heart’s desires,
+you will then have the plant of liberation growing in its full
+luxuriance in your heart.
+
+27. When the rapacious owl of your desire, nestles in your mind, it is
+sure you will be invaded by every evil, which the foreboding bird
+brings on its abode.
+
+28. Thinking is the power of the mind, and the thoughts dwell upon the
+objects of desire; abandon therefore thy thoughts and their objects,
+and be happy with thy thoughtlessness of everything.
+
+29. Anything that depends on any faculty, is lost also upon inaction of
+that faculty; therefore it is by suppression of your thinking (or
+thoughts), that you can put down your desires, and thereby have rest
+and peace of your mind.
+
+30. Be free minded, O Ráma! by tearing off all its worldly ties, and
+become a great soul by suppressing your mean desires of earthly
+frailties: for who is there that is not set free, by being loosened
+from the fetters of desire, that bind his mind to this earth.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+
+ NARRATIVE OF VIROCHANA.
+
+
+Argument. Account of King Bali and his Kingdom, and the Infernal
+Regions; His Resignation of the World, and Rambles over the Sumeru
+mountains.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—O Ráma! that art the bright moon of Raghu’s race,
+you should also follow the example of Bali, in acquiring wisdom by
+self-discernment. (Bali the Daitya king and founder of Maha Bali Pura,
+called Mavalipura in Deccan, and in Southey’s poem on its Ruins).
+
+2. Ráma said:—Venerable Sir, that art acquainted with all natures, it
+is by thy favour that I have gained in my heart all that is worth
+gaining; and that is our final rest in the purest state of infinite
+bliss.
+
+3. O sir, it is by your favor, that my mind is freed from the great
+delusion of my multifarious desires; as the sky is cleared of the massy
+clouds of the rainy weather in autumn.
+
+4. My soul is at rest and as cold as a stone; it is filled with the
+ambrosial draught of Divine knowledge and its holy light; I find myself
+to rest in perfect bliss, and as illumined as the queen of the stars,
+rising in her full light in the evening.
+
+5. O thou dispeller of my doubts, and resemblest the clear autumnal
+sky, that clears the clouds of the rainy season! I am never full and
+satiate with all thy holy teachings to me.
+
+6. Relate to me Sir! for the advancement of my knowledge, how Bali came
+to know the transcendental truth. Explain it fully unto me, as holy
+saints reserve nothing from their suppliant pupils.
+
+7. Vasishtha replied:—Attend Ráma! to the interesting narrative of
+Bali, and your attentive hearing of it, will give you the knowledge of
+the endless and everlasting truth and immutable verities.
+
+8. There is in the womb of this earth, and in some particular part of
+it, a place called the infernal region, which is situated below this
+earth. (The _Infra_ or Pátála means the antipodes and is full of water).
+
+9. It is peopled by the milk white Naiades or marine goddesses, born in
+the milky ocean-sweet water, and of the race of demons, who filled
+every gap and chasm of it with their progeny. (The subterranean cells,
+were peopled by the earth-born Titans).
+
+10. In some places it was peopled by huge serpents, with a hundred and
+thousand heads; which hissed loudly with their parted and forky
+tongues, and their long projected fangs.
+
+11. In other places there were the mountainous bodies of demons,
+walking in their lofty strides, and seeming to fling above the balls of
+the worlds as their bonbons, in order to devour them.
+
+12. In another place there were big elephants, upholding the earth on
+their elevated probosces, and supporting the islands upon their strong
+and projected tusks. (These elephants were of the antediluvian world,
+whose fossiled remains are found under the ground).
+
+13. There were ghosts and devils in other places, making hideous
+shrieks and noise; and there were groups of hellish bodies, and putrid
+carcasses of ghostly shapes.
+
+14. The depth of the nether world concealed in its darksome womb, rich
+mines of gems and metals, lying under the surface of the earth, and
+reaching to the seventh layer of _pátála_ or infernal regions.
+
+15. Another part of this place, was sanctified by the dust of the
+lotus-like feet of the divine Kapila (Siva or Pluto); who was adored by
+the gods and demigods, by prostration of their exalted heads at his
+holy feet.
+
+16. Another part of it was presided by the god Siva, in his form of a
+golden phallus (linga); which was worshipped by the ladies of the
+demons, with abundant offerings and merry revelries. (Siva or Pluto—the
+infernal god was fond of Bacchanals and revels).
+
+17. Bali the son of Virochana, reigned in this place as the king of
+demons, who supported the burden of his kingdom, on the pillars of
+their mighty arms.
+
+18. He forced the gods, Vidyádharas, serpents, and the king of the
+gods, to serve at his feet like his vassal train, and they were glad to
+serve him as their lord.
+
+19. He was protected by Hari, who contains the gemming worlds in the
+treasure of his bowels (brahmánda—bhándodara), and is the preserver of
+all embodied beings, and the support of the sovereigns of the earth.
+
+20. His name struck terror in the heart of Airávata, and made his
+cheeks fade with fear; as the sound of a peacock petrifies the entrails
+of serpents (because the peacock is a serpivorous bird).[8]
+
+21. The intense heat of his valour, dried up the waters of the septuple
+oceans of the earth; and turned them to seven dry beds, as under the
+fire of the universal Conflagration.
+
+22. But the smoke of his sacrificial fire, was an amulet to the people
+for supply of water; and it caused the rains to fall as profusely from
+above as the seas fallen below from the waters above. (This alludes to
+the dynamite which was ignorantly believed to be a talisman).
+
+23. His frowning look, made the high heads of mountains stoop low to
+the ground; and caused the lofty skies to lower with water, like the
+high branches of trees when overloaded with fruits. (It means, that the
+mountains and skies were obedient to his bidding).
+
+24. This mighty monarch reigned over the demons for myriads of years,
+after he had made an easy conquest of all the treasures and luxuries of
+the world.
+
+25. Thus he lived for many ages, which glided on like the course of a
+river rolling about like the waters of whirlpool; and witnessed the
+incessant flux and reflux of the generations of gods, demons and men,
+of the three worlds.
+
+26. The king of the demons felt at last, a distaste to all the
+enjoyments of life, which he had tasted to surfeit; and he felt also an
+uneasiness amidst the variety of his pleasures.
+
+27. He retired to the farthest polar mount of Meru, and there sitting
+at the balcony of one of its gemming pinnacles, he reflected on the
+state of this world and the vanity of mortal life.
+
+28. How long yet, thought he in himself, shall I have to rule over this
+world with my indefatigable labour; and how much more must I remain to
+roam about the triple world, in my successive transmigrations?
+
+29. Of what use is it to me to have this unrivaled sovereignty, which
+is a wonder in the three worlds; and of what good is it to me, to enjoy
+this plenteous luxury, which is so charming to the senses?
+
+30. Of what permanent delight are all these pleasures to me, which are
+pleasant only for the present short time, and are sure to lose all
+their taste with my zest in them in the next moment?
+
+31. There is the same rotation of days and nights in unvarying
+succession, and the repetition of the same acts day after day. It is
+rather shameful and no way pleasant to any one, to continue in the same
+unvaried course of life for a great length of time.
+
+32. The same embraces of our beloved ones, and partaking of the same
+food day by day, are amusements fit for playful boys only, but are
+disgraceful and disgusting to great minds.
+
+33. What man of taste is there, that will not be disgusted to taste the
+same sweets over and over again, which he has tasted all along, and
+which have become vapid and tasteless to-day; and what sensible man can
+continue in the same course, without the feelings of shame and remorse?
+
+34. The revolving days and nights bring the same revolution of duties,
+and I ween this repetition of the same acts—_kritasya karanam_, is as
+ridiculous to the wise, as the mastication of his grinded
+meat—_charbita charbana_. (Kritasya karanam násti, mritasya maranam
+yathá. There is no doing of an act, which has been done? Nor the dying
+of a man, that’s already dead).
+
+35. The actions of men are as those of the waves, which rise to fall
+and then rise again to subside in the waters. (This rising and falling
+over and anon again, is to no purpose whatever).
+
+36. The repetition of the same act, is the employment of mad men; and
+the wise man is laughed at, who reiterates the same chime, as the
+conjugation of a verb by boys, in all its moods, tenses and inflexions.
+
+37. What action is that which being once completed, does not recur to
+us any more, but crowns its actor with his full success all at once?
+(It is cessation from repetition of the same action, _i.e._ inaction).
+
+38. Or if this bustle of the world, were for a short duration only, yet
+what is the good that we can derive from our engaging in this commotion?
+
+39. The course of actions is as interminable, as the ceaseless
+repetends of boyish sports; it is hollow harping on the same string,
+which the more it is played upon, the more it reverberates to its
+hollow sound. (The acts of men make a renown and vain blustering sound
+only, and no real good to the actor).
+
+40. I see no such gain from any of our actions, which being once
+gained, may prevent our further exertions. (Action leads to action, but
+non-action is a leader to quiescence or _naiskarma_).
+
+41. What can our actions bring forth, beside the objects of sensible
+gratification? They cannot bring about anything that is imperishable.
+Saying so, Bali fell in a trance of his profound meditation.
+
+42. Coming then to himself; he said:—“Ah! I now come to remember, what
+I had heard from my father”: so saying he stretched his eye-brows, and
+gave vent to what he thought in his mind.
+
+43. “I had formerly asked my father Virochana, who was versed in
+spiritual knowledge, and acquainted with the manners of the people of
+former and later ages”.
+
+44. Saying: what is that ultimate state of being, where all our pains
+and pleasures cease to exist; and after the attainment of which, we
+have no more to wander about the world, or pass through repeated
+transmigrations.
+
+45. What is that final state towards which all our endeavours are
+directed, and where our minds are freed from their error; and where we
+obtain our full rest, after all our wanderings and transmigrations?
+
+46. What is that best of gains, which gives full satisfaction to the
+cravings of the soul; and what is that glorious object, whose sight
+transcends all other objects of vision?
+
+47. All those various luxuries and superfluities of the world, are no
+way conducive to our real happiness; in as much as they mislead the
+mind to error, and corrupt the souls of even the wisest of men.
+
+48. “Therefore, O father, show me that state of imperishable felicity,
+whereby I may attain to my everlasting repose and tranquility”.
+
+49. My father having heard these words of mine, as he was then sitting
+under the shade of the kalpa tree of paradise, whose flowers were
+fairer far than the bright beams of the nocturnal luminary, and
+overspread the ground all around; spoke to me in his sweet mellifluous
+accents the following speech, for the purpose of removing my error.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+ SPEECH OF VIROCHANA ON SUBJECTION OF THE MIND.
+
+
+Argument. The soul and mind personified as a monarch and his minister.
+
+
+Virochana said:—There is an extensive country, my son, somewhere in
+this universe, with a spacious concavity therein, whose ample space is
+able to hold thousands of worlds and many more spheres in it.
+
+2. It is devoid of the wide oceans and seas and high mountains, as
+there are in this earth; and there are not such forests, rivers and
+lakes, nor holy places of pilgrimage, as you see here below.
+
+3. There is neither land nor sky, nor the heavenly orbs as on high; nor
+are there these suns and moons, nor the regents of the spheres, nor
+their inhabitants of gods and demons.
+
+4. There are no races of Yakshas and Rakshas, nor those tribes of
+plants and trees, woods or grass; nor the moving and immovable beings,
+as you see upon the earth.
+
+5. There is no water, no land, no fire nor air; nor are there the sides
+of the compass, nor the regions you call above and below. There is no
+light nor shadow, nor the peoples, nor the gods Hari, Indra and Siva,
+nor any of the inferior deities or demigods there.
+
+6. There is a great sovereign of that place, who is full of ineffable
+light. He is the creator and pervader of all, and is all in all, but
+quite quiescent in all places and things.
+
+7. He had elected a minister, who was clever in administration and
+brought about what was impossible to be done, and prevented all mishaps
+from coming to pass.
+
+8. He neither ate nor drank, nor did nor knew anything, beside minding
+and doing his master’s behests. In all other respects he was as
+inactive as a block of stone.
+
+9. He conducted every business for his master, who remained quite
+retired from all his business, with enjoyment of his rest and ease in
+his seclusion, leaving all his concerns to be managed by his minister.
+
+10. Bali said:—Tell me sir, what place is that which is devoid of all
+population, and free from all disease and difficulty; who knows that
+place, and how can it be reached at by any body.
+
+11. Who is that sovereign of sovran power, and who that minister of so
+great might; and who being quite apart from the world, are inseparably
+connected with it, and are invincible by our almighty demoniac power.
+(This monarch and master is the soul and his minister is the mind).
+
+12. Relate to me, O thou dread of the gods! this marvelous story of the
+great might of that minister, in order to remove the cloud of doubt
+from my mind, and also why he is unconquerable by us.
+
+13. Virochana replied:—Know my son, this mighty minister to be
+irresistible by the gigantic force of the Asura giants, even though
+they were aided by millions of demons fighting on their side.
+
+14. He is invincible, my son, by the god of a thousand eyes (Indra),
+and also by the gods of riches and death (Kubera and Yama), who conquer
+all, and neither the immortals nor giants, can ever overpower him by
+their might.
+
+15. All weapons are defeated in their attempt to hurt him, and the
+swords and mallets, spears and bolts, disks and cudgels, that are
+hurled against him, are broken to pieces as upon their striking against
+a solid rock.
+
+16. He is unapproachable by missiles, and invulnerable by arms and
+weapons, and unseizable by the dexterity of warriors; and it is by his
+resistless might, that he has brought the gods and demigods under his
+subjection.
+
+17. It was he (the proud mind) that defeated our forefathers, the
+mighty Hiranyas (Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakasipu), before they were
+destroyed by the great Vishnu; who felled the big Asuras, as a storm
+breaks down the sturdy and rocklike oaks.[9]
+
+18. The gods Náráyana and others (who had been the instructors of men),
+were all foiled by him and confined in their cells of the wombs of
+their mothers (by an imprecation of the sage Bhrigu, who denounced them
+to become incarnate in human forms).
+
+19. It is by his favour that Káma (Cupid), the god with his flower bow
+and five arrows, has been enabled to subdue and overcome the three
+worlds, and boasts of being their sole emperor. (Káma called also
+Manoja, is the child of mana or mind, and Kandarpa for his boast of his
+triumph).
+
+20. The gods and demigods, the intelligent and the foolish, the
+deformed and the irascible, are all actuated by his influence. (Love is
+the leader to action according to Plato).
+
+21. The repeated wars between the gods and Asuras, are the sports of
+this minister (who deliberates in secret the destinies of all beings.
+The restless mind is continually at warfare).
+
+22. This minister is only manageable by its lord—the silent soul, or
+else it is as dull as an immovable rock or restless as the wind.
+
+23. It is in the long run of its advancement in spiritual knowledge,
+that the soul feels a desire in itself to subdue its minister; who is
+otherwise ungovernable of its nature by lenient measures. (Govern your
+mind or it will govern you. The mind is best taught by whip).
+
+24. You are then said to be valiant, if you can conquer this greatest
+of the giants in the three worlds, who has been worrying all people out
+for their breath. (The mind longs for occupation).
+
+25. After the rising of the intellect, the world appears as a
+flower garden, and like the lake of blooming lotuses at sunrise; and
+its setting covers the world in darkness as at sunset (_i.e._ in
+unconsciousness).
+
+26. It is only by the aid of this intellect of yours, and by removal of
+your ignorance, that you can subdue this minister, and be famed for
+your wisdom. (Good government of the mind, is more renowned than that
+of a realm).
+
+27. By subduing this minister, you become the subduer of the world,
+though you are no victor of it; and by your unsubjection of this, you
+can have no subjection over the world, though may be the master of it.
+
+28. Therefore be diligent to overcome this minister, by your best and
+most ardent exertions, on account of effecting your perfect
+consummation, and securing your everlasting happiness.
+
+29. It is easy for him to overcome the triple world, and keep all its
+beings of gods and demons, and the bodies of Nágas and men, together
+with the races of Yakshas and Rakshas, and the tribes of serpents and
+Kinnaras, who has been able to subdue this minister by his superior
+might. (Govern yourself, and you govern all besides).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+ ON THE HEALING AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE MIND.
+
+
+Argument. Quelling of the misleading mind, and waiting upon the
+sovereign soul, with the perfection of Platonic Quietism.
+
+
+Bali said:—Tell me sir, plainly who is this minister of so great might,
+and by what expedients can so mighty a being be vanquished and brought
+under subjection.
+
+2. Virochana replied:—Though that minister, is invincible and stands
+above all in his great might; yet I will tell you the expedients,
+whereby he may be overcome by you or any one else.
+
+3. Son! It is by employment of proper means that he may be easily
+brought under subjection, and by neglect of which he will have the
+upper hand of you like the snake poison, if it is not repelled in time
+by means of efficacious mantras and incantations.
+
+4. The ministerial mind being brought up like a boy in the right way he
+should go; leads the man to the presence of the sovran soul, as the
+_rája yoga_ or royal service advances the servant before his king.
+
+5. The appearance of the master makes the minister disappear from
+sight; as the disappearance of the minister, brings one to the full
+view of his king.
+
+6. As long as one does not approach to the presence of his king, he
+cannot fail to serve the minister; and so long as he is employed in
+service of the minister, he cannot come to the sight of his king.
+
+7. The king being kept out of sight, the minister is seen to exercise
+his might; but the minister being kept out of view, the king alone
+appears in full view.
+
+8. Therefore must we begin with the practice of both these exercises at
+once; namely, approaching by degrees to the sight of the king, and
+slighting gradually the authority of the minister.
+
+9. It must be by the exercise of your continued manly exertions and
+diligent application, that you employ yourself in both these practices,
+in order to arrive to the state of your well being.
+
+10. When you are successful in your practice, you are sure to reach to
+that blissful country; and though you are a prince of the demons, you
+can have nothing to obstract your entrance into it.
+
+11. That is a place for the abode of the blessed, whose desires are at
+rest and whose doubts are dissipated, and whose hearts are filled with
+perpetual joy and calmness.
+
+12. Now hear me, explain to you, my son, what that place is which I
+called a country. It is the seat of liberation (moksha), and where
+there is an end of all our pains.
+
+13. The king of that place is the soul of divine essence, which
+transcends all other substances; and it is the mind which is appointed
+by that soul as its wise minister.
+
+14. The mind which contains the ideal world in its bosom, exhibits its
+sensible form to the senses afterwards; as the clod of clay containing
+the mould of the pot, shows itself as the model of a pot to view; and
+the smoke having the pattern of the cloud in its essence, represents
+its shadowy forms in the sky. (The pattern of everything is engraven in
+the mind).
+
+15. Hence the mind being conquered, everything is subdued and brought
+under subjection; but the mind is invincible without adoption of proper
+means for its subjugation.
+
+16. Bali interrogated:—What are these means, sir, which we are to adopt
+for quelling the mind; tell it plainly to me, that I may resort to the
+same, for this conquering invincible barrier of bliss.
+
+17. Virochana answered: The means for subduing the mind, are the want
+of reliance and confidence on all external and sensible things, and
+absence of all desire for temporal possessions.
+
+18. This is the best expedient for removal of the great delusion of
+this world, and subduing the big elephant of the mind at once.
+
+19. This expedient is both very easy and practicable on one hand, as it
+is arduous and impracticable on the other. It is the constant habit of
+thinking so that makes it facile, but the want of such habitude renders
+it difficult.
+
+20. It is the gradual habit of renouncing our fondness for temporal
+objects, that shows itself in time in our resignation of the world; as
+continuous watering at the roots of plants, makes them grow to large
+trees afterwards.
+
+21. It is as hard to master anything even by the most cunning, without
+its proper cultivation for some time; as it is impossible to reap the
+harvest from an unsown and uncultivated field.
+
+22. So long are all embodied souls destined to rove about the
+wilderness of the world, as there is the want of resignation in their
+heart of all the sensible objects in nature.
+
+23. It is impossible without the habit of apathy, to have a distaste
+for sensible objects, as it is no way possible for an ablebodied man,
+to travel abroad by sitting motionless at home.
+
+24. The firm determination of abandoning the stays of life, and a
+habitual aversion to pleasures and enjoyments, make a man to advance to
+purity, as a plant grows in open air to its full height.
+
+25. There is no good to be derived on earth, without the exertion of
+one’s manliness, and man must give up his pleasure and the vexation of
+his spirit, in order to reap the fruit of his actions.
+
+26. People speak of a power as destiny here, which has neither any
+shape nor form of itself. It means whatever comes to pass, and is also
+called our lot or fatality.
+
+27. The word destiny is used also by mankind, to mean an accident over
+which they have no control, and to which they submit with passive
+obedience.
+
+28. They use the word destiny for repression of our joy and grief (at
+what is unavoidable); but destiny however fixed as fate, is overcome
+and set aside by means of manly exertions (in many instances).
+
+29. As the delusion of the mirage, is dispelled by the light of its
+true nature; so it is the exertion of manliness, which upsets destiny
+by effecting whatever it wishes to bring about.
+
+30. If we should seek to know the cause for the good or bad results of
+our actions, we must learn that they turn as well as the mind wishes to
+mould them to being.
+
+31. Whatever the mind desires and decrees, the same become the
+destiny; there is nothing destined (or distinctly to be known), as what
+we may call to be destined or undestined.
+
+32. It is the mind that does all this, and is the employer of destiny;
+it destines the destined acts of destiny.
+
+33. Life or the living soul is spread out in the hollow sphere of the
+world, like air in vacuum. The psychic fluid circulates through all
+space.
+
+(The psychic fluid extending throughout the universe, according to the
+theory of Stahl).
+
+34. Destiny is no reality, but a term invented to express the property
+of fixity, as the word rock is used to denote stability. Hence there is
+no fixed fate or destiny, as long as the mind retains its free will and
+activity.
+
+35. After the mind is set at rest, there remains the principle of the
+living soul (Jíva—zoo). This is called the _purusha_ or embodied
+spirit, which is the source of the energies of the body and mind.
+
+36. Whatever the living soul intends to do by means of its spiritual
+force, the same comes to take place and no other. (There being not even
+the influence of the mind to retard its action. So my son, there is no
+other power in the world except that of spirit or spiritual force).
+
+37. Reliance on this spiritual power will uproot your dependance on
+bodily nutriments; and there is no hope of spiritual happiness, until
+there is a distaste towards temporal enjoyments.
+
+38. It is hard to attain to the dignity of the all conquering
+self-sufficiency, as long as one has the dastardly spirit of his
+earthly cravings.
+
+39. As long as one is swinging in the cradle of worldly affairs, it is
+hard for him to find his rest in the bower of peaceful tranquility.
+
+40. It is hard for you to get rid of your serpentine (crooked) desires,
+without your continued practice of indifference to and unconcernedness
+with worldly affairs.
+
+41. Bali rejoined:—Tell me, O lord of demons! in what manner,
+indifference to worldly enjoyments, takes a deep root in the human
+heart; and produces the fruit of longevity of the embodied spirit on
+earth. (By longevity is meant the spiritual life of man, and his
+resting in the divine Spirit, by being freed from the accidents of
+mortal life).
+
+42. Virochana replied:—It is the sight of the inward spirit, which is
+productive of indifference to worldly things; as the growth of vines is
+productive of the grapes in autumn.
+
+43. It is the sight of the inward Spirit, which produces our internal
+unconcernedness with the world; as it is the glance of the rising sun,
+which infuses its lustre in the cup of the lotus.
+
+44. Therefore sharpen your intellect, by the whetstone of right
+reasoning; and see the Supreme Spirit, by withdrawing your mind from
+worldly enjoyments.
+
+45. There are two modes of intellectual enjoyment, of which one
+consists of book learning, and the other is derived from attendance on
+the lectures of the preceptor, by those that are imperfect in their
+knowledge. (_i.e._ The one is theoretical for adepts and the other is
+practical for novices).
+
+46. Those who are a little advanced in learning, have the double
+advantage of their mental enjoyment, namely: their reflection of book
+learning and consultation with wise preceptors on practical points.
+(Hence the practice of Yoga requires a Yogi guide also).
+
+47. Those who are accomplished in learning, have also two parts of
+their duties to perform; namely, the profession of the sástras teaching
+them to others, and the practice of indifference for themselves. (But
+the last and lowest kind, only have to wait on the guru and reflect on
+what they hear from him).
+
+48. The soul being purified, the man is fitted for Spiritual learning;
+as it is the clean linen only which is fit to receive every good
+tincture upon it.[10]
+
+49. The mind is to be trained by degrees, like a boy in the path of
+learning; namely by means of persuasion and good lectures, and then by
+teaching of the sástras, and lastly by discussion of their doctrines.
+
+50. After its perfection in learning and dispersion of all difficulties
+and doubts, the mind shines as a piece of pure crystal, and emits its
+lustre like the cooling moonbeams.
+
+51. It then sees by its consummate knowledge and clear understanding,
+in both the form of its God the Spirit, and the body which is the seat
+of its enjoyments on earth.
+
+52. It constantly sees the spirit before it, by means of its
+understanding and reason; which help it also to relinquish its desire
+for worldly objects and enjoyments.
+
+53. The sight of the Spirit produces the want of desires, and the
+absence of these shows the light of the spirit to its sight; therefore
+they are related to each other like the wick and oil of the lamp, in
+producing the light, and dispelling the darkness of the night.
+
+54. After the loss of relish in worldly enjoyments, and the sight of
+the Supreme Spirit, the soul finds its perpetual rest in the essence of
+the Supreme Brahma.
+
+55. The living souls that place their happiness in worldly objects, can
+never have the taste of true felicity, unless they rely themselves
+wholly in the Supreme Spirit.
+
+56. It may be possible to derive some delight from acts of charity,
+sacrifices and holy pilgrimage; but none of these can give the
+everlasting rest of the Spirit.
+
+57. No one feels a distaste for pleasure, unless he examines its nature
+and effects in himself; and nothing can teach the way of seeing the
+soul, unless the soul reflects on itself.
+
+58. Those things are of no good whatever, my boy, that may be had
+without one’s own exertion in gaining it; nor is there any true
+happiness, without the resignation of earthly enjoyments.
+
+59. The Supreme felicity of rest in the state of Brahma, is to be bad
+nowhere in this wide world, either in this mundane sphere, or anywhere
+else beyond these spheres.
+
+60. Therefore expect always how your soul may find its rest in the
+divine Spirit, by relying on the exertion of your manliness, and
+leaving aside your dependance on the eventualities of destiny.
+
+61. The wise man detests all worldly enjoyments as if they are the
+strong bolts or barriers at the door of bliss; and it is the settled
+aversion to earthly pleasures, that brings a man to his right reason.
+
+62. As the increasing gloominess of rainy clouds, is followed by the
+serenity of autumnal skies, so clear reasoning comes after detestation
+of enjoyments, which fly at the advance of reason.
+
+63. As the seas and the clouds of heaven, help one another by lending
+their waters in turn; so apathy to pleasures and right reasoning, tend
+to produce each other by turns.
+
+64. So disbelief in destiny, and engagement in manly exertion, are
+sequences of one another, as reciprocities of service are consequences
+of mutual friendship.
+
+65. It must be by the gnashing of your teeth (_i.e._ by your firm
+resolve), that you should create a distaste even of those things, which
+you have acquired by legal means and conformably to the custom of your
+country.
+
+66. You must first acquire your wealth by means of your manly
+exertions, and then get good and clever men in your company by means of
+your wealth (_i.e._ patronise the learned therewith, and improve your
+mind by their instructions).
+
+67. Association with the wise produces an aversion to the sensual
+enjoyments of life, by exciting the reasoning power, which gains for
+its reward an increase of knowledge and learning.
+
+68. These lead gradually to the acquirement of that state of
+consummation, which is concomitant with the utter renunciation of
+worldly objects.
+
+69. It is then by means of your reasoning that you attain to that
+Supreme State of perfection, in which you obtain your perfect rest and
+the holiness of your soul.
+
+70. You will then fall no more in the mud of your misconceptions; but
+as a pure essence, you will have no dependance on anything, but become
+as the venerable Siva yourself.
+
+71. Thus the steps of attaining consummation, are first of all the
+acquisition of wealth, according to the custom of the caste and
+country; and then its employment in the service of wise and learned
+men. Next follows your abandonment of the world, which is succeeded by
+your attainment of Spiritual knowledge, by the cultivation of your
+reasoning powers.[11]
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+
+ REFLECTIONS OF BALI.
+
+
+Argument. Rise of intellectual light in Bali’s mind, and his Reference
+to Sukra for Advice.
+
+
+Bali said:—In this manner did my sapient father advise me before on
+this subject, which I fortunately remember at the present moment for
+the enlightenment of my understanding.
+
+2. It is now that I feel my aversion to the enjoyments of life, and
+come to perceive by my good luck the bliss of tranquility, to liken
+the clear and cooling ambrosial drink of heavenly bliss.
+
+3. I am tired of all my possessions, and am weary of my continued
+accumulation of wealth, for the satisfaction of my endless desires. The
+live-long care of the family also has grown tiresome to me.
+
+4. But how charming is this peace and tranquility of my soul, which is
+quite even and all cool within itself. Here are all our pleasures and
+pains brought to meet upon the same level of equality and indifference.
+
+5. I am quite unconcerned with any thing and am highly delighted with
+my indifference to all things; I am gladdened within myself as by the
+beams of the full-moon, and feel the orb of the full moon rising within
+myself.
+
+6. O! the trouble of acquiring riches, which is attended by the loud
+bustle of the world and agitation in the mind, and the heart burn and
+fatigue of the body; and is accompanied with incessant anxiety and
+affliction of the heart.
+
+7. The limbs and flesh of the body, are smashed by labour; and all
+bodily exercises that pleased me once, now appear to be the long and
+lost labours of my former ignorance.
+
+8. I have seen the sights of whatever was worth seeing, and enjoyed the
+enjoyments which knew no bounds; I have overcome all beings; but what
+is the good (that I have derived from all this)?
+
+9. There is only a reiteration of the very same things, that I had
+there, here and elsewhere; and I found nowhere now any thing new, that
+I had not seen or known before.
+
+10. I am now sitting here in full possession of myself, by resigning
+every thing and its thought from my mind; and thereby I find that
+nothing whatever nor even its thought forms any component-part of
+myself.
+
+11. The best things in the heaven above, earth and in this infernal
+region, are reckoned to be their damsels, gems and jewels; but all
+these are destroyed and wasted sooner or later by the cruel hand of
+time.
+
+12. I have acted foolishly all this time, by waging a continuous
+struggle with the gods, for the sake of the trifle of worldly
+possessions. (The wars of the earth-born demons and the foreign deities
+are well known in the early history of the world).
+
+13. What is this phantom of the world, but a creation of the brain;
+what then is the harm of forsaking it forever in which great souls take
+no delight whatever?
+
+14. Alas! that I have spent such a large portion of my life-time, in
+pursuing after trifles in the ignorant giddiness of my mind.
+
+15. My fickle and fluctuating desires, have led me to do many acts of
+foolishness, in this world of odds and trifles, which now fill me with
+remorse and regret. (Remembrance of the past, is fraught with
+regret).
+
+16. But it is in vain to be overwhelmed with the sad thoughts of the
+past, while I should use my manly exertions to improve the present.
+(The present time is in our hand, but who the past can recall, or the
+future command).
+
+17. It is by reflecting on the eternal cause of the endless infinity of
+souls in the soul, that one can attain his perfect felicity; as the
+gods got the ambrosia from the Milky ocean. (True bliss is to be
+derived from the blissful Deity).
+
+18. I most consult my preceptor Sukra, concerning the Ego and the soul
+and spiritual vision, of the soul of souls in order to expel my
+ignorance in these matters.
+
+19. I must refer these questions to the most venerable Sukra, who is
+always complacent to his favorites; and then it is possible that by
+his advice I shall be settled in the highest perfection of seeing the
+supreme spirit, in my spirit, because the words of the wise, are ever
+fraught with full meaning and are fruitful of the desired object.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+ ADMONITION OF SUKRA TO BALI.
+
+
+Argument. Sukra’s appearance at the call of Bali; and his advice to him
+on the attainment of divine knowledge.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—So saying the mighty Bali closed his eyes, and thought
+upon the lotus-eyed Sukra, abiding in his heavenly abode. (Sukra the
+planet Venus represented as the preceptor of demons, as Vrihaspati the
+planet Jupiter is said to be the Spiritual guide of the deities).
+
+2. Sukra, who sat intently meditating on the all pervading spirit of
+God, came to know in his mind, that he was remembered by his disciple
+Bali in his city.
+
+3. Then Sukra the son of Bhrigu, whose soul was united with the
+all pervading infinite and omniscient spirit, descended with his
+heavenly body at the gemming window of Bali (decorated with glass
+doors).
+
+4. Bali knew the body of his guide by its lustre, as the lotus-flower
+perceives the rising sun by his dawning beams.
+
+5. He then honoured his _guru_ or guide, by adoring his feet on a seat
+decked with gems, and with offering of _mandára_ flowers upon him.
+
+6. As Sukra took his rest on the gemming seat from the labour of his
+journey, he was strewn over with offerings of gems on his body, and
+heaps of mandára flowers upon his head; after which Bali addressed him
+thus:—
+
+7. Venerable sir, this illustrious presence of thy grace before me,
+emboldens me to address to thee, as the morning sun-beams send all
+mankind to their daily work.
+
+8. I have come to feel an aversion, Sir, to all kinds of worldly
+enjoyments, which are productive of the delusion of our souls; and want
+to know the truth relating to it, in order to dispel my ignorance of
+myself.
+
+9. Tell me, sir, in short, what are these enjoyments good for, and how
+far they extend; and what am I, thou or these people in reality.
+(Extent of enjoyments—bhoga, means their limitation and duration).
+
+10. Sukra answered:—I can not tell you in length about it, as I have
+soon to repair to my place in the sky. Hear me O monarch of demons tell
+this much briefly to you at present.
+
+11. There is verily but the intellect in reality, and all this
+existence beside is verily the intellect and full of intellect: The
+mind is the intellect, and I, thou and these people are collectively
+the very intellect. (Gloss. These sayings are based on the srutis,
+namely: All these are but different aspects of the one intellect.
+Again: All things depend on the _chit_. Also:—This _chit_ am I, thou
+and this Brahma and Indra and all others. There is no other looker or
+the subjective; or the hearer or objective beside the _chit_: and so
+forth).
+
+12. If you are wise, know you derive every thing from this Chit—the
+universal Intellect; or else all gifts of fortune are as useless to you
+as the offering of butter on ashes (which cannot consume it, or make a
+burnt offering of it to the gods).
+
+13. Taking the intellect as something thinkable or object of thought,
+is the snare of the mind; but the belief of its freeness or
+incomprehensibility, is what confers liberation to the soul. The
+incomprehensible intellect is verily the universal soul, which is the
+sum of all doctrines. (All faiths and doctrines tend to the belief of
+one unknowable God).
+
+14. Knowing this for certain, look on everything as such; and behold
+the spirit in thy spirit, in order to arrive to the state of the
+Infinite spirit. (Or else the adoration of a finite object, must lead
+to a finite state).
+
+15. I have instantly to repair to the sky, where the seven munis
+are assembled (the seven planets or the seven stars of the
+Pleiades—saptarshi?), where I have to continue in the performance
+of my divine service.
+
+16. I tell you, O king! that you must not of yourself get rid of your
+duties, as long as you are in this body of yours, even though your mind
+may be freed from everything. (The embodied being must continue in the
+discharge of his bodily duty).
+
+17. So saying, Sukra flew as a bee besmeared with the farinaceous
+gold-dust of the lotus, to the aureate vault of heaven; and passed
+through the watery path of the waving clouds, to where the revolving
+planets were ready to receive him.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+ HEBETUDE OF BALI.
+
+
+Argument. Bali attains to his state of Ecstacy, by his observance
+of Sukra’s precepts.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—After Sukra, the son of Bhrigu and senior in the
+assembly of gods and demigods, had made his departure, Bali the best
+among the intelligent, reflected thus in himself.
+
+2. Truly has the seer said, that the Intellect composes the three
+worlds, and that I am this Intellect, and the Intellect fills all the
+quarters, and shows itself in all our actions.
+
+3. It is the Intellect which pervades the inside and outside of every
+thing, and there is nothing anywhere which is without the Intellect.
+
+4. It is the Intellect that perceives the sunbeams and moonlight, or
+else there would be no distinction between them and darkness, had not
+there been this intellectual perception.
+
+5. If there were no such intellectual perception as this earth is land,
+then there would be no distinction of earth and water, nor the word
+earth apply to land.
+
+6. If the Intellect would not understand the vast space as the quarters
+of the sky, and the mountains as vast protuberances on earth; then who
+would call the sides and the mountains by those names?
+
+7. If the world were not known as the world and the vacuum as vacuity,
+then who would distinguish them by the names that are in common use?
+
+8. If this big body was not perceived by the intellect, how proper
+could the bodies of embodied beings be called by their names?
+
+9. The Intellect resides in every organ of sense, it dwells in the
+body, mind and all its desires; the intellect is in the internal and
+external parts of the body, and the intellect is all that is in
+existent and non-existent. (Because the intellect has the notions of
+all these things, which would not come to exist, if they were not in
+the intellect).
+
+10. The Intellect forms my wholeself, by its feeling and knowing of
+everything that I feel and know; or else I can neither perceive or
+conceive nor do anything with my body alone, and without guidance of
+the intellect.
+
+11. What avails this body of mine, which is inert and insensible as a
+block of wood or stone; it is the intellect that makes my self, and it
+is the intelligent spirit which is the universal Soul.
+
+12. I am the intellect which resides in the sun and in the sky, and I
+am the intellect which dwells in the bodies of all beings; I am the
+same intellect which guides the gods and demigods, and dwells alike in
+the movables and immovable bodies.
+
+13. The intellect being the sole existence, it is in vain to suppose
+aught besides; and their being naught otherwise, there can be no
+difference of a friend or foe to us.
+
+14. What is it if I Bali, strike off the head of a person from his
+body, I can not injure the soul which is everywhere and fills all space.
+
+15. The feelings of love and enmity are properties of the intellect
+(Soul), and are not separated from it by its separation from the body.
+Hence the passions and feelings are inseparable from the Intellect or
+soul.
+
+16. There is nothing to be thought of beside the Intellect, and nothing
+to be obtained anywhere, except from the spacious womb of the
+Intellect, which comprehends all the three worlds.
+
+17. But the passions and feelings, the mind and its powers, are mere
+attributes and not properties of the Intellect; which being altogether
+a simple and pure essence, is free from every attribute.
+
+18. The Intellect—_chit_ is the Ego, the omnipresent, all pervasive and
+ever felicitous soul; it is beyond all other attributes, and without a
+duality or parts.
+
+19. The term Intellect—_chit_ which is applied to the nameless power of
+intellection—_chiti_, is but a verbal symbol signifying the omniscient
+Intelligence, which is manifest in all places. (_i.e._ The Divine
+Intellect is both omniscient as well as omnipresent, while human
+understanding is narrow and circumscribed).
+
+20. The Ego is the Supreme Lord, that is ever awake and sees all things
+without manifesting any appearance of himself. He is purely transparent
+and beyond all visible appearances.
+
+21. All its attributes are lame, partial and imperfect. Even time which
+has its phases and parts, is not a proper attribute for it. It is but a
+glimpse of its light that rises before us, but the eternal and infinite
+light, is beyond our comprehension.
+
+22. I must think of it only in the form of light in my own self, and
+know it apart from all other thinkables and thoughts, and quite aloof
+from all shades and colours.
+
+23. I salute his self-same form of Intelligence, and the power of
+Intellection, unaccompanied by the intelligible, and employed in its
+proper sphere.
+
+24. I salute that light of his in me, which represents every thing to
+me; which is beyond all thought, and is of the form of Intellect, going
+everywhere and filling all space.
+
+25. It is the quiet consciousness of all beings, the real Intellect
+(sach-chit), the Ego and the Great; the Ego which is as infinite as
+space, and yet minuter than an atom, and spreading in all alike.
+
+26. I am not subject to the states of pleasure and pain, I am conscious
+of my self and of no other existence besides myself; and I am
+Intelligence without the intelligibles spread out before me.
+
+27. No worldly entity nor non-entity (_i.e._ neither the gain of any
+object nor its want), can work any change in me; for the possession of
+worldly objects would destroy me at once (by their separating my soul
+from God).
+
+28. In my opinion there is nothing that is distinct from me, when we
+know all things as the produce of the same source.
+
+29. What one gets or loses is no gain or loss to any (_i.e._ to the
+gainer or loser), because the same Ego always abides in all, and is the
+Maker of all and pervading everywhere.
+
+30. Whether I am any of the thinkable objects or not, it matters me
+little to know; since the Intellect is always a single thing, though
+its intelligibles (_i.e._ its productions or thoughts), are endless.
+
+31. I am so long in sorrow, as my soul is not united with the Holy
+spirit. So saying, the most discerning Bali fell to a deep meditation.
+
+32. He reflected on the half mantra of Om (_i.e._ the dot only); an
+emblem of the Infinite God; and sat quietly with all his desires and
+fancies lying dormant in him.
+
+33. He sat undaunted, by suppressing his thoughts and his thinking
+powers within him; and remained with his subdued desires, after having
+lost the consciousness of his meditation, and of his being the
+meditator and also of meditated object. (_i.e._ Without knowing himself
+as the subject or object of his thoughts and acts).
+
+34. While Bali was entranced in this manner at the window which was
+decked with gems, he became illumined in his mind as a lighted lamp
+flaming unshaken by the wind. And he remained long in his steady
+posture as a statue carved of a stone.
+
+35. He sat with his mind as clear as the autumnal sky after having cast
+off all his desires and mental anxieties, and being filled within
+himself with his spiritual light.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+ DESCRIPTION OF BALI’S ANAESTHESIA.
+
+
+Argument. Anxiety of the demons at the supineness of Bali, and the
+Appearance of Sukra with them before him.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—The servile demons of Bali (being impatient at
+this numbness of their king), ascended hastily to his high crystal
+palace, and stood at the door of his chamber.
+
+2. There were his ministers Dimbha and others among them, and his
+generals Kumuda and others also. There were likewise the princes Sukra
+and others in the number, and his champions Vritta and the rest.
+
+3. There were Hayagríva and the other captains of his armies, with his
+friends Akraja and others. His associates Laduka and some more joined
+the train, with his servants Valluka and many more.
+
+4. There were also the gods Kubera, Yama and Indra that paid him their
+tribute; and the Yakshas, Vidyádhars and Nágas that rendered him their
+services. (Were the Vidyádhars the Vedias or gipsies of modern India?).
+
+5. There were the heavenly nymphs Rambhá and Tilottamá in the number,
+with the fanning and flapping damsels of his court; and the deputies of
+different provinces and of hilly and maritime districts, were also in
+attendance.
+
+6. These accompanied by the Siddhas inhabiting different parts of the
+three worlds, all waited at that place to tender their services to Bali.
+
+7. They beheld Bali with reverence, with his head hanging down with the
+crown upon it, and his arms hanging loosely with the pendant bracelets
+on them.
+
+8. Seeing him thus, the great Asuras made their obeisance to him in due
+form, and were stupified with sorrow and fear, and struck with wonder
+and joy by turns at this sad plight of his.
+
+9. The ministers kept pondering about what was the case with him, and
+the demons besought their all knowing preceptor Sukra, for his
+explaining the case to them.
+
+10. Quick as thought they beheld the shining figure of Sukra, standing
+confest to their sight, as if they saw the phantom of their
+imagination appearing palpable to view.
+
+11. Sukra being honoured by the demons, took his seat on a sofa; and
+saw in his silent meditation, the state of the mind of the king of
+demons.
+
+12. He remained for a while to behold with delight, how the mind of
+Bali was freed from errors, by the exercise of its reasoning powers.
+
+13. The illustrious preceptor, the lustre of whose person put to shame
+the brightness of the milky ocean, then said smiling to the listening
+throng of the demons:
+
+14. Know ye demons, this Bali to have become an adept in his spiritual
+knowledge, and to have fixed his seat in holy light, by the working of
+his intellect (_i.e._ by his intuition only).
+
+15. Let him alone, ye good demons, remain in this position, resting in
+himself and beholding the imperishable one within himself in his
+reverie.
+
+16. Lo! here the weary pilgrim to have got his rest, and his mind is
+freed from the errors of this false world. Disturb him not with your
+speech, who is now as cold as ice.
+
+17. He has now received that light of knowledge amidst the gloom of
+ignorance, as the waking man beholds the full blaze of the sun, after
+dispersion of the darkness of his sleep at dawn.
+
+18. He will in time wake from his trance, and rise like the germ of a
+seed, sprouting from the seed vessel in its proper season.
+
+19. Go ye leaders of the demons from here, and perform your respective
+duties assigned to you by your master; for it will take a thousand
+years, for Bali to wake from his trance (as a moment’s sleep makes a
+myriad of years in a dream).
+
+20. After Sukra the Guru and guide of the demons, had spoken in this
+manner, they were filled with alternate joy and grief in their hearts,
+and cast aside their anxiety about him, as a tree casts its withered
+leaves away.
+
+21. The Asuras then left their king Bali to rest in his palace in the
+aforesaid manner, and returned to their respective offices, as they had
+been employed heretofore.
+
+22. It now became night, and all men retired to their earthly abodes,
+the serpents entered into their holes, the stars appeared in the skies,
+and the gods reposed in their celestial domes. The regents of all sides
+and mountainous tracts, went to their own quarters, and the beasts of
+the forest and birds of the air, fled and flew to their own coverts and
+nests.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+ BALI’S RESUSCITATION TO SENSIBILITY.
+
+
+Argument. Self-confinement of the Living-liberated Bali in the
+Infernal Regions.
+
+
+Vasishtha related:—After the thousand years of the celestials, had
+rolled on in Bali’s unconsciousness; he was roused to his sensibility,
+at the beating of heavenly drums by the gods above (the loud peal of
+clouds).
+
+2. Bali being awake, his city (Mavalipura) was renovated with fresh
+beauty, as the lotus-bed is revivified by the rising sun in the eastern
+horizon (Vairincha or Brahma-loka, placed at the sunrising points).
+
+3. Bali not finding the demons before him after he was awaked, fell to
+the reflecting of the reveries during his state of entrancement
+(Samádhi).
+
+4. O how charming! said he, was that cooling rapture of spiritual
+delight, in which my soul had been enrapt for a short time.
+
+5. O how I long to resume that state of felicity! because these outward
+enjoyments which I have relished to my fill, have ceased to please me
+any more.
+
+6. I do not find the waves of those delights even in the orb of the
+moon, as I felt in the raptures which undulated in my soul, during the
+entranced state of my insensibility.
+
+7. Bali was again attempting to resume his state of inexcitability,
+when he was interrupted by the attendant demons, as the moon is
+intercepted by the surrounding clouds.
+
+8. He cast a glancing look upon them, and was going to close his eyes
+in meditation; after making his prostration on the ground; but was
+instantly obtruded upon by their gigantic statures standing all around
+him.
+
+9. He then reflected in himself and said: The intellect being devoid of
+its option, there is nothing for me to desire; but the mind being fond
+of pleasures vainly pursues after them: (which it cannot fully gain,
+enjoy or long retain).
+
+10. Why should I desire my emancipation, when I am not confined by or
+attached to anything here: it is but a childish freak to seek for
+liberation, when I am not bound or bound to anything below. (The soul
+is perfectly free of itself, but it is the mind that enchains it to
+earth).
+
+11. I have no desire of enfranchisement nor fear for incarceration,
+since the disappearance of my ignorance; what need have I then of
+meditation, and of what good is meditation to me?
+
+12. Meditation and want of meditation are both mistakes of the mind
+(there being no efficacy or inefficacy of either). We must depend on
+our manliness, and hail all that comes to pass on us without rejoicing
+or shrinking (since all good and evil proceed from God).
+
+13. I require neither thoughtfulness nor thoughtlessness, nor
+enjoyments nor their privation, but must remain unmoved and firm as one
+sane and sound.
+
+14. I have no longing for the spiritual, nor craving for temporal
+things; I have neither to remain in the meditative mood, nor in the
+state of giddy worldliness.
+
+15. I am not dead (because my soul is immortal); nor can I be living
+(because the soul is not connected with life). I am not a reality (as
+the body), nor an unreality (composed of spiritual essence only); nor I
+am a material or aerial body (being neither this body nor Vital air).
+Neither am I of this world or any other, but self-same ego—the Great.
+
+16. When I am in this world, I will remain here in quiet; I am not
+here, I abide calmly in the solace of my soul.
+
+17. What shall I do with my meditation, and what with all my royalty;
+let any thing come to pass as it may; I am nothing for this or that,
+nor is anything mine.
+
+18. Though I have nothing to do (because I am not a free agent; nor
+master of my actions); yet I must do the duties appertaining to my
+station in society. (Doing the duties of one’s station in life, is
+reckoned by some as the only obligation of man here below. So says the
+poet: “Act well thy part, there all the honor lies.”).
+
+19. After ascertaining so in his mind, Bali the wisest of the wise,
+looked upon the demons with complacence, as the sun looketh upon the
+lotuses.
+
+20. With the nods and glancings of his eyes, he received their homages;
+as the passing winds bear the odours of the flowers along with them
+(meaning to say: His cursory glances bore their regards, as the fleet
+winds bear the fragrance of flowers the rose).
+
+21. Then Bali ceasing to think on the object of his meditation;
+accosted them concerning their respective offices under him.
+
+22. He honoured the devas and his gurus with due respect, and saluted
+his friends and officers with his best regards.
+
+23. He honoured with his largesse, all his servants and suitors; and he
+pleased the attendant maidens with various persons.
+
+24. So he continued to prosper in every department of his government,
+until he made up his mind to perform a great sacrifice (yajna) at one
+time.
+
+25. He satisfied all beings with his great gifts, and gratified the
+great gods and sages with due honour and veneration. He then commenced
+the ceremony of the sacrifice under the guidance of Sukra and the chief
+_gurus_ and priests.
+
+26. Then Vishnu the lord of Lakshmí, came to know that Bali had no
+desire of earthly fruition; and appeared at his sacrifice to crown him
+with the success of his undertaking, and confer upon him his desired
+blessing.
+
+27. He cunningly persuaded him, to make a gift of the world to Indra
+his elder brother, who was insatiably fond of all kinds of enjoyment.
+(Indra was elder to Vishnu, who was thence called Upendra or the junior
+Indra).
+
+28. Having deceived Bali by his artifices of dispossessing him of the
+three worlds, he shut him in the nether world, as they confine a monkey
+in a cave under the ground. (This was by Vishnu’s incarnation in the
+form of a dwarf or puny man, who <was> considered to be the most cunning
+among men; _multum in parvo_; or a man in miniature).
+
+29. Thus Bali continues to remain in his confinement to this day, with
+his mind fixed in meditation, for the purpose of his attainment of
+Indraship again in a future state of life.
+
+30. The living liberated Bali, being thus restrained in the infernal
+cave, looks upon his former prosperity and present adversity in the
+same light.
+
+31. There is no rising or setting of his intelligence, in the states of
+his pleasure or pain; but it remained one and the same in its full
+brightness, like the disk of the sun in a painting.
+
+32. He saw the repeated flux and reflux of worldly enjoyments, and
+thence settled his mind in an utter indifference about them.
+
+33. He overcame multitudes of the vicissitudes of life for myriads of
+years, in all his transmigrations, in the three worlds, and found at
+last, his rest in his utter disregard of all mortal things.
+
+34. He felt thousands of comforts and disquiets, and hundreds of
+pleasures and privations of life, and after his long experience of
+these, he found his repose in his perfect quiescence.
+
+35. Bali having forsaken his desire of enjoyments, enjoyed the fulness
+of his mind in the privation of his wants; and rejoiced in
+self-sufficiency of his soul, in the loneliness of his subterranean
+cave.
+
+36. After a course of many years, Bali regained his sovereignty of the
+world, and governed it for a long time to his heart’s content.
+
+37. But he was neither elated by his elevation to the dignity of
+Indra—the lord of gods; nor was he depressed at this prostration from
+prosperity.
+
+38. He was one and the same person in every state of his life, and
+enjoyed the equanimity of his soul, resembling the serenity of the
+etherial sphere.
+
+39. I have related to you the whole story of Bali’s attainment of true
+wisdom, and advise you now, O Ráma! to imitate his example for your
+elevation, to the same state of perfection.
+
+40. Learn as Bali did by his own discernment, to think yourself as the
+immortal and everlasting soul; and try to reach to the state of your
+oneness or solity with the Supreme Unity, by your manliness (of
+self-controul and self-resignation).
+
+41. Bali the lord of the demons, exercised full authority over the
+three worlds, for more than a millennium; but at last he came to feel
+an utter distaste, to all the enjoyments of life.
+
+42. Therefore, O Victorious Ráma, forego the enjoyments of life, which
+are sure to be attended with a distaste and nausea at the end, and
+betake yourself to that state or true felicity, which never grows
+insipid at any time.
+
+43. These visible sights, O Ráma! are as multifarious as they are
+temptations to the soul; they appear as even and charming as a distant
+mountain appears to view; but it proves to be rough and rugged as you
+approach to it. (The pleasant paths of life, cannot entice the wise;
+they are smooth without, but rugged within).
+
+44. Restrain your mind in the cavity of your heart, from its flight in
+pursuit of the perishable objects of enjoyment, either in this life, or
+in the next, which are so alluring to all men of common sense.
+
+45. Know yourself, as the self-same intellect, which shines as the sun
+throughout the universe; and illumines every object in nature, without
+any distinction of or partiality to one or the other.
+
+46. Know yourself O mighty Ráma! to be the infinite spirit, and the
+transcendent soul of all bodies; which has manifested itself in
+manifold forms, that are as the bodies of the internal intellect.
+
+47. Know your soul as a thread, passing through, and interwoven with
+every thing in existence; and like a string connecting all the links of
+creation, as so many gems of a necklace or the beads of a rosary. (This
+hypostasis of the supreme spirit, is known as the _sútrátmá_ or the
+all-connecting soul of the universe; as the poet expresses it.
+Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, as full as perfect in
+a hair as heart. Pope).
+
+48. Know yourself as the unborn and embodied soul of _Virát_, which is
+never born nor ever dies; and never fall into the mistake of thinking
+the pure intellect, to be subject to birth or death. (The embodied soul
+of _Virát_, is the universal soul as what the poet says: “Whose body
+nature is, and god the soul).”
+
+49. Know your desires to be the causes of your birth, life, death and
+diseases; therefore shun your cupidity of enjoyments, and enjoy all
+things in the manner of the all witnessing intellect. (_i.e._ Indulge
+yourself in your intellectual and not corporeal enjoyments).
+
+50. If you remain in the everlasting light of the sun of your
+intellect, you will come to find the phenomenal world to be but a
+phantom of your dream.
+
+51. Never regret nor sorrow for any thing, nor think of your pleasures
+and pains, which do not affect your soul; you are the pure intellect
+and the all pervading soul, which manifests itself in every thing.
+
+52. Know the desirables (or worldly enjoyments) to be your evils, and
+the undesirable (self-mortification) to be for your good. Therefore
+shun the former by your continued practice of the latter.
+
+53. By forsaking your views of the desirables and undesirables, you
+will contract a habit of hebetude; which when it takes a deep root in
+your heart, you have no more to be reborn in the world.
+
+54. Retract your mind from every thing, to which it runs like a boy
+after vain baubles; and settle it in yourself for your own good.
+
+55. Thus by restraining the mind by your best exertions, as also by
+your habit of self-control, you will subdue the rampant elephant of
+your mind, and reach to your highest bliss afterwards.
+
+56. Do not become as one of those ignorant fools, who believe their
+bodies as their real good; and who are infatuated by sophistry and
+infidelity, and deluded by impostors to the gratification of their
+sensual appetites.
+
+57. What man is more ignorant in this world and more subject to its
+evils, than one who derived his Spiritual knowledge from one who is a
+smatterer in theology, and relies on the dogmas of pretenders and false
+doctors in divinity.
+
+58. Do you dispel the cloud of false reasoning from the atmosphere of
+your mind, by the hurricane of our right reasoning, which drives all
+darkness before it.
+
+59. You can not be said to have your right reasoning, so long as you do
+not come to the light and sight of the soul, both by your own exertion
+and grace of the Supreme Spirit.
+
+60. Neither the Veda nor Vedánta, nor the science of logic or any other
+sástras, can give you any light of the soul, unless it appears of
+itself within you.
+
+61. It is by means of your self culture, aided by my instruction and
+divine grace, that you have gained your perfect knowledge, and appear
+to rest yourself in the Supreme Spirit.
+
+62. There are three causes of your coming to spiritual light. Firstly
+your want of the knowledge of a duality, and then the effulgence of
+your intellectual luminary (thy soul) by the grace of God and lastly
+the wide extent of your knowledge derived from my instructions.
+
+63. You are now freed from your mental maladies, and have become sane
+and sound by abandonment of your desires, by removal of your doubts and
+errors, and by forsaking the mist of your fondness for external objects.
+
+64. O Ráma! as you get rid of the faults (errors) of your
+understanding, so you advance by degrees in gaining your knowledge, in
+cherishing your resignation, in destroying your defects, in imbibing
+the bliss of ecstacy, in wandering with exultation, and in elevating
+your soul to the sixth sphere. But all this is not enough unless you
+attend to Brahmahood itself. (These are called the _Sapta bhúmiká_ or
+seven stages of the practice of Yoga).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXX.
+
+ FALL OF HIRANYAKASIPU AND RISE OF PRAHLÁDA.
+
+
+Argument. Slaughter of Demons by Hari.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Attend Ráma, to the instructive narrative of
+Prahláda—the lord of demons; who became an adept by his own intuition.
+
+2. There was a mighty demon in the infernal regions, Hiranyakasipu by
+name; who was as valiant as Naráyana himself, and had expelled the gods
+and demigods from their abodes.
+
+3. He mastered all the treasures of the world, and wrested its
+possession from the hands of Hari; as the swan encroaches upon the
+right of the bee, on the large folia of the lotus.
+
+4. He vanquished the Gods and Asuras, and reigned over the whole earth,
+as the elephant masters the lotus-bed, by expulsion of the drove of
+swans from it.
+
+5. Thus the lord of the Asuras, having usurped the monarchy of the
+three worlds, begot many sons in course of time, as the spring brings
+forth the shoots of trees.
+
+6. These boys grew up to manhood in time, with the display of their
+manly prowess; and like so many brilliant suns, stretched their
+thousand rays on all sides of the earth and skies.
+
+7. Among them Prahláda the eldest prince became the regent, as the
+Kaustubha diamond has the pre-eminence among all other precious gems.
+(The Kaustubha gem was set in the breast-plate of Vishnu).
+
+8. The father Hiranyakasipu delighted exceedingly in his fortunate son
+Prahláda, as the year rejoices in its flowering time of the spring
+(_i.e._ the father delights in his promising lad, as the year in its
+vernal season).
+
+9. Supported by his son on one hand, and possessed of his force and
+treasures on the other; he became puffed up with his pride, as the
+swollen elephant emitting his froth from his triangular mouth.
+(Composed of the two sides of the tusks, and the lower part).
+
+10. Shining with his lustre and elated by his pride, he dried and drew
+up the moisture of the earth, by his unbearable taxation; as the
+all-destroying suns of universal dissolution, parch up the world by
+their rays. (Here is a play of the word _Kara_, in its triple sense of
+the hand, tax and solar rays).
+
+11. His conduct annoyed the gods and the sun and moon, as the behaviour
+of a haughty boy, becomes unbearable to his fellow comrades.
+
+12. They all applied to Brahmá, for destruction of the arch demon;
+because the repeated misdemeanours of the wicked, are unbearable to the
+good and great.
+
+13. It was then that the leonine Hari-Narasingha, clattered his nails
+resembling the tusks of an elephant; and thundered aloud like the
+rumbling noise of the _Dig-hastes_ (the regent elephants of all the
+quarters of heaven), that filled the concave world as on its last
+doomsday.
+
+14. The tusk-like nails and teeth of Vishnu, glittered like flashing
+lightnings in the sky; and the radiance of his earrings filled the
+hollow sphere of heaven, with curling flames of living fire. (The word
+dwija or twice born is applied to the nails and teeth, as to the moon
+and a twiceborn Bráhman).
+
+15. The sides and caverns of mountains presented a fearful aspect; and
+the huge trees were shaken by a tremendous tempest; that rent the skies
+and tore the vault of heaven. (This is the only place where the word
+_dodruma_ occurs for the Greek _dendron_ in Sanskrit, shortened to
+_dru_ a tree, the root of Druid a woodman).
+
+16. He emitted gusts of wind from his mouth and entrails, which drove
+the mountains before them; and his eyeballs flashed with the living
+fire of his rage, which was about to consume the world.
+
+17. His shining mane shook with the glare of sun-beams, and the pores
+of the hairs on his body, emitted the sparks of fire like the craters
+of a volcano.
+
+18. The mountains on all sides, shook with a tremendous shaking, and
+the whole body of Hari, shot forth a variety of arms in every direction.
+
+19. Hari in his leoantheopic form of half a man and half a lion, killed
+the gigantic demon by goring him with his tusks, as when an elephant
+bores the body of a horse with a grating sound.
+
+20. The population of the Pandemonium, was burnt down by the gushing
+fire of his eye balls; which flamed as the all-devouring conflagration
+of the last doomsday.
+
+21. The breath of his nostrils like a hurricane; drove everything
+before it; and the clapping of his arms (bahwasphota), beat as loud
+surges on the hollow shores.
+
+22. The demons fled from before him as moths from the burning fire, and
+they became extinct as extinguished lamps, at the blazing light of the
+day.
+
+23. After the burning of the Pandemonium, and expulsion of the demons,
+the infernal regions presented a void waste, as at the last devastation
+of the world.
+
+24. After the Lord had extirpated the demoniac race, at the end of the
+Titanic age, he disappeared from view with the grateful greetings of
+the synod of gods.
+
+25. The surviving sons of the demon, who had fled from the burning of
+their city, were afterwards led back to it by Prahláda; as the
+migrating fowls are made to return to the dry bed of a lake by a shower
+of rains.
+
+26. There they mourned over the dead bodies of the demons, and lamented
+at the loss of their possessions, and performed at last the funeral
+ceremonies of their departed friends and relatives.
+
+27. After burning the dead bodies of their friends, they invited the
+relics of the demons; that had found their safety by flight, to return
+to their deserted habitations again.
+
+28. The Asuras and their leaders, now continued to mourn with their
+disconsolate minds and disfigured bodies, like lotuses beaten down by
+the frost. They remained without any effort or attempt as the figures
+in a painting; and without any hope of resuscitation, like a withered
+tree or an arbour stricken by lightning.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+ PRAHLÁDA’S FAITH IN VISHNU.
+
+
+Argument. Prahláda’s Lamentations at the slaughter of the demons, and
+his conversion to Vishnuism.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Prahláda remained disconsolate in his subterranean
+region, brooding over the melancholy thoughts of the destruction of the
+Dánavas and their habitations.
+
+2. Ah! what is to become of us, said he, when this Hari is bent to
+destroy the best amongst us, like a monkey nipping the growing shoots
+and sprouts of trees.
+
+3. I do not see the Daityas anywhere in earth or in the infernal
+regions, that are left in the enjoyment of their properties; but are
+stunted in their growth like the lotuses growing on mountain tops.
+
+4. They rise only to fall like the loud beating of a drum, and their
+rising is simultaneous with their falling as of the waves in the sea.
+(_i.e._ no sooner they rise, than they are destined to fall).
+
+5. Woe unto us! that are so miserable in both our inward and outward
+circumstances; and happy are our enemies of light (Devas), that have
+their ascendency over us. O the terrors of darkness!
+
+6. But our friends of the dark infernal regions, are all darkened in
+their souls with dismay: also their fortune is as transitory as the
+expansion of the lotus-leaf by day, and its contraction at night.
+
+7. We see the gods, who were mean servants at the feet of our father,
+to have usurped his kingdom; in the manner of the timid deer, usurping
+the sovereignty of the lion in the forest. (So said the sons of Tipu
+Sultan, when they saw the English polluting his library with their
+hands).
+
+8. We find our friends on the other hand, to be all disfigured and
+effortless; and sitting melancholy and dejected in their hopelessness,
+like lotuses with their withered leaves and petals.
+
+9. We see the houses of our gigantic demons, filled with clouds of
+dusts and frost, wafted by gusts of wind by day and night; and
+resembling the fumes of fire which burnt them down.
+
+10. The inner apartments are laid open without their doors and
+enclosures, and are overgrown with the sprouts of barley, shooting out
+as blades of sapphires from underneath the ground.
+
+11. Ah! what is impossible to irresistible fate, that has so reduced
+the mighty demons; who are while used to pluck the flowers from
+the mountain tops of Meru like big elephants, and are now come to the
+sad plight of the wandering Devas of yore.
+
+12. Our ladies are lurking like the timorous deer, at the rustling of
+the breeze amidst the leaves of trees, for fear of the darts of the
+enemy whistling and hurling in the open air.
+
+13. O! the gemming blossoms of the _guluncha_ arborets, with which our
+ladies used to decorate their ears, are now shorn and torn and left
+forlorn (desolate) by the hands of Hari, like the lorn and lonesome
+heaths of the desert.
+
+14. They have robbed us of the all-producing kalpa-trees, and planted
+them in their _mandana_ pleasure gardens now teeming with their
+shooting gems and verdant leaflets in the etherial sphere.
+
+15. The eyes of haughty demons, that formerly looked with pity on the
+faces of their captured gods; are now indignantly looked upon by the
+victorious gods, who have made captives of them.
+
+16. It is known, that the water (liquid ichor) which is poured from the
+mouths of the spouting elephants of heaven on the tops of the
+mountains, falls down in the form of cascades, and gives rise to rivers
+on earth. (It means the water spouts resembling the trunks of
+elephants, which lifted the sea water to the sky, and let them fall on
+mountain tops to run as rivers below).
+
+17. But the froth exuding from the faces of our elephantic giants, is
+dried up to dust at the sights of the Devas, as a channel is sucked up
+in the dry and dreary desert of sand.
+
+18. Ah! where have those Daityas fled, whose bodies were as big as the
+peaks of mount Meru once, and were fanned by the fragrant breeze,
+breathing with the odorous dust of Mandára flowers. (Mandára is the
+name of a flower of the garden of Paradise).
+
+19. The beauteous ladies of the gods and Gandharvas, that were once
+detained as captives in the inner apartments of demons, are now
+snatched from us, and placed on Meru (the seat of the gods), as if they
+are transplanted there to grow as heavenly plants.
+
+20. O how painful is it to think! that the fading graces of our
+captured girls, are now mocked by the heavenly nymphs, in their
+disdainful dance over their defeat and disgrace.
+
+21. O it is painful to think! that the attending damsels, that fanned
+my father with their _chouri_ flappers, are now waiting upon the
+thousand-eyed Indra in their servile toil.
+
+22. O! the greatest of our grief is, this sad and calamitous fall of
+ours at the hands of a single Hari, who has reduced us to this state of
+helpless impotency.
+
+23. The gods now reposing under the thick and cooling shades of trees,
+are as cool as the rocks of the icy mountain (Himálaya); and do not
+burn with rage nor repine in grief like ourselves.
+
+24. The gods protected by the power of Sauri (Hari), are raised to the
+pinnacle of prosperity, have been mocking and restraining us in these
+caves, as the apes on trees do the dogs below. (The enmity of dogs and
+apes is proverbial, as obstructing one another from alighting on or
+rising above the ground).
+
+25. The faces of our fairies though decked with ornaments, are now
+bedewed with drops of their tears; like the leaves of lotuses with the
+cold dews of night.
+
+26. The old stage of this aged world, which was worsted and going to be
+pulled down by our might, is now supported upon the azure arms of Hari,
+like the vault of heaven standing upon the blue arches of the cerulean
+sky.
+
+27. That Hari has become the support of the celestial host, when it was
+about to be hurled into the depth of perdition; in the same manner as
+the great _tortoise_ supported the mount Mandara, as it was sinking in
+the Milky ocean in the act of churning it. (Samudra manthana). This was
+the act of the post-diluvians reclaiming from the sea all that had been
+swept into it at the great deluge.
+
+28. This our great father, and these mighty demons under him, have been
+laid down to dust like the lofty hills, that were levelled with the
+ground by the blasts of heaven at the end of the Kalpa.
+
+29. It is that leader of the celestial forces, the peerless destroyer
+of Madhu (Satan), that is able to destroy all and every thing by the
+fire in his hands (the flaming lightnings preceding the thunder bolts
+of Indra). (The twin gods, the thundering (vajrapani) Indra and the
+flaming (analapani) Upendra, bear great affinity to Jupiter tonitruous
+or the thundering Jove, and his younger brother the trident-bearer
+Neptune).
+
+30. His elder brother Indra baffles the battle axes in the hands of the
+mighty demons, by the force of the thunder-bolts held by his mightier
+arms, as the big male monkeys kill their male offspring. (These
+passages prove the early invention of fire arms by the Aryans, to have
+been the cause of their victory over Daityas or the demigods).
+
+31. Though the missive weapons (lightnings), which are let fly by the
+lotus-eyed Vishnu be invincible; yet there is no weapon or instrument
+which can foil the force of the thunder: (lit. break the strong
+thunderbolt). (Vishnu the leader of Vishas or the first foreign
+settlers of the land, overpowered the earth-born Daityas by his fire
+and fire arms, and dispossessed them of their soil, and reduced them to
+slavery. The descendants of the Vishas are the Vaishyas, who settled in
+India long before the Aryans).
+
+32. This Hari is inured in warfare, in the previous battles fought
+between him and our forefathers; in which they uprooted and flung great
+rocks at him, and waged many dreadful campaigns.
+
+33. It cannot be expected that he will be afraid of us, who stood
+victorious in those continuous and most dreadful and destructive
+warfares of yore.
+
+34. I have thought of one expedient only to oppose the rage of Hari,
+beside which I find no other way for our safety (lit. remedy).
+
+35. Let us therefore with all possible speed, have recourse to him,
+with full contriteness of our souls and understanding; because that god
+is the true refuge of the pious and the only resort of every body.
+
+36. There is no one greater than him in all the three worlds; for I
+come to know, that it is Hari only, who is the sole cause of the
+creation, sustentation and destruction or reproduction of the world.
+
+37. From this moment therefore, I will think only of that unborn
+(increate) Náráyana for ever more; and I must rely on that Náráyana,
+who is present in all places, and is full in myself and filling all
+space.
+
+38. Obeisance to Náráyana forms my faith and profession, for my success
+in all undertakings; and may this faith of mine ever abide in my heart,
+as the wind has its place in the midst of empty air.
+
+39. Hari is to be known as filling all sides of space and vacuum, and
+every part of this earth and all these worlds; my ego is the
+immeasurable Spirit of Hari, and my inborn soul is full of Vishnu.
+
+40. He that is not full with Vishnu in himself, does not benefit by his
+adoration of Vishnu; but he who worships Vishnu by thinking himself as
+such, finds himself assimilated to his god, and becomes one with him.
+(Or rather he loses himself in his God and perceives nought besides).
+
+41. He who knows Hari to be the same with Prahláda, and not different
+from him, finds Hari to fill his inward soul with his spirit. (So says
+the Sruti:—Prahláda was the incarnate Hari himself).
+
+42. The eagle of Hari (son of Vinatá) flies through the infinite space
+of the sky as the presence of Hari fills all infinity, and his golden
+body-light, is the seat of my Hari also. (Here the bird of heaven means
+the sun, which is said to be the seat of Hari).
+
+43. The claws of this bird,—Kara (or rays) serve for the weapons of
+Vishnu; and the flash of his nails, is the flash of the Vishnu’s
+weapons. (Here Garuda bird of heaven, serves for a personification of
+the sun, and his claws and nails represent the rays of solar light).
+
+44. These are the four arms of Vishnu and their armlets, which are
+represented by the four gemming pinnacles of mount Mandara which were
+grappled by the hands of Hari, at his churning of the milky ocean with
+it.
+
+45. This moonlike figure with the chouri flapper in her hand and rising
+from the depth of the milky ocean, is the goddess of prosperity
+(Laksmi) and associating consort of Vishnu.
+
+46. She is the brilliant glory of Hari, which was easily acquired by
+him, and is ever attendant on his person with undiminished lustre, and
+illuminates the three worlds as a radiant medicinal tree—_mahaushadhi_.
+
+47. There is the other companion of Vishnu called Máyá or illusion,
+which is ever busy in the creation of worlds upon worlds, and in
+stretching a magical enchantment all about them.
+
+48. Here is the goddess Victory (Jayá), an easy earned attendant on
+Vishnu, and shines as a shoot of the kalpa tree, extending to the three
+worlds as an all-pervading plant.
+
+49. These two warming and cooling luminaries of the sun and moon, which
+serve to manifest all the worlds to view, are the two eyes situated on
+the forehead of my Vishnu.
+
+50. This azure sky is the cerulean hue of the body of my Vishnu, which
+is as dark as a mass of watery cloud; and darkens the sphere of heaven
+with its sky blue radiance. The meaning of the word Vishnu was
+afterward changed to the residing divinity in all things from the root
+vish.
+
+51. Here is the whitish conch in the hand of my Hari, which is sonant
+with its fivefold notes (panchajanya), and is as bright as the
+vacuum—the receptacle of sound, and as white as the milky ocean of
+heavens (the milky path).
+
+52. Here I see the lotus in the hand of Vishnu, representing the lotus
+of his navel the seat of Brahmá, who rose from and sat upon it, as a
+bee to form his hive of the world.
+
+53. I see the cudgel of my Vishnu’s hand (the godá) studded with gems
+about it, in the lofty peak of the mountain of Sumeru, beset by its
+gemming stones, and hurling down the demons from its precipice.
+
+54. I see here the discus (chakra) of my Hari, in the rising luminary
+of the sun, which fills all sides of the infinite Space, with the
+radiant beams emanating from it.
+
+55. I see there in the flaming fire, the flashing sword—nandaka of
+Vishnu, which like an axe hath cut down the gigantic bodies of Daityas
+like trees, while it gave great joy to the gods.
+
+56. I see also the great bow of Vishnu (Sáranga), in the variegated
+rainbow of Indra; and also the quiver of his arrows in the Pushkara and
+Avarta clouds, pouring down their rains like piercing arrows from above.
+
+57. The big belly (Jathara) of Vishnu, is seen in the vast vacuity of
+the firmament, which contains all the worlds and all the past, present,
+and future creations in its spacious womb.
+
+58. I see the earth as the footstool of Virát, and the high sky as the
+canopy on his head; his body is the stupendous fabric of the universe,
+and his sides are the sides of the compass.
+
+59. I see the great Vishnu visibly manifest to my view, as shining
+under the cerulean vault of heaven, mounted on his eagle of mountain,
+and holding his conchshell, discus, cudgel and the lotus in his hands
+(in the manner described above).
+
+60. I see the wicked and evil minded demons, flying from me in the
+manner of the fleeting straws, which are blown and borne away after by
+the breath of the winds. (Lit.:—as the heaps of straw or hay _tarna_).
+
+61. This sable deity with his hue of the blue sapphire and mantle
+yellow, holding the club and mounted on the eagle and accompanied by
+Lakshmí; is no other than the selfsame Imperishable One. (Vishnu
+latterly called (Krishna) is the queller of demons, like Christ in the
+battle of the gods and Titan, and is believed to be the only begotten
+Son of God).
+
+62. What adverse Spirit can dare approach this all-devouring flame,
+without being burnt to death, like a flight of moths falling on a vivid
+fire?
+
+63. None of these hosts of gods or demigods that I see before me, is
+able to withstand the irresistible course of the destination of Vishnu.
+And all attempts to oppose it, will be as vain as for our weak-sighted
+eyes to shut out the light of the sun.
+
+64. I know the gods Brahmá, Indra, Siva and Agni (Ignis—the god of
+fire), praise in endless verses and many tongues, the Vishnu as
+their Lord.
+
+65. This Lord is ever resplendent with his dignity, and is invincible
+in his might; He is the Lord beyond all doubt, dispute and duality, and
+is joined with transcendent majesty.
+
+66. I bow down to that person, which stands as a firm rock amidst the
+forest of the world, and is a defence from all fears and dangers. It is
+a stupendous body having all the worlds situated in its womb, and
+forming the essence and substance of every distinct object of vision.
+(Here Vishnu is shown in his microcosmic form of Virát (Virat murti)).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+ THE SPIRITUAL AND FORMAL WORSHIP OF VISHNU.
+
+
+Argument. Prahláda’s Worship of Vishnu both in spirit and his Image.
+Witnessed by the gods, as the Beginning of Hero and Idol Worship.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—After Prahláda had meditated on Vishnu in the
+aforesaid manner, he made an image of him as Náráyana himself, and
+thought upon worshipping that enemy of the Asura race. (Here Vishnu—the
+chief of Vishas and destroyer of Asuras, is represented as the spirit
+of Náráyana, and worshipped in that form).
+
+2. And that this figure might not be otherwise than the form of Vishnu
+himself, he invoked the Spirit of Vishnu to be settled in this his
+out-ward figure also. (This was done by incantation of Pranpratishthá,
+or the charm of enlivening an idol in thought).
+
+3. It was seated on the back of the heavenly bird Garuda, arrayed with
+the quadruple attributes (of will, intelligence, action and mercy), and
+armed with the fourfold arms holding the conchshell, discus, club and a
+lotus. (This passage shows the fictitious representation of the person
+of Vishnu, with his fourfold arms of these, the two original arms with
+the cudgel and discus were in active use, while the two fictitious and
+immovable ones, with the conchshell and lotus, were clapped on for mere
+show).
+
+4. His two eye-balls flashed, like the orbs of the sun and moon in their
+outstretched sockets; his palms were as red as lotuses, and his bow
+_saranga_ and the sword _nandaka_ hang on his two shoulders and sides.
+
+5. I will worship this image, said he, with all my adherents and
+dependants, with an abundance of grateful offerings agreeable to my
+taste. Gloss. Things delectable to one’s taste, are most acceptable to
+the gods.[12]
+
+6. I will worship this great god always, with all kinds of offering of
+precious gems and jewels, and all sorts of articles for bodily use and
+enjoyment.
+
+7. Having thus made up his mind, Prahláda collected an abundance of
+various things, and made offerings of them in his mind, in his worship
+of Mádhava—the lord of Lakshmí. (Má and Ráma are titles of Lakshmí).
+
+8. He offered rich gems and jewels in plates of many kinds, and
+presented sandal pastes in several pots; he burnt incense and lighted
+lamps in rows, and placed many valuables and ornaments in sacred
+vessels.
+
+9. He presented wreaths of Mandára flowers, and chains of lotuses made
+of gold, together with garlands of leaves and flowers of kalpa plants,
+and bouquets and nosegays studded with gems and pearls.
+
+10. He hung hangings of leaves and leaflets of heavenly arbors, and
+chaplets and trimmings of various kinds of flowers, as _vakas_ and
+_kundas_, _kinkiratas_ and white, blue and red lotuses.
+
+11. There were wreaths of _kahlara_, _Kunda_, _Kása_ and _Kinsuka_
+flowers; and clusters of _Asoka_, _Madana_, _Bela_ and _kánikára_
+blossoms likewise.
+
+12. There were florets of the _Kadamba_, _Vakala_, _nimba_,
+_Sindhuvára_ and _Yúthikas_ also; and likewise heaps of _páribhadra_,
+_gugguli_ and _Venduka_ flowers.
+
+13. There were strings of _priyangu_, _pátala_, _páta_ and _pátala_
+flowers; and also the blossoms of _ámra_, _ámrataka_ and _gavyas_; and
+the bulbs of _haritaki_ and _vibhitaki_ myrabolans.
+
+14. The flowers of _Sála_ and _tamála_ trees, were strung together with
+their leaves; and the tender buds of _Sahakáras_, were fastened
+together with their farinaceous pistils.
+
+15. There were the _ketakas_ and centipetalous flowers, and the shoots
+of _ela_ cardamums; together with everything beautiful to sight and the
+tender of one’s soul likewise.
+
+16. Thus did Prahláda worship his lord Hari in the inner apartment of
+his house, with offerings of all the richest things in the world,
+joined with true faith and earnestness of his mind and spirit.[13]
+
+17. Thus did the monarch of Dánavas, worship his lord Hari externally
+in his holy temple, furnished with all kind of valuable things on
+earth. (The external worship followed that of his internal worship in
+faith and spirit. These two are distinctly called the _mánasa_ and
+_bájhya pujas_ and observed one after the other by every orthodox
+Hindu, except the Brahmos and ascetics who reject the latter formality).
+
+18. The Dánava sovereign became the more and more gratified in his
+spirit, in proportion as he adored his god with more and more of his
+valuable outer offerings.
+
+19. Henceforward did Prahláda continue, to worship his lord god day
+after day, with earnestness of his soul, and the same sort of rich
+offerings every day.
+
+20. It came to pass that the Daityas one and all turned Vaishnavas;
+after the example of their king; and worshipped Hari in their city and
+temples without intermission.
+
+21. This intelligence reached to heaven and to the abode of the gods,
+that the Daityas having renounced their enmity to Vishnu, have turned
+his faithful believers and worshippers _in toto_.[14]
+
+22. The Devas were all astonished to learn, that the Daityas had
+accepted the Vaishnava faith; and even Indra marvelled with the body of
+Rudras about him, how the Daityas came to be so at once.
+
+23. The astonished Devas then left their celestial abode, and repaired
+to the warlike Vishnu, reposing on his serpent couch in the milky ocean.
+
+24. They related to him the whole account of the Daityas, and they
+asked him as he sat down, the cause of their conversion, wherewith they
+were so much astonished.
+
+25. The gods said:—How is it Lord! that the demons who had always been
+averse to thee, have now come to embrace thy faith, which appears to us
+as an act of magic or their hypocrisy.
+
+26. How different is their present transformation to the Vaishnava
+faith, which is acquired only after many transmigrations of the soul,
+from their former spirit of insurrection, in which they broke down the
+rocks and mountains.
+
+27. The rumour that a clown has become a learned man, is as gladsome as
+it is doubtful also, as the news of the budding of blossoms out of
+season.
+
+28. Nothing is graceful without its proper place, as a rich jewel loses
+its value, when it is set with worthless pebbles. (The show of goodness
+of the vile, is a matter of suspicion).
+
+29. All animals have their dispositions conforming with their own
+natures; how then can the pure faith of Vishnu, agree with the doggish
+natures of the Daityas?
+
+30. It does not grieve us so much to be pierced with thorns and needles
+in our bodies, as to see things of opposite natures, to be set in
+conjunction with one another.
+
+31. Whatever is naturally adapted to its time and place, the same seems
+to suit it then and there; hence the lotus has its grace in water and
+not upon the land.
+
+32. Where are the vile Daityas, prone to their misdeeds at all times;
+and how far is the Vaishnava faith from them that can never appreciate
+its merit?
+
+33. O lord! as we are never glad to learn a lotus-bed to be left to
+parch in the desert soil; so we can never rejoice at the thought, that
+the race of demons will place their faith in Vishnu—the lord of gods.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+ PRAHLÁDA’S SUPPLICATION TO HARI.
+
+
+Argument. Hari’s Visit to Prahláda, and his Adoration of him.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—The lord of Lakshmí, seeing the gods so clamorous in
+their accusation of the demons, gave his words to them in sounds as
+sonorous as those of the rainy clouds, in response to the loud noise of
+screaming and thirst-stricken peacocks.
+
+2. The Lord Hari said:—Don’t you marvel ye gods! at Prahláda’s faith in
+me; as it is by virtue of the virtuous acts of his past lives, that
+pious prince is entitled to his final liberation in this his present
+life.
+
+3. He shall not have to be born again in the womb of a woman, nor to be
+reproduced in any form on earth; but must remain aloof from
+regeneration, like a fried pea which does not germinate any more.
+
+4. A virtuous man turning impious, becomes of course the source of
+evil; but an unworthy man becoming meritorious, is doubtless a step
+towards his better being and blessedness.
+
+5. You good gods that are quite happy in your blessed seats in heaven,
+must not let the good deserts of Prahláda be any cause of your
+uneasiness.
+
+6. Vasishtha resumed:—The Lord having thus spoken to the gods, became
+invisible to them, like a feather floating on the surface of waves.
+
+7. The assemblage of the immortals then repaired to their heavenly
+abodes after taking their leave of the god; as the particles of sea
+water are borne to the sky by the zephyrs, or by the agitation of the
+Mandara mountain.
+
+8. The gods were henceforth pacified towards Prahláda; because the mind
+is never suspicious of one who has the credit of his superiors.
+
+9. Prahláda also continued in the daily adoration of his god, with the
+contriteness of his heart, and in the formulas of his spiritual, oral
+and bodily services.
+
+10. It was in the course of his divine service in this manner, that he
+attained the felicity proceeding from his right discrimination,
+self-resignation and other virtues with which he was crowned.
+
+11. He took no delight in any object of enjoyment, nor felt any
+pleasure in the society of his consorts, all which he shunned as a stag
+shuns a withered tree, and the company of human beings.
+
+12. He did not walk in the ways of the ungodly, nor spent his time in
+aught but religious discourses. His mind did not dwell on visible
+objects, as the lotus never grows on dry land.
+
+13. His mind did not delight in pleasures, which were all linked with
+pain; but longed for its liberation, which is as entire of itself and
+unconnected with anything, as a single grain of unperforated pearl.
+
+14. But his mind being abstracted from his enjoyments, and not yet
+settled in its trance of ultimate rest; had been only waving between
+the two states, like a cradle swinging in both ways.
+
+15. The god Vishnu, who knew all things by his all-knowing
+intelligence; beheld the unsettled state of Prahláda’s mind, from his
+seat in the milky ocean.
+
+16. Pleased at Prahláda’s firm belief, he proceeded by the sub-terranean
+route to the place of his worship, and stood confest before him at
+the holy altar.
+
+17. Seeing his god manifest to his view, the lord of the demons
+worshipped him with two-fold veneration, and made many respectful
+offerings to his lotus-eyed deity more than his usual practice.
+
+18. He then gladly glorified his god with many swelling orisons, for
+his deigning to appear before him in his house of worship.
+
+19. Prahláda said:—I adore thee, O my lord Hari! that art unborn and
+undecaying; that art the blessed receptacle of three worlds; that
+dispellest all darkness by the light of thy body; and art the refuge of
+the helpless and friendless.
+
+20. I adore my Hari in his complexion of blue-lotus leaves, and of the
+colour of the autumnal sky; I worship him whose body is of the hue of
+the dark _bhramara_ bee; and who holds in his arms the lotus, discus,
+club and the conch-shell.
+
+21. I worship the god that dwells in the lotus-like hearts of his
+votaries, with his appearance of a swarm of sable bees; and holding a
+conch-shell as white as the bud of a lotus or lily, with the earrings
+ringing in his ears with the music of humming bees.
+
+22. I resort to Hari’s sky-blue shade, shining with the starry light of
+his long stretching nails; his face shining as the full-moon with his
+smiling beams, and his breast waving as the surface of Ganges, with the
+sparkling gems hanging upon it.
+
+23. I rely on that godling that slept on the leaf of the fig tree (when
+his spirit floated on the surface of the waters); and that contains the
+universe in himself in his stupendous form of Virát; that is neither
+born nor grown, but is always the whole by himself; and is possest of
+endless attributes of his own nature.
+
+24. I take my refuge in Hari, whose bosom is daubed with the red dust
+of the new-blown lotus, and whose left side is adorned by the blushing
+beauty of Lakshmí; whose body is mantled by a coloured red coverlet;
+and besmeared with red sandal paste like liquid gold.
+
+25. I take my asylum under that Hari who is the destructive frost to
+the lotus-bed of demons; and the rising sun to the opening buds of the
+lotus-bed of the deities; who is the source of the lotus-born Brahmá,
+and receptacle of the lotiform seat (cranium) of our understanding.
+
+26. My hope is in Hari—the blooming lotus of the bed of the triple
+world, and the only light amidst the darkness of the universe; who is
+the principle of the intellect—chit, amidst the gross material world
+and who is the only remedy of all the evils and troubles of this
+transient life.
+
+27. Vasishtha continued:—Hari the destroyer of demons, who is graced on
+his side by the goddess of prosperity; being lauded with many such
+graceful speeches of the demoniac lord, answered him as lovingly in his
+blue lotuslike form, as when the deep clouds respond to the peacocks’
+screams.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+ PRAHLÁDA’S SELF KNOWLEDGE OF SPIRITUALISM.
+
+
+Argument. Prahláda’s meditations and attainment of spiritual knowledge
+by the blessing of Vishnu.
+
+
+The Lord said:—O thou rich jewel on the crown of the Daitya race!
+Receive thy desired boon of me for alleviation of thy worldly
+afflictions.
+
+2. Prahláda replied:—What better blessing can I ask of thee, my Lord!
+than to instruct me in what thou thinkest thy best gift, above all
+other treasures of the world, and which is able to requite all our
+wants in this miserable life.
+
+3. The Lord answered:—Mayst thou have a sinless boy! and may thy right
+discrimination of things, lead thee to thy rest in God, and the
+attainment of thy Supreme felicity, after dispersion of thy earthly
+cares, and the errors of this world.
+
+4. Vasishtha rejoined:—Being thus bid by his god, the lord of demons
+fell into a profound meditation, with his nostrils snoring loudly like
+the gurgling waters of the deep.
+
+5. As the lord Vishnu departed from his sight, the chief of the demons
+made his oblations after him; consisting of handfuls of flowers and
+rich gems and jewels of various kinds.
+
+6. Then seated in his posture of _padmásana_, with his legs folded over
+one another, upon his elevated and elegant seat; and then chaunted his
+holy hymn and reflected within himself.
+
+7. My deliverer from this sinful world, has bade me to have my
+discrimination, therefore must I betake myself to discriminate between
+what is true and falsehood.
+
+8. I must know that I am in this darksome world, and must seek the
+light of my soul as also what is that principle (Ego), that makes me
+speak, walk and take the pains to earn myself.
+
+9. I perceive it is nothing of this external world, like any of its
+verdant trees or hills; the external bodies are all of a gross nature,
+but my _ego_ is quite a simple and pure essence.
+
+10. I am not this insensible body, which is both dull and dumb, and is
+made to move for a moment by means of the vital airs. It is an unreal
+appearance of a transitory existence.
+
+11. I am not the insensible sound, which is a vacuous substance and
+produced in vacuity. It is perceptible by the ear-hole, and is as
+evanescent and inane as empty air.
+
+12. I am neither the insensible organ of touch, or the momentary
+feeling of taction; but find myself to be an inward principle with the
+faculty of intellection, and the capacity of knowing the nature of the
+soul.
+
+13. I am not even my taste, which is confined to the relishing of
+certain objects, and to the organ of the tongue; which is a trifling
+and ever restless thing, sticking to and moving in the cavity of the
+mouth.
+
+14. I am not my sight, that is employed in seeing the visibles only; it
+is weak and decaying and never lasting in its power, nor capable of
+viewing the invisible Spirit.
+
+15. I am not the power of my smelling, which appertains to my nasal
+organ only, and is conversant with odorous substances for a short
+moment only. (Fragrance is a fleeting thing).
+
+16. I am pure intelligence, and none of the sensations of my five
+external organs of sense; I am neither my mental faculty, which is ever
+frail and fruit; nor is there any thing belonging to me or
+participating of my true essence. I am the soul and an indivisible
+whole.
+
+17. I am the ego or my intellect, without the objects of intellection
+(_i.e._ the thinking principle freed from its thoughts). My _ego_
+pervades internally and externally over all things, and manifests them
+to the view. I am the whole without its parts, pure without foulness
+and everlasting.
+
+18. It is my intellection that manifests to me this pot and that
+painting, and brings all other objects to my knowledge by its pure
+light; as the sun and a lamp show everything to the sight.
+
+19. Ah! I come to remember the whole truth at present, that I am the
+immutable and all pervading Spirit, shining in the form of the
+intellect (Gloss. The internal and intellectual Soul, is the Spirit of
+God).
+
+20. This essence evolves itself into the various faculties of sense; as
+the inward fire unfolds itself into the forms of its flash and flame,
+and its sparks and visible light.
+
+21. It is this principle which unfolds itself, into the forms of the
+different organs of sense also; as the all-diffusive heat of the hot
+season, shows itself in the shape of mirage in sandy deserts.
+
+22. It is this element likewise which constitutes the substance of all
+objects; as it is the light of the lamp which is the cause of the
+various colours of things; as the whiteness or other of a piece of
+cloth or any other thing. (The intrinsic perceptivity of the soul,
+causes the extrinsic senses and their separate organs).
+
+23. It is the source of the perception of all living and waking beings,
+and of everything else in existence; and as a mirror is the reflector
+of all outward appearances, so is the Soul the reflective organ of all
+its internal and external phenomena.
+
+24. It is by means of this immutable intellectual light alone, that we
+perceive the heat of the sun, the coldness of the moon, solidity of the
+rock and the fluidity of water.
+
+25. This one is the prime cause of every object of our continuous
+perceptions in this world; this is the first cause of all things,
+without having any prior cause of its own. (The soul produces the body,
+and not the body brings forth the soul).
+
+26. It is this that produces our notions of the continuity of objects
+that are spread all around us, and take the name of objects from their
+objectivity of the soul; as a thing is called not from the heat which
+makes it such.
+
+27. It is this formless cause, that is the prime cause of all plastic
+and secondary causes (such as Brahmá the creative agent and others). It
+is from this that the world has its production, as coldness is the
+produce of cold and the like.
+
+28. The gods Brahmá, Vishnu, Rudra and Indra, who are causes of the
+existence of the world, all owe their origin to this prime cause, who
+has no cause of himself.
+
+29. I hail that Supreme soul which is imprest in me, and is apart from
+every object of thought of the intellect, and which is self-manifest in
+all things and at all times.
+
+30. All beings besides, stand in the relation of modes and modalities
+to this Supreme Being; and they immerge as properties in that
+intellectual Spirit.
+
+31. Whatever this internal and intelligent Soul wills to do, the same
+is done every where; and nothing besides that self same soul exists in
+reality any where.
+
+32. Whatever is intended to be done by this intellectual power, the
+same receives a form of its own; and whatever is thought to be undone
+by the intellect, the same is dissolved into nought from its
+substantiality.
+
+33. These numberless series of worldly objects (as this pot, these
+paintings and the like), are as shades cast on the immense mirror of
+vacuum (or as air-drawn pictures represented on the canvas of empty
+Space).
+
+34. All these objects increase and decrease in their figures under the
+light of the soul, like the shadows of things enlarging and diminishing
+themselves in the sun shine.
+
+35. This internal Soul is invisible to all beings, except to those
+whose minds are melted down in piety. It is seen by the righteous in
+the form of the clear firmament.
+
+36. This great cause like a large tree, gives rise to all these visible
+phenomena like its germ and sprouts; and the movements of living
+beings, are as the flitterings of bees about this tree.
+
+37. It is this that gives rise to the whole creation both in its ideal
+and real and mobile or quiescent forms; as a huge rock gives growth to
+a large forest with its various kinds of big trees and dwarf
+shrubberies. (To him no high, no low, no great, no small, He fills, he
+bounds, connects, and equals all. Pope).
+
+38. It is not apart from anything, existing in the womb of this triple
+world; but is residing alike in the highest gods, as in the lowest
+grass below; and manifests them all full to our view.
+
+39. This is one with the ego, and the all-pervading soul; and is
+situated as the moving spirit, and unmoving dullness of the whole.
+
+40. The universal soul is beyond the distinction, of my, thy or his
+individual spirit; and is above the limits of time, and place, of
+number and manner, of form or figure or shape or size.
+
+41. It is one intelligent soul, which by its own intelligence, is the
+eye and witness of all visible things; and is represented as having a
+thousand eyes and hands and as many feet. (Wherewith he sees and grasps
+everything, and stands and moves in every place).
+
+42. This is that ego of my-self, that wanders about the firmament, in
+the body of the shining sun; and wanders in other forms also, as those
+of air in the current winds. (The first person I is used for supreme
+Ego).
+
+43. The sky is the azure body of my Vishnu with its accompaniments of
+the conchshell, discus, club and the lotus, in the clouds, all which
+are tokens of prosperity in this world by their blissful rains. (Vishnu
+is the lord of Lakshmí or prosperity, which is another name for a
+plenteous harvest. Her other name Srí the same with Ceres—the goddess
+of corn and mother of Prosperine in Grecian mythology).[15]
+
+44. I find myself as identic with this god, while I am sitting in my
+posture of padmásana and in this state of _Samádhi_—hypnotism, and when
+I have attained my perfection in quietism. (which is the form of Vishnu
+in the serene sky).
+
+45. I am the same with Siva—the god with his three eyes, and with his
+eye-balls rolling like bees, on the lotus face of Gaurí; and it is I
+that in the form of the god, Brahmá, contain the whole creation in me,
+as a tortoise contracts its limbs in itself. (The soul in rapture,
+seems to contain the macrocosm in itself).
+
+46. I rule over the world in the form of Indra, and as a monk I command
+the monastery which has come down to me. _i.e._ I am an Indra, when I
+reign over my domain; and a poor monk, when I dwell in my humble cell.
+
+47. I (the Ego) am both the male and female, and I am both the boy and
+girl; I am old as regards my soul, and I am young with regard to my
+body, which is born and ever renewed.
+
+48. The ego is the grass and all kinds of vegetables on earth; as also
+the moisture wherewith it grows them, like its thoughts in the ground
+of the intellect; in the same manner as herbs are grown in holes and
+wells by their moisture. _i.e._ The ego or soul is the pith and marrow
+of all substance.
+
+49. It is for pleasure that this ego has stretched out the world; like
+a clever boy who makes his dolls of clay in play. (God forms the world
+for his own amusement).
+
+50. This ego is myself that gives existence to all being, and it is I
+in whom they live and move about; and being at last forsaken by me, the
+whole existence dwindles into nothing. (The ego is the individual as
+well the universal soul).
+
+51. Whatever image is impressed in the clear mirror or mould of my
+intellect, the same and no other is in real existence, because there is
+nothing that exists beside or apart from myself.
+
+52. I am the fragrance of flowers, and the hue of their leaves; I am
+the figure of all forms, and the perception of perceptibles.
+
+53. Whatever movable or immovable thing is visible in this world; I am
+the inmost heart of it, without having any of its desires in my heart.
+
+54. As the prime element of moisture, is diffused in nature in the form
+of water; so is my spirit overspread in vegetables and all things at
+large in the form of vacuum. (Which is in the inside and outside of
+every thing).
+
+55. I enter in the form of consciousness, into the interior of
+everything; and extend in the manner of various sensation at my own
+will.
+
+56. As butter is contained in milk and moisture is inherent in water;
+so is the power of the intellect spread in all beings, and so the ego
+is situated in the interior of all things.
+
+57. The world exists in the intellect, at all times of the present,
+past and future ages; and the objects of intelligence, are all inert
+and devoid of motion; like the mineral and vegetable productions of
+earth.
+
+58. I am the all-grasping and all-powerful form of Virát, which fills
+the infinite space, and is free from any diminution or decrease of its
+shape and size. I am this all-pervading and all-productive power, known
+as Virát múrti or macrocosm (in distinction from the _súkshma-deha_ or
+microcosm).
+
+59. I have gained my boundless empire over all worlds, without my
+seeking or asking for it; and without subduing it like Indra of old or
+crushing the gods with my arms. (Man is the lord of the world of his
+own nature, or as the poet says:—“I am the Monarch of all I survey, and my
+right there is none to dispute”).
+
+60. O the extensive spirit of God! I bow down to that spirit in my
+spirit; and find myself lost in it, as in the vast ocean of the
+universal deluge.
+
+61. I find no limit of this spirit; as long as I am seated in the
+enjoyment of my spiritual bliss; but appear to move about as a minute
+mollusk, in the fathomless expanse of the milky ocean.
+
+62. This temple of Brahmánda or mundane world, is too small and
+straitened for the huge body of my soul; and it is impossible for me
+to be contained in it, as it is for an elephant to enter into the hole
+of a needle.
+
+63. My body stretches beyond the region of Brahmá, and my attributes
+extend beyond the categories of the schools, and there is no definite
+limitation given of them to this day.
+
+64. The attribute of a name and body to the unsupported soul is a
+falsehood, and so is it to compress the unlimited soul within the
+narrow bounds of the body.
+
+65. To say this is I, and this another, is altogether wrong; and what
+is this body or my want of it, or the state of living or death to me?
+(Since the soul is an immortal and etherial substance and my true-self
+and essence).
+
+66. How foolish and short-witted were my forefathers, who having
+forsaken this spiritual domain, have wandered as mortal beings in this
+frail and miserable world.
+
+67. How great is this grand sight of the immensity of Brahma; and how
+mean are these creeping mortals, with their high aims and ambition, and
+all their splendours of royalty. (The glory of God, transcends the
+glory of glorious sun).
+
+68. This pure intellectual sight of mine, which is fraught with endless
+joy, accompanied by ineffable tranquility, surpasses all other sights
+in the whole world. (The rapture of heavenly peace and bliss, has no
+bounds).
+
+69. I bow down to the Ego, which is situated in all beings; which is
+the intelligent and intellectual soul, and quite apart from whatever is
+the object of intellection or thought (_i.e._ the unthinkable spirit).
+
+70. I who am the unborn and increate soul, reign triumphant over this
+perishing world; by my attainment to the state of the great universal
+spirit, which is the chief object of gain—the _summum bonum_ of mortal
+beings, and which I live to enjoy. (This sublimation of the human soul
+to the state of the supreme spirit, and enjoyment of spiritual
+beatification or heavenly rapture, is the main aim and end of Yoga
+meditation).
+
+71. I take no delight in my unpleasant earthly dominion, which is full
+of painful greatness; nor like to lose my everlasting realm of good
+understanding, which is free from trouble and full of perpetual delight.
+
+72. Cursed be the wicked demons that are so sadly ignorant of their
+souls; and resort for the safety of their bodies, to their strongholds
+of woods and hills and ditches, like the insects of those places.
+
+73. Ignorance of the soul leads to the serving of the dull ignorant
+body, with articles of food and raiment; and it was thus that our
+ignorant elders pampered their bodies for no lasting good.
+
+74. What good did my father Hiranyakasipu reap, from his prosperity of
+a few years in this world; and what did he acquire worthy of his
+descent; in the line of the great sage Kasyapa?
+
+75. He who has not tasted the blissfulness of his soul, has enjoyed no
+true blessing, during his long reign of a hundred years in this world.
+
+76. He who has gained the ambrosial delight of his spiritual bliss, and
+nothing of the temporary blessings of life; has gained something which
+is ever full in itself, and of which there is no end to the end of the
+world.
+
+77. It is the fool and not the wise, who forsakes this infinite joy for
+the temporary delights of this world; and resembles the foolish camel
+which foregoes his fodder of soft leaves, for browzing the prickly
+thorns of the desert.
+
+78. What man of sense would turn his eyes from so romantic a sight, and
+like to roam in a city burnt down to the ground: and what wise man is
+there that would forsake the sweet juice of sugarcane, in order to
+taste the bitterness of Nimba?
+
+79. I reckon all my forefathers as very great fools, for their leaving
+this happy prospect, in order to wander in the dangerous paths of their
+earthly dominion.
+
+80. Ah! how delightful is the view of flowering gardens, and how
+unpleasant is the sight of the burning deserts of sand; how very quiet
+are these intellectual reveries, and how very boisterous are the
+cravings of our hearts!
+
+81. There is no happiness to be had in this earth, that would make us
+wish for our sovereignty in it; all happiness consists in the peace of
+the mind, which it concerns us always to seek.
+
+82. It is the calm, quiet and unaltered state of the mind, that gives
+us true happiness in all conditions of life; and the true realm of
+things in all places and at all times, and under every circumstance in
+life.
+
+83. It is the virtue of sunlight to enlighten all objects, and that of
+moonlight to fill us with its ambrosial draughts; but the light of
+Brahma transcends them both, by filling the three worlds with its
+spiritual glory; which is brighter than sun-beams, and cooler than
+moon-light.
+
+84. The power of Siva stretches over the fulness of knowledge, and that
+of Vishnu over victory and prosperity (Jayas-Lakshmí). Fleetness is the
+character of the mental powers, and force is the property of the wind.
+
+85. Inflammation is the property of fire, and moisture is that of
+water; taciturnity is the quality of devotees for success of devotion,
+and loquacity is the qualification of learning.
+
+86. It is the nature of the aerials to move about in the air, and of
+rocks to remain fixed on the ground; the nature of water is to set deep
+and run downwards; and that of mountains to stand and rise upwards.
+
+87. Equanimity is the nature of Saugatas or Buddhists, and carousing is
+the _penchant_ of wine-bibbers; the spring delights in its flowering,
+and the rainy season exults in the roaring of its clouds.
+
+88. The Yakshas are full of their delusiveness, and the celestials are
+familiar with cold and frost, and those of the torrid zone are inured
+in its heat. (This passage clearly shows the heaven of the Hindus, to
+have been in the northern regions of cold and frost).
+
+89. Thus are many other beings suited to their respective climes and
+seasons, and are habituated to the very many modes of life and
+varieties of habits; to which they have been accustomed in the past and
+present times.
+
+90. It is the one Uniform and Unchanging Intellect, that ordains these
+multiform and changing modifications of powers and things, according to
+its changeable will and velocity.
+
+91. The same unchanging Intellect presents these hundreds of changing
+scenes to us, as the same and invariable light of the sun, shows a
+thousand varying forms and colour to the sight.
+
+92. The same Intellect sees at a glance, these great multitudes of
+objects, that fill the infinite space on all sides, in all the three
+times of the present, past and future.
+
+93. The selfsame pure Intellect knows at once, the various states of
+all things presented in this vast phenomenal world, in all the three
+times that are existent, gone by and are to come hereafter.
+
+94. This pure Intellect reflects at one and the same time, all things
+existent in the present, past and future times; and is full with the
+forms of all things existing in the infinite space of the universe.
+
+95. Knowing the events of the three times, and seeing the endless
+phenomena of all worlds present before it, the divine intellect
+continues full and perfect in itself and at all times.
+
+96. The understanding ever continues the same and unaltered,
+notwithstanding the great variety of its perceptions of innumerables of
+sense and thought: such as the different tastes of sweet and sour in
+honey and _nimba_ fruit at the same time. (_i.e._ The varieties of
+mental perception and conception, make no change in the mind), as the
+reflexion of various figures makes no change in the reflecting glass.
+
+97. The intellect being in its state of arguteness, by abandonment of
+mental desires, and knowing the natures of all things by reducing their
+dualities into unity:—
+
+98. It views them alike with an equal eye and at the same time;
+notwithstanding the varieties of objects and their great difference
+from one another. (_i.e._ All the varieties blend into unity).
+
+99. By viewing all existence as non-existence, you get rid of your
+existing pains and troubles, and by seeing all existence in the light
+of nihility, you avoid the suffering of existing evils.
+
+100. The intellect being withdrawn from its view of the events of the
+three tenses (_i.e._ the occurrences of the past, present and future
+times), and being freed from the fetters of its fleeting thoughts,
+there remains only a calm tranquility.
+
+101. The soul being inexpressible in words, proves to be a negative
+idea only; and there ensues a state of one’s perpetual unconsciousness
+of his soul or self-existence. (This is the state of anæsthesia, which
+is forgetting oneself to a stock and stone).
+
+102. In this state of the soul it is equal to Brahma, which is either
+nothing at all or the All of itself; and its absorption in perfect
+tranquilness is called its liberation (moksha) or emancipation from all
+feelings (bodhas).
+
+103. The intellect being vitiated by its volition, does not see the
+soul in a clear light, as the hoodwinked eye has naught but a dim and
+hazy sight of the world.
+
+104. The intellect which is vitiated by the dirt of its desire and
+dislike, is impeded in its heavenly flight, like a bird caught in a
+snare. (Nor love nor hate of aught, is the best state of thought).
+
+105. They who have fallen into the snare of delusion by their ignorant
+choice of this or that, are as blind birds falling into the net in
+search of their prey.
+
+106. Entangled in the meshes of desire, and confined in the pit of
+worldliness, our fathers were debarred from this unbarred sight of
+spiritual light and endless delight.
+
+107. In vain did our forefathers flourish for a few days on the surface
+of this earth; only to be swept away like the fluttering flies and
+gnats, by a gust of wind into the ditch.
+
+108. If these foolish pursuers after the painful pleasures of the
+world, had known the path of truth they would never fall into the dark
+pit of unsubstantial pursuits.
+
+109. Foolish folks being subjected to repeated pains and pleasures by
+their various choice of things; follow at last the fate of ephemeral
+worms, that are born to move and die in their native ditches and bogs
+(_i.e._ as they are born of earth and dust so do they return to dust
+and earth again).
+
+110. He is said to be really alive who lives true to nature, and the
+mirage of whose desires and aversion, is suppressed like the fumes of
+his fancy, by the rising cloud of his knowledge of truth.
+
+111. The hot and foul fumes of fancy, fly afar from the pure light of
+reason, as the hazy mist of night, is dispersed by the bright beams of
+moon-light.
+
+112. I hail that soul which dwells as the inseparable intellect in me;
+and I come at last to know my God, that resides as a rich gem
+enlightening all the worlds in myself.
+
+113. I have long thought upon and sought after thee, and I have at last
+found thee rising in myself; I have chosen thee from all others; and
+whatever thou art, I hail thee, my Lord! as thou appearest in me.
+
+114. I hail thee in me, O lord of gods, in thy form of infinity within
+myself, and in the shape of bliss within my enraptured soul; I hail
+thee, O Supreme Spirit! that art superior to and supermost of all.
+
+115. I bow down to that cloudless light, shining as the disk of the
+full-moon in me; and to that self-same form, which is free from all
+predicates and attributes. It is the self risen light in myself, and
+that felicitous selfsame soul, which I find in myself _alter ego_.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+ MEDITATION ON BRAHMA IN ONE’S SELF.
+
+
+Argument. Pantheistic Adoration of the universal soul.
+
+
+Prahláda continued:—Om is the proper form of the One, and devoid of all
+defalcation; that Om is this all, that is contained in this world. (The
+Sruti says:—Om is Brahma, and Om is this all, it is the first and last
+&c.).
+
+2. It is the intelligence, and devoid of flesh, fat, blood and bones;
+it abides in all things, and is the enlightener of the sun and all
+other luminous bodies.
+
+3. It warms the fire and moistens the water (_i.e._ gives heat and
+moisture to the fire and water). It gives sensation to the senses, and
+enjoys all things in the manner of a prince. (Warms in the sun,
+refreshes in the breeze, &c. Pope).
+
+4. It rests without sitting, it goes without walking; it is active in
+its inactivity, it acts all without coming in tact with any thing.
+
+5. It is the past and gone, and also the present and even now; it is
+both the next moment, and remote future also; it is all that is fit and
+proper, and whatever is unfit and improper likewise. (Changed through
+all, and yet in all the same. All Discord, harmony not understood,
+tends to universal good. Pope).
+
+6. Undaunted, it produces all productions, and spreads the worlds over
+one another; it continues to turn about the worlds, from the Sphere of
+Brahma to the lower grounds of grass. (So Pope:—Spreads through all
+extent, spreads undivided, operates unspent).
+
+7. Though unmoving and immutable, yet it is as fleeting and changeable
+as the flying winds; it is inert as the solid rock, and more
+transparent than the subtile ether. “These as they change, are but the
+varied God.” Thomson.
+
+8. It moves the minds of men, as the winds shake the leaves of trees;
+and it directs the organs of sense, as a charioteer manages his horses.
+
+9. The Intellect sits as the lord of this bodily mansion, which is
+carried about as a chariot by the equestrians of the senses; and
+sitting at its own ease as sole monarch, it enjoys the fruitions of the
+bodily actions.
+
+10. It is to be diligently sought after, and meditated upon and lauded
+at all times; because it is by means of this only, that one may have
+his salvation from the pains of his age and death, and the evils of
+ignorance.
+
+11. It is easily to be found, and as easy to be familiarised as a
+friend; it dwells as the humble bee, in the recess of the lotus-like
+heart of every body.
+
+12. Uncalled and uninvoked, it appears of itself from within the body;
+and at a slight call it appears manifest to view. (So the Sruti:—The
+soul becomes palpable to view).
+
+13. Constant service of and attendance on this all-opulent Lord, never
+make him proud or haughty, as they do any other rich master to his
+humble attendants.
+
+14. This Lord is as closely situated in every body, as fragrance and
+fluidity, are inherent in flowers and sesamum seeds; and as flavour is
+inseparably connected with liquid substances.
+
+15. It is by reason of our unreasonableness, that we are ignorant of
+the Intellect, that is situated in ourselves; while our reasoning power
+serves to manifest it, as a most intimate friend to our sight.
+
+16. As we come to know this Supreme Lord, that is situated in us by our
+reasoning; we come to feel an ineffable delight in us, as at the sight
+of a beloved and loving friend.
+
+17. As this dearest friend appears to view, with his benign influence
+of shedding full bliss about us; we come to the sight of such glorious
+prospects, as to forget at once all our earthly enjoyments before them.
+
+18. All his fetters are broken loose and fall off from him, and all his
+enemies are put to an end; whose mind is not perforated by his
+cravings, like houses dug by the injurious mice.
+
+19. This one in all (_to pan_) being seen in us, the whole world is
+seen in Him; and He being heard, every thing is heard in Him: He being
+felt, all things are felt in Him; and He being present, the whole world
+is present before us.
+
+20. He wakes over the sleeping world, and destroys the darkness of the
+ignorant; He removes the dangers of the distressed, and bestows His
+blessings upon the holy. (So the sruti: _suptesujágarti_. God never
+sleeps. Jones. The ever wakeful eyes of Jove. To wake over the sleeping
+worlds. Iliad).
+
+21. He moves about as the living soul of all, and rejoices as the
+animal soul in all objects of enjoyment; it is He that glows in all
+visible objects in their various hues. (Shines in the sun, and twinkles
+in the stars; blazes in the fire, and blushes in flowers. Pope).
+
+22. He sees himself in himself, and is quietly situated in all things;
+as pungency resides in peppers, and sweetness in sugar &c.
+
+23. He is situated as intelligence and sensations, in the inward and
+outward parts of living beings; and forms the essence and existence of
+all objects, in general, in the whole universe.
+
+24. He forms the vacuity of the sky, and the velocity of the winds; He
+is the light of igneous bodies, and the moisture of aqueous substances.
+
+25. He is the firmness of the earth, and the warmth of the fire; He is
+the coldness of the moon, and the entity of every thing in the world.
+
+26. He is blackness in inky substances, and coldness in the particles
+of snow; and as fragrance resides in flowers, so is he resident in all
+bodies.
+
+27. It is his essence which fills all space, as the essence of time
+fills all duration; and it is his omnipotence that is the fountain of
+all forces, as it is his omnipresence that is the support of every
+thing in every place. (This is the pervasion, of omnipresence wrongly
+called as pantheism).[16]
+
+28. As the Lord unfolds everything to light, by the external organ of
+sight and the internal organ of thinking; so the Great God enlightens
+the gods (sun, moon, Indra and others) by his own light. (The Natural
+Theism which represented the visible heavens and heavenly bodies as
+gods, maintained also the doctrine of the One Invisible God, as shining
+and supporting them all by his presence. Gloss).
+
+29. I am that I am, without the attributes (of form or figure or any
+property) in me; and I am as the clear air, unsullied by the particles
+of flying dust; and as the leaves of lotuses, untouched by their
+supporting and surrounding waters.
+
+30. As a rolling stone gathers no moss, so there is nothing that
+touches or bears any relation to my airy mind; and the pain and
+pleasure which betake the body, cannot affect my form of the inner soul.
+
+31. The soul like a gourd fruit, is not injured by the shower of rain
+falling on the outer body resembling its hard crust; and the intellect
+like the flame of a lamp, is not to be held fast (or fastened) by a
+rope.
+
+32. So this ego of mine which transcends every thing, is not to be tied
+down by any thing to the earth; nor does it bear any relation with the
+objects of sense or my mental desires, or anything existent or not in
+existence in this world.
+
+33. Who has the power to grasp the empty vacuum; or confine the mind?
+You may cut the body to a thousand pieces, but you cannot divide the
+invisible and the indivisible vacuous Spirit rising in me.
+
+34. As the pot being broken or bored, or removed from its place, there
+is no loss sustained by its containing or contained air; so the body
+being destroyed, there is no damage done to the unconnected soul; and
+the mind is as false a name, as that of a demon or Pisácha.
+
+35. The destruction of the gross body, does not injure the immaterial
+soul; and what is the mind, but the perceptive power of my desires and
+gross pleasures and pains. (The organ of the mind is destroyed with the
+body).
+
+36. I had such a percipient mind before, but now I have found my rest
+in quiescence. I find it is another thing beside myself, because it
+perceives and partakes of the enjoyments of life, and is exposed to the
+dangers that betake the body.
+
+37. There is another one in me (_i.e._ the soul or intellect), which
+beholds the actions of the other (_i.e._ of the mind) as a theatric
+act; and witnesses the exposure of the body to peril, as its last sad
+and catastrophe.
+
+38. It is the wicked spirit, that is caught in ignorance; but the pure
+spirit has nothing to suffer: and I feel in myself neither the wish of
+my continuing in worldly enjoyments, nor a desire of forsaking them
+altogether. (I enjoy my life while it lasts).[17]
+
+39. Let what may come to pass on me, and whatever may happen to pass
+away from me; I have neither the expectation of pleasures for me, nor
+an aversion to the suffering of pain. (in my gain or loss of any thing,
+in my resignation of myself to God).
+
+40. Let pleasure or pain betake or forsake me as it may, without my
+being concerned with or taking heed of either; because I know the
+fluctuating desires, to be incessantly rising and setting in the sphere
+of my mind.
+
+41. Let these desires depart from me, for I have nothing to do with
+them, nor have they any concern with me. Alas! how have I been all this
+time, misled to these by ignorance, which is my greatest enemy.
+
+42. It is by favour of Vishnu, and by virtue of my pure Vaishnava
+faith, rising in me of itself, that my ignorance is now wholly
+dispelled from me, and the knowledge of the True One is revealed unto
+me.
+
+43. My knowledge of truth has now driven away my egoism (or knowledge
+of myself) from my mind; as they drive a spirit from its hiding-place
+in the hollow of a tree.
+
+44. I am now purified by admonition (mantra) of divine knowledge to me,
+and the arbour of my body is now set free from egoism, which sat as a
+demon (Yaksha) in it.
+
+45. It is now become as a sacred arbour, blooming with heavenly
+flowers; and freed from the evils of ignorance, penury, and vain
+wishes, which infested it erewhile.
+
+46. Loaded with the treasure of sacred knowledge, I find myself sitting
+here as one supremely-rich; and knowing all that is to be known, I see
+the sights that are invisible to others.
+
+47. I have now got that in which nothing can be wanting, and wherein
+there is no want besides; it is by my good fortune that I am freed from
+all evils, and the venomous serpents of worldly cares.
+
+48. My chill and frigid ignorance is melted down, by the light of
+knowledge; and the hot mirage of my desires, is now quenched and cooled
+by my quietude: I see the clear sky on all sides without any mist or
+dust and I rest under the cooling umbrage of the tranquility of my
+soul.
+
+49. It is by my glorification of God, and my thanksgivings to Vishnu,
+my holy rites and also by my divine knowledge and quietism; that I have
+obtained by grace of my God, a spacious room and elevated position in
+spirituality.
+
+50. I have got that god in my spirit, and have seen and known him also
+in his spiritual form. He is beyond my own ego, and I remember him
+always in this manner.
+
+51. I remember Vishnu as the great Spirit, and eternal Brahma in his
+nature; while my egoism or selfishness is confined as a snake, in the
+holes of my organic frame, which is wholly the land of death. (The
+animal soul is born to die with the mortal body).
+
+52. It is entangled in the bushes of its pricking desires, resembling
+the prickly _karanja_ ferns; and amidst the tumults of raging passions,
+and a thousand other broils of this world.
+
+53. It is placed amidst the conflagration of calamities, and is
+encircled by the flames of smart pain at all times; it is subjected
+to continual ups and downs of fortune, and repeated risings and
+fallings in its journey in this world.
+
+54. It has its repeated births and deaths, owing to its interminable
+desires; and thus I am always deceived by this great enemy—my own
+egoism.
+
+55. The animal soul is powerless at night, as if it were caught in the
+clutches of a demon in the forest; so I feel it now to be deprived of
+its power and action, while I am in this state of my meditation. (The
+animal spirit is dormant in its states of physical and spiritual
+trance).
+
+56. It is by grace of Vishnu, that the light of my understanding is
+roused; and as I see my God by means of this light, I lose the sight of
+my demoniac egoism (_i.e._ I become unconscious of my existence at the
+sight of my Lord).
+
+57. The sight of the demoniac egoism dwelling in the cavity of my mind,
+disappears from my view in the like manner; as the shadow of darkness
+flies from the light of a lamp, and as the shade of night is dispersed
+by day light.
+
+58. As you know not where the flame of the lighted lamp is fled, after
+it is extinguished; so we know not where our lordly egoism is hid, at
+the sight of our God before us.
+
+59. My rich egoism flies at the approach of reason, as a heavy loaded
+robber, flies before the advance of day light; and our false egoism
+vanishes as a demon, at the rising of the true Ego of God.
+
+60. My egoism being gone, I am set at ease like a tree, freed from a
+poisonous snake rankling in its hollow cavity. I am at rest and in my
+insensibleness in this world, when I am awakened to my spiritual light.
+
+61. I have escaped from the hand of my captor, and gained my permanent
+ascendency over others; I have got my internal coldness _sang froid_,
+and have allayed the mirage of my thirst after vain glory.
+
+62. I have bathed in the cold bath of rain water, and am pacified as a
+rock after the cooling of its conflagration; I am cleansed of my
+egoism, by my knowledge of the true meaning of the term.
+
+63. What is ignorance and what are our pains and affliction? what are
+our evil desires, and what are our diseases and dangers? All these with
+the ideas of heaven and liberation, together with the hope of heaven
+and the fear of hell, are but false conceptions proceeding from our
+egoism or selfishness (or the cravings and loathings of our hearts).
+
+64. As a picture is drawn on a canvas and not in empty air, so our
+thoughts depend on our selfish principle and upon its want. And as it
+is the clear linen, that receives the yellow colour of saffron; so it
+is the pure soul that receives the image of God. It is egoism which
+vitiates the soul with the bilious passions of the heart, as a dirty
+cloth vitiates a goodly paint, with its inborn taint.
+
+65. Purity of the inward soul, is like the clearness of the autumnal
+sky; it is devoid of the cloudiness of egoism, and the drizzling drops
+of desires. (_i.e._ A pure soul is as clear as the unclouded sky).
+
+66. I bow down to thee, O my soul inmost! that art a stream of bliss to
+me, with pure limpid waters amidst, and without the dirt of egoism
+about thee.
+
+67. I hail thee, O thou my soul! that art an ocean of joy to me,
+uninfested by the sharks of sensual appetites, and undisturbed by the
+submarine fire of the latent mind.
+
+68. I prostrate myself before thee, O thou quick soul of mine! that art
+a mountain of delight to me, without the hovering clouds of egoistic
+passions, and the wild fires of gross appetites and desires.
+
+69. I bow to thee, O thou soul in me! that art the heavenly lake of
+Manas to me, with the blooming lotuses of delight, and without the
+billows of cares and anxieties.
+
+70. I greet thee my internal spirit! that floatest in the shape of a
+swan (hansa) in the lake of the mind (manas) of every individual, and
+residest in the cavity of the lotiform cranium (Brahmárandhra), with
+thy outstretched wings of consciousness and standing.
+
+71. All hail to thee, O thou full and perfect spirit! that art the
+undivided and immortal soul, and appearest in thy several parts of the
+mind and senses; like the full-moon containing all its digits in its
+entire self.
+
+72. Obeisance to the sun of my intellect! which is always in its
+ascendency and dispels the darkness of my heart; which pervades
+everywhere, and is yet invisible or dimly seen by us.
+
+73. I bow to my intellectual light, which is an oilless lamp of benign
+effulgence, and burns in full blaze within me and without its wick. It
+is the enlightener of nature, and quite still in its nature.
+
+74. Whenever my mind is heated by cupid’s fire, I cool it by the
+coolness of my cold and callous intellect coolness; as they temper the
+red-hot iron with a cold and hard hammer.
+
+75. I am gaining my victory over all things, by killing my egoism by
+the Great Ego; and by making my senses and mind to destroy themselves.
+
+76. I bow to thee, O thou all subduing faith, that dost crush our
+ignorant doubt by thy wisdom; dispellest the unrealities by thy
+knowledge of the reality, and removest our cravings by thy
+contentedness.
+
+77. I subsist solely as the transparent spirit, by killing my mind by
+the great Mind, and removing my egoism by the sole Ego, and by driving
+the unrealities by the true Reality.
+
+78. I rely my body (_i.e._ I depend for my bodily existence), on the
+moving principle of my soul only; without the consciousness of my
+self existence, my egoism, my mind and all its efforts and actions.
+
+79. I have obtained at last of its own accord, and by the infinite
+grace of the Lord of all, the highest blessing of cold heartedness and
+_insouciance_ in myself.
+
+80. I am now freed from the heat of my feverish passions, by subsidence
+of the demon of my ignorance; from disappearance of the goblin of my
+egoism.
+
+81. I know not where the falcon of my false egoism has fled, from the
+cage of my body, by breaking its string of desires to which it was fast
+bound in its feet.
+
+82. I do not know whither the eagle of my egotism is flown, from its
+nest in the arbor of my body, after blowing away its thick ignorance
+as dust.
+
+83. Ah! where is my egoism fled, with its body besmeared with the dust
+and dirt of worldliness, and battered by the rocks of its insatiable
+desires? It is bitten by the deadly dragons of fears and dangers, and
+pierced in its hearts by repeated disappointments and despair.
+
+84. O! I wonder to think what I had been all this time, when I was
+bound fast by my egoism in the strong chain of my personality.
+
+85. I think myself a new born being to-day, and to have become
+highminded also, by being removed from the thick cloud of egoism, which
+had shrouded me all this time.
+
+86. I have seen and known, and obtained this treasure of my soul, as it
+is presented to my understanding, by the verbal testimonies of the
+sástras, and by the light of inspiration in my hour of meditation
+(samádhi).
+
+87. My mind is set at rest as extinguished fire, by its being released
+from the cares of the world; as also from all other thoughts and
+desires and the error of egoism. I am now set free from my affections
+and passions, and all delights of the world, as also my craving after
+them.
+
+88. I have passed over the impassable ocean of dangers and
+difficulties, and the intolerable evils of transmigration; by the
+disappearance of my internal darkness, and sight of the One Great God
+in my intellect.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+ HYMN TO THE SOUL.
+
+
+Argument. Prahláda getting the light of his internal soul, delights
+himself as one in the company of his sweet-heart.
+
+
+Prahláda continued:—I thank thee, O lord and great spirit! that art
+beyond all things, and art found in myself by my good fortune.
+
+2. I have no other friend, O my Lord, in the three worlds except thee;
+that dost vouchsafe to embrace and look upon me, when I pray unto thee.
+
+3. It is thou that preservest and destroyest all, and givest all things
+to every body; and it is thou, that makest us move and work, and praise
+thy holy name. Now art thou found and seen by me, and now thou goest
+away from me.
+
+4. Thou fillest all being in the world with thy essence; thou art
+present in all places, but where art thou now fled and gone from me?
+
+5. Great is the distance between us, even as the distance of the places
+of our birth, it is my good fortune of friend! that has brought thee
+near me today, and presented thee to my sight (so fleeting is spiritual
+vision).
+
+6. I hail thee, thou felicitous one! that art my maker and preserver
+also; I thank thee that art the stalk of this fruit of this world, and
+that art the eternal and pure soul of all.
+
+7. I thank the holder of the lotus and discus, and thee also that
+bearest the crescent half moon on thy forehead—great Siva. I thank the
+lord of gods—Indra, and Brahmá also, that is born of the lotus.
+
+8. It is a verbal usage that makes a distinction betwixt thee and
+ourselves (_i.e._ between the Divine and animal souls); but this is a
+false impression as that of the difference between waves and their
+elemental water.
+
+9. Thou showest thyself in the shapes of the endless varieties of
+beings, and existence and extinction are the two states of thyself from
+all eternity.
+
+10. I thank thee that art the creator and beholder of all, and the
+manifester of innumerable forms. I thank thee that art the whole nature
+thyself.
+
+11. I have undergone many tribulations in the long course of past
+lives, and it was by thy will that I became bereft of my strength, and
+was burnt away at last.
+
+12. I have beheld the luminous worlds, and observed many visible and
+invisible things; but thou art not to be found in them. So I have
+gained nothing (from my observations).
+
+13. All things composed of earth, stone and wood, are formations of
+water (the form of Vishnu), there is nothing here, that is permanent, O
+god, beside thyself. Thou being obtained there is nothing else to
+desire.
+
+14. I thank thee lord! that art obtained, seen and known by me this
+day; and that shalt be so preserved by me, as never to be obliterated
+(from my mind).
+
+15. Thy bright form which is interwoven by the rays of light, is
+visible to us by inversion of the sight of the pupils of our eyes, into
+the inmost recesses of our heart.
+
+16. As the feeling of heat and cold is perceived by touch, and as the
+fragrance of the flower is felt in the oil with which it is mixed; so I
+feel thy presence by thy coming in contact with my heart.
+
+17. As the sound of music enters into the heart through the ears, and
+makes the heart strings to thrill, and the hairs of the body to stand
+at an end; so is thy presence perceived in our hearts also.
+
+18. As the objects of taste are felt by the tip of the tongue, which
+conveys their relish to the mind; so is thy presence felt by my heart,
+when thou touchest it with thy love.
+
+19. How can one slight to look and lay hold on his inner soul which
+shoots through every sense of his body; when he takes up a sweet
+scenting flower, perceptible by the sense of smelling only, and finally
+decorating his outer person with it.
+
+20. How can the supreme spirit, which is well known to us by means of
+the teachings of the Vedas, Vedánta, Sidhántas and the Puránas, as also
+by the Logic of schools and the hymns of the Vedas, be any way
+forgotten by us?
+
+21. These things which are pleasant to the bodily senses, do not
+gladden my heart, when it is filled by thy translucent presence.
+
+22. It is by thy effulgent light, that the sun shines so bright; as it
+is by thy benign lustre also, that the moon dispenses her cooling beams.
+
+23. Thou hast made these bulky rocks, and upheld the heavenly bodies;
+thou hast supported the stable earth, and lifted the spacious firmament.
+
+24. Fortunately thou hast become myself, and I have become one with
+thyself, I am identic with thee and thou with me, and there is no
+difference between us.
+
+25. I thank the great spirit, that is expressed by turns by the words
+myself and thyself; and mine and thine.
+
+26. I thank the infinite God, that dwells in my unegoistic mind; and I
+thank the formless Lord, that dwells in my tranquil soul.
+
+27. Thou dwellest, O Lord! in my formless, tranquil, transparent and
+conscious soul, as thou residest in thy own spirit, which is unbounded
+by the limitations of time and space.
+
+28. It is by thee that the mind has its action, and the senses have
+their sensations; the body has all its powers, and the vital and
+respirative breaths have their inflations and afflations.
+
+29. The organs of the body are led by the rope of desire to their
+several actions, and being united with flesh, blood and bones, are
+driven like the wheels of a car by the charioteer of the mind.
+
+30. I am the consciousness of my body, and am neither the body itself
+nor my egoism of it; let it therefore rise or fall, it is of no
+advantage or disadvantage to me.
+
+31. I was born in the same time with my ego (as a personal, corporeal
+and sensible being); and it was long afterwards that I had the
+knowledge of my soul; I had my insensibility last of all, in the manner
+of the world approaching to its dissolution at the end.
+
+32. Long have I travelled in the long-some journey of the world; I am
+weary with fatigue and now rest in quiet, like the cooling fire of the
+last conflagration. (_i.e._ Of the doomsday).
+
+33. I thank the Lord who is all (_to pan_), and yet without all and
+everything; and thee my soul! that art myself likewise. I thank thee
+above those sástras and preceptors, that teach the ego and tu (_i.e._
+the subjective and objective).
+
+34. I hail the all witnessing power of that providential spirit, that
+has made these ample and endless provisions for others, without
+touching or enjoying them itself.
+
+35. Thou art the spirit that dwellest in all bodies in the form of the
+fragrance of flowers, and in the manner of breath in bellows; and as
+the oil resides in the sesamum seeds.
+
+36. How wonderful is this magic scene of thine, that thou appearest in
+everything, and preservest and destroyest it at last, without having
+any personality of thy own.
+
+37. Thou makest my soul rejoice at one time as a lighted lamp, by
+manifesting all things before it; and thou makest it joyous also, when
+it is extinguished as a lamp, after its enjoyment of the visibles.
+
+38. This universal frame is situated in an atom of thyself, as the big
+banian tree is contained in the embryo of a grain of its fig.
+
+39. Thou art seen, O lord, in a thousand forms that glide under our
+sight; in the same manner as the various forms of elephants and horses,
+cars and other things are seen in the passing clouds on the sky.
+
+40. Thou art both the existence and absence of all things, that are
+either present or lost to our view; yet thou art quite apart from all
+worldly existences, and art aloof from all entities and non-entities in
+the world.
+
+41. Forsake, O my soul! the pride and anger of thy mind, and all the
+foulness and wiliness of thy heart; because the highminded never fall
+into the faults and errors of the common people.
+
+42. Think over and over on the actions of thy past life, and the long
+series of thy wicked acts; and then with a sigh blush to think upon
+what thou hadst been before, and cease to do such acts anymore.
+
+43. The bustle of thy life is past, and thy bad days have gone away;
+when thou wast wrapt in the net of thy tangled thoughts on all sides.
+
+44. Now thou art a monarch in the city of thy body, and hast the desire
+of thy mind presented before thee; thou art set beyond the reach of
+pleasure and pain, and art as free as the air which nobody can grasp.
+
+45. As thou hast now subdued the untractable horses of thy bodily
+organs, and the indomitable elephant of thy mind; and as thou hast
+crushed thy enemy of worldly enjoyment, so dost thou now reign as the
+sole sovereign, over the empire of thy body and mind.
+
+46. Thou art now become as the glorious sun, to shine within and
+without us day by day; and dost traverse the unlimited fields of air,
+by thy continued rising and setting at every place in our meditation of
+thee.
+
+47. Thou Lord! art ever asleep, and risest also by thy own power; and
+then thou lookest on the luxuriant world, as a lover looks on his
+beloved.
+
+48. These luxuries like honey, are brought from great distances by the
+bees of the bodily organs; and the spirit tastes the sweets, by looking
+upon them through the windows of its eyes. (The spirit enjoys the
+sweets of offerings, by means of its internal senses).
+
+49. The seat of the intellectual world in the cranium is always dark,
+and a path is made in it by the breathings of inspiration and
+respiration (pránápána), which lead the soul to the sight of Brahmá
+(_lit._: to the city of Brahmá. This is done by the practice of
+_pránáyáma_).
+
+50. Thou Lord! art the odor of this flower-like body of thine, and
+thou art the nectarious juice of thy moonlike frame, the moisture of
+this bodily tree, and thou art the coolness of its cold humours: phlegm
+and cough.
+
+51. Thou art the juice, milk and butter, that support the body, and
+thou being gone (O soul!), the body is dried up and become as full to
+feed the fire.
+
+52. Thou art the flavour of fruits, and the light of all luminous
+bodies; it is thou that perceivest and knowest all things, and givest
+light to the visual organ of sight.
+
+53. Thou art the vibration of the wind, and the force of our
+elephantine minds; and so art thou the acuteness of the flame of our
+intelligence.
+
+54. It is thou that givest us the gift of speech, and dost stop our
+breath, and makest it break forth again on occasions. (Speech—Vách—vox
+in the feminine gender, is made Váchá by affix á according to Bhaguri).
+
+55. All these various series of worldly productions, bear the same
+relation to thee, as the varieties of jewelleries (such as the
+bracelets and wristlets); are related to the gold (of which they are
+made).
+
+56. Thou art called by the words I, thou, he &c., and it is thyself
+that callest thyself such as it pleaseth thee. (The impersonal God is
+represented in different persons).
+
+57. Thou art seen in the appearances of all the productions of nature,
+as we see the forms of men, horses and elephants in the clouds, when
+they glide softly on the wings of the gentle winds. (But as all these
+forms are unreal, so God has no form in reality).
+
+58. Thou dost invariably show thyself in all thy creatures on earth,
+the blazing fire presents the figures of horses and elephants in its
+lambent flames. (Neither has God nor fire any form at all).
+
+59. Thou art the unbroken thread, by which the orbs of worlds are
+strung together as a rosary of pearls; and thou art the field that
+growest the harvest of creation, by the moisture of thy intellect. (The
+divine spirit stretches through all, and contains the pith of creation).
+
+60. Things that were inexistent and unproduced before creation, have
+come to light from their hidden state of reality by thy agency, as the
+flavour of meat-food, becomes evident by the process of cooking.[18]
+
+61. The beauties of existences are imperceptible without the soul; as
+the graces of a beauty are not apparent to one devoid of his eyesight.
+
+62. All substances are nothing whatever without thy inherence in them;
+as the reflection of the face in the mirror (or a picture in painting),
+is to no purpose without the real face or figure of the person.
+
+63. Without thee the body is a lifeless mass, like a block of wood or
+stone; and it is imperceptible without the soul, as the shadow of a
+tree in absence of the sun.
+
+64. The succession of pain and pleasure, ceases to be felt by one who
+feels thee within himself; as the shades of darkness, the twinkling of
+stars, and the coldness of frost, cease to exist in the bright sunlight.
+
+65. It is by a glance of thy eye, that the feelings of pain and
+pleasure rise in the mind; as it is by the beams of the rising sun,
+that the sky is tinged with its variegated hues.
+
+66. Living beings perish in a moment, at the privation of thy presence;
+as the burning lamp is extinguished to darkness, at the extinction of
+its light. (Light and life are synonymous terms, as death and darkness
+are homonyms).
+
+67. As the gloom of darkness is conspicuous at the want of light; but
+coming in contact with light, it vanishes from view.[19]
+
+68. So the appearances of pain and pleasure, present themselves before
+the mind, during thy absence from it; but they vanish into nothing at
+the advance of thy light into it.
+
+69. The temporary feelings of pleasure and pain, can find no room in
+the fulness of heavenly felicity (in the entranced mind); just as a
+minute moment of time, is of no account in the abyss of eternity.
+
+70. The thoughts of pleasure and pain, are as the short-lived fancies
+of the fairy land or castles in air; they appear by turns at thy
+pleasure, but they disappear altogether no sooner thy form is seen in
+the mind.
+
+71. It is by thy light in our visual organs, that things appear to
+sight at the moment of our waking, as they are reproduced into being;
+and it is by thy light also poured into our minds, that they are seen
+in our dream, as if they are all asleep in death.
+
+72. What good can we derive from these false and transient appearances
+in nature? No one can string together the seeming lotuses that are
+formed by the foaming froth of the waves.
+
+73. No substantial good can accrue to us from transitory mortal things;
+as no body can string together the transient flashes of lightning into
+a necklace. (This is in refutation of the usefulness of temporary
+objects maintained by the Saugatas).
+
+74. Should the rationalist take the false ideas of pain and pleasure
+for sober realities; what distinction then can there be between them
+and the irrational realists (Buddhists).
+
+75. Should you, like the Nominalist, take everything which bears a name
+for a real entity; I will tell you no more than that, you are too fond
+to give to imaginary things a fictitious name at your own will.
+(Gloss:—according to the ideas and desires of one’s own mind, or giving
+a name to airy nothing).
+
+76. But the soul is indivisible and without its desire and egoism, and
+whether it is a real substance or not we know nothing of, yet its
+agency is acknowledged on all hands in our bodily actions.
+
+77. All joy be thine! that art boundless in thy spiritual body, and
+ever disposed to tranquility; that art beyond the knowledge of the
+Vedas, and art yet the theme of all the sástras.
+
+78. All joy to thee! that art both born and unborn with the body, and
+art decaying undecayed in thy nature; that art the unsubstantial
+substance of all qualities, and art known and unknown to every body.
+
+79. I exult now and am calm again, I move and am still afterwards; I am
+victorious and live to win my liberation by thy grace; therefore I hail
+thee that art myself.
+
+80. When thou art situated in me, my soul is freed from all troubles
+and feelings and passions; and is placed in perfect rest. There is no
+more any fear of danger or difficulty or of life and death, nor any
+craving for prosperity, when I am absorbed in everlasting bliss with
+thee.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+ DISORDER AND DISQUIET OF THE ASURA REALM.
+
+
+Argument. As Prahláda was absorbed in Meditation, his dominions were
+infested by robbers for want of a Ruler, and the reign of terror.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Prahláda the defeater of inimical hosts, was sitting in
+the said manner in divine meditation, and was absorbed in his entranced
+rapture, and undisturbed _anaesthesia_ or insensibility for a long time.
+
+2. The soul reposing in its original state of unalterable _ecstatis_,
+made his body as immovable as a rock in painting or a figure carved on
+a stone (_in bas relief_).
+
+3. In this manner a long time passed upon his hybernation, when he was
+sitting in his house in a posture as unshaken as the firm Meru is fixed
+upon the earth.
+
+4. He was tried to be roused in vain, by the great Asuras of his
+palace; because his deadened mind remained deaf to their calls like a
+solid rock, and was as impassive as a perched grain to the showers of
+rain.
+
+5. Thus he remained intent upon his God, with his fixed and firm gaze
+for thousands of years; and continued as unmoved, as the carved sun
+upon a stone (or sundial).
+
+6. Having thus attained to the state of supreme bliss, the sight of
+infelicity disappeared from his view, as it is unknown to the supremely
+felicitous being. (So the Sruti: In Him there is all joy and no woe can
+appear before Him).
+
+7. During this time the whole circuit of his realm, was overspread by
+anarchy and oppression; as it reigns over the poor fishes.[20]
+
+8. For after Hiranyakasipu was killed and his son had betaken himself
+to asceticism, there was no body left to rule over the realms of the
+Asura race.
+
+9. And as Prahláda was not to be roused from his slumber, by the
+solicitations of the Daitya chiefs, or the cries of his oppressed
+people:—
+
+10. They—the enemies of the gods, were as sorry not to have their
+graceful lord among them; as the bees are aggrieved for want of the
+blooming lotus at night (when it is hid under its leafy branches).
+
+11. They found him as absorbed in his meditation, as when the world is
+drowned in deep sleep, after departure of the sun below the horizon.
+
+12. The sorrowful Daityas departed from his presence, and went away
+wherever they liked; they roved about at random, as they do in an
+ungoverned state.
+
+13. The infernal regions became in time the seat of anarchy and
+oppression; and the good and honest dealings bade adieu to it all at
+once.
+
+14. The houses of the weak were robbed by the strong, and the
+restraints of laws were set at naught; the people oppressed one another
+and robbed the women of their robes.
+
+15. There were crying and wailing of the people on all sides, and the
+houses were pulled down in the city; the houses and gardens were robbed
+and spoiled, and outlawry and rapacity spread all over the land.
+
+16. The Asuras were in deep sorrow, and their families were starving
+without food or fruits; there were disturbance and riot rising every
+where, and the face of the sky was darkened on all sides.
+
+17. They were derided by the younglings of the gods, and invaded by
+vile robbers and envious animals; the houses were robbed of their
+properties, and were laid waste and void.
+
+18. The Asura realm became a scene of horror, by lawless fighting for
+the wives and properties of others; and the wailings of those that were
+robbed of their wealth and wives, it made the scene seem as the reign
+of the dark Kali age, when the atrocious marauders are let loose to
+spread devastation all over the earth.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+ SCRUTINY INTO THE NATURE OF GOD.
+
+
+Argument. Hari’s care for preservation of the order of the world, and
+his advice to Prahláda.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Now Hari who slept on his couch of the snake, in
+his watery mansion of the Milky ocean, and whose delight it was to
+preserve the order of all the groups of worlds;—
+
+2. Looked into the course of world in his own mind, after he rose from
+his sleep at the end of the rainy season for achieving the objects of
+the gods. (Vishnu rises after the rains on the eleventh day of moon
+उत्थानैकादशी ।).
+
+3. He surveyed at a glance of his thought the state of the triple
+world, composed of the heaven, the earth and the regions below; and
+then directed his attention to the affairs of the infernal regions of
+the demons.
+
+4. He beheld Prahláda sitting there in his intense hypnotic meditation,
+and then looked into the increasing prosperity of Indra’s palace.
+
+5. Sitting as he was on his serpentine couch in the Milky Ocean, with
+his arms holding the conch-shell, the discus, and the club and lotus in
+his four hands;—
+
+6. He thought in his brilliant mind and in his posture of _padmásana_,
+about the states of the three worlds, as the fluttering bee inspects
+into the state of the lotus.
+
+7. He saw Prahláda immerged in his hypnotism, and the infernal regions
+left without a leader; and beheld the world was about to be devoid of
+the Daitya race.
+
+8. This want of the demons, thought he, was likely to cool the military
+ardour of the Devas; as the want of clouds serves to dry up the waters
+on earth.
+
+9. Liberation which is obtained by privation of dualism and egoism,
+brings a man to that state of asceticism; as the want of moisture tends
+to dry up and deaden the promising plant.
+
+10. The Gods being at rest and contented in themselves, there will be
+no need of sacrifices and offerings to please and appease them; and
+this will eventually lead to the extinction of the gods (for want of
+their being fed with the butter and fat of the sacrifices).
+
+11. The religious and sacrificial rites, being at an end among mankind,
+will bring on (owing to their impiety), the destruction of human race,
+which will cause the desolation of the earth (by wild beasts).
+
+13. What is the good of my providence, if were I to allow this
+plenteous earth to go to ruin by my neglect? (It would amount to
+Vishnu’s violation of duty to preserve the world).
+
+14. What can I have to do in this empty void of the world, after the
+extinction of these created beings into nothing, than to charge my
+active nature to a state of cold inactivity, and lose myself into the
+_anaesthesia_ of final liberation or insensibility.
+
+15. I see no good in the untimely dissolution of the order of the
+world, and would therefore have the Daityas live to its end.
+
+16. It is owing to the struggles of the demons, that the deities are
+worshipped with sacrifices and other religious rites for their
+preservation of the earth; therefore they are necessary for the
+continuation of these practices in it.
+
+17. I shall have therefore to visit the nether world, and restore it to
+its right order; and appoint the lord of the demons to the observance
+of his proper duties; in the manner of the season of spring returning
+to fructify the trees.
+
+18. If I raise any other Daitya to the chieftainship of the demons, and
+leave Prahláda in the act of his meditation; it is sure that he will
+disturb the Devas, instead of bearing obedience to them. Because no
+demon can get rid of his demoniac nature like Prahláda.
+
+19. Prahláda is to live to old age in his sacred person, and to reside
+therein to the end of the kalpa age, with this very body of his
+(without undergoing the casualties of death and transmigration).
+
+20. So it is determined by Destiny, the divine and overruling goddess;
+that Prahláda will continue to reign to the end of the _kalpa_, in this
+very body of his.
+
+21. I must therefore go, and awaken the Daitya chief from his trance,
+as the roaring cloud rouses the sleepy peacocks, on the tops of hills
+and banks of rivers.
+
+22. Let that self ridden (_swayam-mukta_) and somnolent (_samádhistha_)
+prince, reign unconcerned (_amanaskára_) over the Daitya race; as the
+unconscious pearl reflects the colours of its adjacent objects.
+
+23. By this means both the gods and demigods, will be preserved on the
+face of the earth; and their mutual contention for superiority, will
+furnish occasion for the display of my prowess.
+
+24. Though the creation and destruction of the world, be indifferent to
+me; yet its continuation in the primordial order, is of much concern to
+others, if not to my insusceptible self.
+
+25. Whatever is alike in its existence and inexistence, is the same
+also in both its gain and loss (to the indifferent soul). Any effort
+for having any thing is mere foolishness; since addition and
+subtraction presuppose one another. (Gain is the supplying of want, and
+want is the privation of gain).
+
+26. I shall therefore hasten to the infernal region, and awaken the
+Daitya prince to the sense of his duty; and then will I resume my
+calmness, and not play about on the stage of the world like the
+ignorant. (The sapient God is silent; but foolish souls are turbulent).
+
+27. I will proceed to the city of the Asuras amidst their tumultuous
+violence, and rouse the Daitya prince as the sunshine raises the
+drooping lotus; and I shall bring the people to order and union, as the
+rainy season collects the fleeting clouds on the summits of mountains.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+ ADMONITIONS OF HARI TO PRAHLÁDA.
+
+
+Argument. Hari enters into the Daitya city, blows his conch-shell,
+and directs Prahláda to reign and rule over his realm.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Thinking thus within himself, Hari started from
+his abode in the Milky Ocean with his companions, and moved like the
+immovable Mandara mountain with all its accompaniments.
+
+2. He entered the city of Prahláda resembling the metropolis of Indra,
+by a subterranean passage lying under the waters of the deep. (This
+passage, says the gloss, leads to the _sweta dwípa_ or white island of
+Albion—Britain; but literally it means the underground passage of
+waters).
+
+3. He found here the prince of the Asuras, sitting under a golden dome
+in his hypnotic trance, like Brahmá sitting in his meditative mood in a
+cavern of the Sumeru mountain. (This shows Brahmá the progenitor of
+mankind or of the Aryan Brahmanic race, to have been a mountaineer of
+the Altai or N. polar ranges, called Sumeru _contra_ Kumeru—the S.
+pole).
+
+4. There the Daityas being tinged in their bodies, by the bright rays
+of Vishnu’s person, fled far away from him, like a flock of owls from
+the bright beams of the rising sun. (The Daityas are night rovers or
+_nisa charas_, and cannot maintain their ground at sun rise).
+
+5. Hari then being accompanied by two or three Daitya chiefs entered
+the apartment of Prahláda, as the bright moon enters the pavilion of
+the sky at eve, in company with two or three stars beside her. (Moon in
+Sanskrit is the male consort of the stars, and called _Tará-pati_).
+
+6. There seated on his eagle and fanned with the flapper of Lakshmí,
+and armed with his weapons, and beset by the saints hymning his praise:—
+
+7. He said, O great soul! rise from thy trance; and then blew his
+_pánchajanya_ shell, which resounded to the vault of heaven.
+
+8. The loud peal of the Conch, blown by the breath of Vishnu, roared at
+once like the clouds of the sky, and the waves of the great deluge with
+redoubled force.
+
+9. Terrified at the sound, the Daityas fell flat and fainting on the
+ground; as when the flocks of swans and geese, are stunned at the
+thundering noise of clouds.
+
+10. But the party of Vaishnavas, rejoiced at the sound without the
+least fear; and they flushed with joy like the _Kurchi_ flowers,
+blooming at the sound of the clouds. (Kurchi buds are said to blossom
+in the rains).
+
+11. The lord of the Dánavas, was slowly roused from his sleep; in the
+manner of the kadamba flowers, opening their florets by degrees at the
+intervals of rain.
+
+12. It was by an act of the excretion of his breathing, that he brought
+down his vital breath, which was confined in the vertical membrane of
+the cranium; in the manner that the stream of Ganges gushes out from
+the high-hill, and mixes and flows with the whole body of waters into
+the ocean. (So it is with our inspiration and respiration, which carry
+up and down our vital breath, to and from the sensory of the brain).
+
+13. In a moment the vital breath circulated through the whole body of
+Prahláda; as the solar beams spread over the whole world soon after
+they emanate from the solar disk at sun rise.
+
+14. The vital breath, having then entered into the cells of the nine
+organs of sense; his mind became susceptible of sensations, received
+through the organs of the body like reflexions in a mirror.
+
+15. The intellect desiring to know the objects, and relying in the
+reflexions of the senses, takes the name of the mind; as the reflexion
+of the face in the mirror, refracts itself again to the visual organ.
+
+16. The mind having thus opened or developed itself, his eyelids were
+about to open of themselves; like the petals of the blue lotus, opening
+by degrees in the morning.
+
+17. The breathings then, by conveying the sensations to the body,
+through the veins and arteries, give it the power of motion; as the
+current breeze moves the lotuses.
+
+18. The same vital breath, strengthened the powers of his mind in a
+short time; as the billows of a river, become more powerful when it is
+full of water.
+
+19. At last his eyes being opened, his body shone forth with vivacity,
+by its mental and vital powers; as the lake blushes with blooming
+lotuses at the sun’s rising above the horizon.
+
+20. At this instant, the lord bade him awake instantly at his word; and
+he rose as the peacock is awakened, at the roar of a cloud.
+
+21. Finding his eyes shining with lustre, and his mind strong with its
+past remembrance; the lord of the three worlds, spoke to him in the
+manner, as he had formerly addressed the lotus-born Brahmá himself.
+
+22. O holy youth! remember your large (dominions), and bring to your
+mind your youthful form and figure; then think and ponder, why you
+causelessly transform yourself to this torpid state.
+
+23. You who have no good to desire nor any evil to shun, and look on
+want and plenty in the same light; you must know that what is destined
+by God, is all for your good.
+
+25. You shall have to live here, in the living liberated state of your
+mind, and in full possession of your dominions, for a kalpa period; and
+shall have to pass your time with this body of yours, and without any
+anxiety or earthly trouble whatever.
+
+26. The body being decayed by this time, you shall have still to abide
+with your greatness of soul to the end; till the body being broken down
+like an earthen vessel, the vital life like the contained air of the
+pot, come to mix with the common air of vacuum.
+
+27. Your body which is liberated in its life time, is to endure in its
+purity to the end of the kalpa, and will witness generations passing
+before it without any diminution of itself.
+
+28. The end of the kalpa or dooms day, is yet too far when the twelve
+suns will shine together; the rocks will melt away, and the world will
+be burnt down to ashes. Why then do you waste away your body even now?
+
+29. Now the winds are not raging with fury, nor is the world grey with
+age and covered with ashes over it. The marks on the foreheads of the
+immortals are still uneffaced, why then waste your body before its time?
+
+30. The lightnings of the deluging clouds, do not now flash nor fall
+down like asoka flowers, why then do you vainly waste your precious
+body so prematurely?
+
+31. The skies do not pour out their showers of rain-water on earth, so
+as to overflood the mountain tops, nor do they burst out in fire and
+burn them down to ashes; why then do you waste away your body in vain?
+
+32. The old world is not yet dissolved into vapour, nor fused to fumes
+and smoke; neither are the deities all extinct, after leaving Brahmá,
+Vishnu and Siva to survive them; why then do you waste yourself in
+vain? (If they are all alive, you should learn to live also).
+
+33. The earth on all sides is yet so submerged under the water, as to
+present the sight of the high mountains only on it, why then waste you
+away your body in vain (before the last doom and deluge of the earth?).
+
+34. The sun yet does not dart his fiery rays, with such fury in the
+sky, as to split the mountains with hideous cracks; nor do the diluvian
+clouds rattle and crackle in the midway sky; (to presage the last day,
+why then in vain waste you your body, that is not foreboded to die?).
+
+35. I wander everywhere on my vehicle of the eagle, and take care of
+all animal beings lest they die before their time, and do not therefore
+like your negligence of yourself.
+
+36. Here are we and there the hills, these are other beings and that is
+yourself; this is the earth and that the sky, all these are separate
+entities and must last of themselves; why then should you neglect your
+body, and do not live like the living?
+
+37. The man whose mind is deluded by gross ignorance, and one who is
+the mark of afflictions, is verily led to hail his death. (So the
+Smriti says:—Very sick and corpulent men have their release in death).
+
+38. Death is welcome to him, who is too weak and too poor and grossly
+ignorant; and who is always troubled by such and similar thoughts in
+his mind. (The disturbed mind is death and hell in itself).
+
+39. Death is welcomed by him, whose mind is enchained in the trap of
+greedy desires and thrills between its hopes and fears; and who is
+hurried and carried about in quest of greed, and is always restless
+within himself.
+
+40. He whose heart is parched by the thirst of greed, and whose better
+thoughts are choked by it, as the sprouts of corn are destroyed by
+worms; is the person that welcomes his death at all times.
+
+41. He who lets the creeping passions of his heart, grow as big as palm
+trees, to overshadow the forest of his mind, and bear the fruits of
+continued pain and pleasure, is the man who hails his death at all
+times.
+
+42. He whose mind is festered by the weeds of cares, growing as rank as
+his hair on the body; and who is subject to the incessant evils of
+life, is the man that welcomes death for his relief.
+
+43. He whose body is burning under the fire of diseases, and whose
+limbs are slackened by age and weakness, is the man to whom death is a
+remedy, and who resorts to its aid for relief.
+
+44. He who is tormented by his ardent desires and raging anger, as by
+the poison of snake biting, is as a withered tree, and invites instant
+death for his release.
+
+45. It is the soul’s quitting the body that is called death; and this
+is unknown to the spiritualist, who is quite indifferent about the
+entity and nonentity of the body.
+
+46. Life is a blessing to him, whose thoughts do not rove beyond the
+confines of himself; and to the wise man also who knows and
+investigates into the true nature of things.
+
+47. Life is a blessing to him also, who is not given to his egotism,
+and whose understanding is not darkened by untruth, and who preserves
+his evenness in all conditions of life.
+
+48. His life is a blessing to him, who has the inward satisfaction and
+coolness of his understanding, and is free from passions and enmity;
+and looks on the world as a mere witness, and having his concern with
+nothing.
+
+49. He is blest in his life, who has the knowledge of whatever is
+desirable or detestable to him, and lives aloof from both; with all his
+thoughts and feelings confined within himself; (literally, within his
+own heart and mind).
+
+50. His life is blest, who views all gross things in the light of
+nothing, and whose heart and mind are absorbed in his silent and
+conscious soul. (_i.e._ Who witnesses and watches the emotions and
+motions of his heart and mind).
+
+51. Blessed is his life, who having his sight represses it from viewing
+the affairs of the world, as if they are entirely unworthy of him.
+
+52. His life is blessed, who neither rejoices nor grieves at what is
+desirable or disadvantageous to him; but has his contentment in every
+state of his life whether favourable or not.
+
+53. He who is pure in his life, and keeps company with pure minded men;
+who spreads the purity of his conduct all about, and shuns the society
+of the impure; is as graceful to behold, as the hoary swan with its
+snow white wings, in the company of the fair fowls of the silvery lake.
+
+54. Blessed is his life, whose sight and remembrance, and the mention
+of whose name, give delight to all persons.
+
+55. Know the life of that man, O lord of demons, to be truly happy,
+whose lotus-like appearance is as delightsome to the bee-like eyes of
+men, as the sight of the full moon is delightful to the world.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LX.
+
+ RESUSCITATION OF PRAHLÁDA.
+
+
+Argument. On the necessity of the observance of duty, both in the
+secular as well as Religious Life.
+
+
+The Lord continued:—It is the soundness of the body, which men call
+life; and it is the quitting of the present body for a future one,
+which they call death. (Activity is the life of the body).
+
+2. You are released from both these states, O high minded youth! and
+have nothing to do with your life or death any more. (Because the
+living liberated are freed from the cares of life, and future
+transmigrations also).
+
+3. It is for your acquaintance, that I relate to you the components of
+life and death; by knowledge of which you will not have to live nor
+die, like other living beings on earth (in pain and misery).
+
+4. Though situated in the body, yet you are as unembodied as the
+disembodied spirit; and though embosomed in vacuity, yet are you as
+free and fleet as the wind, on account of your being unattached to
+vacuum. (Unattachment of the soul to the body and vital spirit,
+constitutes its freedom).
+
+5. Your perception of the objects of the touch, proves you to be an
+embodied being; and your soul is said to be the cause of that
+perception; as the open air is said to be the cause of the growth of
+trees, for its putting no hindrance to their height. But neither the
+soul is cause of perception, nor the air of the growth of trees. (It is
+the mind which is the cause of the one, as moisture of the other).
+
+6. But the perception of outward things, is no test of their
+materiality to the monoistic immaterialist; as the sight of things in a
+dream, is no proof of their substantiality, nor of the corporeality of
+the percipient soul. (All external perceptions, are as those in a
+dream).
+
+7. All things are comprehended, in yourself, by the light of your
+intellect; and your knowledge of the only One in all, comprehends every
+thing in it. How then can you have a body either to take to yourself or
+reject it from you?
+
+8. Whether the season of the spring appears or not, or a hurricane
+happens to blow or subside; it is nothing to the pure soul, which is
+clear of all connection whatever. (The soul is unconnected with all
+occurrences).
+
+9. Whether the hills fall headlong to the ground, or the flames of
+destruction devour all things; or the rapid gales rend the skies, it is
+no matter to the soul which rests secure in itself.
+
+10. Whether the creation exists or not, and whether all things perish
+or grow; it is nothing to the soul which subsists of itself. (The
+increate soul is self existent and ever lasting).
+
+11. The Lord of this body, does not waste by waste of its frame, nor he
+is strengthened by strength of the body; neither does it move by any
+bodily movement, nor sleep when the body and its senses are absorbed in
+sleep.
+
+12. Whence does this false thought rise in your mind, that you belong
+to the body, and are an embodied being, and that you come to take,
+retain and quit this mortal frame at different times?
+
+13. Forsake the thought, that you will do so and so after doing this
+and that; for they that know the truth, have given up such desires and
+vain expectations. (Since God is the disposer of all events).
+
+14. All waking and living persons, have something or other to do in
+this world, and have thereby to reap the results of their actions; but
+he that does nothing, does not take the name of an active agent, nor
+has anything to expect (but lives resigned to the will of Providence).
+
+15. He who is no agent of an action, has nothing to do with its
+consequence; for he who does not sow the grains, does not reap the
+harvest. (For as you sow, so you reap).
+
+16. Desinence of action and its fruition, brings on a quiescence, which
+when it has become habitual and firm, receives the name of liberation
+(which is nothing to have or crave, save what God gave of his own will,
+agreeably to the prayer, “Let not mine, but thy will be done”).
+
+17. All intellectual beings and enlightened men, and those that lead
+pure and holy lives, have all things under their comprehension,
+wherefore there is nothing for them left to learn anew or reject what
+they have learnt. (The gods and sages are all knowing, and have nothing
+to know or unknow any more).
+
+18. It is for limited understandings and limited powers of the body and
+mind, to grasp or leave out some thing; but to men of unbounded
+capacities, there is nothing to be received or left out. (Fulness can
+neither be more full, nor wanting in any thing).
+
+19. When a man is set at ease after cessation of his relation of the
+possessor or possession of any external object, and when this sense of
+his irrelation becomes a permanent feeling in him, he is then said to
+be liberated in his life time. (Total unconnection is perfect freedom).
+
+20. Great men like yourself, being placed in this state of perpetual
+unconcern and rest; conduct themselves in the discharge of their
+duties, with as much ease as in their sleep. (Here is the main precept
+of the combination of internal torpitude with bodily action in the
+discharge of duties).
+
+21. When one’s desires are drowned in his reliance on God, he views the
+existing world—shining in his spiritual light.
+
+22. He takes no delight in the pleasing objects about him, nor does he
+regret at the afflictions of others; all his pleasure consisting in his
+own soul (at its total indifference).
+
+23. With his wakeful mind, he meets all the affairs of his concern with
+his spiritual unconcern; as the mirror receives the reflexions of
+objects, without being tainted by them.
+
+24. In his waking he reposes in himself, and in his sleep he reclines
+amidst the drowsy world; in his actions he turns about as frolicsome
+boys, and his desires lie dormant in his soul.
+
+25. O thou, great soul, thus continue to enjoy thy supreme bliss, for
+the period of a Kalpa (a day of Brahmá), by relying your mind in the
+victorious Vishnu, and with enjoying the prosperity of thy dominions by
+exercise of your virtues and good qualities. (The ultimate lesson is,
+to be observant of the duties which are paramount on every body, with
+relinquishment of all personal desire for oneself).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLI.
+
+ INSTALLATION OF PRAHLÁDA IN HIS REALM.
+
+
+Argument. Hari’s Inauguration of Prahláda with blessings, and
+appointment of him to the Government.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—After Hari the receptacle of the three worlds, and
+observer of everything that passes in them; had spoken in the aforesaid
+manner in his lucid speech, shedding the coolness of moon beams:
+
+2. Prahláda became full blown in his body, and his eyes shone forth as
+blooming lotuses; he then spoke out with full possession of his mental
+powers.
+
+3. Prahláda said:—Lord! I was much tired with very many state affairs,
+and in thinking about the weal and woe of my people. I have now found a
+little rest from my labour.
+
+4. It is by thy grace, my lord! that I am settled in myself; and
+whether I am in my trance or waking state, I enjoy the tranquility of
+my mind at all times.
+
+5. I always see thee seated in my heart, with the clear sightedness of
+my mind; and it is by my good luck, that I have thee now in my presence
+and outside of it.
+
+6. I had been all this time, sitting without any thought in me; and was
+mixed up as air in air, in my mind’s internal vision of thee.
+
+7. I was not affected by grief or dulness, nor infatuated by my zeal of
+asceticism or a wish of relinquishing my body (that I remained in my
+torpid trance).
+
+8. The One All being present in the mind, there is no room for any
+grief in it, at the loss of anything besides; nor can any care for the
+world, or caution of the body or life, or any fear of any kind, abide
+in his presence.
+
+9. It is simply by pure desire of holiness, rising spontaneously of
+itself in me; that I had been situated in my saintlike and holy state.
+
+10. Yes my Lord, I am disgusted with this world, and long to resign its
+cares; together with all the mutations of joy and grief, which rise
+alternate in the minds of the unenlightened.
+
+11. I do not think that our embodied state is subject to misery, and
+that our being freed from the bonds of the body is the cause of our
+release: it is worldliness that is a venomous viper in the bosom, and
+torments the ignorant only and not the sage. (Because it is mind and
+not the body, that is addicted to pleasure, and feels the stings of
+pain).
+
+12. It is the ignorant and not the learned, whose minds fluctuate with
+the thoughts, that this is pleasure and the other is pain, and that I
+have this and am in want of another. (The more they have, the more they
+crave).
+
+13. The ignorant man thinks himself, to be a person distinct from
+another; and so all living beings devoid of the knowledge of truth,
+entertain and exult in their egoistic thoughts.
+
+14. The erroneous idea that, such things are acceptable to me, and
+others are not so; serves only to delude the ignorant, and not the wise
+(who acquiesce to whatever occurs to them).
+
+15. All things being contained by and situated in my all-pervading
+spirit, how can we accept one and reject another thing, as distinct
+from and undesirable to the selfsame One? (Shall we desire only good
+from God, and not the evil also? Job).
+
+16. The whole universe whether real or unreal (or composed of its
+substantiality and vacuity), is a manifestation of Omniscience; we know
+not what is desirable or detestable in it to be accepted or rejected by
+us. (But must submit to the wise ordinance of providence).
+
+17. It is only by discrimination of the natures of the viewer and the
+view (_i.e._ of the subjective soul, and the objective world); and by
+reflecting the Supreme Soul in one’s self, that the mind receives its
+rest and tranquility.
+
+18. I was freed during my trance, of the consciousness of my being or
+not being, and of whatever is desirable or detestable to any one; and I
+continue also, in the same state of my mind even after I am awakened.
+
+19. This state being familiar to me, I see every thing in the spirit
+within myself; and I act according as it pleaseth thee. (_i.e._ Not by
+mine but thy will).
+
+20. O lotus-eyed Hari! thou art adored in all the three worlds;
+wherefore it behoveth thee to receive my adoration also, offered in the
+proper form.
+
+21. Saying so, the lord of Dánavas, presented his platter of presents
+(arghya) before the god, as the lord of hills pays his offerings to the
+full-moon. (This hill is the mount of moon rising, which is hailed and
+welcomed by it).
+
+22. He worshipped Hari first of all, together with his weapons and his
+Vehicle Garuda; and then he adored the bands of the gods and Apsaras
+that accompanied him and the three worlds contained in him.
+
+23. After he had done worshipping the lord of the worlds, with the
+worlds situated within and without him; the Lord of Laxmí spoke to him
+saying:—
+
+24. Rise, O lord of Dánavas! and sit upon your throne, until I perform
+your inauguration this very moment.
+
+25. Hari then blew his _pánchajanya_ shell summoning the five races, of
+the gods, siddhas, sádhyas and men and Daityas, to attend at the
+ceremony.
+
+26. After this the lotus-eyed god placed him on the throne which he
+deserved, and whereon he caused him to sit as cloud rests on the summit
+of a mountain.
+
+27. Hari then caused him to make his sacred ablution, with the waters
+of the milky and other oceans; and those of the Ganges and other holy
+rivers, which were presented before him.
+
+28. All bodies of Bráhmans and Rishis, and all groups of Siddhas and
+Vidyádharas; with the Loka-pálas or regents of the quarters, attended
+and assisted at the ceremony.
+
+29. Then Hari the immeasurable Spirit, anointed the great Asura in the
+kingdom of the Daityas; and the Maruta winds lauded his praise, as they
+do the hymns of Hari in heaven.
+
+30. Then blessed by the gods and applauded by Asuras, Prahláda greeted
+them all in his turn; and was thus addressed at last by the slayer of
+Madhu—the demoniac Satan.
+
+31. The Lord said:—Do thou reign here as sole monarch, as long as the
+mount Meru stands on the earth, and the sun and moon shine in the sky;
+and be fraught with all praiseworthy virtues of thine own.
+
+32. Govern thy realm without any interested motive of thy own, and
+without showing any symptom of anger or fear on your part; but preserve
+your moderation and a tolerant spirit in all your affairs.
+
+33. May you never have any disquiet, in this realm of excellent soil
+and plenteous provisions; nor do you create any disturbance to the gods
+in heaven, or to men on earth below.
+
+34. Conduct yourself in your proper course at all events, which may
+occur to you at any time or place; and never allow yourself to be led
+astray, by the caprice of your mind or the freaks of fancy.
+
+35. Keep in mind your spiritual being, and abandon your egoism and
+selfish views altogether; and then by managing your affairs in one even
+tenor, both in your want and prosperity, you will evade all the
+vicissitudes of fortune.
+
+36. You have seen both the ways and dealings of this world, and
+measured also the immeasurable depth of spiritual knowledge. You know
+the state of every thing in every place, and require no advice of any
+body.
+
+37. As you are now perfectly devoid of your anger, passions and fears,
+there is no more any chance of further broils between the gods and
+Asuras, under your rule over them in future.
+
+38. No more will the tears of Asura females, wash the decorations on
+their faces; nor will the currents of rivers rise as high as lofty
+trees, with floods of tears from their weeping eyes.
+
+39. The cessation of hostilities between the gods and demons, will
+render the earth as quiet from this day, as the unruffled ocean after
+its churning by the Mandara mountain.
+
+40. The wives of the gods and demigods, will no more be led away in
+captivity by one another; but will rest fearless under the marital
+roofs of their husbands in future.
+
+41. Let thy expectations now rise from their dormancy, of many long
+nights of dismal darkness, and be crowned with success and prosperity;
+and do thou, O progeny of Danu! enjoy thy unconquerable royal fortune,
+as in the company of thy charming consort.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLII.
+
+ SPIRITUALITY OF PRAHLÁDA.
+
+
+Argument. The merit of hearing the narrative of Vishnu, and the cause
+of Prahláda’s awaking from his trance.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—The lotus-eyed Hari, having said thus much to
+Prahláda, departed with the whole concourse of the assembled gods,
+Kinnaras and men, from the abode of the Asura.
+
+2. Then did Prahláda and his associates throw handfuls of flowers on
+the departing god, as he was mounted on the back of the king of birds
+(Garuda—the eagle or bird of heaven).
+
+3. The god crossed the heavenly Ganges and reached at the milky ocean,
+where he took his serpent couch as the black bee sits on the lotus-leaf.
+
+4. The God Vishnu sat on his serpent seat with as much ease, as Indra
+sits in heaven in the assembly of the gods; and as the lord of the
+demons, was made to sit in the infernal region wholly devoid of all his
+cares.
+
+5. I have now related to you, Ráma! the whole narrative of Prahláda’s
+coming to his sense, from the state of his insensibility; and this
+account is as charming to the holy hearer, as the cooling moon-beams
+are refreshing to the tired traveller.
+
+6. The man that ponders in his mind, the manner of Prahláda’s
+resuscitation to life; is regenerated in that felicitous state, from
+the sinfulness of his former condition.
+
+7. A cursory rehearsal of his narration, wipes off the sins of men;
+while the deep consideration of its spiritual sense, leads one to his
+eternal salvation.
+
+8. The ignorant are released from their ignorance, and the deep thinker
+is released from his sins; therefore do not neglect to ponder well on
+it, for the remission of all your sins.
+
+9. The man who considers well the manner of Prahláda’s gaining his
+proficiency, gets a remission of all the sins committed by him in his
+repeated previous states of life.
+
+10. Ráma said:—Tell me sir, how the sound of the _pánchajanya_ conch
+shell, roused the mind of the devout Prahláda from its immersion in
+holy meditation.
+
+11. Vasishtha replied:—Know Ráma, that there are two states of
+liberation attending on sinless persons, the one is the emancipation of
+one in his embodied state in this life, and the other is after his
+departure from here.
+
+12. The embodied liberation means one’s continuance in his living body,
+but with a state of mind freed from its attachment to worldly things,
+and liberated from the desire of fruition and reward of all his
+meritorious acts.
+
+13. The disembodied liberation is obtained after the soul is released
+from the body, and is settled in the Supreme Spirit. It is an
+enfranchisement from the recurrence of future life and birth in this
+mortal world.
+
+14. The living liberated man is like a fried grain, whose regerminating
+power is parched within itself, and the desire of whose heart is
+purified from every expectation of future reward or regeneration.
+
+15. He remains in the pure, holy and magnanimous state of his mind, who
+resigns himself solely to the meditation of the Great soul, and
+continues as if he were asleep in his living and waking states.
+
+16. Being thus entranced in his inward meditation, he continues in a
+torpid state for a thousand years, and wakes again to his senses, if he
+is allowed to live long ever after that period.
+
+17. Prahláda remained thus with his holy thoughts suppressed within
+himself, until he was roused from his trance by the shrill sound of the
+conch-shell.
+
+18. Hari is the soul of all beings, and he who assimilates himself to
+that god in his thought; becomes identified with the supreme soul,
+which is the cause of all.
+
+19. No sooner the god thought that Prahláda should come to his sense,
+than his sensation came immediately to him at the divine will.
+
+20. The world has no other cause, but the divine spirit; which with the
+assistance of the causal elements, takes different forms on itself at
+the time of creation; and therefore it is the spirit of Hari that
+constitutes the world.
+
+21. The worship of God in spirit, presents Hari to the spiritual sight;
+and the worship of Hari in his outward form, represents the figure to
+the soul and the inner mind.
+
+22. Do you, O Ráma! put out the visible sights from your view, and look
+at the inmost soul within yourself; being thus accustomed to spiritual
+meditation, you will soon have the sight of your God.
+
+23. The world presents a scene of the gloomy rainy weather, with
+showers of woes falling on all sides; it is likely to freeze us in
+ignorance, unless we look to the sun of our reason (or, unless we abide
+under the sunshine of reason).
+
+24. It is by grace of God that we can avoid the delusions of the world,
+as we may escape from a goblin by means of a spell.
+
+25. It is at the will of the spirit, that the thick darkness of the
+mind, is dispersed and cleared off in time; the world is a net-work of
+delusion, which is scattered like a smoke by the breeze of reason.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+ REST AND REPOSE OF PRAHLÁDA.
+
+
+Argument. All knowledge is derived by one’s own attention and personal
+exertion, joined with his reliance on the grace of God.
+
+
+Ráma said:—Sir, your knowledge of all truths, and the light of your
+holy discourses, have gratified me as much, as the cooling moon-beams
+gratify the medicinal plants (whence the moon is called _oshadhísa_ or
+lord of medicinal drugs).
+
+2. Your gentle and purifying words are as gratifying to my ears, as the
+beautiful and sweet flowers delight the external senses (by their
+colours and odours). (Sweet words are often compared with flowers by
+Persian and Urdu poets: as, _guleazrouzeijaved. Elahikar sakhur meriko
+up phol_.)
+
+3. Sir, if the exertions of men, as you said, be the causes of their
+success, how was it that Prahláda came to be enlightened without his
+effort or attempt? (in obtaining his divine knowledge without his
+learning or help of a preceptor).
+
+4. Vasishtha replied:—Yes Ráma, it was by his manly exertion, that the
+highminded Prahláda had acquired his divine knowledge; and there was no
+other cause (of his knowing and having whatever he knew and possessed).
+
+5. The soul of man is the same as the spirit of Náráyana, (which means
+abiding in man); and there is no difference between them, as there is
+none between the oil and the sesamum seed; and as the cloth and its
+whiteness, and the flower and its fragrance are not distinct things.
+(Because the spirit of God was breathed into the nostrils of man.
+Náráyana and Purusha both mean the spirit dwelling in man).
+
+6. And Vishnu is the same with his spirit or the soul of man, and the
+human soul is the same with Vishnu (which means the inherent spirit);
+Vishnu and the soul are synonymous terms as the plant and the vegetable.
+
+7. Prahláda came at first to know the soul by himself (of his own
+intuition), it was afterwards by means of his intellectual power, that
+he was led to the persuasion and made many proselytes after his own
+example.
+
+8. It was by his own desert, that Prahláda obtained his boon from
+Vishnu; and it was by the exercise of his own reasoning, that he came
+to the knowledge of the eternal Mind.
+
+9. Sometimes the soul is awakened of itself by one’s own intuition, and
+at others it is roused by the grace of the personal god Vishnu, owing
+to one’s faith in his person. (As it is said: “Thy faith will save
+thee”).
+
+10. And though this god may be pleased with his prolonged service and
+devout worship, yet he is unable to confer spiritual knowledge to one
+devoid of his reasoning faculty. (Or to one who has no understanding.
+Hence gross idolators can have no salvation, which is to be had by
+spiritual knowledge only. Blind faith is of no good, without the light
+of reason).
+
+11. Hence the primary cause of spiritual light is the intelligence of a
+man and which is gained by exertion of his mental powers only; the
+secondary causes may be the blessing and grace of a deity, but I wish
+you to prefer the former one for your salvation. (So it is knowledge
+and intrinsic merit which exalt a man, and not the mere favour of a
+patron, is ever able to raise the unworthy).
+
+12. Exert therefore your manliness at first, to keep the quintuple
+organs of sense under proper control; and habituate yourself with all
+diligence to cultivate your understanding, and the power of reasoning.
+
+13. For know whatever gain any one makes at any time, it is owing to
+his own endeavours only that he gains the same, and not by any other
+means whatever.
+
+14. It is only by dependence on your manly powers, that you can
+surmount the insuperable barriers of your sensual appetites; and then
+by crossing over the ocean of this world, reach to the other shore of
+supreme felicity.
+
+15. It requires no exertion or manly effort to see the figure of
+Vishnu; but the mere sight of the image is not sufficient to save you,
+or else the birds and beasts would all be saved by looking at it.
+
+16. If it were in the power of the spiritual guide also to save his
+foolish followers by his preachings; it would be possible also to the
+leaders of camels and kine, to save their herds in their future lives.
+(This figure is set in many temples, and in stones also).
+
+17. It is in the power of the mind only to acquire anything good for
+one’s self, and not the favour of Hari or that of Hara, or the
+influence of money, that is able to effect anything.
+
+18. It is by means of constant practice, accompanied by
+self-resignation and self-controul, that one is enabled to effect
+anything; and whatever he is unable to do by these means, is impossible
+for him to do by any other in the three worlds.
+
+19. Look to the spirit in the spirit, and adore the spirit in your own
+soul; behold the supreme soul in yourself, and have the universal soul
+in your own soul, and thus remain with it.
+
+20. Fools flying from attending to the sástras, or practising their
+self-devotion and exercise of reason, have adopted to themselves the
+Vaishnava faith as a path leading to their better being (or a means
+towards the great object of final beatitude).
+
+21. Practice and diligence are said to be steps to self-edification,
+and rites and ceremonies are represented as secondary courses resorted
+to for want of the former!
+
+22. The senses being refractory what is the good of ceremonial
+observances, and these being under control, it is useless to observe
+the ritual. (In both ways the rituals are useless to men of virtuous
+and vicious habits; the former being in no need, of them and the latter
+not benefiting by them).
+
+23. Without rationality and dispassionateness of his spirit, it is hard
+to have Hari (or spiritual felicity); and when there is the cool and
+calm reasoning of the mind, it is as useless to have the idol of Hari,
+as to place a lotus in the hand of the dead and liberated.
+
+24. When you have the qualities of abstraction and composure in your
+mind, think you have every thing in yourself; for these being in your
+possession, you become an adept, or else you are an ass of the forest.
+(that is good for nothing).
+
+25. Men are eager to find favour in the sight of the gods (and great
+men); but they do not seek the favour of their hearts and minds (which
+can give them whatever blessing is derived from any other).
+
+26. Vishnu the indwelling spirit of the body, is situated in the inmost
+soul of every individual; it is the ignorant fool only that forsake the
+innermost Vishnu, and seek the outer form for its leading to the other
+(which is more closely allied to us than the latter).
+
+27. The consciousness dwelling in the cavity of the heart, is the true
+body of the everlasting spirit; and the outward form of Vishnu, holding
+the conchshell, cudgel, lotus and the discus, is but a false
+representation of it. (A fabrication of the ignorant for the immaterial
+spirit, in a material form).
+
+28. He who forsakes the real form, and follows the fictitious one, lets
+off the ambrosia pass from his hand, in pursuit of some promised
+confectionary.
+
+29. He who is not settled amidst the charming scenery of his spiritual
+meditation, lets his frantic mind to rove at large, after every object
+that presents itself before him.
+
+30. He who has not the abstract knowledge of the soul in himself, is
+under the subjection of his infatuated mind; and worships the image
+bearing the conch, discus, club and lotus in its hands, as the supreme
+Lord and God.
+
+31. It is by practice of continued austerity, and a prolonged worship
+of this deity, that the mind of the devotee becomes purified in process
+of time, and gets rid of its turbulent passions at last.
+
+32. But the daily practice of self-control and abstract meditation,
+gives the mind the same purity, and like the ámra or mango fruit, it
+gets its accompanying virtues one by one. (The virtues of the mango are
+its flavour, colour &c.).
+
+33. So the soul is said to get in itself the virtues of peace,
+contentment and the rest, by means of the external adoration of Hari;
+and it is for this reason that the practice of idol worship is
+prescribed in the sástras. (As a preparatory step to holiness and
+spiritual worship).
+
+34. He who obtains his boon from the all-powerful god, gets it in
+reward of his merit; as a fruit of the tree of his long practice.
+
+35. It is mental labour (lit.: painstaking), which is the foundation of
+every improvement, and of all lasting good in life; just as the
+cultivated soil is the cause of the good condition of the harvest.
+
+36. Even the digging of the ground, and the pulling of the hill (by
+bodily labour), is productive of no good without application of the
+mind. (Gloss. The digging of the ground alludes to the mining of the
+earth by the sons of Sagara; and the pulling of the hill refers to the
+churning of the sea with Mandara by the gods and demons. Both these
+hardy works were for the sake of obtaining the gems hid under them
+which required knowledge (of geology)).
+
+37. Men may undergo a thousand transmigrations, and wander about the
+earth in various births and shapes, and yet find no rest composure of
+their minds.
+
+38. They may worship Brahmá, Vishnu and the Rudras for ever, and gain
+their favour also, and yet can have no salvation owing to the perturbed
+state of their minds.
+
+39. Leave off worshipping the visible form or image of Vishnu (or any
+other god), either internally or externally in your mind or before your
+sight; and put an end to your transmigration, by meditating on your
+consciousness alone.
+
+40. Behold the unsullied form of One infinite God in your conscious
+self, and by forsaking all whatever it is conscious of. Relish the
+sweet essence of the one real entity, and go over the ocean of repeated
+births in the mortal world.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+ NARRATIVE OF GÁDHI AND HIS DESTRUCTION.
+
+
+Argument. Narrative of Gádhi in illustration of the Adoration of Vishnu.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Ráma; it is the government of the restless mind alone,
+that is able to destroy the delusion, which causes the interminable
+transmigrations in this mortal world. There is no other means to this
+end.
+
+2. Hear attentively, O sinless Ráma! this story which I am going to
+relate to you, in order to show you the intricacy of understanding the
+nature of worldly delusions.
+
+3. There is the large district of Kosala on the surface of this land,
+which is full of forests and fruitful trees, forming as groves of Kalpa
+arbors; and abounding with minerals like the Sumeru mountain.
+
+4. There lived a learned Bráhman, known by the name of Gádhi; who was
+intelligent and versed in the Vedas, and remained as an image of virtue.
+
+5. From his youth he continued with the calmness of his mind, and
+abstracted from and indifferent to worldly affairs; and was of
+as pure and unsullied a soul as the clear sky above.
+
+6. Then intent on some fixed purpose of his mind, he left the company
+of his friends, and went out to a forest to perform his austere
+devotion.
+
+7. He found there a lake filled with full blown lotuses, and the moon
+shining in the sky with the scattered stars about her; and all shedding
+their lustre like showers of rain.
+
+8. He went down into the lake, and stood in the midst of the waters up
+to his neck; his body was below water, and his head floated over it as
+a lotus; and he stood upon his devotion, intent with a view to have the
+sight of Vishnu present before him.
+
+9. He thus passed full eight months, continuing with his body immerged
+in the water of the lake; and his face was shrivelled and wan, like the
+lotuses of his lake for want of sun shine.
+
+10. When he was emaciated by his austerities, his god Hari appeared
+before him, in the manner of a dark cloud of the rainy weather,
+appearing over the parched earth of the hot season.
+
+11. The Lord said:—Rise O Bráhman! from amidst the water, and receive
+thy desired blessing of me; because the tree of thy vow, is now
+pregnant with its expected fruit.
+
+12. The Bráhman replied:—I bow to thee, O my lord Vishnu! thou art the
+receptacle of the three worlds, and the reservoir of innumerable starry
+worlds, which rise as lotuses in the lake of thy heart, and whereon
+thou sittest like the black bee (to behold their beauty).
+
+13. I want to behold my lord, the spiritual delusion which thou hast
+ordained to blind fold this world, and known as Vishnu Máyá.
+
+14. Vasishtha said:—To this the god replied:—you shall verily behold
+this delusion, and get rid of it afterwards, by virtue of thy devotion.
+Saying so, the god disappeared from his sight as an aerial castle.
+
+15. Vishnu being gone, the good Bráhman got up from his watery bed, in
+the manner of the fair and humid moon, rising from amidst the cool and
+white milky ocean.
+
+16. He was glad in his soul at the sight of the lord of world, and his
+heart was as full blown with joy; as the Kumuda (selenian) lotuses
+unfold at the sight of the moon.
+
+17. He then passed some days in that forest, overjoyed in his mind by
+the sight of Hari, and employed himself in discharge of his Bráhmanical
+duties.
+
+18. Once on a time as he had been bathing in the lake, overspread with
+full-blown lotuses, he thought upon the words of Vishnu, as the great
+sages reflect in their minds the sense of texts of Vedas.
+
+19. Then in the act of his discharging his sacerdotal functions in the
+midst of sacred water, he made his mental prayer for the expurgation of
+his sins. (This is the ceremony agha-marshna).
+
+20. As he was performing this act in the midst of the water, he chanced
+to forget his sacred mantras (texts), and was drowned in deep water in
+the confusion of his mind.
+
+21. He thought that his body had fallen down like a mountain tree, in
+the dale below by a blast of wind; and that his dead corpse was taken
+up and mourned over by his friends.
+
+22. He thought that his vital breath had fled away from his being, and
+the members of his body were as motionless as the shrubs of sugar cane;
+laid down on the ground by a hurricane.
+
+23. He thought his countenance to have faded away, and grown as pale as
+the withered leaf of a tree; and that his body now turned to a carcass,
+was lying on the ground like a lotus-bud torn from its stalk.
+
+24. His eye balls were as dull and dim, as the stars of the morning are
+shorn of their beams; and the ground seemed to be as dry to him as in a
+drought of rain water, and filled with flying dust on all sides.
+
+25. He believed his dead body was beset all about by his kind friends,
+weeping upon it with their sad and sorrowful countenances, and loudly
+lamenting and crying over it like birds upon trees.
+
+26. He thought his faithful wife sitting at his feet as handsome
+lotus flower, and weeping as profusely with a shower of tears from
+her lotus-like eyes, as the rushing of waters at the breaking of an
+embankment.
+
+27. His sorrowing mother with her loud wailing and mournful ditties,
+was buzzing like the humming bee; and holding the chin newly over grown
+with whiskers in her tender hand.
+
+28. His friends were sitting by his side with their dejected looks, and
+with trickling tears dropping down their faces and cheeks; and these
+washed his dead body, as the melting dews on withered leaves, bedew the
+parent tree.
+
+29. The members of his body now ceased to befriend him, like strangers
+who decline to become friends for fear of future separation, or turning
+unfriendly ever afterwards in life.
+
+30. The open lips leaving the teeth bare, seemed to deride at the
+vanity of human life; as the white and bony teethed ascetics and cynics
+do on fickleness of worldly events.
+
+31. His mouth was as speechless, as that of a devotee in his
+meditation; and the body was as motionless, as it was made of mud and
+clay; it slept to wake no more, like a sage absorbed in his hypnotism.
+
+32. It remained quiet with its lifted ears, as if to listen to the
+cries and wailings of the mourning friends; in order to judge the
+degrees of their affection and grief for him.
+
+33. Then the relatives raised their loud lamentations, with the sobbing
+and beating of their breasts, swooning and rising, and shedding floods
+of tears from their leaky eyes.
+
+34. Afterwards the sorrowful relations, removed the disgusting corpse
+with their bitter cries for its funeral, seeing it no more in future in
+this passing world.
+
+35. Then they bore the body to the funeral ground with its rotten flesh
+and entrails, and daubed all over with mud and dust, and placed it on
+the ground, strewn over with unnumbered bones and skeletons, and dried
+and rotten carcasses.
+
+36. Flights of flying vultures shaded the sunbeams on high, and the
+burning piles drove the darkness below; the fearful glare of open
+mouthed jackals flashed on all sides, as they were flames of living
+fire.
+
+37. There the ravens were bathed in floods of blood, and the crows
+dipping their wings in it; ravenous birds were tearing the entrails,
+and the old vultures were entrapped in those strings.
+
+38. The friends of the dead burnt the corpse in the funeral flame and
+reduced to ashes; and the moisture of the body flew in fumes, as the
+waters of the ocean are evaporated by the marine fire.
+
+39. The burning wood of the funeral pile, consumed the dead body with
+loud cracking noise; and the dry fuel of the pile, flashed in ambient
+flames with curling smoke over them.
+
+40. The devouring fire gnawed down the bones with crackling noise, and
+filled the atmosphere with the filthy stink and stench. It gorged up
+all that was soft or hard, as the elephant devours the reeds with the
+moisture contained in their cellular vessels.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLV.
+
+ GÁDHI REBORN AS A CHANDÁLA, AND MADE
+ KING OVER THE KIR TRIBE.
+
+
+Argument. Gádhi reborn in a Chandalí, His Life and Election as King of
+Kir.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Then Gádhi, standing as he was amidst the water with
+his sorrowful heart, saw many other occurrences in the clearness of his
+mind.
+
+2. He saw a village in the vicinity of Bhuta mandala (Butan) full of
+its inhabitants, and that he was reborn there in the womb of a Chandála
+woman, in which he remained with great pain.
+
+3. Confined in the cavity of the womb, he felt his body pressed by the
+pressure of the intestines, while his senses were sorely annoyed by
+being constrained to abide the stink of the ordure and filth in the
+intestinal parts of Chandála woman.
+
+4. After the foetus was matured, he was born in proper time, with its
+black complexion like a dark cloud of the rainy season, and soiled with
+filth all over its body.
+
+5. It grew up to childhood and then to boyhood in the Chandála’s house,
+and moved about here and there like a pebble thrown up by the current
+of the Yamuna stream.
+
+6. It reached its twelfth and then its sixteenth year of age, and had
+its body fully developed like a rainy cloud increasing in its size.
+
+7. Then accompanied by a pack of hounds, the lad roved from one forest
+to another, and continued to hunt after and kill the wild deer, in his
+occupation of a huntsman.
+
+8. He was then joined with a Candáli spouse, as black as the leaf of a
+tamála plant, and who with her budding breasts, and palms, resembled
+the newly sprouting stalks and leaves of trees.
+
+9. She was black and swarthy in her whole complexion, except her two
+rows of milk white teeth, and had all her limbs as brisk and supple as
+the tender creepers of the forest.
+
+10. They sported together in the skirts of the forest in their youthful
+dalliance, and wandered about the flowery meadows, like a couple of
+nigrescent bees.
+
+11. When tired they took their seats on beds of leaves and creepers,
+which were spread over the plains, like those strewn over the skirts of
+the Vindhya hills, by the driving winds.
+
+12. They reposed in woodland groves, and slept in the caverns of
+mountains; they sat on heaps of leaflets, and had their abode under
+shrubberies and bowers of creeping plants.
+
+13. They decorated their heads with _kinkirata_ flowers, and their
+necks and bosoms with blossoms of various kinds. They hung _ketaka_
+flowers in their earholes, and made necklaces of _amra_ florets.
+
+14. They rolled on beds of flowers and roved about the foot of the
+mountain; they knew all the arbours where to resort, and were skilled
+in archery and hunting the deer.
+
+15. They begot many children as the offshoots of their race in the
+hilly region; and they were as rude and rough as the prickly thorns of
+the _khadira_ plant.
+
+16. After passing their youth in family life, they came gradually to
+their decay and decline; till at last they were overtaken by decrepit
+old age, which was as dry of pleasure as the parched ground of the
+desert.
+
+17. Then returning to their native village in the Bhuta or _Bhota_
+district, they built for themselves a poor hut of leaves and straws,
+and there lived as recluse hermits (passing their lives in holy
+devotion).
+
+18. Gádhi found his body worn out with age, and grown as thin and lean
+as a dry leaf, and as a withered tamála tree growing in a mountain
+cave; which for want of moisture soon dwindles into decrepitude.
+
+19. He saw his Chandála family increasing in its members, and himself
+becoming cramped in his means and crabbed in his speech in his extreme
+old age.
+
+20. As Gádhi found himself to be the oldest man alive among the
+Chandálas, and had his comfort in the members of his family in his
+dotage:—
+
+21. He came to see at last all his family to be swept away by the cruel
+hand of death, as the rain water carries away the fallen leaves of the
+forest.
+
+22. He continued to lament over their loss, with his heart rent with
+sorrow; and his eyes were suffused in tears, like those of a stag deer
+separated from its companions.
+
+23. Thus passing some days in that forest with his heart overflown with
+grief, he left at last his natal land, as the aquatic fowls quit their
+native lake, when its waters and the lotus plants are dried up.
+
+24. He travelled through many countries with his sad and sickly heart,
+without finding a spot of rest and repose; and was driven to and fro,
+as a cloud is carried by contrary winds.
+
+25. On one time he entered the opulent city of the Kirs, and observed
+the birds flying over it, like so many balloons hanging in the air.
+
+26. There he saw rows of trees on both sides of the road, waving their
+variegated leaves and clusters of flowers like enamelled cloths and
+gems; and the path strewn over with beautiful flowers of various kinds
+up to the heels.
+
+27. He then came to the royal road, resembling the milky path of
+heaven; and found it filled by soldiers and citizens, and their women
+without number.
+
+28. He saw there the auspicious royal elephant decorated with its
+gemming and embroidered trappings; and appearing as the golden mountain
+of the gods moving on the earth.
+
+29. He learnt it to be rambling about in search of a new king, to be
+elected in lieu of the last king who was lately dead. The royal
+elephant was employed as a jeweller to select the best gem to be placed
+on the royal throne.
+
+30. The Chandála remained to look steadfastly on the elephant with his
+curious eye, and found it to be no other than a hill in motion.
+
+31. As he was looking on it with amazement, the elephant came to him
+and lifted him with his trunk; then setting him on his head with
+respect, bore him as the mount Meru bears the sun on its top.
+
+32. Seeing him to be sitting on the animal’s head, the people sounded
+their trumpets; the noise whereof was as loud as that of the resounding
+ocean, to the roaring of the diluvian clouds in the sky.
+
+33. Then the acclamation of ‘Victory to the king,’ rose from the
+assembled throng and filled the air around; and seemed as it were the
+united cry of matutinal birds over the waking (or rising) world.
+
+34. Next rose the loud voices of the panegyrists, which, moved in the
+air like the dashing waves of the sea.
+
+35. Then the matrons joined to anoint him as their king, and moved
+about him like the waves of the sea; surrounding the Mandara mountain
+after its labour of churning.
+
+36. The respectable ladies adorned him afterwards with many ornaments
+of various gems, as the sea laves the rock on its shore; with the many
+coloured waves under the beams of the rising sun.
+
+37. Youthful maidens poured cooling ointments on him, as the raining
+clouds pour down their waters, on the tops of mountains.
+
+38. Other women decorated his person with wreaths of fragrant flowers,
+with their tender hands; as the season of spring adorns the forest with
+variety of flowers, with her hands of the tender stalks and branches.
+
+39. They put a great many paints and pastes upon his person, which
+decorated it, as the rays of the sun, paint the mountain with the many
+colours of its minerals.
+
+40. His body being decorated with ornaments made of gems and gold,
+attracted all hearts unto him; as the mount Meru is attractive of all
+hearts, by the variegated clouds of evening shining upon it.
+
+41. He was adorned by beauteous maids, with shoots of creeping plants;
+which gave him the appearance of the kalpa tree, entwined by its
+creepers.
+
+42. Being thus anointed and decorated, he was attended to by all the
+royal family and subjects; as a shady and flowering tree, is resorted
+to by the travellers.
+
+43. They all assembled and installed him on the throne, as the gods
+join together, to place Indra on the throne, after he is borne on the
+back of the Airávata elephant.
+
+44. In this manner, was the Chandála made a king in the city of the
+Kirs; and he was as much overjoyed at his unexpected good fortune, as a
+raven is delighted to find a stout dead deer in the forest.
+
+45. His feet were rubbed by the lotus-like hands of the Kiri queen, and
+his body daubed with odorous powder of frankincense, which gave it the
+brightening appearance of the evening with the crimson clouds.
+
+46. He flaunted in the Kir city and in the midst of their women, as a
+lion struts in the company of lionesses in the flowery forest.
+
+47. He now forgot his former pains and sorrows; and his person was as
+much cooled, as by wearing a necklace of pearls, dropped from the heads
+of elephants killed by lions. And he was as much delighted at the
+enjoyment of the luxuries in company with these good people, as a
+sun-burnt elephant is refreshed, in a lake full of water and forage.
+
+48. He reigned here for sometime in his self-gotten kingdom, having
+extended his power and mandates on all sides; he ruled the state
+through the medium of the ministers, and was himself known by the name
+of Gávala throughout his dominions.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+ GÁDHI’S LOSS OF HIS VISIONARY KINGDOM.
+
+
+Argument. Continuation of Gádhi’s Vision:—
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Thus was Gádhi surrounded by his courtiers, and
+attended by his ministers; the chiefs paid their homage to him, and the
+royal umbrella was raised above his head and the chouri flapped about
+him.
+
+2. He attained great dignity on seeing his mandates were carried out on
+every side. He was delighted to learn the state affairs, and to be
+informed that his subjects were happy and lived fearless within his
+dominion.
+
+3. The pæans of the panegyrists, made him forget himself and his
+former state; and the excess of his delight, made him as giddy as if by
+intoxication.
+
+4. He reigned for full eight years over the Kiri kingdom, and managed
+himself in an honourable manner all along that time.
+
+5. He was once sitting at his pleasure and without his regal attire in
+the open air; and was looking at the clear firmament, which was devoid
+of clouds and darkness, and without the light of the sun, moon and
+stars.
+
+6. His heart was full with the enjoyment of royal dignity, and did not
+think much of the trinkets and ornaments, which were loaded upon him.
+
+7. He went abroad at one time in this naked state of his body, and
+beheld the setting sun bending his course below the horizon from his
+wonted path of glory. (The setting sun refers to his present state and
+his impending fall).
+
+8. He saw there a band of chandálas of black complexions and big
+bodies, singing like melodious cuckoos the approach of the vernal
+season.
+
+9. They were striking the strings of their wired instruments—lyre, with
+the strokes of their trembling fingers; as the swarm of sweet sounding
+bees, shake the tremulous leaves of trees with their fluttering and
+buzzing.
+
+10. There stood an old man among them, who seemed to be the leader of
+the band; and appeared with his grey head and ruby eyes, like the mount
+Meru with his snow covered top and gemming caverns.
+
+11. He accosted the king saying:—How is it, O Kálanjaka! that you came
+to be here, has the king of this place taken you for his associate on
+account of your skill in music?
+
+12. Does he take a liking for sweet songsters, as they do for the
+musical kokilas, and does he load upon them his favours, with presents
+of household cloths and seats?
+
+13. I am as much glad to see you here today (in this happy condition of
+yours), as men are pleased to see the mango tree, fraught with its
+fruits and flowers in spring.
+
+14. I am as glad in my heart as the budding lotus at the sight of the
+rising sun, and the selenian or medicinal plants at moon rise; and as
+great men are pleased with all their best gains, so am I pleased at
+seeing thee here, because the highest limit of joys is the sight of a
+friend.
+
+15. As the Chandála was addressing the king in the said manner, he
+acquainted him of the manner in which the wheel of time turned to his
+favour. (Here is a misprint of avadhírana for avadhárana, which would
+alter the meaning and express, that he felt ashamed at the speech).
+
+16. At this instant his consorts and servants that were standing at the
+window, overheard their conversation, and were in deep sorrow to learn
+that he was a Chandála by birth.
+
+17. They were as sick at heart as the lotus-flowers under a shower of
+frost, and as a tract of land under a draught; and the citizens were as
+cheerless upon learning this, as upon seeing the conflagration of a
+mountain wood.
+
+18. He hurled his defiance at these words of the old Chandála, as the
+lion lying on the ground, shows his teeth at the sneering of a cat on
+the top of a tree.
+
+19. He fled in haste into the inner apartment, and among its sorrowful
+inmates, with as much palpitation of his heart, as the reluctant swan
+enters a lake of withering lotuses, in the dry season.
+
+20. His limbs grew stiff, and his countenance became pale with fear;
+and his knees tottered with inward rage, as the trunks of trees shake
+with the burning fire in their hollows. (The _sami_ or _sáin_ tree is
+an instance of it. Gloss).
+
+21. He beheld all persons there sitting in a melancholy mood, with
+their downcast looks and drooping heads; like the bending tops of
+plants, eaten up at the root by mice and rats.
+
+22. The ministers, the ladies of the harem and all people of the city,
+refrained from touching his person, as they avoid the touch of a dead
+body lying in the house.
+
+23. The servants ceased to minister unto him, and the ladies with all
+their love and sorrow for him, loathed his company.
+
+24. They looked upon his cheerless face and dark complexion with its
+departed lustre, as the funeral ground which every one loathes to look
+upon.
+
+25. Though the people sorrowed for his darksome body, now smoking with
+fumes of his grief; yet they durst not approach his person, which
+appeared to burn as a volcano amidst its smoke.
+
+26. The courtiers left him with the heavings of their hearts, nor were
+his orders obeyed any more, than those of quenching the cool ashes with
+water.
+
+27. The people fled from him as from a heinous Rákshasa, who is the
+cause of evil and danger only.
+
+28. Thus was he shunned by all, and left lonesome amidst the populous
+city; and became as an unbefriended traveller passing through a foreign
+country, without money or skill to support him.
+
+29. Though he called and accosted every body, yet he got no answer from
+any one; as the hollow sounding reed, is never returned with a reply by
+any of the passers by.
+
+30. They all said to one another, that the guilt of their long
+association with the Chandála, cannot be expiated by any other penance,
+than by the act of burning themselves alive on the funeral pile in the
+form of self-immolation.
+
+31. Being so resolved, the ministers and citizens all joined together,
+and raised for themselves piles with heaps of dry wood.
+
+32. These being lighted, blazed all about the ground like stars in the
+sky, and the city was filled with loud wailings of the people all
+around.
+
+33. The wailing wives were shedding showers of tears with their loud
+and piteous cries; and the weeping people were heaving their heavy
+groans with their choked voices, all about the burning furnaces.
+
+34. The plaintive cries of the dependants of the self-cremating
+ministers, rose as the swell of whistling winds amidst the forest trees.
+
+35. The bodies of great Bráhmans, that were burnt on the piles, sent
+forth their fatted fumes in the air; which were scattered about by the
+winds, and overcast the landscape as with a portentous mist.
+
+36. The winds bore aloft and spread far and wide in the open sky, the
+stench of the burning fat and flesh of men; which invited flocks of the
+flying fowls of the air to the feast, and the disk of the sun was hid
+under the wide extending shadow of the winged tribe.
+
+37. The flame of the burning pile, borne by the winds to the sky,
+burned as a conflagration on high; and the flying sparks of fire
+scattered in the air, appeared as falling meteors blazing in the
+horizon.
+
+38. Here the helpless boys were crying for their ornaments being robbed
+by atrocious robbers, owing to their want of guardians; and there the
+citizens were threatened with the loss both of their lives and
+properties by the dacoits.
+
+39. On one side the people were seen to lament the loss of their
+relatives (in the destructive fire); on the other were the bands of
+thieves, lurking and prying unobserved about the houses for plunder and
+booty.
+
+40. As adverse fate brought on this direful change on the devoted city;
+its horrified inhabitants remained in mute amazement; as on the last
+doom of nature.
+
+41. Gavala, the Chandála prince, whose mind was purified and whose
+manners were refined in the society of the great men of the palace;
+witnessed the sad catastrophe of the state, and mourned in himself with
+a pensive heart.
+
+42. It is all owing to me, said he, that all this woe has befallen on
+this state; and that time has brought on the untimely dissolution of
+the doomsday; both on this realm and the royal family and its
+ministerial officers.
+
+43. What is the good of this miserable life of mine? My death is a
+blessing to me than living in this wretched state. It is better for the
+mean and base to die away, than live to be reviled by others.
+
+44. Thus resolved, Gavala prepared a pile for himself, and made an
+offering of his body in the burning furnace, like the poor moth
+dropping on fire, without betraying a sigh.
+
+45. As Gavala cast his body (nick named as Gavala) amidst the flame, and
+was pulling his limbs singed by the fire; their violent motion and his
+painful emotion, roused the dreaming Gádhi from his reverie amidst the
+water.
+
+46. Válmíki said:—As the sage was saying these things, the day departed
+with the setting sun to its evening devotion; the congregation broke
+with mutual salutations, for the performance of their evening
+ablutions, and assembled again with the rising sun after dispersion of
+the gloom of night.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+ VERIFICATION OF GÁDHI’S VISION.
+
+
+Argument. Gádhi learns from a guest the report of the Keri people, and
+goes out to inquire into the fact on the spot.
+
+
+Vasishtha resumed:—Gádhi was soon afterwards relieved from the
+perturbation of his mind at the delusions of the world; and he was
+set at rest from his perturbed state, like the disturbed sea after
+subsidence of its waves.
+
+2. His mind being freed from its painful thoughts, regained its repose
+after the troublesome dream, had passed away, and he resumed his
+calmness, as the god Brahmá had his rest, after the labour of his
+creation was over at the end of the kalpa (the time of his creative
+will or the duration of creation).
+
+3. He regained his senses slowly, as a man upon waking from his sleep;
+and as one gains his sobriety after the passing off of his ebriety.
+
+4. He then said to himself, I am the same Gádhi and in the same
+function (of my sacred ablution in the water). All this is nothing that
+I had been seeing so long, and this I see as clearly as men see things
+after dispersion of the shade of night.
+
+5. Remembering himself what he was (_i.e._ coming to himself), he
+lifted his feet from amidst the water (_i.e._ got out of it); as the
+lotus-bud lifts its head above the water, after the frost is over in
+spring.
+
+6. He said again, this is the same water, sky and earth (where I stood
+before); but what I was just seeing, is quite astonishing to me.
+
+7. What am I and what do I see now, and what was I and had been doing
+all this time? With these thoughts he remained a long time with his
+knitted brows and staring eyes.
+
+8. It was my weakness, said he, that showed me this delusion; and
+knowing it for certain, he came out of the water, as the rising sun
+appears above the horizon.
+
+9. Then rising on the bank, he said:—Ah! where is that mother and wife
+of mine, who attended on me at the moment of my death.
+
+10. Or were my parents dead in the ignorant state of my boyhood, like
+the parent plant of a young shoot, cut off by the sword of death?
+
+11. I am unmarried and know not the form of a wife, and am as ignorant
+of conjugal love, as a Bráhman is stranger to the pernicious taste of
+forbidden liquors.
+
+12. I am too far from my country and know none of my friends and
+relatives; unto whom I shall return and there to die.
+
+13. Therefore all these scenes that I have come to see, are no more
+than the forms of the fairy land pictured in my fancy.
+
+14. Be it as it may, all this is but delusion and dream, and we are
+living dead among our friends; it is all magic and delusion, and
+nothing is true or real herein.
+
+15. Our minds are as wild beasts, roaming furiously in the forest of
+error; which presents endless scenes of delusion to living beings at
+large.
+
+16. Reflecting on these delusions in his mind, Gádhi passed some days
+at his own house amidst the woods.
+
+17. Once on a time he happened to entertain a Bráhman at his house as
+his guest, who resorted there to take his rest from his travels.
+
+18. He was highly gratified with feasting upon fruits and syrup of
+flowers, and was as refreshed supplied with sap as the tree which is
+supplied by the bounteous spring, and shoots forth in its foliage and
+fruitage in time.
+
+19. They then performed their evening service, and turned their beads,
+and afterwards took to their beds made of tender leaves and grass.
+
+20. There they began to talk on divine subjects, with which they were
+conversant; and the words fell from the lips, like the sweets of the
+vernal season.
+
+21. Then Gádhi asked his guest in the course of their conversation,
+saying: why is it sir, that you are so thin and lean and appear to lie
+so very weary.
+
+22. The guest replied:—Hear me sir, relate to you the cause both of my
+leanness and weariness, and I will tell you the true facts, and not as
+a travelling teller of tales deals and lies.
+
+23. There is on the surface of this land, and in the woody tracts of
+the north, the great district of the Kir (Kirgis?), which is far
+renowned for its richness. (Kir the land of the Gees in Afghanistan).
+
+24. I lived in the city there; and was honoured by its inhabitants, and
+the gust of my soul and mind were mightily pleased with the variety of
+dainty food that I used to get there.
+
+25. There it was once related to me by some one in the way of gossip,
+that a chandála had once been the king of that country for the space of
+eight years.
+
+26. I inquired of the village people about the truth of this report,
+and they all told me with one voice, that a chandála, had really
+reigned there for full eight years.
+
+27. But being discovered at last as such, he immolated himself on the
+burning pile; which was followed by the self-immolation of hundreds of
+Bráhmans on the funeral pyre.
+
+28. Hearing this news from their mouths, I departed from that district,
+intending, O Bráhman, to do my penance, by making a pilgrimage to
+Prayága (Allahabad, on the doab or confluence of the two sacred streams
+of Gangá and Jamuna).
+
+29. I made my _chándráyana_ fast for three days and nights, and had to
+break my fast only this day. It is for this reason, that have become so
+very thin and lean, as you find me at present.
+
+30. Vasishtha said:—Gádhi on hearing this, made a hundred inquiries of
+his guest about the matter, to which he answered everything in
+verification of the fact.
+
+31. Gádhi was quite surprised at this narration, and passed the night
+till sunrise in great palpitation of his heart.
+
+32. Waking in the morning, he made his ablution and discharged his
+matins; then took leave of his guest, and began to reflect in himself
+with his bewildered understanding.
+
+33. He said to himself, what I saw in my delusion, is ratified as a
+fact by my Bráhman guest. I am puzzled to think, whether this be a
+magic, or a fascination of the conjurer Sambara.
+
+34. What I saw about my death amidst my relatives, was undoubtedly a
+delusion of my mind; but the latter part of my vision (of becoming a
+Chandála), is verified by the Bráhman’s observance of the penance
+Chándráyana for his having entered the Chandála city.
+
+35. I must therefore learn fully the particulars of the Chandála, and
+proceed immediately to the Bhuta country (Bhutan?) with an undaunted
+mind.
+
+36. Thus determined, Gádhi rose to visit the distant district, as the
+sun rises over the horizon to visit all the sides of Sumeru (the Altain
+chain, at the bottom of which the country of the Kirgis is situated).
+
+37. He travelled onward, and obtained at last the sight of the country
+he had seen in his dream; as intelligent and wayfaring men, reach to
+their desired destinations in distant regions.
+
+38. Finding everything, however unattainable it may appear at first, to
+be attained by perseverance, Gádhi was resolved to make a test of the
+truth of his delusive dream.
+
+39. He had proceeded from his home, with the swiftness of a current
+rivulet in the rainy weather; and traversed through many unknown
+countries, as a cloud passes over distant realms on the back of its
+airy steed.
+
+40. At last he came to the country of the Bhatas (Bhoteas), a people
+following their own debased customs; and thought himself to be got
+amongst a savage people, as a camel is confounded to find itself,
+fallen in a karanja forest, in quest of thorny thistles. (The camels or
+cramelas are called kantaka_ bhojes_, from their browsing the brambles).
+
+41. There he saw in its vicinity a city, as what he had seen in his
+delusion; and resembling in every respect the habitation of the
+Gandharva race.
+
+42. Proceeding onward, he saw at the further end, the locality of the
+chandálas, resembling the hell-pit of the infernal region. (The
+out-castes are always located at the filthy outskirts of towns).
+
+43. It was as spacious a place as what he had seen in his vision, and
+beheld his own likeness in the dream appearing in the figures of the
+chandálas, as one sees the shape of a Gandharva or ghost, in his dream
+or delirium.
+
+44. He saw in that place the habitation of chandálas, as what he had
+seen before in his delusion, and observed with grief and coldness of
+his mind (the deserted abodes of his fellow Chandálas).
+
+45. He saw his own residence flooded over by rain water grown with
+sprouts of barley and brambles; his house was left roofless, and his
+bedstead was almost indiscernible.
+
+46. His hut presented the picture of poverty and wretchedness, and its
+compound was a scene of ruin and desolation (as if it was laid waste by
+the hand of oppression and pillage).
+
+47. Gádhi stood long gazing upon the dry white bones of bulls and cows,
+buffaloes and horses, which lay strewn over the plains round about his
+hut; and which he remembered to be the remains of the beasts of his
+prey and slaughter (_lit._:—the bones broken under the teeth and jaws
+of men and wild beasts).
+
+48. He saw the dry hollow skulls lying on the ground, which had served
+for his eating and drinking vessels before; and which still lay unmoved
+on the spot, and were filled with rain water (as if to supply him with
+drink).
+
+49. He saw strings of the dried entrails of the beasts of his victims,
+lying like parched plants on the plain, and pining with thirst for the
+rain-water.
+
+50. Gádhi who was conscious of himself (as Gádhi), the Bráhman looked
+long at his former house and its environs, resembling the dry and
+dilapidated skeleton of a human body, lying unburied on the naked land.
+
+51. He stood amazed at what he saw, and then withdrew himself to the
+adjacent village; as when a traveller repairs to the habitation of the
+Aryas, from his sojourning in the land of barbarians (Mlech’chas).
+
+52. There he asked some one saying, sir, do you remember anything
+concerning the former state of yonder village, and the lives of its
+chandála inhabitants?
+
+53. I have heard all good people say, that knowing men are conversant
+with the annals of all places, as they know every spot on a globe in
+their hand.
+
+54. If you recollect aught of the good old chandála that, lived retired
+at yonder spot, and if you remember his adventures, as every one does
+the past accidents of his own life:—
+
+55. If you are acquainted with the particulars thereabouts, then please
+to relate them unto me; for it is said there is great spirit in
+directing a stranger, and in dispelling the doubts of one hanging in
+suspense.
+
+56. The village people being one by one importuned in this manner by
+the strange Bráhman; they were as much surprised at his odd request, as
+physicians are concerned at the abnormal complaint of a patient.
+
+57. The villagers said:—It is an undeniable truth, O Bráhman! as you
+say, that there lived a chandála of hideous shape by name of Katanjala
+at that place.
+
+58. He was beset by a large family, consisting of his sons, grandsons,
+friends and servants; and had other relatives and kinsmen besides. His
+children were as many as the fruits of a mango tree.
+
+59. But cruel fate snatched all his family in course of time, as a
+conflagration burns down a mountain forest with all its fruits and
+flowers at once.
+
+60. He then deserted his native land and went over to the city of the
+Kirs, of which he became the king; and reigned there for the space of
+twice four years.
+
+61. The citizens coming to know his mean birth afterwards, drove him
+from there at last; as they remove a noxious and poisonous tree from
+the garden.
+
+62. Gádhi seeing the people immolating themselves on funeral piles
+entered into a burning pyre, which he had prepared for himself; and was
+thus purified with others by the sacred fire _pávaka_.
+
+63. But tell us, O Bráhman, why you are so curiously inquisitive about
+the chandála, and as to whether he was any friend of yours, or you had
+contracted any friendship with him.
+
+64. Being accosted in this manner, Gádhi made many more inquiries of
+them concerning the chandála, and passed a whole month in their several
+houses on his inquiry.
+
+65. He also told the village people, all that he knew of the chandála
+in his dream; and they heard him attentively relating the whole story
+from first to last.
+
+66. Gádhi being informed of all the particulars regarding the chandála,
+both from the hearsay of the people as well as from his personal
+observations; returned equally ashamed and astonished to his abode,
+with the disgraceful reflection of his past vileness, which was stamped
+like the black spot of the moon upon the tablet of his mind.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+ ON THE WONDROUS POWER OF ILLUSION.
+
+
+Argument. Devotion of Gádhi after his return, and Vishnu’s exhibition
+of the extraordinary power of delusion to him
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Gádhi was bewildered in his mind, at all that
+he heard and observed about the Chandála and his residence, and felt
+uneasy to learn more about them.
+
+2. He went back to the place, and observed the abodes that lay
+scattered upon the plain; as when the lotus-born Brahmá looks over the
+ruins, made by the great deluge at the end of a kalpa age.
+
+3. He said to himself, those bones lying scattered about the ruined
+huts in this forest, look like little imps (pisáchas), gathered round
+the trees standing on the burial ground.
+
+4. These posts and pegs of elephant’s tusks, that are fastened to and
+upon the walls of the ruined houses; look like the craigs of mount
+Meru, drowned under the waters of the kalpa deluge.
+
+5. Here the Chandála feasted on his meat food of monkey’s flesh, and
+dressed with the sprouts of young bamboos; and there he caroused on his
+country grog, in company with his drunken friends.
+
+6. Here he slept in the embrace of his murky spouse, on his bed of the
+lion’s skin; being drunk with the better liquor mixed with the ichor,
+exuding from the frontal proboscis of the elephant.
+
+7. There was a pack of hounds, tied to the trunk of the withered
+_Bharaeda_ tree, and fed with the rotten flesh of the putrid carcasses.
+
+8. Here I see three earthen vessels covered with the hides of
+buffaloes, resembling fragments of dark clouds; and which had once
+contained the precious pearls falling from the sculls of slain
+elephants. (The low and poor people, use earthen pots and boiling
+kettles for boxes and chests).
+
+9. I see the site of the place which I had seen in my dream, and where
+the Chandála boys played on the dust, with as much glee and gaiety, as
+the cuckoos have in flitting on the tufts of mango leaves.
+
+10. I see the place I had seen in my vision, where the boys sang
+responsive to the tune of their bamboo pipes; and drank the milk of
+bitches, and adorned themselves with flowers from the funeral grounds.
+
+11. Here the families of the wedding parties, met together to celebrate
+their marriage festivity; and danced and sang as loudly, as the noise
+of the dashing waves of the sea.
+
+12. There I find the bamboo cages, still suspended on high; which were
+laid before, for catching the flying birds of the air; in order to be
+killed for the food (of their slayers).
+
+13. Vasishtha resumed:—Thus Gádhi remained for a long time on the spot,
+observing all what he remembered to have seen in his dream; and was
+lost in wonder, to think on the miraculous disclosure of these things
+in his dream. (Lit.:—heart-strings palpitated with surprise &c.).
+
+14. He then departed from that place, and travelled through many
+countries beyond the boundaries of Butan, for a long time.
+
+15. He passed over many rivers and rocks, and through many deserts and
+forests; until he reached to the snowy mountain, and the habitation of
+humankind beyond its borders.
+
+16. He then arrived at the city of a great monarch, the towers of which
+rose as hills upon the earth; and there stopped after his long journey,
+as when Nárada rests in his heavenly dome, after the fatigue of
+travelling through the numerous worlds.
+
+17. He beheld in that city all the places answering to the romantic
+thoughts in his mind, and those as he had seen and enjoyed in his
+dream, and then asked the citizens in a respectful manner.
+
+18. Good Sirs, said he, do you remember any thing regarding the
+Chandála king that reigned here for sometime, which, if you do, be
+pleased to relate unto me in its proper order.
+
+19. The citizens replied:—Yes, O Bráhman, there reigned here a Chandála
+king for full eight years, and he was elected to its government, by the
+auspicious elephant of the realm.
+
+20. Being at last discovered to be of so vile a race, he committed his
+self-immolation on the funeral pyre; and it is now a dozen of years,
+since the direful event has taken place.
+
+21. In this manner the inquisitive Gádhi continued in his inquiry of
+every man he met with, and was satisfied to learn the same information
+from the mouth of every body there.
+
+22. He then beheld the king of that city coming with his body guards
+and vehicles, and whom he recognized to be no other than the god Vishnu
+and his attendants as he had seen in his devotion, and were now going
+out of the city.
+
+23. He saw the sky shadowed by the cloud of dust raised by the feet of
+the passing procession; and remembered with grief the like state of his
+pomp under his past kingship.
+
+24. He said to himself, here are the same Kiri damsels with their rosy
+skins, resembling the petals of lotuses; and those with their bodies
+blazing as liquid gold, and their cerulean eyes trembling like blue
+lotuses.
+
+25. The waving of the chouri flappers, flashes with the light of bright
+moonbeams; and resembles the falling waters of a cascade, and clusters
+of kása flowers.
+
+26. Beautiful maidens, waving the snow white fans in their beauteous
+hands, resembled the forest plants with pearly flower on their branches.
+
+27. The rows of furious elephants, standing on both sides of the land,
+are like thick lines of kalpa trees, growing on ridges of the Sumeru
+mountains.
+
+28. These chieftains resembling the gods Yama, Kuvera and Varuna—the
+lord of waters, are like the regents of the different quarters of the
+sky, accompanying Indra—the lord of heaven.
+
+29. These long extending lines of goodly edifices, which are full of a
+great variety of things, and abounding in all sorts of comforts,
+resemble a grove of kalpa trees, conferring all the objects of desire.
+
+30. In this royal city of the Kirs, and in the manners of its assembled
+people, I see exactly the same customs and usages, as those of the
+kingdom of my past life.
+
+31. Truly this is but a vision in my dream, and appearing as a reality
+in my waking state; I cannot understand why this delusive magic show is
+spread out before me.
+
+32. O yes, I am as fast bound by my ignorance, and captivated by my
+reminiscence, as a captive bird in a net, that has lost all power over
+itself.
+
+33. O fie! that my silly mind is so deluded by its desires, that it is
+always wont to mistake the shadow for the substance, of people dwelling
+in their aerial castles.
+
+34. This extraordinary magic, I ween is shown to me by Vishnu—the
+holder of the discus, of whom I recollect to have asked the favour of
+showing Máyá or delusion to me.
+
+35. I will now betake myself to austere devotion in the cavern of a
+hill, in order to learn the origin and subsistence of delusion (_i.e._
+how the deceitful delusion sprang from the truthful God, and where in it
+consists).
+
+36. Having long thought in this manner, Gádhi went out of the city, and
+came to the cavern of mountain; where he rested after all his travels
+and travail of thought, like a lion tired with his roaming for forage.
+
+37. He remained there for a whole year, living only on the water of the
+cataract collected in the hollow of his palm; and devoted himself to
+the worship of Vishnu, the holder of the Sáringi bow.
+
+38. Then the lotus eyed god appeared to him in his watery form, which
+was as clear and graceful to sight, as the limpid lake of autumn with
+the blue lotuses full blown upon it.
+
+39. With this form, the god approached to the hermit’s cell in the
+mountain, and stood over it in the likeness of a transparent watery
+cloud, resting on the humid atmosphere.
+
+40. The lord spoke to him saying:—Gádhi thou hast fully seen the great
+spell of my magic (máyá); and known the network or delusion, which is
+spread by destiny over all the affairs of this world. (_i.e._ Man is
+destined, and to be deluded to think the false scenes of the world as
+real ones).
+
+41. Thou hast now well understood the nature of delusion, which thou
+didst desire in thy heart to know, what is it again that thou wantest
+to know, by these austerities of thine in this mountain cave?
+
+42. Vasishtha said:—Gádhi the best of Bráhmans, seeing Hari addressing
+him in this manner, honoured him duly with strewing plentiful of
+flowers at his divine feet.
+
+43. After Gádhi had made his offering of flowers, with due obeisance
+and turning round the deity; he addressed him with his words, sounding
+as sweet as notes of the chátaka to the blooming lotus.
+
+44. Gádhi said:—Lord! I have seen the dark delusion, that thou hast
+shown me in her form of gloominess; I pray thee now to show her unto me
+in her fair form, as the sun appears after the gloom of night.
+
+45. The mind which is vitiated by the dirt of its desires, views a
+great many errors, rising before it like false phantoms and visions in
+a dream; but how is it my lord! that the same visions continue to be
+seen in the waking state also (or as waking dreams likewise)?
+
+46. It was for a moment only that I thought to have seen some thing as
+false as a dream, when I stood amidst the waters but how was it, O thou
+enlightener of the mind, that it became manifest to my outward sense
+and sight?
+
+47. Why was not the delusion of my birth and death as a Chandála, which
+took place long ago, and lately verified by many visible vestiges,
+confined in my memory only, as well as other idle creations of the
+brain, but became palpable to my naked eyes?
+
+48. The lord replied:—Gádhi! it is the nature of delirium as of one’s
+desires, to present many false appearances to view; and to make one
+believe what he has never seen before, to be present to his external
+sight, which in reality is a vision of his mind only.
+
+49. There is nothing on the outside of any body as the earth, sea,
+hills and the sky; they are all contained in the mind as the fruits,
+flowers and leaves of trees, are born in the seed and grow from its
+germ.
+
+50. Like fruits and flowers growing out of the seed and its sprout,
+this earth and all other things are the productions of the mind alone,
+and not distinct from it in their essences (_i.e._ all sensible
+perceptions are not reflexions of the inborn ideas of the mind).
+
+51. Know it for certain that this earth and all other things, are
+situated in the mind and not outside of it; as the fruit, flowers and
+leaves are all contained in the inside of the seed and not without it.
+
+52. The sight of things present, and the thoughts of the absent past
+and unseen future, are all but acts of the mind, as the making and
+unmaking of pots, are both of them the doings of the pot maker.
+
+53. Whatever notions there are in the minds of men from their youth to
+age are alike to the phantoms of their dream or the deliriums of their
+ebriety or some (mental) disease.
+
+54. The settled desires of the mind present a thousand appearances
+before its sight, as the rooted plants on earth, abound with fruits and
+flowers of various kinds, on the surface of the ground.
+
+55. But the plants being rooted out of the ground, there remains no
+vestige of a fruit or flower or leaf upon earth: so the desires being
+driven out of the mind, there is no more any trace of anything left
+behind them; nor is there any probability of future transmigrations,
+when the reminiscence of the past is utterly obliterated from the soul.
+
+56. It is no wonder for the shifting stage of the mind, to present you
+the single scene of the Chandála, when it has in store, and can with
+equal ease show you an infinity of appearances at its pleasure. (The
+drama of life exhibits but a partial scene at a time).
+
+57. It was the impression (_eidolon_) in thy mind, that made thee think
+thyself as the Chandála, in the manner of the many phantoms, that rise
+before the mind in the delirium of a sickly person.
+
+58. It was the same phrenzy that made thee see the advent of thy
+Bráhman guest, and entertain him with board and bed; and all thy
+conversation with him, was no other than the phantasies of thy mind.
+
+59. Then the thoughts of thy departure from home, and arrival at the
+district of the Bhootas, thy sight of the Bhotias and their villages
+and habitations, were but aberrations of thy mind.
+
+60. Next thy sight of the ruins of the former abode of Katanjala, and
+the account that thou didst get of him from the mouths of the people,
+were all the fumes of thy fancy.
+
+61. Afterwards thy visit to the city of the Kirs, and the tale told
+thee of the Chandála’s reign by the people, were the excogitations of
+thy own mind.
+
+62. Thus all that thou didst hear and see, was the net-work of thy
+imagination, and what thou dost believe as true is as false as a
+phantom of thy brain.
+
+63. The mind infatuated by its hopes and desires sees everything before
+it, how far soever it may be removed from it; as one dreams of objects
+as present before him, which would take a whole year for him to reach
+at.
+
+64. There was neither the guest nor the city, nor were there the
+Bhotias or the Kiris that thou didst see in reality. It was all a day
+dream, that thou didst see with thy mind’s eye.
+
+65. The truth is, that on thy way to the country of the Bhotias at one
+time, thou didst halt in the cave of this mountain, as a stag rests
+himself in a forest, after his long wandering.
+
+66. There being tired with the fatigue of thy travel, thou didst fall
+into a sound sleep; and dreamt of the Bhotia city and the Chandála, in
+thy reverie without seeing anything in reality.
+
+67. It was there and in the same state of thy mind that thou sawest the
+city of the Kirs; and it was the delusion of thy mind that showed thee
+those things at the time of thy devotion in the water.
+
+68. In this manner thou dost see many other things, wherever thou goest
+at any time; as a high flier sees his vagaries on all sides about him.
+(All worldly sights, are but vagaries of imagination).
+
+69. Rise therefore and remain unshaken in the discharge of thy duties,
+without being misled by the vagaries of thy mind; because it is
+practice of one’s profession that leads him to success, and not the
+ideals or his mind. (_i.e._ Mind thyself what thou art, and not what
+thou dost fancy to be).
+
+70. Vasishtha said:—So saying the lotus-naveled Hari, who is worshipped
+by the saints and sages in all places, went to his abode in the sea,
+where he was received by the hands of the gods and holy sages, who led
+him to his residence. (Vishnu is called lotus-naveled पद्मलाभः on account
+ of Brahma’s birth from it, who is thence named the lotus-born पद्मयोनी ।).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+ GÁDHI’S GAINING OF TRUE KNOWLEDGE.
+
+
+Argument. Gádhi gains his knowledge and Liberation from Hari in his
+Life-time.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Vishnu being gone, Gádhi began to wander again
+about the Bhota country, as a cloud continues to move about in the air.
+
+2. Having collected many informations about himself in the life of the
+chandála, he betook himself again to the worship of Vishnu in the cave
+of a mountain.
+
+3. In course of a short time, Hari appeared to him again; as it is his
+nature to be pleased with a little devotion, made with sincerity of
+heart.
+
+4. The god spoke to Gádhi with as much complaisance, as the watery
+cloud addresses the peacock; and asked him what he wanted again by his
+repeated devotion.
+
+5. Gádhi replied:—Lord! I have again wandered about the countries of
+the Bhotas and Kirs for these past six months, and found no discrepancy
+in the accounts, they gave of me lately from the former ones.
+
+6. Thou hast told me, Lord! all this to be mere delusion, (which prove
+to be positive facts by the testimony of every body). I know the words
+of the great, serve to dissipate and not increase the delusion (as it
+is done by thy words).
+
+7. The Lord said:—It often happens that many things are of simultaneous
+occurrence at the one and same time; as the _kákatálíya sanyoga_ or the
+synchronous flying of the crow and the falling of the fruit upon him.
+Thus it was that the idea of the Chandála was of contemporaneous growth
+in the minds of all the Bhotas and Kirs as of thyself: as there are
+many men that are prepossessed with the same opinion with others,
+however wrong it may be.
+
+8. It was by cause of this, that they corresponded with thy thoughts,
+and related thy story as thou didst reflect it thyself: because a
+cogitation or reflection of something cannot be otherwise at the same
+time (but it must appear to every body alike).
+
+9. It is true that a Chandála had erected a house at the border of the
+village, which thou didst see to be now reduced to ruins; but it was an
+erroneous conception of thine, to think thyself the very man, and to
+have built the very house. (It was the mistake of thy personality for
+another, as it often overtakes the minds of many men).
+
+10. Sometimes the same mistake lays hold on many minds, as the
+multitude is seen to be led astray, by the simultaneous current of the
+same opinions in many ways.
+
+11. In this manner many men see at once the same dream, as the giddy
+heads of drunken men, fall equally into the same kind of dizziness at
+the same time, of seeing the earth and skies turning and rolling round
+them.
+
+12. Many boys are seen at once to join in the same sport, and a whole
+herd of stags is observed to meet together in the same verdant field.
+
+13. Many men are seen simultaneously to pursue the same employment, for
+the purpose of gaining the like object of their pursuit (as it is seen
+in the flight and fighting of an army for their safety or victory).
+
+14. It is commonly said, that time is the giver (or producer) and
+obstructer of the objects of human pursuits as of all other events; but
+time is as quiescent as the supreme spirit, and it is the desire and
+exertion of people, that are the causes of their desired effects.
+
+15. Time is a formless void, and is identic with the nature and form of
+the increate great Lord God himself. It is neither the giver nor taker
+of anything to or from any one at any time.
+
+16. Time according to its common reckoning by years, kalpas and
+yuga-ages, is classed among the categories of substance; but time far
+from being a substance, is the source of all substances.
+
+17. Men of deluded understanding are subject to the errors, arising
+from the like cause of their fallacy; and it was owing to this false
+conception, that the Bhota and Kiri people, fell into the very same
+error. (Like cause means, the same kind of bias or prejudice &c.).
+
+18. Therefore employ thyself to do thy duty, and try to know thy
+true-self; get rid of the error of thy personality (as so and so), and
+move about as freely as I do by myself (as a free aerial spirit).
+
+19. Saying this, the lord Vishnu disappeared from his sight; and Gádhi
+remained in his cave, with great perplexity of his mind.
+
+20. He passed some months on the same hill, and then resumed his
+devotion to Vishnu with redoubled fervency.
+
+21. He saw his god appearing again to his view, when he bowed down
+before him, and addressed him as follows:—
+
+22. Gádhi said:—O Lord! I am quite bewildered with the thought of my
+Chandálship, and my reflection on the delusions of this world.
+
+23. Do thou deign to extricate me from my errors, and employ me to the
+only act of adoring the Holy one.
+
+24. The lord said:—This world, O Bráhman! is a delusion, like the
+enchantment of the conjurer Sambara; all things here, are the wondrous
+productions of imagination, and proceed from forgetfulness of the self.
+
+25. It was your error that made you see many things, in your sleeping
+and waking dreams.
+
+26. The Kirs were led also to see the same things like thyself, and to
+mistake those falsities as true, owing to the same error laying hold of
+all of you at the same time. (As the tricks of a juggler are thought to
+be true by the observers).
+
+27. Now hear me tell you the truth as it was for your own good; and
+whereby your error will fade away, like a creeping plant in the
+chilling month of November.
+
+28. The Chandála Kátanjaka, whom thou thinkest to be thyself, was a man
+really existent in the same locality before.
+
+29. Who being bereaved of his family there, went out from that place to
+wander about in foreign parts; when he became king of the Kiris, and
+afterwards immerged himself in the fire.
+
+30. This state of Kátanjaka entered into thy mind, when thou hadst been
+standing amidst the water in thy devotion; and the thoughts of the
+whole career of the Chandála, had altogether engrossed thy mind.
+
+31. Things which are seen or thought of once, can hardly escape from
+the memory; and it sometimes happens that the mind comes to see many
+things in its imagination, which it has never seen before its eyes.
+
+32. In the manner of a man’s vision of a kingdom in his dream, and like
+the delirium caused by the vitiated humours, of the body; the mind sees
+many day dreams and deliriums in its waking and healthy states also.
+
+33. The past conduct of Kátanja presented itself to your mind, as the
+past and future events of the world, are present before the mental
+vision of an oracle (lit.:—a seer of the three times).
+
+34. That this is I, and these things and those friends are mine; is the
+mistake of those that are devoid of their self-knowledge; (as thou
+didst think that Kátanja to be thyself, and his house, goods and
+relatives to be thine also).
+
+35. But that ‘I am all in all’ is the belief of the truly wise, which
+prevents them from falling into such mistakes; and keeps them from the
+wrong notions of individualities and particularities, from their belief
+in the generality of all persons and things.
+
+36. This general and œcumenical view of all things, preserves people
+from the mistaken notions of pleasure and pain; and makes the drowning
+wretch as buoyant, as the floating gourd or bottle tied to a sinking
+net.
+
+37. But thou art entangled in the snare of thy desire, and art lost to
+thy good sense; nor canst thou be at thy perfect ease, as long as thou
+dost suffer under the symptoms of thy sickness.
+
+38. It is because of thy imperfect knowledge, that thou art incapable
+to ward off the errors of thy mind; just as it is impossible for a man
+to protect himself from the rain, without his endeavours to raise a
+shed or shelter for himself.
+
+39. Thou art easily susceptible of every impression of thy untutored
+mind, as a small tree is easily over-reached by a tall person.
+
+40. The heart is the nave or axis of the wheel of delusion; if thou
+canst stop the motion of this central power, there is nothing to
+disturb thee any more. (self-regret, says the gloss, serves to stop the
+motion of the heart).
+
+41. Now rise and repair to the sacred bower on this mountain, and there
+perform your austerities for full ten years with a steady mind; so that
+thou mayst attain to thy perfect knowledge at the end of this period.
+
+42. So saying, the lotus-eyed god disappeared from that place, as a
+flimsy cloud or candle-light or the billow of Jamuna, is put out by a
+slight gust of the wind.
+
+43. Gádhi then gradually gained his dispassionateness, by means of his
+discrimination; as the trees fade away for want of moisture, at the end
+of autumn.
+
+44. Now getting rid of the vagaries of his mind, Gádhi remained to
+reflect upon and blamed himself, for his fostering the false thoughts
+of the Chandála and the like.
+
+45. He then with his heart melting in pity and sorrow for himself,
+repaired to the Rishya-mukha mount, for the purpose of making his
+penitence; and he sat there in the manner of a rainy cloud, stopping on
+the top of a mountain.
+
+46. He relinquished all his desires, and performed his austere devotion
+(as it was his duty); and at last he attained the knowledge of his
+self, after the expiration of the tenth year of his penitence.
+
+47. Having obtained his knowledge of himself like the great-souled
+Brahmá, and getting rid of his fears and sorrows in this world of
+retribution; he wandered about with the joy of a living liberated
+being, and with perfect tranquility of his mind, resembling the serene
+lustre of the full-moon, revolving in the sphere of the sky.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER L.
+
+ INTENTIONS OF RÁMA.
+
+
+Argument. On subjection of the mind and greatness of knowledge; and
+stoutness of the heart as the cause of all evil.
+
+
+Vasishtha continued:—Know Ráma, this delusion to be as extensive in
+its form, as it is inexplicable in its nature; it is fraught with
+ignorance; it is a spiritual illusion and no sensible deception.
+
+2. Look on the one hand at the erroneous dream of the Bráhman for a
+couple of hours, and his transformation into the state of Chandála
+which lasted for many years.
+
+3. Observe how the false conception of the Bráhman, appeared as present
+to his sensible perception; and see how the false thought appeared as
+true to him, and his true knowledge of him-self vanishing at last into
+untruth.
+
+4. I say therefore this illusion, to be utterly inexplicable in its
+nature; and how it leads the unguarded mind, to a great many errors and
+difficulties and dangers at last.
+
+5. Ráma asked:—How Sir, can we put a stop to the wheel of delusion,
+which by its rapid rotation, is constantly grinding every part of our
+body? (Figuratively used for every good quality of the mind. Gloss).
+
+6. Vasishtha said:—Know Ráma, this revolving world is the wheel of
+delusion, and the human heart is the nave or axis of this great wheel;
+which by its continual rotation produces all this delusion within its
+circle.
+
+7. If you can by means of your manly exertion, put a stop to the motion
+of your heart, as it were by fixing a peg to the loop-hole of the
+wheel, you stop the rotation of the circle of delusion at once.
+
+8. Again the mind is the nave of the wheel of ignorance; and if you can
+stop its motion, by binding it fast by the rope of your good sense; you
+escape the danger of falling into the vortiginous rotation of errors.
+
+9. Ráma, you are well skilled in the art of fighting by hurling the
+discus, and cannot be ignorant of preventing its motion by stopping it
+at the central hole.
+
+10. Therefore, O Ráma! be diligent to stop the nave of your mind; and
+you will be enabled thereby to preserve yourself, both from the
+revolution of the world and vicissitudes of time.
+
+11. The soul that rejects this counsel, is exposed to interminable
+misery; while by keeping it always before the sight of the mind, it
+avoids all difficulties in this world.
+
+12. There is no other medicine for any body, to heal the disease of his
+worldliness, save by restraining the mind to its own pivot.
+
+13. Forsake therefore, O Ráma! your acts of holy pilgrimage, and
+observance of austerity and charity (which are of no avail to the peace
+of the soul); but keep the mind under your control, for attainment of
+your supreme felicity.
+
+14. The world is situated in the mind, as the air is confined in a pot;
+but the mind being restricted to itself, the world is lost to it; as
+the pot just broken, lets out the air to mix in endless vacuity.
+
+15. You who are for ever confined in the imaginary world of your mind,
+like a gnat confined in the hollow of a pot; will get your release only
+by breaking out of this confinement, like the gnat flying into the open
+air.
+
+16. The way to get rid of the delusions of the mind, is to fix your
+attention only to the present moment; and not to employ your thoughts
+about the past and future events. (This will keep your attention close
+to yourself).
+
+17. You will then arrive to the state of that holy unmindfulness called
+_non-chalance_, when you cease to pursue at once any of the objects of
+your desire or imagination.
+
+18. The mind is obscured so long, as it has the mist of its desires and
+fancies flying over it; as the sky is overcast as long as the watery
+clouds overspread upon it.
+
+19. As long as the intelligent soul is joined with the faculty of the
+mind, so long it is subject to its gross desires and thickening train
+of its fancies; as the sky is filled with bright moon-beams as long as
+the moon shines in it. (_i.e._ As there is no moon-light without the
+moon, so there is no fancy without the mind, nor is there any mind
+which is devoid of its fancies).
+
+20. When the intelligent soul is known without the medium of the mind
+(_i.e._ when the soul is seen face to face) then the existence of the
+world, is rooted out from the mind, like trees burnt down to their
+roots.
+
+21. Intelligence unappertaining to the mind, is called perspicacity
+(pratyak chetana); which is of a nature unconnected with
+intellectuality, and freed from the foulness of the fumes of fancy.
+(_i.e._ quite clear of all mental thought).
+
+22. That is verily the state of truth and of true felicity. It is the
+true state of spirituality, and a manner of omniscience; having
+all-sightedness of its own, and seeing all things in itself. It is
+quite unconnected with any mental operation, and is enlightened by the
+light of the spirit.
+
+23. Whenever there is the action of the mind, it is invariably
+accompanied with the train of desires and the sense of pleasure and
+pain; and the feelings and passions are its concomitants, as the ravens
+are accompaniments of the burning ground. (The mind is the sensorium of
+feelings).
+
+24. The minds of the intelligent are not, without their action, but
+they are aloof of those feelings, by their knowledge of the vanity of
+earthly things. And though these feelings are contained like plants in
+the seed vessel of their mind; yet they are not allowed to germinate in
+its sterile soil.
+
+25. They (the wise), have come to know the unsubstantiality and
+uncertainty of all worldly things and events, both by their knowledge
+of the natures of things; and by means of their acquaintance with the
+sástras; as also by their association with holy men, and their habitual
+observance of the practices of a pious and saintly life.
+
+26. They have forcibly withdrawn their minds from ignorance, by their
+determined exertions to gain the true knowledge of things; and have
+strenuously applied them to the study of sástras, and the good conduct
+of righteous people.
+
+27. But it is the purity of the soul only, that has the sight of the
+Supreme spirit; as it is the brilliancy of the gem itself, that makes
+it discernable amidst the waters of the deep, and enables it to be
+redeemed from darkness. (_i.e._ Human soul being a reflexion of the
+Supreme, lends its light to the vision of the other).
+
+28. As the soul naturally desires to get rid of things, which it has
+come to know to be attended with pain to it; so the soul is the sole
+cause of knowing the Supreme (by its discarding the knowledge of the
+gross objects, which interposes between it and the Divine; and
+obstructs the view of the latter).
+
+29. Be therefore freed from your thoughts of all other things, both in
+your waking and sleeping states, and when you talk to or think of any
+body, give or receive anything to or from another. Rely and reflect on
+your consciousness alone, and watch constantly its secret admonitions
+and intuitions.
+
+30. Whether when you are born or going to die, or do anything or live
+in this world, be steadily attentive to your conscious self, and you
+will perceive the clear light of the soul (and have your clairvoyance).
+
+31. Leave off thinking that this is I and that is another, because all
+are alike before the Lord of all; and give up wishing this for thyself
+and that for others, for all things belong to God. Rely solely on the
+one, and that is thy internal consciousness alone.
+
+32. Be of one mind in your present and future states of life, and
+continue to investigate into its various phases in your own
+consciousness. (_i.e._ Know yourself in all the varying circumstances
+of your life).
+
+33. In all the changes of your life from boyhood to youth and old age,
+and amidst all its changing scenes of prosperity and adversity, as also
+in the states of your waking, dreaming and sound sleep, remain faithful
+to your consciousness. (_i.e._ Never lose the knowledge of your
+self-identity (as the one and unchanging soul)).
+
+34. Melt down your mind as a metal, and purify it of its dross of the
+knowledge or impression of external things; break off the snare of your
+desires and depend on your consciousness of yourself.
+
+35. Get rid of the disease of your desire, of whatever is marked as
+good or bad for you; and turn your sight from all, which may appear as
+favourable or unfavourable to you; and rely on your consciousness of
+pure intelligence. (This is having perfect mastery of yourself).
+
+36. Leave untouched whatever is tangible to the touch, and obtainable
+to you by your agency or instrumentality; remain unchanged and
+unsupported by any thing in the world, and depend only on your own
+consciousness (as the intangible spirit).
+
+37. Think yourself as sleeping when you are awake, and remain as calm
+and quiet as you are insensible of any thing; think yourself as all and
+alone, and as instinct with the Supreme Spirit.
+
+38. Think yourself free from the changing and unchanging states of life
+(_i.e._ from the states of life and death and of waking and sleep); and
+though engaged in business, think yourself as disengaged from all
+concerns.
+
+39. Forsake the feelings of your egoism and nonegoism (as this is mine
+and that is others); and be undivided from the rest of the world, by
+thinking yourself as the macrocosm of the cosmos, and support yourself
+on the adamantine rock of your consciousness, by remaining unshaken at
+all events.
+
+40. Continue to cut off the meshes of the net of your internal desires,
+by the agency of your intellect and its helpmate of patience; and be of
+the profession of belonging to no profession; (of any particular faith
+or creed or calling).
+
+41. The sweet taste of trusting in the true faith of consciousness,
+converts even the poison of false faiths to ambrosia (_i.e._ belief in
+soul is the soul of all creeds).
+
+42. It is then only, that the great error of taking the false world for
+true, prevails over the mind; when it forgets to remember the pure and
+undivided self-consciousness (and takes the outward forms for true).
+
+43. Again the progress of the great error, of the substantiality of the
+world, is then put <to> an end; when the mind relies its trust, in the
+immaculate and undivided consciousness or intelligence.
+
+44. One who has passed over the great gulf of his desires, and known
+the true nature of his soul; has his consciousness shining within
+himself, with the full blaze of the luminous sun.
+
+45. One who knows the nature of his soul, and is settled in the
+transcendental bliss of knowing the peerless One; finds the most
+nectarious food as a poison to him. (_i.e._ The taste of spiritual
+bliss, is sweeter far than that of the daintiest food).
+
+46. We revere those men, who have known the nature of the soul, and
+have reached to their spiritual state; and know the rest bearing the
+name of men, as no better than asses in human shape.
+
+47. Behold the devotees going from hill to hill, and roving like
+bigbodied elephants, for the performance of their devotions; but they
+are far below the spiritualist, who sits as high above them as on the
+top of the mountain.
+
+48. The heavenward sight of consciousness, reaching beyond the limits
+of all regions to the unseen and invisible God; derives no help from
+the light of the sun and moon (which can never reach so far, as the
+highest empyrean).
+
+49. The lights of the luminaries fade away like candle lights, before
+the sight of consciousness; which sees the great lights of the sun and
+moon and all, within the compass of its knowledge.
+
+50. He who has known the truth of God, stands highest above the rest of
+men, by reason of his self-sacrifice, and the greatness of his soul, by
+means of his practice of _yoga_; and is distinguished from others by
+the brightness of his person. (The eternal light shines in the body
+also).
+
+51. Like Him whose effulgence shines forth unto us, in the lustre of
+the sun, moon, stars, gems and fire, the pre-eminent among men shine
+among mankind, in their knowledge of what is knowable, and worthy to be
+known. (The sapient shine with their knowledge, as luminous bodies
+before us).
+
+52. Those that are ignorant of truth (or the true natures of things),
+are known to be viler than the asses, and other brute creatures that
+live upon the land; and are meaner than the mean insects that dwell in
+the holes beneath the earth. (Knowledge of truth ennobles man-kind,
+above their fellow-creatures).
+
+53. So long is an embodied being said to be a devil of darkness, as he
+is ignorant of spiritual knowledge, but no sooner is he acquainted with
+his soul, and united with his self in his intellection, than he is
+recognized as a spiritual being.
+
+54. The unspiritual man is tossed about on earth as a carcass, and is
+consumed with the fuel of his cares, as a dead body is burnt away by
+the flames of its funeral fire; but the spiritualist knowing the nature
+of his soul, is only sensible of his immortality.
+
+55. Spiritualism flies afar from the man, whose heart is hardened in
+this world; just as the glory of sunshine, is lost under the shadow of
+the thickening clouds in the sky.
+
+56. Therefore the mind is to be gradually curbed and contracted in
+itself, by a dislike of all earthly enjoyments; and the knower of his
+self should try by long practice of abstinence, to desiccate his spirit
+of its moisture, to the dryness of a faded leaf.
+
+57. The mind is thickened and fattened by consolidating itself with
+those of others; and staining it with the affections, of wife and those
+of offspring, relations and friends.
+
+58. The passions and feelings also are often the causes, of the
+solidity and stolidity of the mind; and these are its egotism and
+selfishness, gaiety and impurity of thoughts, and its changing tempers
+and affections. But most of all it is the sense of meity that this is
+mine, that nourishes it to gross density. (The mind is puffed up with
+the increase of possessions).
+
+59. The mind is swollen on coming to prosperity, even under the deadly
+pains of old age and infirmity; as also under the poisonous pangs of
+penury and miserliness. (Stinginess is a painful pleasure).
+
+60. The mind grows lusty in its expectation of some good in prospect,
+even under the afflictions of disease and danger. It grows stout with
+enduring what is intolerable, and doing what ought not to be done.
+
+61. The heart too becomes stout with its affection for others, and also
+with its desire and gain of riches and jewels; it becomes lusty with
+its craving after women, and in having whatever is pleasant to it for
+the moment.
+
+62. The heart like a snake, is big swollen with feeding on false hopes
+as air; and by breathing the empty air of passing delights and
+pleasures. It is pampered by drinking the liquor of fleeting hope, and
+moves about in the course of its endless expectations.
+
+63. The heart is stanch in its enjoyment of pleasures, however
+injurious they are in their nature; and though situated inside the
+body, yet it is subject to pine in disease and uneasiness, under a
+variety of pains and changes.
+
+64. There grows in the heart of the body, as in the hollow of a tree, a
+multitude of thoughts like a clump of orchids; and these bearing the
+budding blossoms of hope and desire, hung down with the fruits and
+flowers of death and disease.
+
+65. Delay not to lop off the huge trunk of the poisonous tree of
+avarice, which has risen as high as a hill in the cavity of thy heart,
+with the sharp saw of thy reason; nor defer to put off the big branch
+of thy hope, and prune its leaves of desires, without the least delay.
+
+66. The elephantine heart sits with its infuriate eyes, in the solitary
+recess of the body; and is equally fond of its ease as of its carnal
+gratification: it longs to look at the lotus bed of the learned, as
+also to meet a field of sugarcanes composed of fools and dunces.
+
+67. Ráma! you should, like a lion, the monarch of the forest, destroy
+your elephantine heart which is seated amidst the wilderness of your
+body, by the sharp saws of your understanding; and break the protruding
+tusks of its passions, in the same manner as they break down all big
+bodies.
+
+68. Drive away the crowlike ravenous heart, from within the nest of
+your bosom. It is fond of frequenting filthy places, as the ravens
+hover over funeral grounds, and crows squat in dirty spots, and fatten
+their bodies by feeding on the flesh of all rotten carcasses. It is
+cunning in its craft and too cruel in its acts. It uses the lips like
+the bills of the crow only to hurt others, and is one eyed as the crow,
+looking only to its own selfish interest; it is black all over its body
+for its black purposes and deeds.
+
+69. Drive afar your ravenlike heart, sitting heavy on the tree of your
+soul, intent on its wicked purposes, and grating the ear with its
+jarring sound. It flutters on all sides at the scent of putrid bodies,
+to pollute its nest with foul putrescence of evil intents.
+
+70. Again there is the pernicious hideous demon—avarice, roving at
+large like a goblin, or lurking in ambush in the dark cavity of the
+heart, as in a dreary desert. It assumes a hundred forms, and appears
+in a hundred shapes (in repeated births), pursuing their wonted courses
+in darkness (without any knowledge of themselves and their right
+course).
+
+71. Unless and until you drive away this wicked goblin of your heart,
+from the abode of your intelligent soul (_i.e._ the body) by means of
+your discrimination and dispassionateness, and your power of _mantras_
+and _tantras_, you cannot expect to be successful (siddha) in your
+endeavours. (For perfection सिद्धि Siddhi).
+
+72. Moreover there is the serpentine mind, hid under the slough of the
+body; which with its poisonous thoughts, frothing at the mouth as the
+destructive venom of mankind, is continually breathing in and out as a
+pair of bellows, and inhaling and exhaling the air as a snake, for the
+destruction of all other persons.
+
+73. You must subdue, O Ráma, this great serpent of the mind, lying hid
+in a cell of the cellular _simal_ tree of your body, by some mantra
+formula, pronounced by the Garuda of your intelligence; and thus be
+free from all fear and danger for ever.
+
+74. Repress, O Ráma! thy vulture-like heart, that bears an ominous
+figure by its insatiate greediness for dead bodies; it flies about on
+all sides and being annoyed by the hungry crows and kites, it rests in
+desolate cemeteries. (The greedy mind dwells on the ruin of others).
+
+75. It ransacks all quarters in quest of its meat of living and dead
+bodies, and lifts its neck to watch for its prey, when it is sitting
+silently with patience. The vulturous heart flies afar from its resting
+tree of the body, and requires to be restrained with diligence from its
+flight.
+
+76. Again the apish mind is wandering through the woods on all sides,
+and passing fastly beyond the limits of its natal horizon in search of
+fruits; it outruns the bounds of its native land and country, and thus
+being bound to nowhere, he derides at the multitude, that are bound to
+their homely toil, and confined in their native clime and soil.
+
+77. The big monkey of the mind that sports on the tree of the body,
+with its eyes and nose as the flowers of the tree, and having the arms
+for its boughs, and the fingers for its leaves, ought to be checked for
+one’s success in any thing.
+
+78. The illusion of the mind rises like a cloud with the mists of
+error, for laying waste the good harvest of spiritual knowledge. It
+flashes forth lightnings from its mouth to burn down every thing and not
+to give light on the way: its showers are injurious to ripened crops,
+and it opens the door of desire (to plunge the boat of the body in the
+whirlpool of the world).
+
+79. Forsake to seek the objects of your desire, which are situated in
+the airy region of your mind; and exert your energy to drive off the
+cloud of your mind, in order to obtain the great object of your aim.
+
+80. The mind is as a long rope, that binds mankind to their incessant
+acts. It is impossible to break or burn its knots in any other way
+except by means of one’s self knowledge. Its bond of transmigration is
+painful to all, until they obtain their final emancipation.
+
+81. Break boldly, O Ráma! by the instrumentality of your inappetency
+the bondage of your mind, that binds fast in infinite number of bodies
+to the chain of their transmigration; and enjoy your freedom without
+any fear for evermore.
+
+82. Know avarice as a venomous snake, which destroys its votaries by
+the poison of its breath, and never yields to the good counsel of any
+body. It is this serpent that has ruined mankind, by its deceit and by
+laying in wait for its prey, it emaciates the body to a stick.
+
+83. Avarice which is hid in the body, and lurks unseen in its cells, is
+as a dark cobra or hydra in its form; it is to be burnt to death by the
+fire of lukewarmness, for your safety and security from all evil.
+
+84. Now put your heart to rest by the intelligence of your mind, and
+gird yourself with the armour of purity for your defence; forsake your
+fickle-mindedness for ever, and remain as a tree uninfested by the apes
+of passion.
+
+85. Purify both your body and mind with the sanctity of your soul, and
+be dauntless and quiet by the aid of your intelligence and calm
+composure of your intellect. Think yourself as lighter and meaner than
+a straw, and thus enjoy the sweets of this world by going across it to
+the state of beatitude in this life.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LI.
+
+ DESIRE OF UDDÁLAKA.
+
+
+Argument, Uddálaka’s struggle for Liberation, amidst all his worldly
+attachments.
+
+
+Vasishtha said:—Rely no confidence, O Ráma! in the course of the mind,
+which is sometimes continuous and sometimes momentary, now even and
+flat and then sharp and acute, and often as treacherous as the edge of
+a razor.
+
+2. As it occurs in the course of a long time, that the germ of
+intelligence comes to sprout forth in the field of the mind; so do you,
+O Ráma! who are a moralist, grow it by sprinkling the cold water of
+reason over its tender blades.
+
+3. As long as the body of the plant does not fade away in course of
+time, nor roll upon the ground as the decayed and dead body of man; so
+long should you hold it up upon the prop of reason (_i.e._ cultivate
+your knowledge in your youth).
+
+4. Knowing the truth of my sayings, and pondering on the deep sense of
+these sayings of mine, you will get a delight in your inmost soul, as
+the serpent killing peacock, is ravished at the deep roaring of raining
+clouds.
+
+5. Do you, like the sage Uddálaka, shake off your knowledge of
+quintuple materiality as the cause of all creation, and accustom
+yourself to think deeper, and on the prime cause of causes by your
+patient inquiry and reasoning.
+
+6. Ráma requested:—Tell me sir, in what way the sagely Uddálaka got rid
+of his thoughts of the quintessential creation, and penetrated deeper
+into the original cause of all, by the force and process of his
+reasoning.
+
+7. Vasishtha replied:—Learn Ráma, how the sage Uddálaka of old, rose
+higher from his investigation of quintuple matter to his inquiry into
+their cause, and the manner in which that transcendent light dawned
+upon his mind.
+
+8. It was in some spacious corner of the old mansion of this world, and
+on the northwest side of this land, a spot of rugged hills and
+overtopping it as a shed.
+
+9. Among these stood the high hill of Gandhamádana with a table-land on
+it, which was full of camphor arbours, that shed the odours of their
+flowers and pistils continually on the ground.
+
+10. This spot was frequented by birds of variegated hues, and filled
+with plants of various kinds. Its banks were beset by wild beasts, and
+fraught with flowers shining smilingly over the woodland scene.
+
+11. There were the bright swelling gems in some part of it, and the
+blooming and full blown lotuses on another; some parts of it were
+veiled by tufts of snow, and crystal streams gliding as glassy mirrors
+on others.
+
+12. Here on the elevated top a big cliff of this hill, which was
+studded with sarala trees, and strewn over with flowers up to the
+heels, and shaded by the cooling umbrage of lofty trees:—
+
+13. There lived the silent sage by name of Uddálaka, a youth of a great
+mind, and with high sense of his honour. He had not yet attained his
+maturity, ere he betook himself to the course of his rigorous austerity.
+
+14. On the first development of his intellect, he had the light of
+reason dawning upon his mind; and he was awakened to noble aims and
+expectations, instead of arriving at the state of rest and quietude.
+
+15. As he went on in this manner in his course of austerities,
+religious studies and observance of his holy rites and duties, the
+genius of right reason appeared before him, as the new year presents
+itself before the face of the world.
+
+16. He then began to cogitate in himself in the following manner,
+sitting aside as he was in his solitude, weary with thoughts and
+terrified at the ever changing state of the world.
+
+17. What is that best of gains, said he, which being once obtained,
+there is nothing more to be expected to lead us to our rest, and which
+being once had, we have no more to do with our transmigrations in this
+world?
+
+18. When shall I find my permanent rest in that state of holy and
+transcendent thoughtlessness, and remain above all the rest, as a cloud
+rests over the top of the Sumeru mountain, or as the polar star stands
+above the pole without changing its pace.
+
+19. When will my tumultuous desires of worldly aggrandizement, merge in
+peaceful tranquillity; as the loose, loud and boisterous waves and
+billows subside in the sea?
+
+20. When will the placid and unstirred composure of my mind, smile in
+secret within myself, to reflect on the wishes of mankind, that they
+will do this thing after they have done the other, which leads them
+interminably in the circuit of their misery.
+
+21. When will my mind be loosened from its noose of desire, and when
+shall I remain unattached to all, as a dew drop on the lotus-leaf? (It
+is called _anasanga sango_ or intangible connection).
+
+22. When shall I get over the boisterous sea of my fickle desires, by
+means of the raft of my good understanding?
+
+23. When shall I laugh to scorn, the foolish actions of worldly people,
+as the silly play of children?
+
+24. When will my mind get rid of its desire and dislike and cease to
+swing to and fro in the cradle of its option and caprice; and return to
+its steadiness, as a madman is calmed after the fit of his delirium has
+passed away?
+
+25. When shall I receive my spiritual and luminous body, and deride the
+course of the world; and have my internal satisfaction within myself,
+like the all knowing and all sufficient spirit of Virát?
+
+26. With internal equanimity and serenity of the soul, and indifference
+to external objects, when shall I obtain my calm quietness, like the
+sea after its release from churning?
+
+27. When shall I behold the fixed scene of the world before me, as it
+is visible in my dream, and keep myself aloof from the same? (as no
+part of it).
+
+28. When shall I view the inner and outer worlds, in the light of a
+fixed picture in the sight of my imagination; and when shall I meditate
+on the whole in the light of an intellectual system?
+
+29. Ah! when shall I have the calmness of my mind and soul, and become
+a perfectly intellectual being myself; when shall I have that
+supernatural light in me, which enlightens the internal eye of those
+that are born blind?
+
+30. When will the sunshine of my meditation, show unto me the pure
+light of my intellect, whereby I may see the objects at a distance, as
+I perceive the parts of time in myself.
+
+31. When shall I be freed from my exertion and inertness, towards the
+objects of my desire and dislike; and when shall I get my
+self-satisfaction in my state of self-illumination.
+
+32. When will this long and dark night of my ignorance come to its end?
+It is infested by my faults fluttering as the boding birds of night,
+and infected with frost withering the lotus of my heart (hrid-padma).
+
+33. When shall I become like a cold clod of stone, in the cavern of a
+mountain, and have the calm coolness of my mind by an invariable
+_samádhi_—comatosity.
+
+34. When will the elephant of my pride, which is ever giddy with its
+greatness, become a prey to the lion of right understanding.
+
+35. When will the little birds of the forest, build their nest of grass
+in the braids of hair upon my head; when I remain fixed in my
+unalterable meditation, in my state of silence and torpidity.
+
+36. And when will the birds of the air rest fearlessly on my bosom, as
+they do on the tops of fixed rocks, upon finding me sitting transfixed
+in my meditation, and as immovable as a rock.
+
+37. Ah! when shall I pass over this lake of the world, wherein my
+desires and passions, are as the weeds and thorny brambles, and
+obstructing my passage to its borders of felicity.
+
+38. Immerged in these and the like reflections, the twice-born Uddálaka
+sat in his meditation amidst the forest.
+
+39. But as his apish ficklemindedness turned towards sensible objects
+in different ways, he did not obtain the state of habitation which
+could render him happy.
+
+40. Sometimes his apish mind turned away from leaning to external
+objects, and pursued with eagerness the realities of the internal world
+or intellectual verities (known as sátwikas).
+
+41. At others his fickle mind, departed from the intangible things of
+the inner or intellectual world; and, returned with fondness to outer
+objects, which are mixed with poison.
+
+42. He often beheld the sunlight of spirituality rising within himself,
+and as often turned away his mind from that golden prospect, to the
+sight of gross objects.
+
+43. Leaving the soul in the gloom of internal darkness, the licentious
+mind flies as fast as a bird, to the objects of sense abroad.
+
+44. Thus turning by turns from the inner to the outer world, and then
+from this to that again; his mind found its rest in the intermediate
+space, lying between the light of the one and darkness of the other.
+(_i.e._ in the twilight of indifference to both).
+
+45. Being thus perplexed in his mind, the meditative Bráhman remained
+in his exalted cavern, like a lofty tree shaken to and fro by the
+beating tempest.
+
+46. He continued in his meditation as a man of fixed attention, at the
+time of an impending danger; and his body shook to and fro, as it was
+moved forward and backward by the tiny waves splashing on the bank.
+
+47. Thus unsettled in his mind, the sage sauntered about the hill; as
+the god of day makes his daily round, about the polar mountain in his
+lonely course.
+
+48. Wandering in this manner, he once observed a cavern, which was
+beyond the reach of all living beings; and was as quiet and still, as
+the liberated state of an anchorite.
+
+49. It was not disturbed by the winds, nor frequented by birds and
+beasts; it was unseen by the gods and Gandharvas, and was as lightsome
+as the bright concave of heaven.
+
+50. It was covered with heaps of flowers, and was spread over with a
+coverlet of green and tender grass; and being overlaid by a layer of
+moonstones, it seemed to have its floor of emerald.
+
+51. It afforded a cool and congenial shade, emblazoned by the mild
+light of the bright gems in its bosom; and appeared to be the secret
+haunt of woodland goddesses, that chanced to sport therein.
+
+52. The light of the gems that spread over the ground, was neither too
+hot nor too cold; but resembled the golden rays of the rising sun in
+autumn.
+
+53. This cave appeared as a new bride decked with flowers, and holding
+a wreathed garland in her hand; with her countenance fading under the
+light of the gemming lamps, and fanned by the soft whistling of winds.
+
+54. It was as the abode of tranquility, and the resting place of the
+lord of creation; it was charming by the variety of its blooming
+blossoms, and was as soft and mild as the cell of the lotus (which is
+the abode of the lotus-born Brahmá).
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LII.
+
+ RATIOCINATION OF UDDÁLAKA:—
+
+
+Argument. Uddálaka’s Remonstration with himself, amidst the reveries of
+his meditation.
+
+
+Vasistha resumed:—The saintly Uddálaka then entered in that grotto
+of Gandhamádana mountain, as the sauntering bee enters into the
+lotus-cell, in the course of its romantic peregrination.
+
+2. It was for the purpose of his intense meditation, that he entered
+the cave and sat therein; as when the lotus-born creator, had retired
+to and rested in his seclusion, after termination of his work of
+creation.
+
+3. There he made a seat for himself, by spreading the unfaded leaves of
+trees on the floor; as when the god Indra spreads his carpet of the
+manifold layers of clouds.
+
+4. He then spread over it his carpet of deerskin, as the bedding of
+stars, is laid over the strata of the blue clouds of heaven.
+
+5. He sat upon it in his meditative mood, with the watchfulness of his
+mind; as when an empty and light cloud alights on the top of the
+Rishyasringa mountain. (_i.e._ His mind was as fleet, as a fleeting
+cloud).
+
+6. He sat firmly in the posture of _padmásana_ like Buddha, with his
+face turned upwards; his two legs and feet covered his private parts,
+and his palms and fingers counted the beads of Brahmá.
+
+7. He restrained the fleet deer of his mind, from the desires to which
+it ran by fits and starts; and then he reflected in the following
+manner, for having the unaltered steadiness of his mind.
+
+8. O my senseless mind! said he, why is it, that thou art occupied in
+thy worldly acts to no purpose; when the sensible never engage
+themselves, to what proves to be their bane afterwards.
+
+9. He who pursues after pleasure, by forsaking his peaceful
+tranquility; is as one who quits his grove of mandára flowers, and
+enters a forest of poisonous plants. (Thoughts of pleasure poisons the
+mind).
+
+10. Thou mayst hide thyself in some cave of the earth, and find a place
+in the highest abode of Brahmá, then yet thou canst not have thy quiet
+there, without the quietism of thy spirit.
+
+11. Cease to seek thy objects of thy desire, which are beset by
+difficulties, and are productive of thy woe and anxiety; fly from these
+to lay hold on thy chief good, which thou shalt find in thy solitary
+retirement only.
+
+12. These sundry objects of thy fancy or liking, which are so temporary
+in their nature; are all for thy misery, and of no real good at any
+time (either when they are sought for, or enjoyed or lost to thee).
+
+13. Why followest thou like a fool, the hollow sound of some fancied
+good, which has no substantial in it? It is as the great glee of frogs,
+at the high sounding of clouds that promise them nothing. (Hence the
+phrase “megha mandukika”, that is, the frogs croaking in vain at the
+roaring of clouds; answering the English phrases “fishing in the air
+and milking the ram, or pursuing a shadow &c.”).
+
+14. Thou hast been roving all this time with thy froggish heart, in the
+blind pursuit after thy profit and pleasure; but tell me what great
+boon has booted thee; in all thy ramblings about the earth.
+
+15. Why dost thou not fix thy mind to that quietism, which promises to
+give thee something as thy self-sufficiency; and wherein thou mayst
+find thy rest as the state of thy liberation in thy life-time.
+
+16. O my foolish heart! why art thou roused at the sound of some good
+which reaches unto thy ears, and being led by thy deluded mind, in the
+direction of that sound; thou fallest a victim to it, as the deer is
+entrapped in the snare, by being beguiled by the hunter’s horn.
+
+17. Beware, O foolish man! to allow the carnal appetite to take
+possession of thy breast, and lead thee to thy destruction, as the male
+elephant is caught in the pit, by being beguiled by the artful _koomki_
+to fall into it. (The female elephant is called _koomki_ in
+elephant-catching).
+
+18. Do not be misled by thy appetite of taste, to cram the bitter gall
+for sweet; or bite the fatal bait that is laid, to hook the foolish
+fish to its destruction.
+
+19. Nor let thy fondness for bright and beautiful objects, bewitch thee
+to thy ruin; as the appearance of a bright light or burning fire,
+invites the silly moth to its consumption.
+
+20. Let not thy ardour for sweet odor, tempt thee to thy ruin; nor
+entice thee like the poor bees to the flavour of the liquor, exuding
+from the frontal proboscis of the elephant, only to be crushed by its
+trunk.
+
+21. See how the deer, the bee, the moth, the elephant and the fish, are
+each of them destroyed by their addiction to the gratification of a
+single sense; and consider the great danger to which the foolish man,
+is exposed by his desire of satisfying all his refractory senses and
+organs.
+
+22. O my heart! it is thou thyself, that dost stretch the snare of thy
+desires for thy own entanglement; as the silk worm weaves its own cell
+(cocoon) by its saliva, for its own imprisonment.
+
+23. Be cleansed of all thy impure desires, and become as pure and clear
+as the autumnal cloud (after it has poured out its water in the rains);
+and when thou art fully purged and are buoyed up as a cloud, you are
+then free from all bondage.
+
+24. Knowing the course of the world, to be pregnant with the rise and
+fall of mankind, and to be productive of the pangs of disease and death
+at the end; you are still addicted to it for your destruction only.
+
+25. But why do I thus upbraid or admonish my heart in vain; it is only
+by reasoning with the mind that men are enabled to govern their hearts
+(_i.e._ to repress all their feelings and passions).
+
+26. But as long as gross ignorance continues to reign over the mind, so
+long is the heart kept in its state of dulness; as the nether earth is
+covered with mist and frost, as long as the upper skies are shrouded by
+the raining clouds.
+
+27. But no sooner is the mind cleared of its ignorance, than the heart
+also becomes lighter (and cleared of its feeling); as the disappearance
+of the rainy clouds disperses the frost covering the nether earth.
+
+28. As the heart becomes lighter and purer by means of the mind’s act
+of reasoning; so I ween its desires to grow weaker and thinner, like
+the light and fleeting clouds of autumn.
+
+29. Admonition to the unrighteous proves as fruitless, as the blowing
+of winds against the falling rain. (_i.e._ Counsel to the wicked is as
+vain, as a blast of wind to drive the pouring rain).
+
+30. I shall therefore try to rid myself of this false and vacant
+ignorance; as it is the admonition of the sástras, to get rid of
+ignorance by all means.
+
+31. I find myself to be the inextinguishable lamp of intellect, and
+without my egoism or any desire in myself; and have no relation with
+the false ignorance, which is the root of egoism.
+
+32. That this is I and that is another, is the false suggestion of our
+delusive ignorance; which, like an epidemic disease, presents us with
+such fallacies for our destruction.
+
+33. It is impossible for the slender and finite mind to comprehend the
+nature of the infinite soul; as it is not possible for an elephant to
+be contained in a nut shell. (Lit.: in the crust of a _bilva_ or bel
+fruit).
+
+34. I cannot follow the dictate of my heart, which is a wide and deep
+cave, containing the desires causing all our misery.
+
+35. What is this delusive ignorance, which, like the error of
+injudicious lads, creates the blunder of viewing the self-existent one,
+in the different lights of I, thou, he and other personalities.
+
+36. I analysed my body at each atom from the head to foot, but failed
+to find what we call the “I” in any part of it, and what makes my
+personality. (It is the body, mind and soul taken together, that makes
+a person).
+
+37. That which is the “I am” fills the whole universe, and is the only
+one in all the three worlds; it is the unknowable consciousness,
+omnipresent and yet apart from all.
+
+38. Its magnitude is not to be known, nor has it any appellation of its
+own; it is neither the one nor the other, nor an immensity nor
+minuteness (but is greater than the greatest, and minuter than the
+minutest).[21]
+
+39. It is unknowable by the light of the Vedas, and its ignorance which
+is the cause of misery is to be destroyed by the light of reason.
+
+40. This is the flesh of my body and this its blood! these are the
+bones and this the whole body; these are my breaths, but where is that
+I or ego situated?
+
+41. Its pulsation is the effect of the vital breath or wind, and its
+sensation is the action of the heart; there are also decay and death
+concomitant of the body; but where is its “I” situated in it?
+
+42. The flesh is one thing and the blood another, and the bones are
+different from them; but tell me, my heart, where is the “I” said to
+exist?
+
+43. These are the organs of smelling and this the tongue; this is skin
+and these my ears; these are the eyes and this the touch—_twac_; but
+what is that called the soul and where is it situated?
+
+44. I am none of the elements of the body, nor the mind nor its desire;
+but the pure intellectual soul, and a manifestation of the divine
+intellect.
+
+45. That I am everywhere, and yet nothing whatever that is anywhere, is
+the only knowledge of the true reality that we can have, and there is
+no other way to it (_i.e._, of coming to know the same.)[22]
+
+46. I have been long deceived by my deceitful ignorance, and am misled
+from the right path; as the young of a beast is carried away by a
+fierce tiger to the woods.
+
+47. It is now by my good fortune that I have come to detect this
+thievish ignorance; nor shall I trust any more this robber of truth.
+
+48. I am above the reach of affliction, and have no concern with
+misery, nor has it anything to do with me. This union of mine with
+these is as temporary, as that of a cloud with a mountain.
+
+49. Being subject to my egoism, I say I speak, I know, I stay, I go,
+&c.; but on looking at the soul, I lose my egoism in the universal soul.
+
+50. I verily believe my eyes, and other parts of my body, to belong to
+myself; but if they be as something beside myself, then let them remain
+or perish with the body, with which I have no concern.
+
+51. Fie for shame! What is this word I, and who was its first inventor?
+This is no other than a slip slop and a namby pamby of some demoniac
+child of earth. (_i.e._, it is an earth-born word and unknown in
+heaven).
+
+52. O! for this great length of time, that I have been groveling in
+this dusty den; and roving at large like a stray deer, on a sterile
+rock without any grass or verdure.
+
+53. If we let our eyes to dry into the true nature of things, we are at
+a loss to find the true meaning of the word I, which is the cause of
+all our woe on earth. (_i.e._, ignorance of ourselves is the cause of
+our woe, and the obliteration of our personalities obviates all our
+miseries).
+
+54. If you want to feel your in being by the sense of touch, then tell
+me how you find what you call I, beside its being a ghost of your own
+imagination.
+
+55. You set your I on your tongue, and utter it as an object of that
+organ, while you really relish no taste whatever of that empty word,
+which you so often give utterance to.
+
+56. You often hear that word ringing in your ears, though you feel it
+to be an empty sound as air, and cannot account whence this rootless
+word had its rise.
+
+57. Our sense of smelling, which brings the fragrance of objects to the
+inner soul, conveys no scent of this word into our brain.
+
+58. It is as the mirage, and a false idea of something we know not
+what; and what can it be otherwise than an error, of which we have no
+idea or sense whatever?
+
+59. I see my will also is not always the cause of my actions, because I
+find my eyes and the other organs of sense are employed in their
+respective functions, without the direction of my volition.
+
+60. But the difference between our bodily and wilful acts is this, that
+the actions of the body done without the will of the mind are
+unattended with feeling of pain or pleasure unto us. (Therefore let all
+thy actions be spontaneous and indifferent in their nature, if thou
+shalt be free from pain or pleasure).
+
+61. Hence let thy organs of sense perform their several actions,
+without your will of the same; and you will by this means evade all the
+pleasure and pain (of your success and disappointment).
+
+62. It is in vain that you blend your will with your actions, (which
+are done of themselves by means of the body and mind); while the act of
+your will is attended with a grief similar to that of children, upon
+the breaking of the dolls of their handy work in play. (_i.e._, boys
+make toys in play, but cry at last to see them broken).
+
+63. Your desires and their productions are the fac similes of your
+minds, and not different from them; just as the waves are composed of
+the same water from which they rise. Such is the case with the acts of
+will.
+
+64. It is your own will that guides your hand to construct a prison for
+your confinement; as the silly silkworm is confined in the pod of its
+own making.
+
+65. It is owing to your desires that you are exposed to the perils of
+death and disease, as it is the dim sightedness of the traveller over
+the mountainous spots that hurls him headlong into the deep cavern
+below.
+
+66. It is your desire only, that is the chief cause of your being
+attached to one another in one place; as the thread passing through the
+holes of pearls, ties them together in a long string round the neck.
+(Every desire is a connecting link between man and man).
+
+67. What is this desire, but the creation of your false imagination,
+for whatever you think to be good for yourself; (though it may not be
+so in reality); and no sooner you cease to take a fancy for anything,
+than your desire for it is cut off as by a knife.
+
+68. This desire—the creature of your imagination—is the cause of all
+your errors and your ruin also; as the breath of air is the cause both
+of the burning and extinction of lamps and lightening the fiery
+furnaces.
+
+69. Now therefore, O my heart! that art the source and spring of thy
+senses, do thou join with all thy sensibility, to look into the nature
+of thy unreality, and feel in thyself the state of thy utter
+annihilation—_nirvána_ at the end.
+
+70. Give up after all thy sense of egoism with thy desire of
+worldliness, which are interminable endemics to thee in this life. Put
+on the amulet of the abandonment of thy desires and earthliness, and
+resign thyself to thy God to be free from all fears on earth.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LIII.
+
+ THE RATIONAL RAPTURE OF UDDÁLAKA.
+
+
+Argument. Description of the Soul unsullied by its desires and egoism,
+and the Difference subsisting between the body and mind.
+
+
+Uddálaka continued:—The intellect is an unthinkable substance: it
+extends to the limits of endless space, and is minuter than the
+minutest atom. It is quite aloof of all things, and inaccessible to the
+reach of desires, &c.
+
+2. It is inaccessible by the mind, understanding, egoism and the gross
+senses; but our empty desires are as wide extended, as the shadowy
+forms of big and formidable demons.
+
+3. From all my reasonings and repeated cogitations, I perceive an
+intelligence within myself, and I feel to be the stainless Intellect.
+
+4. This body of mine which is of this world, and is the depository of
+my false and evil thoughts, may last or be lost without any gain or
+loss to me, since I am the untainted intellect.
+
+5. The Intellect is free from birth and death, because there is nothing
+perishable in the nature of the all pervasive intellect: what then
+means the death of a living being, and how and by whom can it be put to
+death?
+
+6. What means the life and death of the intellect, which is the soul
+and life of all existence: what else can we expect of the intellect,
+when it is extended through and gives life to all?
+
+7. Life and death belong to the optative and imaginative powers of the
+mind, and do not appertain to the pure soul; (which is never perturbed
+by volition or imagination).
+
+8. That which has the sense of its egoism has also the knowledge of its
+existence and inexistence (and that is the mind); but the soul which is
+devoid of its egoism can have no sense of its birth or death (since it
+is always existent of itself).
+
+9. Egoism is a fallacy and production of ignorance, and the mind is no
+other than a appearance as the water in a mirage; the visible objects
+are all gross bodies; what then is that thing to which the term ego is
+applied.
+
+10. The body is composed of flesh and blood, and the mind is considered
+as a nullity of itself; the heart and the members are all dull objects,
+what then is it that contains the ego?
+
+11. The organs of sense are all employed in their respective functions
+for supporting the body; and all external bodies remain as mere bodies;
+what then is it to which you apply the term ego?
+
+12. The properties of things continue as properties, and the substances
+always remain as substances; the entity of Brahma is quite calm and
+quiet, what then is the ego among them?
+
+13. There is only one Being which is all pervading and subsisting in
+all bodies; it exists at all times and is immensity in itself. It is
+only the Supreme Spirit that is the intelligent soul of all.
+
+14. Now tell me which of these is the ego, what is it and what its
+form; what is its genus and what are its attributes; what is its
+appearance and of what ingredients it is composed? What am I and what
+shall I take it to be, and what reject as not itself?
+
+15. Hence there is nothing here, which may be called the ego either as
+an entity or nonentity; and there is nothing anywhere, to which the ego
+may bear any relation or any resemblance whatever.
+
+16. Therefore egoism being a perfect non-entity, it has no relation to
+anything at all; and this irrelation of it with all things being
+proved, its fiction as a duality (beside the unity of God), goes to
+nothing whatever.
+
+17. Thus every thing in the world being full of the spirit of God, I am
+no other than that reality, and it is in vain that I think myself as
+otherwise, and sorrow for it.
+
+18. All things being situated in one pure and omnipresent spirit;
+whence is it that the meaningless word ego could take its rise?
+
+19. So there is no reality of any object whatever, except that of the
+supreme and all-pervading spirit of God; it is therefore useless for us
+to inquire about our relation with anything which has no reality in
+itself.
+
+20. The senses are connected with the organs of sense, and the mind is
+conversant with the mental operations; but the intellect is unconnected
+with the body, and bears no relation with any body in any manner.
+
+21. As there is no relation between stones and iron nails, so the body,
+the senses, the mind and the intellect bear no relation with one
+another, though they are found to reside together in the same person.
+
+22. The great error of the unreal ego having once obtained its footing
+among mankind, it has put the world to an uproar with the expressions
+of mine and thine, as that this is mine and that is thine, and that
+other is another’s and the like.
+
+23. It is want of the light of reason that has given rise to the
+meaningless and marvellous expression of egoism; which is made to
+vanish under the light of reason, as ice is dissolved under heat of
+solar light.
+
+24. That there is nothing in existence, except the spirit of God is my
+firm belief, and this makes me believe the whole universe, as a
+manifestation of the great Brahmá himself.
+
+25. The error of egoism presents itself before us in as vivid and
+variety of colours as the various hues which tinge the face of the sky;
+it is better to obliterate it at once from the mind, than retain any
+trace of it behind (as I am this child, youth, old man, &c.).
+
+26. I have altogether got rid of the error of my egoism, and now
+recline with my tranquil soul in the universal spirit of God, as the
+autumnal cloud rests in the infinite vacuum of the sky.
+
+27. Our accompaniment with the idea of egoism is productive only of our
+misconduct and misery, by producing the great variety of our acts of
+selfishness.
+
+28. Egoism hath taken a deep root in the moist soil of our hearts, and
+sprouts forth in the field of our bodies with the germs of innumerable
+evils.
+
+29. Here is death closely following the course of life, and there is a
+new life hereafter awaiting upon our death; now there is a state of
+being distinct from its privation or not being, and again there is
+reverse of it in our transmigration, to our great annoyance only.
+
+30. This I have gained, and this I will gain, are the thoughts that
+constantly employ the minds of men; and the desire of a new gain is
+incessantly kindled in the minds of the senseless, as the ceaseless
+flame of the sun-stone is increased in summer heat.
+
+31. That this I want and this must have are thoughts ever attendant on
+egoism; and the dull-headed pursue dull material objects with as much
+ardour, as the heavy clouds hasten to halt on high-headed hills.
+
+32. Decay of egoism withers away the tree of worldliness, which then
+ceases to germinate in the manner of a plant on sterile rocks. (Or as
+seeds cast on sandy sounds).
+
+33. Your desires are as black serpents creeping in the hole of your
+heart; but skulking their heads, at the sight of the snake-eater Garuda
+of reason.
+
+34. The unreal world gives rise to the error of appearing as real; as
+the unreal I and thou (or ego and nonego) seem to be realities, though
+they are caused by mere pulsations of the unreal mind.
+
+35. This world rises at first without a cause and to no cause, how then
+call it a reality which is sprung from and to no cause at all. (The
+visible world is produced by, and continues with our error which, is no
+cause in reality).
+
+36. As a pot made of earth long before, continues in the same state at
+all times, so the body which has long ago come to existence, still
+continues and will continue the same. (The body being made of earth,
+remains in and returns to the earth again).
+
+37. The beginning and end of billows is mere water and moisture, and
+the intermediate part only presents a figure to view; so the beginning
+and end of bodies is mere earth and water, and the intermediate state
+is one of bustle and commotion.
+
+38. It is the ignorant only that trust in this temporary and
+fluctuating state of the body; which, like the billow, is hastening to
+subside, in its original liquid and quiet state.
+
+39. What reliance is there in any body, which makes a figure in the
+middle, and is an unreality both in its prior and latter states.
+
+40. So the heart also is as quiet as the intellect, both at first and
+in the end; and remains immerged in itself, both when it exists in the
+body or not. What then if it heaves for a little while in the midst?
+(_i.e._, the palpitation of the heart between its prior and latter
+states of inaction).
+
+41. As it comes to pass in our dreams, and in our deluded sights, of
+marvellous things; and as it happens in the giddiness of ebriety, and
+in our journeying in boats:—
+
+42. And as it turns out in cases of our vitiated humours, and delusion
+of senses, and also in cases of extreme joy and grief, and under some
+defect of the mind or body:—
+
+43. That some objects come to sight, and others disappear from it; and
+that some appear to be smaller or larger than they are and others to be
+moving; so do all these objects of our vision, appear and disappear
+from our sight in the course of time.
+
+44. O my heart! all thy conduct is of the same nature, at the different
+times, of thy joy and grief; that it makes the long of short and the
+short of long; as the short space of a single night, becomes as tedious
+to separated lovers as an age; and an age of joyous affluence as short
+as a moment.
+
+45. Or it is my long habit of thinking that makes the untruth appear as
+truth to me; and like the mirage of the desert, our mirage of life,
+presents its falsehoods as realities unto us.
+
+46. All things that we see in the phenomenal world are unrealities in
+their nature; and as the mind comes to know the nothingness of things,
+it feels in itself its nothingness also.
+
+47. As the mind becomes impressed with certainty, of the
+unsubstantiality of external objects; its desire of worldly enjoyments
+fade away, like the fading verdure of autumn.
+
+48. When the mind comes to see the pure soul by means of its
+intellectual light, it gets itself ridden of its temporal exertions;
+and being thereby freed from its passions and affections, it rests with
+its calm composure in itself.
+
+49. And the heart attains its perfect purity, when, by compressing its
+members of sensational organs, it casts itself into the flame of the
+supreme soul, where all its dross is burnt away.
+
+50. As the hero boldly faces his death, with the thought of his
+ascending to heaven, by fighting bravely in battle, so the mind
+conquers all impediments by casting off all its worldly desires and
+attachments.
+
+51. The mind is the enemy of the body, and so is the latter an enemy of
+the former (because the growth of the one puts down the vigour of the
+other); but they both die away without the half of each other, and for
+want of desire which supports them both.
+
+52. Owing to their mutual hostilities, and their passions and
+affections towards each other, it is better to eradicate and destroy
+both of them, for our attainment of supreme bliss. (As the control of
+the body and mind leads to temporal happiness, so the utter extinction
+of both, is the means to spiritual bliss).
+
+53. The existence of either of these (_i.e._ of the body or mind) after
+death is as incapable of heavenly felicity, as it is for an aerial
+fairy to fare on earth. (_i.e._, neither the body nor mind survives
+one’s death, as it is believed by many; and even if it does, its gross
+nature would not permit it to enjoy the pure spiritual felicity of
+heaven).
+
+54. When these things (the body and mind), that are naturally repugnant
+and opposed to one another, meet together in any place or person, there
+is a continued clashing of their mutual mischiefs, like the crashing of
+conflicting arms.
+
+55. The base man that has a liking for this world of conflicts is like
+one left to burn in a conflagration of showering flames.
+
+56. The mind stout with its avaricious desires loads the body with
+labour, and feeds upon its precious life, as a ghost-_yaksha_ preys
+upon the body of a boy.
+
+57. The body being harassed and oppressed with toil, attempts to stop
+and stay the mind; as an impious son intends to kill his father, when
+he finds him to stand an open foe to his life. (It is lawful to kill an
+enemy of one’s life for self-defence). जघांशन्तं जिघांशियात ।
+
+58. There is no one who of his nature is a foe or friend to another;
+but becomes a friend to one that is friendly to him, and a foe to him
+that deals inimically unto him.
+
+ स्वभावान्नकश्चित्कस्यचिन्मित्रं नकश्चित कस्यचिद्रिपुः ।
+ ब्यवहारोणजानन्तिमित्राणि रिपवस्तथा ॥
+
+59. The body being put to pain attempts to kill the mind; and the mind
+is ever intent to make the body the receptacle of its afflictions. (The
+intimate connection of the body and mind causes them to participate in
+one another’s pains).
+
+60. What good then can possibly accrue to us from the union of the body
+and mind, which are repugnant to one another, and which of their own
+nature can never be reconciled together.
+
+61. The mind being weakened, the body has no pain to undergo; wherefore
+the body is always striving to weaken the mind.
+
+62. The body, whether it is alive or dead, is subjected to all sorts of
+evils by its hostile mind, unless it is brought under the subjection of
+reason. (_i.e._ The unreasonable mind is an enemy of the body).
+
+63. When both the body and mind become stout and strong, they join
+together to break all bonds, as the lake and rainwater join together to
+overflow on the banks.
+
+64. Though both of them are troublesome to us in their different
+natures, yet their union to one end is beneficial to us, as the
+co-operation of fire and water is for the purpose of cooking.
+
+65. When the weak mind is wasted and worn out, the body also becomes
+weakened and languid; but the mind being full, the body is flushed like
+a flourishing arbor, shooting forth with verdure.
+
+66. The body pines away with its weakened desires, and at the weakness
+of the mind; but the mind never grows weak at the weakness of the body;
+therefore the mind requires to be curbed and weakened by all means.
+
+67. I must therefore cut down the weed wood of my mind, with the trees
+of my desires and the plants of my thirstiness; and, having reclaimed
+thereby a large tract of land, rove about at my pleasure.
+
+68. After my egoism is lost, and the net of my desires is removed, my
+mind will regain its calm and clearness, like the sky after dispersion
+of the clouds at the end of the rainy weather.
+
+69. It is of no matter to me whether this body of mine, which is a
+congeries of my humours, and a great enemy of mine, should waste away
+or last, after the dissolution of my mind.
+
+70. That for which this body of mine craves its enjoyments is not mine,
+nor do I belong to it; what is the good therefore of bodily pleasure to
+me? (When I have to leave this body and that pleasure also for ever).
+
+71. It is certain that I am not myself the body, nor is the body mine
+in any way; just as a corpse with all its parts entire, is no body at
+all. (The personality of man, belongs to his mind and not to his
+person).
+
+72. Therefore I am something beside this body of mine, and that is
+everlasting and never setting in its glory; it is by means of this that
+I have that light in me, whereby I perceive the luminous sun in the sky.
+
+73. I am neither ignorant of myself, nor subject to misery, nor am I
+the dull unintelligent body, which is subject to misery. My body may
+last or not, I am beyond all bodily accidents.
+
+74. Where there is the soul or self, there is neither the mind, nor
+senses nor desire of any kind; as the vile Pamaras never reside in the
+contiguity of princes. (_Mahibhretas_ mean mountains also).
+
+75. I have attained to that state in which I have surpassed all things;
+and it is the state of my solity, my extinction, my indivisibility, and
+my want of desires.
+
+76. I am now loosened from the bonds of my mind, body and the senses,
+as the oil which is extracted from the seeds of sesamum, and separated
+from the sediments.
+
+77. I walk about freely in this state of my transcendentalism, and my
+mind which is disjoined from the bonds of the body considers its
+members as its dependent instruments and accompaniments.
+
+78. I find myself to be now situated in a state of transparency and
+buoyancy, of self-contentment and intelligence, and of true reality; I
+feel my full joy and calmness, and preserve my reservedness in speech.
+
+79. I find my fulness and magnanimity, my comeliness and evenness of
+temper; I see the unity of all things, and feel my fearlessness and
+want of duality, choice and option.
+
+80. I find these qualities to be ever attendant on me. They are
+constant and faithful, easy and graceful and always propitious to me;
+and my unshaken attachment to them has made them as heartily beloved
+consorts to me.
+
+81. I find myself as all and in all, at all times and in every manner;
+and yet I am devoid of all desire for or dislike to any one, and am
+equally unconcerned with whatever is pleasant or unpleasant, agreeable
+or disagreeable to me.
+
+82. Removed from the cloud of error and melancholy, and released from
+dubitation and duplicity in my thoughts, I peregrinate myself as a
+flimsy cloud, in the cooling atmosphere of the autumnal sky.
+
+END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+ FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+Footnote 1:
+
+ This colophon occurring at the end of many chapters, shows the
+ intermediate chapters as parts of the lectures of a single day; and
+ by enumeration of which, the whole space of time occupied in the
+ delivery of these lectures may be fairly ascertained. This will serve
+ to show that the delivery of the lectures occupied but a few months;
+ and Válmíki’s writing of them, if he was a shorthand writer, embraced
+ also the same length of time, contrary to the common belief of this
+ composition’s being a work of many years.
+
+Footnote 2:
+
+ (It was Plato’s doctrine of the souls’ _reminiscence_ of a former
+ apprehension of truth awakened by the traces of ideas which sensation
+ discovered in things).
+
+Footnote 3:
+
+ The Arhatas have seven categories:
+
+ 1. The animated and intelligent body.
+
+ 2. The inanimate and insensible body as rocks &c.
+
+ 3. The organs of sense.
+
+ 4. Ignorance or austerities, called _Ávarana_.
+
+ 5. Tonsure of the head called _nirávarana_.
+
+ 6. Bondage to repeated births and deaths.
+
+ 7. Liberation or final emancipation.
+
+ They are divided into seven schisms, according to their belief or
+ disbelief in this last _viz._
+
+ 1. Sadvádis or believers in liberation. 2. Asadvádis—unbelievers. 3.
+ Syadvádis—Sceptics. 4. _Sada_—_Sadavádis_—misbelievers. 5.
+ Anirvachaneyavádis—Infidels. 6. Nástikas—Atheists. 7.
+ Súnyavádís—Vacuists.
+
+Footnote 4:
+
+ Hari in the form of _Krishna_, destroyed the demons chief Sambara or
+ Káliya under his feet; as the son of God in the form of Christ,
+ defeated Satan and bruised his head under his feet.
+
+Footnote 5:
+
+ Ceylon is said to be first peopled by the Yakkas (yakshas) who
+ followed the train of the Rákshasa Rávana to that island.
+
+Footnote 6:
+
+ But these formal changes are phenomenal and not real. They are mere
+ appearances. Gloss.
+
+Footnote 7:
+
+ So it is represented in Kumára Sambhava: दरीगुहाहिमेन समीरणेन, उद्गास्यतामिच्छति किन्नरीणां ।
+
+Footnote 8:
+
+ Airávata signifies both Indra, the god of _caelum_ and the celestials,
+ as also his vehicle, the elephantine clouds.
+
+Footnote 9:
+
+ It is recorded, that the forefathers of Bali to the fourth ascent,
+ were all destroyed by Vishnu, who took upon him the first four shapes
+ of his ten incarnations, namely: those of the fish, tortoise, the
+ boar and the biform man and lion, to destroy them one after another;
+ till he took his fifth form of the dwarf, to kill Bali also. Hence it
+ was one family of the Asuras at Mavalipura in Deccan, that called
+ down Vishnu five times from his heaven for their destruction.
+
+Footnote 10:
+
+ Instruction of abstruse knowledge from yoga to the impure, is pearls
+ before swine; as it is said: पण्डिता एब उपदेष्टब्याः न च मूर्खः कदाचन ।
+
+Footnote 11:
+
+ Reason is a divine attribute and given to man for his discernment of
+ truth from untruth, and of true felicity of the soul, from its
+ fetters of the frailties of this world.
+
+Footnote 12:
+
+ The former figure of meditation was that of Virát, the god who with
+ his thousand heads, hands and legs and feet “सहस्रशीर्षः पुरुषं सहस्र बाहु सहस्र पाद्,”
+ shows the Daitya Titan Briareus with his hundred heads and hands;
+ but the figure of worship in this chapter is that of Vishnu, with
+ his four arms, one head and two legs only, as a more compendious
+ form for common and practical worship.
+
+Footnote 13:
+
+ The flowers and offerings mentioned in this place, are all of a white
+ hue, and specially sacred to Vishnu, as there are others peculiar to
+ other deities, whose priests and votaries must carefully distinguish
+ from one another. The adoration of Vishnu consists, in the offering
+ of the following articles, and observance of the rites as mentioned
+ below: _viz._ Fumigation of incense and lighting of lamps,
+ presentation of offerings, of food, raiment, and jewels suited to the
+ adorer’s taste and best means, and presents of betel leaves,
+ umbrellas, mirrors and chowri flappers. Lastly, scattering of
+ handfuls of flowers, turning round the idol and making obeisance &c.
+
+ सर्ब्बेधूपदाम नैवेद्यतम्बुलदर्पणच्छत्रचामर नीराजन पुष्पाञ्जलि प्रदाक्षण नमस्कारादिः ।
+
+Footnote 14:
+
+ Brahmá was the god of Bráhmanas, and Vishnu was worshipped by
+ the early Vaisya colonists of India; while Siva or Mahádeva was
+ the deity of the aboriginal Daityas. These peoples after long
+ contention came to be amalgamated into one great body of the
+ Hindus, by their adoption of the mixed creed of the said triality
+ or trinity, under the designation of the Triune duty. Still there
+ are many people that have never been united under this triad, and
+ maintain their several creeds with tenacity. See Wilson’s Hindu
+ Religion.
+
+Footnote 15:
+
+ The history of Sanskrit words derives the name Lakshmí from the
+ appellation of king Dilipa’s queen, who was so called from her
+ luckiness. Thus the words _lucky_ and _luckhy_ (valgs), are
+ synonymous and same in sound and sense.
+
+Footnote 16:
+
+ (This is the doctrine of the indwelling spirit pervading all nature.
+ Or as the poet says:—
+ A motion or spirit that impels
+ All thinking things, all objects of thought,
+ And rolls through all things
+ Wordsworth)
+
+Footnote 17:
+
+ Nor love thy life nor hate, but live while thou livest; How long or
+ short, permit to heaven. _Dum vivimus, vinamus_.
+
+Footnote 18:
+
+ (_i.e._ As the work is known after it is worked out by the workman).
+
+Footnote 19:
+
+ So there is but dead matter without the enlivening soul, and every
+ thing is full of life with the soul inherent in it.
+
+Footnote 20:
+
+ (The analogy of _matsya nyaya_ or piscine oppression, means the havoc
+ which is committed on the race of fishes by their own kind, as also
+ by all other piscivorous animals of earth and air, and tyranny of the
+ strong over the weak).
+
+Footnote 21:
+
+ अणोरणीयान्, महतो महीयान्. Sruti.
+
+Footnote 22:
+
+ नान्यपन्था द्वितीयकमनाय. Sruti.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOGA-VASISHTHA MAHARAMAYANA
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+<body>
+<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 2 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2), by Valmiki</p>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 2 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2)</p>
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Valmiki</p>
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Translator: Vihari-Lala Mitra</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 28, 2023 [eBook #71064]</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
+ <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Credits: Mark C. Orton, Juliet Sutherland, Édith Nolot, Krista Zaleski, windproof, readbueno and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net</p>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOGA-VASISHTHA MAHARAMAYANA OF VALMIKI, VOL. 2 (OF 4), PART 2 (OF 2) ***</div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter transnote">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Notes">Transcriber’s Notes</h2>
+
+<p>Inconsistent punctuation has been silently corrected.</p>
+
+<p>Obvious misspellings have been silently corrected, and the following
+corrections made to the text. Other spelling and hyphenation variations
+have not been modified.</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<dl>
+<dt> <a href="#unlearned">Page 412, section 15</a> </dt><dd> and the other to that of the learned -> and the other to that of the unlearned</dd>
+<dt> <a href="#mountainous">Page 413, section 19</a> </dt><dd> in mountainous -> in the mountainous</dd>
+<dt> <a href="#favourite">Page 437, section 66</a> </dt><dd> favourite females -> favourite of females</dd>
+<dt> <a href="#iniquity">Page 634, section 40</a> </dt><dd> full of inequity -> full of iniquity</dd>
+<dt> <a href="#like">Page 680, section 22</a> </dt><dd> the like -> like the</dd>
+<dt> <a href="#visionary">Page 715, section 53</a> </dt><dd> unvisionary -> visionary</dd>
+<dt> <a href="#even_though">Page 816, section 16</a> </dt><dd> bring though -> even though</dd>
+<dt> <a href="#very_thin">Page 930, section 29</a> </dt><dd> very thick and lean -> very thin and lean</dd>
+</dl>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>Also, some of the shortcomings of the LPP edition have been corrected by referencing
+other printings:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<dl>
+<dt>Page <a href="#Page_434">434</a></dt><dd> Missing line "remove it by your subjection to ignorance and idleness" was inserted.</dd>
+
+<dt>Page <a href="#Page_687">687</a></dt><dd> in the printed book is a copy of page 887 (where it belongs).
+The missing page 687 has been supplied from the Bharatiya edition.
+(It is the start of chapter LXI: On Birth, Death and Existence (verse
+1-9)). This error has been reproduced in the Parimal ed. because this
+is based on a scanning of an edition with this error.</dd>
+
+<dt>Page <a href="#Page_688">688</a> and <a href="#Page_888">888</a></dt><dd> were switched in the printed book.</dd>
+
+<dt>Page <a href="#Page_886">886</a></dt><dd> verse 17-18 were missing.</dd>
+
+<dt>Page <a href="#Page_918">918</a></dt><dd> verse 8 was missing.</dd>
+</dl>
+</div>
+<p>Angle brackets: <...> have been used by the transcriber to indicate light editing
+of the text to insert missing words.
+</p>
+
+<p>The spelling of Sanskrit words are normalized to some extent, including
+correct/addition of accents where necessary. Note that the author uses
+á, í, ú to indicate long vowels. This notation has not been changed.
+</p>
+
+<p>The third Devanagari character in <a href="#Footnote_7">footnote 7</a> is illegible in the text.
+It has been inserted from an alternate text, although it
+appears that the original of this text may in fact have included a typo.</p>
+
+<p>The LPP edition (1999) which has been scanned for this ebook, is of
+poor quality, and in some cases text was missing. Where possible, the
+missing/unclear text has been supplied from another edition, which has
+the same typographical basis (both editions are photographical reprints
+of the same source, or perhaps one is a copy of the other): Bharatiya
+Publishing House, Delhi 1978.</p>
+
+<p>A third edition, Parimal Publications, Delhi 1998, which is based on an
+OCR scanning of the same typographical basis, has also been consulted.</p>
+
+<p>The term “Gloss.” or “Glossary” probably refers to the extensive
+classical commentary to Yoga Vásishtha by Ananda Bodhendra Saraswati
+(only available in Sanskrit).</p>
+
+
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+
+<h1> THE<br>
+
+ YOGA-VÁSISHTHA-MAHÁRÁMÁYANA.</h1>
+
+<p class="ph2"> VOL. II (part 2)
+</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+
+<p class="ph2"><span class="small">THE</span>
+YOGA-VÁSISHTHA MAHÁRÁMÁYANA<br>
+ <span class="small">OF</span>
+<br>
+VÁLMÍKI
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p class="ph2"> <span class="small">THE</span></p>
+
+<p class="ph2 big"> YOGA-VÁSISHTHA<br>
+ MAHÁRÁMÁYANA</p>
+
+<p class="ph2 small"> OF</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph2 big"> VÁLMÍKI</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center"> in 4 vols. in 7 pts.<br>
+ (Bound in 4.)</p>
+
+<p class="center p4"> Vol. 2 (In 2 pts.)<br>
+ Bound in one.</p>
+
+<p class="center p2"> Containing<br>
+ Utpatti Khanda, Sthiti Prakarana and<br>
+ Upasama Khanda to Chapter LIII.</p>
+
+<p class="center p2"> <i>Translated from the original Sanskrit</i><br>
+ <i>By</i><br>
+ VIHARI-LALA MITRA</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2> YOGA VASISHTHA</h2>
+
+<p class="ph2"> BOOK IV.<br>
+ STHITI PRAKARANA<br>
+ ON ONTOLOGY OR EXISTENCE.
+</p>
+</div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+
+
+<h2> CONTENTS<br>
+
+
+ <span class="small">OF</span><br>
+ STHITI PRAKARANA.</h2>
+<hr>
+<p class="center"> <b><span class="small">(ON ONTOLOGY OR EXISTENCE).</span></b></p>
+
+ <p class="center big"> <b> BOOK IV.</b></p>
+
+</div>
+<table class="autotable">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER I.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Janya-Jani-Nirúpana</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_403">403</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER II.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The Receptacle of the Mundane Egg</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_408">408</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER III.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Eternity of the World</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_411">411</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER IV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Treating of the Germ of Existence</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_414">414</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER V.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Story of Bhárgava</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_416">416</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER VI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Elysium of Bhárgava</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_418">418</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER VII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Re-union of the Lovers</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_421">421</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER VIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Transmigration of Sukra</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_425">425</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER IX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Description of Sukra’s Body</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_429">429</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[vii]</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER X.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Bhrigu’s Conference with Kála or Death</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_431">431</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Cause of the Production of the World</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_439">439</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Detailed Account of the Genesis of the World</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_448">448</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Consolation of Bhrigu</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_451">451</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XIV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Sukra’s Reminiscence of his Metempsychosis</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_454">454</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Lamentation and Expostulation of Sukra</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_459">459</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XVI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Resuscitation of Sukra</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_464">464</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XVII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Attainment of the Ideal Realm</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_467">467</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XVIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The Incarnation of the Living Spirit</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_471">471</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XIX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Investigation into the Nature of the Living Soul</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_480">480</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Description of the Mind</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_484">484</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">On the Philosophy of the Mind</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_486">486</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Resting in Supreme Felicity</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_493">493</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Meditation of the Wonders in the Realm of the Body</td>
+<td class="tdr"> <a href="#Page_498">498</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXIV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The Non-entity of the Mind</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_505">505</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[viii]</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Narrative of Dáma, Vyála and Kata</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_508">508</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXVI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Battle of the Deities and Demons</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_512">512</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXVII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Admonition of Brahmá</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_518">518</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXVIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The Renewed Battle of the Gods and Demons</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_523">523</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXIX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Defeat of the Demons</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_527">527</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Account of the Subsequent lives of the Demons</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_531">531</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Investigation of Reality and Unreality</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_533">533</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">On Good Conduct</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_539">539</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Consideration of Egoism</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_545">545</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXIV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">End of the Story of Dáma and Vyála</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_553">553</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Description of Insouciance</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_558">558</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXVI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Description of the Intellectual Sphere</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_566">566</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXVII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Upasama. The Sameness or Quietism of the Soul</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_570">570</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXVIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The Same Quietness or Quietude of the Spirit</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_572">572</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXIX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">On the Unity of all Things</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_577">577</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[ix]</span></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Brahma Identic with the World</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_584">584</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Description of ignorance</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_589">589</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Production of Jíva or Living Souls</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_593">593</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The Repositories of Living Souls</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_598">598</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLIV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The Incarnation of Human Souls in the World</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_605">605</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Dependence of all on God</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_611">611</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLVI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Description of Living-Liberation</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_617">617</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLVII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Description of the Worlds and their Demiurgi</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_621">621</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLVIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Story of Dásúra</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_630">630</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLIX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Description of Dásúra’s Kadamba Forest</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_635">635</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER L.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Dásúra’s Survey of the Heavens</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_639">639</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Dásúra’s Begetting a Son</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_641">641</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Grandeur of the Air-born King</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_645">645</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Description of the Mundane City</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_649">649</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LIV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Corrective of Desires</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_655">655</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[x]</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Meeting of Vasishtha and Dásúra</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_660">660</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LVI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">On the Soul and its Inertness</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_664">664</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LVII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Nature of Volleity and Nolleity</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_670">670</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LVIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The song of Kacha</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_676">676</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LIX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Works of Brahmá’s Creation</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_678">678</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Production of Living Beings</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_684">684</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LXI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">On Birth, Death and Existence</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_687">687</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LXII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Speech of the Divine Messenger</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_690">690</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<h2> CONTENTS<br>
+ OF<br>
+ UPASAMA KHANDA.<br>
+
+ (ON QUIETISM.)<br>
+
+ BOOK V.</h2>
+
+<table class="autotable">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER I.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"> The Áhnika or Daily Ritual</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_693">693</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER II.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"> Ráma’s Recapitulation of Vasishtha’s Lectures</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_698">698</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER III.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"> Description of the Royal Assembly</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_703">703</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[xi]</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER IV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"> Inquiries of Ráma</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_706">706</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER V.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"> Lecture on Tranquility of the Soul and Mind</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_710">710</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER VI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"> Lecture on the Discharge of Duty</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_716">716</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER VII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"> On Attainment of Divine Knowledge</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_719">719</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER VIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"> Song of the Siddhas or Holy Adepts</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_720">720</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER IX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Reflections of Janaka</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_723">723</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER X.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Silent and Solitary Reflections of Janaka</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_730">730</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Subjection of the Mind</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_734">734</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">On the Greatness of the Intelligence</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_737">737</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Government of the Mind</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_741">741</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XIV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Ascertainment of the Thinking Principle</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_754">754</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">On Avarice</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_761">761</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XVI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Healing of Avarice</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_764">764</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XVII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">On the Extirpation of Avarice</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_767">767</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XVIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Living Liberation or True Felicity of Man in this Life</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_771">771</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xii">[xii]</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XIX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">On Holy Knowledge</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_779">779</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Remonstration of Pávana</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_784">784</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Repression of Desires by Means of Yoga-Meditation</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_789">789</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Narrative of Virochana</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_793">793</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Speech of Virochana on Subjection of the Mind</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_799">799</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXIV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">On the Healing and Improvement of the Mind</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_803">803</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Reflections of Bali</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_811">811</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXVI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Admonition of Sukra to Bali</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_814">814</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXVII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Hebetude of Bali</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_817">817</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXVIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Description of Bali’s anaesthesia</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_821">821</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXIX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Bali’s resuscitation to sensibility</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_824">824</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Fall of Hiranyakasipu and Rise of Prahláda</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_831">831</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Prahláda’s Faith in Vishnu</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_835">835</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The Spiritual and formal Worship of Vishnu</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_843">843</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Prahláda’s Supplication to Hari</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_848">848</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXIV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Prahláda’s Self-knowledge of Spiritualism</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_852">852</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Meditation on Brahma in One’s Self</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_865">865</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXVI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Hymn to the Soul</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_876">876</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXVII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Disorder and Disquiet of the Asura Realm</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_885">885</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXVIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Scrutiny into the Nature of God</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_887">887</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XXXIX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Admonitions of Hari to Prahláda</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_890">890</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XL.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Resuscitation of Prahláda</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_896">896</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Installation of Prahláda in his Realm</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_900">900</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Spirituality of Prahláda</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_905">905</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Rest and Repose of Prahláda</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_908">908</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLIV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Narrative of Gádhi and his Destruction</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_913">913</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLV.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Gádhi is Reborn as a Chandála, and made King over the Kir Tribe</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_918">918</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLVI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Gádhi’s Loss of his Visionary Kingdom</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_923">923</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLVII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Verification of Gádhi’s Vision</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_928">928</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLVIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">On the Wondrous Powers of Illusion</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_935">935</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER XLIX.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Gádhi’s gaining of True Knowledge</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_943">943</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER L.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Intentions of Ráma</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_949">949</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LI.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Desire of Uddálaka</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_960">960</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Ratiocination of Uddálaka</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_966">966</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">CHAPTER LIII.</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The Rational Rapture of Uddálaka</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_974">974</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_403">[403]</span>
+<p class="center">YOGA VASISHTHA</p>
+
+<h2>
+
+BOOK IV.<br>
+
+STHITI PRAKARANA<br>
+
+ON ONTOLOGY OR EXISTENCE.
+</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h2>
+CHAPTER I.
+<br>
+<span class="small">JANYA-JANI-NIRÚPANA.</span></h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>On Genesis and Epigenesis.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The variety of creation is described as the working of
+the mind, and the existence of one Brahma only, is established in
+refutation of the Atomic and Materialistic doctrines of Nyáya and
+Sánkhya philosophy.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—Attend now Ráma, to the subject of Existence, which
+follows that of Production: a knowledge of this, is productive of
+<i>nirvána</i> or utter annihilation of the self or soul.</p>
+
+<p>2. Know then the phenomenal world which is existent before you, and
+your knowledge of egoism or self-existence, to be but erroneous
+conceptions of the formless inexistence or inanity.</p>
+
+<p>3. You see the tints of various hues painting the vacuous sky, without
+any paint (colouring substance), or their cause (the painter). This is
+but a conception of the mind without its visual perception, and like
+the vision in a dream of one, who is not in a state of sound sleep.
+(The world is a dream).</p>
+
+<p>4. It is like an aerial city built and present in your mind; or like
+the warming of shivering apes beside the red clay, thinking it as red
+hot fire; and as one’s pursuing an unreality or (grasping a shadow).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_404">[404]</span></p>
+
+<p>5. It is but a different aspect of the self same Brahma, like that of a
+whirlpool in water, and as the unsubstantial sunlight, appearing as a
+real substance in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>6. It is like the baseless fabric of gold of the celestials on high;
+and like the air-built castle of Gandharvas in the midway sky. (The
+gods and Gandharvas are believed to dwell in their golden abodes in
+heaven).</p>
+
+<p>7. It is as the false sea in the mirage, appearing true at the time;
+and like the Elysian and Utopian cities of imagination in empty air,
+and taken for truth.</p>
+
+<p>8. It is like the romantic realms with their picturesque scenes in the
+fancies of poets, which are no where in nature but it seems to be solid
+and thick within, without any pith or solidity in it, as <a> thing in an
+empty dream.</p>
+
+<p>9. It is as the etherial sphere, full of light all around, but all
+hollow within; and like the blue autumnal sky, with its light and
+flimsy clouds without any rain-water in them.</p>
+
+<p>10. It is as the unsubstantial vacuum, with the cerulean blue of solid
+sapphire; and like the domes and dames appearing in dreams, fleeting as
+air and untangible to touch.</p>
+
+<p>11. It is as a flower garden in a picture, painted with blooming
+blossoms; and appearing as fragrant without any fragrance in them. It
+is lightsome to sight, without the inherent heat of light, and
+resembles the orb of the sun or a flaming fire represented in a picture.</p>
+
+<p>12. It is as an ideal domain—the coinage of the brain, and an unreal
+reality or a seeming something; and likens a lotus-bed in painting,
+without its essence or fragrance.</p>
+
+<p>13. It is as the variegated sky, painted with hues which it does not
+possess; and is as unsolid as empty air, and as many-hued as the
+rain-bow without any hue of its own.</p>
+
+<p>14. All its various colourings of materiality, fade away under the
+right discrimination of reason; and it is found in the end to be as
+unsolid a substance as the stem of a plantain tree; (all coated without,
+and nothing solid in the inside).</p>
+
+<p>15. It is like the rotation of black spots, before the eyes of a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_405">[405]</span>purblind man; and as the shape of a shadowy inexistence, presented as
+something existent before the naked eye.</p>
+
+<p>16. Like the bubble of water, it seems as something substantial to
+sight; but in reality all hollow within; and though appearing as juicy,
+it is without any moisture at all.</p>
+
+<p>17. The bubbling worlds are as wide spread as the morning dews or
+frost; but take them up, and you will find them as nothing, it is
+thought as gross matter by some, and as vacuum by others. It is
+believed as a fluctuation of thought or false vision by some, and as a
+mere compound of atoms by many. (It is the dull matter of Sánkhyas;
+mere vacuity of Vedántists; fluctuation of error—<i>avidyá spanda</i> of the
+Sánkaras; empty air of Mádhyamikas; fortuitous union of atoms of
+Acháryas; different atomisms of Sautrántas, and Vaibháshikas; and so
+likewise of Kanáda, Gotama and Arhatas; and so many more according to
+the theories of others). (Gloss).</p>
+
+<p>18. I am partly of a material frame, on my body and mind, but
+spiritually I am an empty immaterial substance; and though felt by the
+touch of the hand, I am yet as intangible as a nocturnal fiend:—(an
+empty shadow only).</p>
+
+<p>19. Ráma said:—It is said Sir, that at the end of a great Kalpa age,
+the visible world remains in its seed; after which it developes again
+in its present form, which I require to be fully explained to me.</p>
+
+<p>20. Are they ignorant or knowing men, who think in these various ways?
+Please Sir, tell me the truth for removal of my doubts, and relate to
+me the process of the development.</p>
+
+<p>21. Vasishtha replied:—Those who say that the mundane world existed in
+the form of a seed at the final sleep (of Brahmá), are altogether
+ignorant of the truth, and talk as children and boys: (from what they
+think themselves, or hear from others).</p>
+
+<p>22. Hear me tell you, how unaccordant it is to right reason and how far
+removed from truth. It is a false supposition, and leading both the
+preacher and hearer of such a doctrine to great error and egregious
+mistake.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_406">[406]</span></p>
+
+<p>23. Those who attempt to show the existence of the world, in the form
+of a germ in the mundane seed; maintain a very silly position, as I
+shall now explain unto you.</p>
+
+<p>24. A seed is in itself a visible thing, and is more an object of sense
+than that of the mind; as the seeds of paddy and barley, are seen to
+sprout forth in their germs and leaves.</p>
+
+<p>25. The mind which is beyond the six organs of sense, is a very minute
+particle; and it cannot possibly be born of itself, nor become the seed
+of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>26. The Supreme Spirit also, being more rarefied than the subtile
+ether, and undefinable by words, cannot be of the form of a seed.</p>
+
+<p>27. That which is as minute as a nil and a zero, is equivalent to
+nothing; and could never be the mundane seed, without which there could
+be no germ nor sprout.</p>
+
+<p>28. That which is more rare and transparent than the vacuous and clear
+firmament; cannot possibly contain the world with all its mountains and
+seas; and the heavens with all their hosts, in its transcendent
+substratum.</p>
+
+<p>29. There is nothing, that is in any way situated as a substance, in
+the substantiality of that Being; or if there is anything there, why is
+it not visible to us?</p>
+
+<p>30. There is nothing that comes of itself, and nothing material that
+comes but of the immaterial spirit; for who can believe a hill to
+proceed from the hollowness of an earthen pot?</p>
+
+<p>31. How can a thing remain with another, which is opposed to it in its
+nature? How can there be any shadow where there is light, and how does
+darkness reside in the disc of the sun, or even coldness in fire?</p>
+
+<p>32. How can an atom contain a hill, or anything subsist in nothing? The
+union of a similar with its dissimilar, is as impossible as that of
+shadow with the light of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>33. It is reasonable to suppose that the material seeds of the fig and
+paddy, should bring forth their shoots in time; but it is unreasonable
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_407">[407]</span>to believe the big material world to be contained in an immaterial atom.</p>
+
+<p>34. We see the same organs of sense and their sensations, in all men in
+every country; but there is not the same uniformity in the
+understandings of men in every place, nor can there be any reason
+assigned to this difference.</p>
+
+<p>35. Those who assign a certain cause to some effect or event, betray
+their ignorance of the true cause; for what is it that produces the
+effect, except the very thing by some of its accessory powers. (Every
+production is but a transformation of itself, by some of its inherent
+powers and properties).</p>
+
+<p>36. Throw off at a distance, the doctrine of cause and effect invented
+by the ignorant; and know that to be true, which is without beginning
+and end, and the same appearing as the world. (An increate everlasting
+prototype in the mind of God).</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_408">[408]</span></p><h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.
+
+
+<br>THE RECEPTACLE OF THE MUNDANE EGG.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument.—Refutation of the doctrine of the separate Existence of
+the world, and establishment of the tenet of the “One God as All
+in All.”</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—Now Ráma! that best knowest the knowable, I will tell
+thee in disparagement of thy belief in the separate existence of the
+world; that there is one pure and vacuous principle of the Intellect
+only, above all the false fabrications of men.</p>
+
+<p>2. If it is granted, that there was the germ of the world in the
+beginning; still it is a question, what were the accompanying causes of
+its development.</p>
+
+<p>3. Without co-operation of the necessary causes, there can be no
+vegetation of the seed, as no barren woman is ever known or seen to
+bring forth an offspring, notwithstanding the seed is contained in the
+womb.</p>
+
+<p>4. If it was possible for the seed to grow without the aid of its
+accompanying causes, then it is useless to believe in the primary
+cause, when it is possessed of such power in its own nature.</p>
+
+<p>5. It is Brahmá himself who abides in his self, in the form of creation
+at the beginning of the world. This creation is as formless as the
+creator himself, and there is no relation of cause and effect between
+them.</p>
+
+<p>6. To say the earth and other elements, to be the accompanying causes
+of production, is also wrong; since it is impossible for these elements
+to exist prior to their creation.</p>
+
+<p>7. To say the world remained quiescent in its own nature, together with
+the accompanying causes, is the talk proceeding from the minds (mouths)
+of boys and not of the wise.</p>
+
+<p>8. Therefore Ráma! there neither is or was or ever will be a separate
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_409">[409]</span>world in existence. It is the one intelligence of the Divinity, that
+displays the creation in itself.</p>
+
+<p>9. So Ráma! there being an absolute privation of this visible world, it
+is certain that Brahma himself is All, throughout the endless space.</p>
+
+<p>10. The knowledge of the visible world, is destroyed by the destruction
+of all its causalities; but the causes continuing in the mind, will
+cause the visibles to appear to the view even after their outward
+extinction (like objects in the dream).</p>
+
+<p>11. The absolute privation of the phenomenal, is only effected by the
+privation of its causes, (<i>i.e.</i> the suppression of our acts and
+desires); but if they are not suppressed in the mind, how can you
+effect to suppress the sight?</p>
+
+<p>12. There is no other means of destroying our erroneous conception of
+the world, except by a total extirpation of the visibles from our view.</p>
+
+<p>13. It is certain that the appearance of the visible world, is no more
+than our inward conception of it, in the vacuity of the intellect; and
+the knowledge of I, thou and he, are false impressions on our minds
+like figures in paintings.</p>
+
+<p>14. As these mountains and hills, these lands and seas and these
+revolutions of days and nights, and months and years and the knowledge
+that this is a Kalpa age, and this is a minute and moment, and this is
+life and this is death, are all mere conceptions of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>15. So is the knowledge of the duration and termination of a <i>Kalpa</i>
+and <i>Mahákalpa</i> (millenniums &c.) and that of the creation and its
+beginning and end, are mere misconceptions of our minds.</p>
+
+<p>16. It is the mind that conceives millions of Kalpas and billions of
+worlds, most of which are gone by and many as yet to come. (Or else
+there is but an everlasting eternity, which is self-same with the
+infinity of the Deity).</p>
+
+<p>17. So the fourteen regions of the planetary spheres, and all the
+divisions of time and place, are contained in the infinite space of the
+Supreme Intellect.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_410">[410]</span></p>
+
+<p>18. The universe continues and displays itself as serenely in the
+Divine mind, as it did from before and throughout all eternity; and it
+shines with particles of the light of that Intellect, as the firmament
+is as full with the radiance of solar light.</p>
+
+<p>19. The ineffable light, which is thrown into the mind by the Divine
+Intellect, shows itself as the creation, which in reality is a baseless
+fabric by itself.</p>
+
+<p>20. It does not come to existence nor dissolves into nothing, nor
+appears or sets at any time; but resembles a crystal glass with certain
+marks in it, which can never be effaced.</p>
+
+<p>21. The creations display of themselves in the clear Intellect of God,
+as the variegated skies form portions of the indivisible space of
+endless vacuum.</p>
+
+<p>22. These are but properties of the Divine Intellect, as fluidity is
+that of water, motion of the wind, the eddies of the sea, and the
+qualities of all things. (Creation is cœternal with the Eternal Mind).</p>
+
+<p>23. This creation is but a compact body of Divine wisdom, and is
+contained in the Divinity as its component part. Its rising and setting
+and continuance, are exhibited alike in the tranquil soul.</p>
+
+<p>24. The world is inane owing to its want of the accompaniment of
+secondary (<i>i.e.</i> material and instrumental) causes and is selfborn:
+and to call it as born or produced, is to breathe the breath (of life)
+like a madman (<i>i.e.</i>, it is foolish to say so).</p>
+
+<p>25. Ráma! purify your mind from the dross of false representations, and
+rise from the bed of your doubts and desires; drive away your
+protracted sleep of ignorance (avidyá), and be freed from the fears of
+death and disease with every one of your friends in this Court.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_411">[411]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.<br>
+<span class="small">ETERNITY OF THE WORLD.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> said:—But it is related, that Brahmá—the lord of creatures,
+springs up by his reminiscence at the end of a kalpa, and stretches out
+the world from his remembrance of it, in the beginning of creation.</p>
+
+<p>2. Vasishtha answered:—So it is said, O support of Raghu’s race! that
+the lord of creatures rises at first by his predestination, after the
+universal dissolution, and at the commencement of a new creation.</p>
+
+<p>3. It is by his will, that the world is stretched out from his
+recollection, and is manifested like an ideal city, in the presence of
+Brahmá—the creative power.</p>
+
+<p>4. The supreme being can have no remembrance of the past at the
+beginning of a new creation, owing to his want of a prior birth or
+death. Therefore this aerial arbour of reminiscence has no relation to
+Brahma. (Who being an ever living being, his cognizance of all things
+is also everlasting).</p>
+
+<p>5. Ráma asked:—Does not the reminiscence of the past, continue in
+Brahmá at his recreation of the world; and so the former remembrance of
+men upon their being reborn on earth? Or are all past remembrances
+effaced from the minds of men by the delirium of death in their past
+life?</p>
+
+<p>6. Vasishtha replied:—All intelligent beings, including Brahmá and all
+others of the past age, that obtain their <i>nirvána</i> or extinction, are
+of course absorbed in One Brahma (and have lost their remembrance of
+every thing concerning their past lives).</p>
+
+<p>7. Now tell me, my good Ráma, where do these past remembrances and
+remembrancers abide any more, when they are wholly lost, at the final
+liberation (or extinction) of the rememberers?</p>
+
+<p>8. It is certain that all beings are liberated, and become extinct in
+Brahma at the great dissolution; hence there cannot be remembrance of
+anything in the absence of the persons that remember the same.</p>
+
+<p>9. The remembrance that lives impressed of itself in the empty space of
+individual Intellects, is verily the reservoir of the perceptible and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_412">[412]</span>imperceptible worlds. This reminiscence is eternally present before the
+sight of God, as a reflexion of his own Intellect.</p>
+
+<p>10. It shines with the lustre of his self-consciousness, from time
+without beginning and end, and is identic with this world, which is
+therefore called to be self-born (because it is immanent in the mind of
+God).</p>
+
+<p>11. The spiritual body which is the attribute of God from time without
+beginning (that God is a spirit); is the same with Viráta or
+manifestation of himself, and exhibits the form of the world or the
+microcosm (<i>i.e.</i> God—spirit—Virát or cosmos).</p>
+
+<p>12. But the world is said to be composed of atoms, which compose the
+land and woods, the clouds and the firmament. But there are no atoms to
+form time and space, actions and motions and revolutions of days and
+nights. (All which are shaped by the spirit and not by atoms).</p>
+
+<p>13. Again the atoms (of matter) which fill the world, have other
+incipient atoms (of spirit), which are inherent in them, and cause them
+to take and appear in the forms of mountains and the like.</p>
+
+<p>14. But these forms seeming to be conglomerations of atomic particles,
+and showing themselves to our vision as lightsome objects, are in
+reality no substantial things.</p>
+
+<p>15. Thus there is no end of the real and unreal sights of things; the
+one presenting itself to the view of the learned, and the other to that
+of the <a id="unlearned"></a>unlearned. (<i>i.e.</i> All things are viewed in their spiritual
+light by the learned, and in their material aspect by the ignorant).</p>
+
+<p>16. The cosmos appears as the immutable Brahma only to the intelligent,
+and as the mutable visible world to the unintelligent.</p>
+
+<p>17. As these bright worlds appear to roll about as eggs in their
+spheres, so there are multitudes of other orbs, shining in every atom
+in the universe.</p>
+
+<p>18. As we see curved pillars, consisting of figures under figures, and
+those again under others; so is the grand pillar of the universe,
+composed of systems under systems to no end.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_413">[413]</span></p>
+
+<p>19. As the sands on a rock, are separably attached to it, and are
+countless in their number; so the orbs in the three worlds, are as
+particles of dust in <the> <a id="mountainous"></a>mountainous body of Brahmá.</p>
+
+<p>20. It may be possible to count the particles of ray scattered in the
+sun-beams; but it is impossible to number the atoms of light, which are
+emanating from the great sun of Brahmá.</p>
+
+<p>21. As the sun scatters the particles of his light, on the sparkling
+waters and sands of the sea; so does the Intellect of God, disperse the
+atoms of its light all over the vacuity of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>22. As the notion of vacuity fills the mind, with the idea of the
+visible firmament; so the thought of creation, as self-same with Brahmá,
+gives us the notion of his intellectual sphere.</p>
+
+<p>23. To understand the creation as something different from Brahma,
+leads man apart from Him; but to take it as synonymous with Brahma,
+leads him to his felicity.</p>
+
+<p>24. The enlightened soul, freed from its knowledge of the mundane seed,
+and knowing Brahma alone as the plenum filling the vacuum of intellect;
+knows the knowable (God) in his inward understanding, as the same with
+what has proceeded from him.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_414">[414]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.<br>
+<span class="small">TREATING OF THE GERM OF EXISTENCE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Sensations and Perceptions, as the Roots of the
+knowledge of Existence: suppression of these annuls all
+existence, and removes the visibles from view.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—It is the overthrow of the battery of the senses, that
+supplies us with a bridge over the ocean of the world; there is no
+other act, whereby we may cross over it (to the other shore of truth).</p>
+
+<p>2. Acquaintance with the sástras, association with the good and wise,
+and practice of the virtues, are the means whereby the rational and
+self-controlled man, may come to know the absolute negation of the
+visibles.</p>
+
+<p>3. I have thus told you, O handsome Ráma! of the causes of the
+appearance and disappearance of the creation, resembling the heaving
+and resting of the waves of the sea of the world.</p>
+
+<p>4. There is no need of a long discourse to tell you that, the mind is
+the germ of the arbour of acts, and this germ being nipped in the
+beginning, prevents the growth of the tree, and frustrates the doing of
+acts, which are the fruits thereof.</p>
+
+<p>5. The mind is all (<i>i.e.</i> the agent of all actions); therefore it is,
+that by the healing of your heart and mind, you can cure all the
+troubles and diseases, you may incur in the world.</p>
+
+<p>6. The minds of men are ever troubled, with their thoughts of the world
+and bodily actions; but these being deadened and defunct, we see
+neither the body nor the outer world.</p>
+
+<p>7. The negation of the outer world, and the suppression of the inner
+thoughts, serve to curb the demon of the mind, by practice of
+self-abnegation for a long period of time.</p>
+
+<p>8. It is possible to heal the inward disease of the internal mind, by
+administration of this best and only medicine of negation of the
+external world. (Ignoring the outer world, is the only way to restore
+the peace of the mind).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_415">[415]</span></p>
+
+<p>9. It is because of its thoughts, that the mind is subjected to the
+errors of its birth and death; and to those of its being bound to or
+liberated from, the bonds of the body and this world.</p>
+
+<p>10. The mind being deluded by its thoughts, sees the worlds shining
+before it; as a man sees in his delusion, the imaginary city of the
+Gandharvas, drawn before him in empty air.</p>
+
+<p>11. All these visible worlds consist in the mind, wherein they seem to
+exist as the fragrance of the air, consists in the cluster of flowers
+containing the essence.</p>
+
+<p>12. The little particle of the mind contains the world, as a small
+grain of sesamum contains the oil, and as an attribute is contained in
+its subject, and a property abiding in the substance.</p>
+
+<p>13. The world abides in the mind in the same manner, as the sun-beams
+abide in the sun, and as brightness consists in the light, and as the
+heat is contained in fire.</p>
+
+<p>14. The mind is the reservoir of the worlds, as the snow is the
+receptacle of coldness. It is the substratum of all existence, as the
+sky is that of emptiness, and as velocity is inherent in the wind.</p>
+
+<p>15. Therefore the mind is the same with the world, and the world is
+identic with the mind; owing to their intimate and inseparable
+connection with one another. The world however is lost by the loss of
+the mind; but the mind is not lost by destruction of the world.
+(Because the thoughts thereof are imprinted in the mind).</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_416">[416]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.<br>
+<span class="small">STORY OF BHÁRGAVA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Meditation of Bhrigu, Ramblings of Sukra. His sight
+of and amour for an aerial nymph.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> said:—Tell me sir, that knowest all truths, and art best
+acquainted with all that is past and is to come, how the form of the
+world is so vividly existed in the mind.</p>
+
+<p>2. Please Sir, explain to me by some illustration, how this world,
+appears as a visible object to the inner mind.</p>
+
+<p>3. Vasishtha replied:—The world is situated as truly in the minds of
+men, as it appeared in its firm and compact state to the bodiless son
+of Indu (I have related long before).</p>
+
+<p>4. It is situated in the same manner in the minds of men, as the
+thought of king Lavana’s transformation of himself to a chandála, under
+the influence of sorcery.</p>
+
+<p>5. It is in the same manner, as Bhárgava believed himself to be
+possessed of all worldly gratifications. Because true bliss has much
+more relation to the mind, than to earthly possessions.</p>
+
+<p>6. Ráma said:—How is it Sir, that the son of Bhrigu came to the
+enjoyment of earthly pleasures, when he had been longing for the
+fruition of heavenly felicity.</p>
+
+<p>7. Vasishtha replied:—Attend now Ráma, to my narration of the history
+of Bhrigu and Kála, whereby you will know how he came to the possession
+of earthly enjoyments.</p>
+
+<p>8. There is a table-land of the Mandara mountain, which is beset by
+rows of tamála trees, with beautiful arbours of flowers under them.</p>
+
+<p>9. Here the sage Bhrigu conducted his arduous devotion in olden times
+and it was in this place, that his high-minded and valiant son Sukra,
+also came to perform his devotion.</p>
+
+<p>10. Sukra was as handsome as the moon, and radiant with his brilliant
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_417">[417]</span>beams (like the sun). He took his seat in that happy grove of Bhrigu,
+for the purpose of his devotion.</p>
+
+<p>11. Having long sat in that grove under the umbrage of a rock, Sukra
+removed himself to the flowery beds and fair plains below.</p>
+
+<p>12. He roved freely about the bowers of Mandara in his youthful sport,
+and became revered among the wise and ignorant men of the place.</p>
+
+<p>13. He roved there at random like Trisanku, between the earth and sky;
+sometimes playing about as a boy, and at others sitting in fixed
+meditation as his father.</p>
+
+<p>14. He remained without any anxiety in his solitude, as a king who has
+subdued his enemy; until he happened to behold an Apsara fairy,
+traversing in her aerial journey.</p>
+
+<p>15. He beheld her with the eyes of Hari, fixed upon his Lakshmí, as she
+skims over the watery plain, decked with her wreaths of Mandara
+flowers, and her tresses waving loosely with the playful air.</p>
+
+<p>16. Her trinkets jingling with her movements, and the fragrance of her
+person perfuming the winds of the air; her fairy form was as beautiful
+as a creeping plant, and her eyeballs rolling as in the state of
+intoxication.</p>
+
+<p>17. The moon-beams of her body, shed their ambrosial dews over the
+landscape, which bewitched the hard-heart of the young devotee, as he
+beheld the fairy form before him.</p>
+
+<p>18. She also with her body shining as the fair full-moon, and shaking
+as the wave of the sea, became enamoured of Sukra as she looked at his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>19. Sukra then checked the impulse of his mind, which the god of love
+had raised after her; but losing all his power over himself, he became
+absorbed in the thought of his beloved object.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_418">[418]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.<br>
+<span class="small">ELYSIUM OF BHÁRGAVA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Sukra’s imaginary journey to heaven, and his
+reception by Indra.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—Henceforth Sukra continued to think of the nymph with
+his closed eye-lids, and indulge himself in his reverie of an imaginary
+kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>2. He thought that the nymph was passing in the air, to the paradise of
+Indra—the god with thousand eyes; and that he followed her closely,
+to the happy regions of the celestial gods.</p>
+
+<p>3. He thought, he saw before him the gods, decorated with their
+chaplets of beautiful <i>mandara</i> blossoms on their heads, and with
+garlands of flowers pendant on their persons resplendent as liquid gold.</p>
+
+<p>4. He seemed to see the heavenly damsels with their eyes as
+blue-lotuses, regaling the eyes of their spectators; and others with
+their eyes as beautiful as those of antelopes, sporting with their
+sweet smiles all about (the garden of paradise).</p>
+
+<p>5. He saw also the Marutas or gods of winds, bearing the fragrance of
+flowers, and breathing their sweet scent on one another; and resembling
+the omnipresent Viswarúpa by their ubiquitous journey.</p>
+
+<p>6. He heard the sweet hum of bees, giddy with the perfumed ichor,
+exuding from the proboscis of Indra’s elephant; and listened to the
+sweet strains, sung by the chorus of the heavenly choir.</p>
+
+<p>7. There were the swans and storks, gabbling in the lakes, with lotuses
+of golden hue in them; and there were the celestial gods reposing in
+the arbours, beside the holy stream of the heavenly Gangá (Mandákiní).</p>
+
+<p>8. These were the gods Yama and Indra, and the sun and moon, and the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_419">[419]</span>deities of fire and the winds; and there were the regents of the
+worlds, whose shining bodies shaded the lustre of vivid fire.</p>
+
+<p>9. On one side was the warlike elephant of Indra—(Airávata), with the
+scratches of the demoniac weapons on his face (proboscis), and tusks
+gory with the blood of the defeated hosts of demons.</p>
+
+<p>10. Those who were translated from earth to heaven in the form of
+luminous stars, were roving in their aerial vehicles, blazing with
+aureate beams of the shining sun.</p>
+
+<p>11. The gods were washed by the showers, falling from the peaks of Meru
+below, and the waves of the Ganges, rolled on with scattered <i>mandara</i>
+flowers floating on them.</p>
+
+<p>12. The alleys of Indra’s groves, were tinged with saffron, by heaps of
+the dust of <i>mandara</i> flowers; and were trodden by groups of Apsara
+lasses, sporting wantonly upon them.</p>
+
+<p>13. There were the gentle breezes blowing among the <i>párijáta</i> plants,
+brightening as moon-beams in the sacred bowers; and wafting the
+fragrant honey, from the cups of <i>Kunda</i> and <i>mandara</i> blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>14. The pleasure garden of Indra, was crowded by heavenly damsels; who
+were besmeared with the frosty farina of <i>kēsara</i> flowers, mantling
+them like the creepers of the grove in their yellow robes.</p>
+
+<p>15. Here were the heavenly nymphs dancing in their gaiety, at the tune
+of the songs of their lovers; and there were heavenly musicians Nárada
+and Tamburu, joining their vocal music in unison with the melody of the
+wired instruments of the lute and lyre (Vallakikákali).</p>
+
+<p>16. Holy men and the pious and virtuous, were seen to soar high in
+their heavenly cars, and sitting there with their decorations of
+various kinds.</p>
+
+<p>17. The amorous damsels of the gods, were clinging round their god
+Indra: as the tender creepers of the garden, twine about the trees
+beside them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_420">[420]</span></p>
+
+<p>18. There were the fruit trees of <i>gulunchas</i>, studded with clusters of
+their ripening fruits; and resembling the gemming sapphires and rubies,
+and set as rows of ivory teeth.</p>
+
+<p>19. After all these sights, Sukra thought of making his obeisance to
+Indra, who was seated on his seat like another Brahmá—the creator of
+the three worlds.</p>
+
+<p>20. Having thought so, Sukra bowed down to Indra in his own mind, as he
+was the second Bhrigu in heaven—(<i>i.e.</i> He bowed to him with a
+veneration equal to that he paid to his father).</p>
+
+<p>21. Indra received him with respect, and having lifted him up with his
+hand, made him sit by himself.</p>
+
+<p>22. Indra addressed him saying:—I am honoured, Sukra! by thy call, and
+this heaven of mine is graced by thy presence, may thou live long to
+enjoy the pleasure of this place.</p>
+
+<p>23. Indra then sat in his seat with a graceful countenance, which shone
+with the lustre of the unspotted full-moon.</p>
+
+<p>24. Sukra being thus seated by the side of Indra, was saluted by all
+the assembled gods of heaven; and he continued to enjoy every felicity
+there, by being received with paternal affection by the lord of gods
+and men.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_421">[421]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.<br>
+<span class="small">RE-UNION OF THE LOVERS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Sukra sees his beloved in heaven, and is joined to her
+at that place.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—Thus Sukra being got among the gods in the celestial
+city, forgot his former nature, without his passing through the pangs
+of death.</p>
+
+<p>2. Having halted awhile by the side of the Sachi’s consort (Indra), he
+rose up to roam about the paradise, by being charmed with all its
+various beauties.</p>
+
+<p>3. He looked with rapture on the beauty of his own person, and longed
+to see the lovely beauties of heavenly beings, as the swan is eager to
+meet the lotuses of the lake.</p>
+
+<p>4. He saw his beloved one among them in the garden of Indra’s Eden
+(udyána), with her eyes like those of a young fawn; and with a stature
+as delicate as that of a tender creeper of the <i>Amra</i> (amarynthus).</p>
+
+<p>5. She also beheld the son of Bhrigu, and lost her government on
+herself; and was thus observed by him also in all her indications of
+amorous feelings.</p>
+
+<p>6. His whole frame was dissolved in affection for her, like the
+moonstone melting under the moonbeams; so was hers likewise in
+tenderness for him.</p>
+
+<p>7. He like the moonstone was soothed by her cooling beauty, beaming as
+moonlight in the sky; and she also being beheld by him, was entirely
+subdued by her love to him.</p>
+
+<p>8. At night they bewailed as chakravákas (ruddy geese), at their
+separation from one another, and were filled with delight on their
+mutual sight at the break of the day (which unites the Chakraváka pair
+together).</p>
+
+<p>9. They were both as beautiful to behold, as the sun and the opening
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_422">[422]</span>blossom of the lotus at morn; and their presence added a charm to the
+garden of paradise, which promised to confer their desired bliss.</p>
+
+<p>10. She committed her subdued-self to the mercy of the god of love, who
+in his turn darted his arrows relentless on her tender heart.</p>
+
+<p>11. She was covered all over her person with the shafts of cupid, as
+when the lotus blossom is hid under a swarm of fleeting bees; and
+became as disordered as the leaves of the lotus, are disturbed under a
+shower of rain drops.</p>
+
+<p>12. She fluttered at the gentle breath of the playful winds, like the
+tender filaments of flowers; and moved as graceful as the swan, with
+her eyes as bluish as those of the leaflets of blue-lotuses.</p>
+
+<p>13. She was deranged in her person by the god of love, as the lotus-bed
+is put into disorder by the mighty elephant; and was beheld in that
+plight by her lover (Sukra), in the flight of his fancy.</p>
+
+<p>14. At last the shade of night overspread the landscape of the heavenly
+paradise, as if the god of destruction (Rudra) was advancing to bury
+the world under universal gloom.</p>
+
+<p>15. A deep darkness overspread the face of the earth, and covered it in
+thick gloom; like the regions of the polar mountains; where the
+hot-blazing-sun is obscured by the dark shade of perpetual night, as if
+hiding his face in shame under the dark veil of Cimmerian gloom.</p>
+
+<p>16. The loving pair met together in the midst of the grove, when the
+assembled crowds of the place, retired to their respective habitations
+in different directions.</p>
+
+<p>17. Then the love-smitten-dame approached her lover with her sidelong
+glances, as a bird of air alights from her aerial flight in the
+evening, to meet with her mate on the earth below.</p>
+
+<p>18. She advanced towards the son of Bhrigu, as a peahen comes out to
+meet the rising cloud; and thought she beheld there a white washed
+edifice, with a couch placed in the midst.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_423">[423]</span></p>
+
+<p>19. Bhárgava entered the white hall, as when Vishnu enters into hoary
+sea, accompanied by his beloved Lakshmí; who held him by the hand with
+her down-cast countenance.</p>
+
+<p>20. She graced his person, as the lotus-stalk graces the bosom of the
+elephant; and then spoke to him sweetly with her words mixed with
+tender affection.</p>
+
+<p>21. She told him in a sweet and delightsome speech fraught with
+expressions of endearment: Behold, O my moon-faced lover! I see the
+curve of thy bow as a bow bent for my destruction.</p>
+
+<p>22. Cupid is thence darting his arrows to destroy this lovelorn maid;
+therefore protect me from him, that am so helpless and have come under
+thy protection from his rage.</p>
+
+<p>23. Know my good friend, that it is the duty of good people, to relieve
+the wretched from their distress; and those that do not look upon them
+with a compassionate eye, are reckoned as the basest of men.</p>
+
+<p>24. Love is never vilified by those, who are acquainted with erotics;
+because the true love of faithful lovers, have endured to the last
+without any fear of separation.</p>
+
+<p>25. Know my dear, that the delightful draught of love, defies the dewy
+beams distilled by the moon; and the sovereignty of the three worlds,
+is never so pleasing to the soul, as the love of the beloved.</p>
+
+<p>26. I derive the same bliss from the touch of thy feet, as it attends
+on mutual lovers on their first attachment to one another.</p>
+
+<p>27. I live by the nectarious draught of thy touch, as the <i>kumuda</i>
+blooms by night, imbibing the ambrosial beams of the moon.</p>
+
+<p>28. As the fluttering Chakora, is delighted with drinking the
+moonbeams, so is this suppliant at thy feet, blessed by the touch of
+the leaf-like palm of thy hand.</p>
+
+<p>29. Embrace me now to thy bosom, which is filled with ambrosial bliss.
+Saying so, the damsel fell upon his bosom with her body soft as a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_424">[424]</span>flower, and her eyes turning as a leaflet at the gentle breeze.</p>
+
+<p>30. The loving pair fell into their trance of love in that happy grove,
+as a couple of playful bees creeps into the lotus cup, under the fair
+filaments of the flower, shaking by the gentle breeze.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_425">[425]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.<br>
+<span class="small">TRANSMIGRATIONS OF SUKRA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Sukra fancies his fall from heaven, and passing
+through many imaginary births.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> related:—Thus the son of Bhrigu, believed himself to be in
+the enjoyment of heavenly pleasures, in his ideal reveries.</p>
+
+<p>2. He thought of enjoying the company of his beloved, bedecked with
+garlands of <i>mandara</i> flowers, and inebriated with the drink of
+ambrosial draughts, like the full-moon accompanied by the evening star.</p>
+
+<p>3. He roved about the ideal lake of heaven (Mánas Sarovara), filled
+with golden lotuses, and frequented by the giddy swans and gabbling
+geese or hansas of heaven; and roamed beside the bank of the celestial
+river (Mandákiní), in company with the choristers (cháranas, and
+Kinnaras of paradise).</p>
+
+<p>4. He drank the sweet nectarious juice beaming as moonbeams in company
+with the gods; and reposed under the arbours of the groves, formed by
+the shaking branches of <i>párijáta</i> plants.</p>
+
+<p>5. He amused himself with his favourite Vidyádharís, in swinging
+himself in the hanging cradles, formed by the shady creepers of the
+arbour, and screening him from the vernal sunbeams.</p>
+
+<p>6. The parterres of Nandana gardens were trodden down under the feet of
+the fellow followers of Siva, as when the ocean was churned by the
+<i>Mandara</i> mountain.</p>
+
+<p>7. The tender weeds and willows growing as golden shrubberies, and
+tangled bushes in the beach of the river, were trampled under the legs
+of heated elephants, as when they infest the lotus lakes on Meru.
+(<i>i.e.</i> Lotuses growing in the lakes of mountainous regions).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_426">[426]</span></p>
+
+<p>8. Associated by his sweet-heart, he passed the moonlight nights in the
+forest groves of Kailása, attending to the songs and music of heavenly
+choristers.</p>
+
+<p>9. Roaming on the table-lands of Gandhamádana mountain, he decorated
+his beloved with lotus-garlands from her head to foot.</p>
+
+<p>10. He roved with her to the polar mountain which is full of wonders,
+as having darkness on one side and lighted on the other. Here they
+sported together with their tender smiles and fond caresses and embrace.</p>
+
+<p>11. He thought he remained in a celestial abode beside the marshy lands
+of Mandara, for a period of full sixty years; and passed his time in
+the company of the fauna of the place.</p>
+
+<p>12. He believed he passed half a <i>yuga</i> with his helpmate, on the
+border of the milky ocean, and associated with the maritime people and
+islanders of that ocean.</p>
+
+<p>13. He next thought to live in a garden at the city of the Gandharvas,
+where he believed to have lived for an immeasurable period like the
+genius of Time himself, who is the producer of an infinity of worlds.</p>
+
+<p>14. He was again translated to the celestial seat of Indra, where he
+believed to have resided for many cycles of the quadruple <i>yuga</i> ages
+with his mistress.</p>
+
+<p>15. It was at the end of the merit of their acts that they were doomed
+to return on earth, shorn of their heavenly beauty and the fine
+features of their persons.</p>
+
+<p>16. Being deprived of his heavenly seat and vehicle, and bereft of his
+godlike form and features; Sukra was overcome by deep sorrow, like a
+hero falling in the field of warfare.</p>
+
+<p>17. His great grief at his fall from heaven to earth, broke his frame
+as it were into a hundred fragments; like a waterfall falling on the
+stony ground, and breaking into a hundred rills below.</p>
+
+<p>18. They with their emaciated bodies and sorrowful minds, wandered
+about in the air, like birds without their nest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_427">[427]</span></p>
+
+<p>19. Afterwards their disembodied minds entered into the net-work of
+lunar beams, and then in the form of molten frost or rain water, they
+grew the vegetables on earth.</p>
+
+<p>20. Some of these vegetables were concocted, and then eaten by a
+Bráhman in the land of Dasárna or confluence of the ten streams. The
+substance of Sukra was changed to the semen of the Bráhman, and then
+conceived as a son by his wife.</p>
+
+<p>21. The boy was trained up in the society of the munis to the practice
+of rigorous austerities, and he dwelt in the forests of Meru for a
+whole <i>manwantara</i>, observant of his holy rites.</p>
+
+<p>22. There he gave birth to a male child of human figure in a doe (to
+which his mistress was transformed in her next birth), and became
+exceedingly fond of the boy, to the neglect of his sacred duties.</p>
+
+<p>23. He constantly prayed for the long life, wealth and learning of his
+darling, and thus forsook the constancy of his faith and reliance in
+Providence. (Longevity, prosperity and capacity for learning, are the
+triple blessings of civil life, instead of austerity, purity and
+self-resignation of painful asceticism).</p>
+
+<p>24. Thus his falling off from the thought of heaven, to those of the
+earthly aggrandizement of his son, made his shortened life an easy prey
+to death, as the inhaling of air by the serpent. (It is said that the
+serpent lives upon air, which it takes in freely in want of any other
+food).</p>
+
+<p>25. His worldly thoughts having vitiated his understanding, caused him
+to be reborn as the son of the Madra king, and succeed to him in the
+kingdom of the Madras (Madura-Madras).</p>
+
+<p>26. Having long reigned in his kingdom of Madras by extirpation of all
+his enemies, he was overtaken at last by old age, as the lotus-flower
+is stunted by the frost.</p>
+
+<p>27. The king of Madras, was released of his kingly person by his desire
+of asceticism; whereby he became the son of an anchorite in next-birth,
+in order to perform his austerities.</p>
+
+<p>28. He retired to the bank of the meandering river of the Ganges, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_428">[428]</span>there betook himself to his devotion; being devoid of all his worldly
+anxieties and cares.</p>
+
+<p>29. Thus the son of Bhrigu, having passed in various forms in his
+successive births, according to the desires of his heart; remained at
+last as a fixed arbour on the bank of a running stream.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_429">[429]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.<br>
+<span class="small">DESCRIPTION OF SUKRA’S BODY.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The departed spirit of Sukra, remembers the state of
+its former body.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> related:—As Sukra was indulging his reveries in this manner,
+he passed insensibly under the flight of a series of years, which
+glided upon him in the presence of his father.</p>
+
+<p>2. At last his arboraceous body withered away with age, under the
+inclement sun and winds and rain; and it fell down on the ground as a
+tree torn from its roots.</p>
+
+<p>3. In all his former births, his mind thirsted after fresh pleasures
+and enjoyments; as a stag hunts after fresh verdure from forest to
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>4. He underwent repeated births and deaths, in his wanderings in the
+world in search of its enjoyments; and seemed as some thing whirled
+about in a turning mill or wheel; till at last he found his rest in the
+cooling beach of the rivulet.</p>
+
+<p>5. Now the disembodied spirit of Sukra, remained to reflect on his past
+transmigrations, in all the real and ideal forms of his imagination.</p>
+
+<p>6. It thought of its former body on the Mandara mountain, and how it
+was reduced to a skeleton of mere bones and skin by the heat of the sun
+and his austerities (<i>i.e.</i> of the five fires <i>pancha-tapas</i> of his
+penance).</p>
+
+<p>7. It remembered how the wind instrument of its lungs, breathed out the
+joyous music of its exemption from the pain of action (to which all
+other men were subjected). (It refers to the breathing of <i>so-ham
+hamsah</i> in yoga, which is the sweet music of salvation).</p>
+
+<p>8. Seeing how the mind is plunged in the pit of worldly cares, the body
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_430">[430]</span>seems to laugh at it, by showing the white teeth of the mouth in
+derision.</p>
+
+<p>9. 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>i.e.</i> they are all hollow within, though
+they seem to be solid without).</p>
+
+<p>10. The body sheds the tears of its eyes in sorrow for its past pains
+and austerities, as the sky rains after its excessive heat to cool the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>11. The body was refreshed by the breeze and moon-beams, as the
+woodlands are renovated by cooling showers in the rainy season.</p>
+
+<p>12. It remembered how its body was washed on the banks of mountain
+rills, by the water-falls from above, and how it was daubed by the
+flying dust and the dirt of sin.</p>
+
+<p>13. It was as naked as a withered tree, and rustling to the air with
+the breeze; yet it withstood the keen blasts of winter as unshaken
+devotion in person.</p>
+
+<p>14. The faded face, the withered lungs and arteries, and the skinny
+belly, resembled those of the goddess of famine, that cried aloud in
+the forest, in the howlings of the wild beasts.</p>
+
+<p>15. Yet the holy person of the hermit was unhurt by envious animals,
+owing to its freedom from passions and feelings, and its fervent
+devotion; and was not devoured by rapacious beasts and birds.</p>
+
+<p>16. The body of Bhrigu’s son was thus weakened by his abstinence and
+self-denial, and his mind was employed in holy devotion, as his body
+lay prostrate on the bed of stones.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_431">[431]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.<br>
+<span class="small">BHRIGU’S CONFERENCE WITH KÁLA OR DEATH.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Bhrigu’s grief at seeing the death-like body of his son.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—After the lapse of a thousand years, the great
+Bhrigu rose from his holy trance (anaesthesia); and was disengaged in
+his mind from its meditation of God, as in a state of suspension or
+syncope of his holy meditations.</p>
+
+<p>2. He did not find his son lowly bending down his head before him, the
+son who was the leader of the army of virtues, and who was the
+personified figure of all merits.</p>
+
+<p>3. He only beheld his body, lying as a skeleton before him, as it was
+wretchedness or poverty personified in that shape.</p>
+
+<p>4. The skin of his body was dried by the sun, and his nostrils snoring
+as a hooping bird; and the inner entrails of his belly, were sounding
+as dry leather-pipes with the croaking of frogs.</p>
+
+<p>5. The sockets of his eyes, were filled with new-born worms grown in
+them; and the bones of his ribs had become as bars of a cage, with the
+thin skin over them resembling the spider’s web.</p>
+
+<p>6. The dry and white skeleton of the body, resembled the desire of
+fruition, which bends it to the earth, to undergo all the favourable
+and unfavourable accidents of life.</p>
+
+<p>7. The crown of the head had become as white and smooth (by its
+baldness or grey hairs), as the phallus of Siva anointed with camphor,
+at the <i>Indu-varcha</i> ceremony in honor of the moon.</p>
+
+<p>8. The withered head erected on the bony neckbone, likened the soul
+supported by the body:—(either to lead or be led by it).</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_432">[432]</span></p>
+<p>9. The nose was shriveled to a dry stalk, for want of its flesh; and
+the nose-bone stood as a post, dividing the two halves of the face.</p>
+
+<p>10. The face standing erect on the protruded shoulders on both sides,
+was looking forward in the womb of the vacuous sky, whither the vital
+breath had fled from the body.</p>
+
+<p>11. The two legs, thighs, knees and the two arms (forming the eight
+<i>angas</i> or members of the body), had been doubled in their length (for
+their long etherial course); and lay slackened with fatigue of the long
+journey.</p>
+
+<p>12. The leanness of the belly like a <i>lath</i>, showed by its shriveled
+flesh and skin, the empty inside of the ignorant: (<i>i.e.</i> they may be
+puffed up with pride on the outside, but are all hollow in the inside).</p>
+
+<p>13. Bhrigu seeing the withered skeleton of his son, lying as the
+worn-out post (to which the elephant was tied by its feet), made his
+reflections as said before, and rose from his seat.</p>
+
+<p>14. He then began to dubitate in his mind, at the sight of the dead
+body, as to whether it could be the lifeless carcass of his son or any
+other.</p>
+
+<p>15. Thinking it no other than the dead body of his son, he became sore
+angry upon the god of death (that had untimely taken him away).</p>
+
+<p>16. He was prepared to pronounce his imprecation against the god of
+fate, in vengeance of his snatching his son so prematurely from him.</p>
+
+<p>17. At this <i>Yama</i>—the regent of death, and devourer of living beings,
+assumed his figurative form of a material body, and appeared in an
+instant before the enraged father.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_433">[433]</span></p>
+
+<p>18. He appeared in armour with six arms and as many faces, accompanied
+by the army of his adherents, and holding the noose and sword and other
+weapons in his hands. (The commentary ascribes a dozen of arms to
+<i>Yama</i>, by the number of the twelve months of the year, and having half
+of the number on either side, according to the six signs of the zodiac
+in either hemisphere. The six faces are representative of the six
+seasons of Hindu astronomy instead of four of other nations).</p>
+
+<p>19. The rays of light radiating from his body, gave it the appearance
+of a hill, filled with heaps of the crimson <i>kinsuka</i> flowers, growing
+in mountain forests.</p>
+
+<p>20. The rays of the living fire flashing from his trident gave it the
+glare of golden ringlets, fastened to the ears of all the sides of the
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>21. The breath of his host, hurled down the ridges of mountains, which
+hung about them, like swinging cradles on earth.</p>
+
+<p>22. His sable sword flashing with sombre light, darkened the disk of
+the sun; as it were by the smoke of the final conflagration of the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>23. Having appeared before the great sage, who was enraged as the
+raging sea, he soothed him to calmness as after a storm, by the gentle
+breath of his speech.</p>
+
+<p>24. “The sages” said he, “are acquainted with the laws of nature, and
+know the past and future as present before them. They are never moved
+even with a motive to anything, and are far from being moved without a
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>25. “You sages are observers of the multifarious rules of religions
+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).”</p>
+
+<p>26. Do not belie your righteousness by your rage, nor think to do us
+any harm, who are spared unhurt by the flames of final dissolution, and
+cannot be consumed by your curses.</p>
+
+<p>27. We have destroyed the spheres of the universe and devoured legions
+of Rudras, millions of Brahmás and myriads of Vishnus (in the repeated
+revolutions of creation); what is it therefore that we cannot do?</p>
+
+<p>28. We are appointed as devourers of all beings; and you are destined
+to be devoured by us. This is ordained by destiny herself, and not by
+any act of our own will.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_434">[434]</span></p>
+
+<p>29. It is the nature of flame to ascend upwards, and that of fluids to
+flow downward; it is destined for the food to be fed upon by its
+eaters, and that creation must come under its destruction by us.</p>
+
+<p>30. Know this form of mine to be that of the Supreme Being, whose
+universal spirit acts in various forms, all over the universe.</p>
+
+<p>31. To the unstained (clear) sight, there is no other agent or object
+here, except the supreme; but the stained sight (of the clear eyed),
+views many agents and objects (beside the one in all).</p>
+
+<p>32. Agency and objectivity are terms, coined only by the short sighted;
+but they disappear before the enlarged view of the wise.</p>
+
+<p>33. As flowers grow upon trees, so are animals born on earth; their
+growth and birth, as also their fall and death, are of their own
+spontaneity, and miscalled as their causality.</p>
+
+<p>34. As the motion of the moon is caused by no casual cause, though they
+falsely attribute a causality to it; such is the course of death in the
+world of its own spontaneous nature.</p>
+
+<p>35. The mind is falsely said to be the agent of all its enjoyments in
+life; though it is no agent of itself. It is a misbelief like the false
+conception of a serpent in the rope, where there is no serpent at all.</p>
+
+<p>36. Therefore, O sage! allow not yourself to be so angry for your
+sorrow; but consider in its true light, the course of events that
+befall on humankind.</p>
+
+<p>37. We were not actuated by desire of fame, nor influenced by pride or
+passion to any act; but are ourselves subject to the destiny, which
+predominates over all our actions.</p>
+
+<p>38. Knowing that the course of our conduct, is subject to the destiny
+appointed by the Divine will, the wise never allow themselves to be
+subjected under the darkness of pride or passion, at our doings.</p>
+
+<p>39. That our duties only should be done at all times, is the rule laid
+down by the wise creator; and you cannot attempt to remove it by your
+subjection to ignorance and idleness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_435">[435]</span></p>
+
+<p>40. Where is that enlightened sight, that gravity and that patience of
+yours, that you grovel in this manner in the dark like the blind, and
+slide from the broad and beaten path laid open for every body? (This
+path is submission to what is destined by the Divine will, according to
+the common prayer: “Let not mine, but thy will be done”).</p>
+
+<p>41. 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!)</p>
+
+<p>42. You know that all living beings have two bodies here, of which one
+is known as the intellectual or spiritual body or mind.</p>
+
+<p>43. The other is the inert or corporeal frame, which is fragile and
+perishable. But the minute thing of the mind which lasts until its
+liberation, is what leads all to their good or evil desires.</p>
+
+<p>44. As the skilful charioteer guides his chariot with care, so is this
+body conducted by the intelligent mind, with equal attention and
+fondness.</p>
+
+<p>45. But the ignorant mind which is prone to evil, destroys the goodly
+body; as little children break their dolls of clay in sport.</p>
+
+<p>46. The mind is hence called the <i>purusha</i> or regent of the body, and
+the working of the mind is taken for the act of the man. It is bound to
+the earth by its desires, and freed by its freedom from earthly
+attractions and expectations.</p>
+
+<p>47. That is called the mind which thinks in itself, “this is my body
+which is so situated here, and these are the members of my body and
+this my head.”</p>
+
+<p>48. The mind is called life, for its having the living principle in it;
+and the same is one and identic with the understanding. It becomes
+egoism by its consciousness, and so the same mind passes under various
+designations, according to its different functions.</p>
+
+<p>49. It has the name of the heart from the affections of the body, and
+so it takes many other names at will (according to its divers
+operations). But the earthly bodies are all perishable.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_436">[436]</span></p>
+
+<p>50. When the mind receives the light of truth, it is called the
+enlightened intellect, which being freed from its thoughts relating to
+the body, is set to its supreme felicity.</p>
+
+<p>51. Thus the mind of your son, wandered from your presence, as you sat
+absorbed in meditation, to regions far and wide in the ways of its
+various desires. (<i>i.e.</i> His body was before thee, but his mind was led
+afar by its inward desires).</p>
+
+<p>52. He having left this body of his behind him, in the mountain cave of
+Mandara, fled to the celestial region, as a bird flies from his nest to
+the open air.</p>
+
+<p>53. This mind got into the city of the tutelar gods, and remained in a
+part of the garden of Eden (Nandana), in the happy groves of Mandara,
+and under the bower of <i>párijáta</i> flowers.</p>
+
+<p>54. There he thought he passed a revolution of eight cycles of the four
+<i>yugas</i>, in company with <i>Viswáchí</i> a beauteous Apsara damsel, unto
+whom he clung as the hexaped bee clings to the blooming lotus.</p>
+
+<p>55. But as his strong desire led him to the happy regions of his
+imagination, so he had his fall from them at the end of his desert,
+like the nightly dew falling from heaven.</p>
+
+<p>56. He faded away in his body and all his limbs, like a flower attached
+to the ear or head ornament; and fell down together with his beloved
+one, like the ripened fruits of trees.</p>
+
+<p>57. Being bereft of his aerial and celestial body, he passed through
+the atmospheric air, and was born again on earth in a human figure.</p>
+
+<p>58. He had become a Bráhman in the land of Dasárná, and then a king of
+the city of Kosala. He became a hunter in a great forest, and then a
+swan on the bank of Ganges.</p>
+
+<p>59. He became a king of the solar race, and then a rája of the Pundras,
+and afterwards a missionary among the Sauras and Sálwas. He next became
+a Vidyádhara, and lastly the son of a sage or <i>muni</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_437">[437]</span></p>
+
+<p>60. He had become a ruler in Madras, and then the son of a devotee,
+bearing the name of Vásudeva, and living on the bank of Samangá.</p>
+
+<p>61. Your son has also passed many other births, which he was led to by
+his desire; and he had likewise to undergo some <i>itara-janma</i>
+heterogeneous births in lower animals.</p>
+
+<p>62. He had repeatedly been a Kiráta—huntsman in the Vindhyá hills and
+at Kaikatav. He was a chieftain in Sauvíra, and had become an ass at
+Trigarta.</p>
+
+<p>63. He grew as a bamboo tree in the land of Keralas, and as a deer in
+the skirts of China. He became a serpent on a palm tree, and a cock on
+the tamála tree.</p>
+
+<p>64. This son of yours had been skilled in incantations—mantras, and
+propagated them in the land of Vidyádharas. (So called from their skill
+in enchantments).</p>
+
+<p>65. Then he became a Vidyádhara (Jadugar) or magician himself; and
+plied his jugglery of abstracting ornaments from the persons of females.</p>
+
+<p>66. He became a <a id="favourite"></a>favourite of females, as the sun is dear to
+lotus-flowers; and being as handsome as Káma (Cupid) in his person, he
+become a favourite amongst Vidyádhara damsels in the land of Gandharvas.</p>
+
+<p>67. 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.</p>
+
+<p>68. Finding no other world nor body where he could enter (upon the
+extinction of the universe), his spirit roved about in the empty air,
+as a bird soars on high without its nest.</p>
+
+<p>69. After the lapse of a long time, as Brahmá awoke again from his long
+night of repose, and commenced anew his creation of the world in all
+its various forms:—</p>
+
+<p>70. The roving spirit of your son was led by its desire, as if it was
+propelled by a gust of wind, to become a Bráhman again, and to be
+reborn as such on this earth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_438">[438]</span></p>
+
+<p>71. He was born as the boy of a Bráhman, under the name of Vásudeva,
+and was taught in all the Srutis, among the intelligent and learned men
+of the place.</p>
+
+<p>72. It is in this <i>kalpa</i> age that he has become a Vidyádhara again,
+and betaken himself to the performance of his devotion on the bank of
+Samangá, where he is sitting still in his yoga meditation.</p>
+
+<p>73. Thus his desire for the varieties of worldly appearances, has led
+him to various births, amidst the woods and forests in the womb of this
+earth, covered with jungles of the thorny khadira, karanja and other
+bushes and brambles.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_439">[439]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.<br>
+<span class="small">CAUSE OF THE PRODUCTION OF THE WORLD.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Yama’s narration of Sukra’s meditation, and his
+inclination to worldliness.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">Y</span>ama</span> continued:—Your son is still engaged in his rigorous austerities
+on the bank of the rivulet, rolling with its loud waves on the beach,
+and the winds blowing and howling from all sides.</p>
+
+<p>2. He has been sitting still in his firm devotion, with matted braids
+of hair on his head; and beads of <i>rudráksha</i> seeds in his hand; and
+controuling the members of his body from their going astray.</p>
+
+<p>3. If you wish, O venerable sage! to know the reveries in his mind, you
+shall have to open your intellectual eye, in order to pry into the
+thoughts of others.</p>
+
+<p>4. Vasishtha said:—Saying so, Yama the lord of world, who sees all at
+one view, made the Muni to dive into the thoughts of his son with his
+intellectual eye.</p>
+
+<p>5. The sage immediately saw by his percipience, all the excogitations
+of his son’s mind; as if they were reflected in the mirror of his own
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>6. Having seen the mind of his son in his own mind, the <i>muni</i> returned
+from the bank of Samangá to his own body on mount Mandara, where it was
+left in its sitting posture, in the presence of Yama (during the
+wandering of his mind).</p>
+
+<p>7. Surprised at what he saw, the sage looked upon Yama with a smile;
+and dispassionate as he was, he spoke to the god in the following soft
+and dispassionate words.</p>
+
+<p>8. O god, that art the lord of the past and future! we are but ignorant
+striplings before thee; whose brilliant insight views at once, the
+three times presented before it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_440">[440]</span></p>
+
+<p>9. The knowledge of the existence of the world, whether it is a real
+entity or not, is the source of all errors of the wisest of men, by its
+varying forms and fluctuations.</p>
+
+<p>10. It is thou, O potent god! that knowest what is inside this world;
+while to us it presents its outward figure, in the shape of a magic
+scene only.</p>
+
+<p>11. I knew very well, that my son is not subject to death; and
+therefore I was struck with wonder, to behold him lying as a dead body.</p>
+
+<p>12. Thinking the imperishable soul of my son, to be snatched by death;
+I was led to the vile desire, of cursing thee on his untimely demise.</p>
+
+<p>13. For though we know the course of things in the world; yet we are
+subjected to the impulses of joy and grief, owing to the casualties of
+prosperity and adversity.</p>
+
+<p>14. Moreover, to be angry with wrong doers, and to be pleased with
+those that act rightly, have become the general rule in the course of
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>15. So long do we labour under the sense of what is our duty, and what
+we must refrain from, as we are subject to the error of the reality of
+the world; but deliverance from this error, removes all such
+responsibilities from us.</p>
+
+<p>16. When we fret at death, without understanding its intention (that it
+is intended only for our good); we are of course blamable for it.</p>
+
+<p>17. I am now made to be acquainted by thee, regarding the thoughts of
+my son; and am enabled also to see the whole scene on the bank of
+Samangá (by thy favour).</p>
+
+<p>18. Of the two bodies of men, the mind alone is ubiquitous, and leader
+of the outer body of animated beings. The mind therefore is the true
+body, which reflects and makes us conscious of the existence of
+ourselves, as also of the exterior world.</p>
+
+<p>19. Yama replied:—You have rightly said, O Bráhman! that the mind is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_441">[441]</span>the true body of man. It is the mind that moulds the body according to
+its will, as the potter makes the pot <i>ad libitum</i> (<i>ex suo moto</i>).</p>
+
+<p>20. It frames a form and gives a feature to the person, that it had not
+before; and destroys one in existence in a moment. It is the
+imagination that gives an image to airy nothing, as children see ghosts
+before them in the dark. (The mind changes the features of the face and
+body, and views things according to its own fancy).</p>
+
+<p>21. Its power to create apparent realities out of absolute unreality,
+is well known to every body, in his dream and delirium, in his
+misconceptions and fallacies and all kinds of error; as the sight of
+magic cities and talismans.</p>
+
+<p>22. It is from reliance in visual sight, that men consider it as the
+principal body, and conceive the mind as a secondary or supplementary
+part.</p>
+
+<p>23. It was the (Divine) mind, that formed the world from its thought;
+wherefore the phenomenal is neither a substance by itself (as it
+subsists in the mind); nor is it nothing (being in existence in us).
+Gloss. It is therefore undefinable—<i>anirvachaníya</i>.</p>
+
+<p>24. The mind is part of the body, and spreads itself in its thoughts
+and desires into many forms; as the branch of a tree shoots forth in
+its blossoms and leaves. And as we see two moons by optical deception,
+so does one mind appear as many in many individuals (and as different
+in different persons).</p>
+
+<p>25. It is from the variety of its desires, that the mind perceives and
+produces varieties of things, as pots and pictures and the
+like—<i>ghatapatádi</i>. (Hence the mind is the maker of all things).</p>
+
+<p>26. The same mind thinks itself as many by the diversity of its
+thoughts; such as:—“I am weak, I am poor, I am ignorant and the like;”
+(all which serve to liken the mind to the object constantly thought
+upon).</p>
+
+<p>27. The thought, that I am none of the fancied forms which I feign to
+myself, but of that form from whence I am, causes the mind to be one
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_442">[442]</span>with the everlasting Brahma, by divesting it of the thoughts of all
+other things.</p>
+
+<p>28. All things springing from Brahma, sink at last in him; as the huge
+waves of the wide and billowy ocean, rise but to subside in its calm
+and undisturbed waters below.</p>
+
+<p>29. They sink in the Supreme Spirit, resembling one vast body of pure
+and transparent, cold and sweet water; and like a vast mine of
+brilliant gems of unfailing effulgence.</p>
+
+<p>30. One thinking himself as a little billow, diminishes his soul to
+littleness. (He who bemeans himself, becomes mean).</p>
+
+<p>31. But one believing himself as a large wave, enlarges his spirit to
+greatness. (Nobleness of mind, ennobles a man).</p>
+
+<p>32. He who thinks himself as a little being, and fallen from above to
+suffer in the nether world; is born upon earth in the form he took for
+his pattern.</p>
+
+<p>33. But he who thinks himself to be born to greatness, and rises
+betimes by his energy; becomes as big as a hill, and shines with the
+lustre of rich gems growing upon it.</p>
+
+<p>34. He rests in peace, who thinks himself to be situated in the cooling
+orb of the moon; otherwise the body is consumed with cares; as a tree
+on the bank is burnt down by a conflagration.</p>
+
+<p>35. Others like forest trees are fixed and silent, and shudder for fear
+of being burnt down by the wild fire of the world; though they are
+situated at ease, as beside the running streams of limpid water, and as
+high as on mountain tops of inaccessible height.</p>
+
+<p>36. Those who think themselves to be surrounded by worldly affairs; are
+as wide-stretching trees, awaiting their fall by impending blasts of
+wind.</p>
+
+<p>37. Those who wail aloud for being broken to pieces under the pressure
+of their misery; are like the noisy waves of the sea, breaking against
+the shore and shedding their tears in the form of the watery spray.</p>
+
+<p>38. But the waves are not of one kind, nor are they altogether entities
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_443">[443]</span>or nullities in nature; they are neither small or large nor high or
+low, nor do these qualities abide in them.</p>
+
+<p>39. The waves do not abide in the sea, nor are they without the sea or
+the sea without them: they are of the nature of desires in the soul,
+rising and setting at their own accord.</p>
+
+<p>40. The dead are undying, (because they die to be born again), and the
+living are not living, (because they live but to die at last). Thus is
+the law of their mutual succession which nothing can forefend or alter.</p>
+
+<p>41. As water is universally the same and transparent in its nature, so
+is the all pervading spirit of God, pure and holy in every place.</p>
+
+<p>42. It is this one and self-same spirit which is the body of God, that
+is called the transparent Brahma. It is omnipotent and everlasting, and
+constitutes the whole world appearing as distinct from it.</p>
+
+<p>43. The many wonderful powers that it contains, are all active in their
+various ways. The several powers productive of several ends, are all
+contained in that same body. All the natural and material forces, have
+the Divine spirit for their focus.</p>
+
+<p>44. Brahmá was produced in Brahma as the billow is produced in the
+water, and the male and female are produced from the neuter Brahma,
+changed to and forming both of them.</p>
+
+<p>45. That which is called the world, is only an attribute of Brahmá; and
+there is not the slightest difference between Brahmá and the world.
+(The one being a fac-simile of the original Mind).</p>
+
+<p>46. Verily this plenitude is Brahma, and the world is no other than
+Brahma himself. Think intently upon this truth and shun all other false
+beliefs (of the creator and created, and the like).</p>
+
+<p>47. There is one eternal law, that presides over all things, and this
+one law branches forth into many, bringing forth a hundred varieties of
+effects. The world is a congeries of laws, which are but manifestations
+of the Almighty power and omniscience. (Therefore says the psalmist:
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_444">[444]</span>“Blessed is he, who meditates on his laws day and night”—<i>O bhi Turat
+Jehovah hefzo yomam olaila</i>).</p>
+
+<p>48. Both the inert and active (matter and life), proceed from the same;
+and the mind proceeds from the intellect—chit of God. The various
+desires are evolved by the power of the mind, from their exact
+prototypes in the Supreme soul.</p>
+
+<p>49. It is Brahmá therefore, O sinless Ráma! that manifests itself in
+the visible world; and is full with various forms, as the sea with all
+its billows and surges.</p>
+
+<p>50. It assumes to itself all varieties of forms by its volition of
+evolution or the will of becoming many; and it is the spirit that
+displays itself in itself and by itself (of its own causality); as the
+sea water displays its waves in its own water and by itself.</p>
+
+<p>51. As the various waves are no other than the sea water, so all these
+phenomena are not different from the essence of the lord of the world.</p>
+
+<p>52. As the same seed developes itself in the various forms of its
+branches and buds, its twigs and leaves, and its fruits and flowers; so
+the same almighty seed evolves itself in the multifarious varieties of
+creation.</p>
+
+<p>53. As the strong sun light, displays itself in variegated colours in
+different bodies; so does Omnipotence, display itself in various vivid
+colours, all of which are unreal shades. (<i>Urdu: O leken chamakta hai
+har rang men.</i>—It is His light, that shines in all colours).</p>
+
+<p>54. As the colourless cloud receives in its bosom, the variety of
+transient hues displayed in the rainbow; so the inscrutable spirit of
+the Almighty, reflects and refracts the various colours displayed in
+creation. (Shines in the stars, glows in the sun &c. Pope).</p>
+
+<p>55. From the active agent, proceed the inert matter and inactivity
+without a secondary cause; as the active spider produces the passive
+thread, and the living man brings upon him, his dull torpor in sleep.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_445">[445]</span>(So the active spirit of God, brings forth <i>inertia</i> and inactive
+matter, out of itself into being. The laws of statics as well as
+dynamics both subsist in the energy of the spirit).</p>
+
+<p>56. Again the Lord makes the mind to produce matter for its own bondage
+only; as he makes the silkworm weave its own sheathing for its
+confinements alone. (So the mind maketh its material equipage, for its
+own imprisonment in the world).</p>
+
+<p>57. The mind forgets its spiritual nature of its own will; and makes
+for itself a strong prison house (of its earthly possessions), as the
+silkworm weaves its own coating.</p>
+
+<p>58. But when the mind inclines to think of its spiritual nature by its
+own free will; it gets its release from the prison-house of the body
+and bondage in the world; as a bird or beast is released from its cage,
+and the big elephant let loose from his fetters and the tying post.</p>
+
+<p>59. The mind gradually moulds itself into the form, which it constantly
+thinks upon in itself; and it derives from within itself, the power to
+be what it wishes to become. (Constant thought brings about its end.
+<i>Yádrisí bhávaná yasya</i> &c.).</p>
+
+<p>60. The long sought power when acquired, becomes as familiar to the
+soul, as the dark clouds are attendant upon the sky in the rainy-season.</p>
+
+<p>61. The newly obtained power is assimilated with its recipient, as the
+virtue of every season is manifested in its effect upon the trees,
+(<i>i.e.</i> in the season fruits and flowers).</p>
+
+<p>62. There is no bondage nor liberation of human soul, nor of the Divine
+Spirit. We cannot account for the use of these words among mankind.
+(These terms apply to the mind which is bound and freed, and not to the
+soul which is ever free).</p>
+
+<p>63. There is no liberation nor bondage of the soul, which is the same
+with the Divine. It is this delusive world which shows the immortal
+soul under the veil of mortality, or as eclipsed by and under the
+shadow of temporary affairs.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_446">[446]</span></p>
+
+<p>64. It is the unsteady mind, which has enwrapped the steady soul, under
+the sheath of error; as the coverlet of the silkworm, covers the
+dormant worm.</p>
+
+<p>65. All other bondages which bind the embodied soul to earth, are the
+works of the mind, which is the root of all worldly ties and affections.</p>
+
+<p>66. All human affections and attachments to the visible world, are born
+in and remain in the mind; although they are as distinct from it, as
+the waves of the sea or as the beams of the moon; are produced from and
+contained in their receptacles.</p>
+
+<p>67. It is the Supreme spirit, which is stretched out as one universal
+ocean, agitated into myriads of its waves and billows. The Intellect
+itself is spread out as the water of the universal ocean, containing
+everything that is aqueous and terrene in its infinite bosom.</p>
+
+<p>68. All those that appear as Brahmá, Vishnu and Rudras, as also they
+that have become as gods, and those that are called men and male
+creatures:—</p>
+
+<p>68.—(1). Are all as the waves of the sea, raised spontaneously by the
+underlying spirit; and so are Yama, Indra, the sun, fire, Cuvera and
+the other deities.</p>
+
+<p>68.—(2). So too are the Gandharvas and Kinnaras, the Vidyádharas and
+the other gods and demigods, that rise and fall or remain for a while
+like the breakers of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>68.—(3). They rise and fall as waves on every side, though some
+continue for a longer duration, as the lotus-born Brahmá and others.</p>
+
+<p>68.—(4). Some are born to die in a moment, as the petty gods and men;
+and others are dead no sooner they are born as the ephemerids and some
+worms.</p>
+
+<p>69. Worms and insects, gnats and flies and serpents and huge snakes,
+rise in the great ocean of the Divine Spirit, like drops of water
+scattered about by waves of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>70. There are other moving animals as men and deer, vultures and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_447">[447]</span>jackals, which are produced on land and mountains, in woods and forests
+and in marshy grounds.</p>
+
+<p>71. Some are long lived and others living for a short duration; some
+living with higher aims and ambitions, and others with no other care
+than that of their contemptible bodies, or self-preservation only.</p>
+
+<p>72. Some think of their stability in this world of dreams, and others
+are betrayed by their false hope of the stability of worldly affairs,
+which are quite unstable. (So in Persian <i>Daregá jehán rá baquina
+didam</i>).</p>
+
+<p>73. Some that are subjected to penury and poverty, have little to
+effect in their lives; and always torment themselves with the thoughts,
+that they are poor and miserable, weak and ignorant.</p>
+
+<p>74. Some are born as trees, and others have become as gods and
+demigods; and while some are furnished with moving bodies, others are
+dissolved as water in the sea.</p>
+
+<p>75. Some are no less durable than many <i>kalpas</i> (as the land and sea
+and mountains &c.); and others return to the Supreme Spirit, by the
+moonlike purity of their souls. All things have risen from the
+oceanlike Spirit of Brahma, like its moving undulations. It is the
+intellectual consciousness of every body that is termed his mind.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_448">[448]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.<br>
+<span class="small">DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE GENESIS OF THE WORLD.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Confutation of the instance of the sea and its
+fluctuation, with regard to the immutable spirit of God; and
+resolution of the phenomenal world, to our erroneous conception,
+and visual deception.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">Y</span>ama</span> said:—The consciousness of gods, demigods and men as distinct
+beings, is quite wrong, since they are no way distinct from the
+infinite ocean of Divine Spirit, of which they are all as undulations.</p>
+
+<p>2. It is owing to our erroneous conceptions that we make these
+distinctions in ourselves and the Supreme Soul. The thought of our
+being separate and apart from the Supreme spirit, is the cause of our
+degradation from our pristine holiness and the image of God, in which
+man was made at first and was infused with his holy spirit.</p>
+
+<p>3. Remaining within the depth of the Divine Spirit, and yet thinking
+ourselves to live without it, is the cause of keeping us in darkness on
+the surface of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>4. Our consciousness of ourselves as Brahmá, being vitiated by the
+various thoughts in our minds, becomes the root of our activities;
+while the pure consciousness of ego sum—I am, is free from all actions
+and energies.</p>
+
+<p>5. It is the inward desire of the heart and mind, that becomes the seed
+of earthly actions; which sprouts forth in thorny plants like the
+karanja, a handful of which fills the ground with rankest weeds.</p>
+
+<p>6. Those living bodies, that lie scattered as pebbles on earth; are
+seen to roll about or lie down with their temporary joy and grief in
+continued succession, owing to their ignorance of themselves.</p>
+
+<p>7. From the highest empyrean of Brahmá, down to the lowest deep, there
+is an incessant undulation of the Divine spirit, like the oscillation
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_449">[449]</span>of the wind; which keeps all beings in their successive wailing and
+rejoicing, and in their incessant births and deaths.</p>
+
+<p>8. There are some of pure and enlightened souls, as the gods Hari, Hara
+and others; and some of somewhat darkened understandings, as men and
+the inferior demigods.</p>
+
+<p>9. Some are placed in greater darkness, as the worms and insects; and
+others are situated in utter darkness, as the trees and vegetables.</p>
+
+<p>10. Some grow afar from the great ocean of the Divine Spirit; as the
+grass and weeds of the earth, which are ever degraded, owing to their
+being the emblems of sin; and others are barred from elevation as dull
+stones and heinous snakes.</p>
+
+<p>11. Some have come to being only with their bodies, (without any share
+of understanding); and they know not that death has been undermining
+the fabric of their bodies, as a mouse burrows a house.</p>
+
+<p>12. Some have gone through the ocean of Divine knowledge, and have
+become as divinities, in their living bodies as Brahmá, Hari, and Hara.
+(The gods like angels are embodied beings in which form, they are
+worshipped by their votaries. It is wrong therefore for the Kesavite
+Brahmos, to call the formless Brahma as Hari, who had a visible body
+according to our text).</p>
+
+<p>13. Some having a little understanding, have gone down the depth of
+holy knowledge, without ever reaching the bottom, or finding its either
+shore.</p>
+
+<p>14. Some beings that have undergone many births, and have yet to pass
+through many more, have ever remained abortive and benighted without
+the light of truth.</p>
+
+<p>15. Some are tossed up and down, like fruits flung from the hand: those
+flying upward have gone higher still; and those going down have fallen
+still lower and lower. (None can know the highest pitch or lowest depth
+of existence?).</p>
+
+<p>16. It is forgetfulness of Supreme felicity, that causes one to rove in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_450">[450]</span>various births of weal or woe; but the knowledge of the Supreme, causes
+the cessation of transmigration; as the remembrance of Garuda, destroys
+the power of the most destructive poison.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_451">[451]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.<br>
+<span class="small">CONSOLATION OF BHRIGU.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Bhrigu being acquainted with the powers of the mind and
+Death, rose to repair to the spot where the body of Sukra was
+lying.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">Y</span>ama</span> said:—Among these various species of living creatures, which
+resemble the waves of the ocean, and are as numerous as the plants and
+creepers of spring:—</p>
+
+<p>2. There are some persons among the Yakshas, Gandharvas and Kinnaras,
+who have overcome the errors of their minds, and have well considered
+every thing before and after them; that have become perfect in their
+lives, and passing as the living liberated persons in this world.</p>
+
+<p>3. Others there are among the moving and unmoving, that are as
+unconscious of themselves as wood and stone; and many that are worn out
+with error, and are incapable of judging for themselves. (Worn out with
+error, means hardened in their ignorance).</p>
+
+<p>4. But those that are awakened to sense, have the rich mine of the
+sástras, framed by the enlightened, for the guidance of their souls.
+(Hence it is for the sensible only to benefit themselves by learning).</p>
+
+<p>5. Those who are awakened to sense, and whose sins are washed off; have
+their understandings purified by the light of the sástras. (Lit., by
+investigation into the sástras).</p>
+
+<p>6. The study of good works, destroys the errors of the mind; as the
+course of the sun in the sky, destroys the darkness of the night.</p>
+
+<p>7. Those who have not succeeded to dispel the errors of their minds,
+have darkened their understandings by a mist of ignorance; like the
+frosty sky of winter, and they find the phantoms of their error,
+dancing as demons before their eyes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_452">[452]</span></p>
+
+<p>8. All living bodies are subject to pain and pleasure; but it is the
+mind which constitutes the body, and not the flesh (which is insensible
+of either).</p>
+
+<p>9. The body that is seen to be composed of flesh and bones and the five
+elemental parts, is a creation of the imagination of the mind, and has
+no substantiality in it.</p>
+
+<p>10. What your son had thought of in his mental body (mánas-saríra), the
+same he found in the same body; and was not accountable to any body for
+aught or whatever passed in his mind. (We are responsible for every act
+of the body; but not so for the thoughts or reveries of the mind).</p>
+
+<p>11. Whatever acts a man wills to do in his own mind, the same comes to
+take place in a short time; and there is no other (foreign) agency of
+anybody else required to bring them about.</p>
+
+<p>12. Whatever the mind doth in a moment and of its own accord, and
+actuated by its own will or desire, there is no body in the world, who
+has the power to do or undo the same at any time. (The mind is master
+of the act, and not the body, nor any body besides. Or; whatever the
+mind sets about to do, it does it sooner than by the help of another).</p>
+
+<p>13. The suffering of hell torments and enjoyment of heavenly bliss, and
+the thoughts of birth and death; are all fabrications of the mind;
+which labours under these thoughts. (It is the mind that makes a heaven
+of hell and a hell of heaven).</p>
+
+<p>14. What need I to tell more in the manner of verbose writers (on this
+subject), than go together at once, to the place where your son is
+situated.</p>
+
+<p>15. He (Sukra) having tasted the pleasure and pain of all these states
+at a moment’s thought of his mind, is now seated as a devotee on the
+bank of Samangá, under the spreading beams of the moon. (The Gloss
+speaks here of Sukra’s passing into many births, before his betaking
+himself to devotion).</p>
+
+<p>16. His vital breath having fled from his heart, became as the moonbeam
+sparkling in a dew drop, which entered the uterus in the form of <i>semen
+virilis</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_453">[453]</span></p>
+
+<p>17. 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.</p>
+
+<p>18. O wonderful is the law of nature! said Bhrigu slowly to himself,
+and then rose higher and higher, as the sun ascends above his rising
+mountain.</p>
+
+<p>19. With their luminous bodies, they arrived at the spot of Samangá,
+and shone on high above the tamála trees below. Their simultaneous
+rising in the clear firmament, made them appear as the sun rising with
+the full-moon over the cloudy horizon.</p>
+
+<p>20. Válmíki said:—As the <i>muni</i> (Vasishtha) was telling these things,
+the sun went down his setting mountain, and the day departed to its
+evening service. The court broke with mutual salutations, to perform
+their evening rites and observances, after which they joined the
+assembly at the dawn of the next day.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_454">[454]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.<br>
+<span class="small">SUKRA’S REMINISCENCE OF HIS METEMPSYCHOSIS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Bhrigu and Yama’s Expostulation with Sukra, and
+desiring him to return to his former state.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—Now as Yama and Bhrigu departed from the cavern of the
+Mandara mountain, and proceeded towards the bank of Samangá river:—</p>
+
+<p>2. They beheld upon their descending from the mountain, a great light
+below; proceeding from the bodies of the celestials, sleeping in the
+arbours of aureate creepers.</p>
+
+<p>3. The birds were sporting in their sprays, formed by the cradling
+creepers under the canopy of heaven; and the lovely antelopes looking
+face to face, with their eyes resembling the blue-lotuses.</p>
+
+<p>4. They beheld the Siddhas, sitting on their stony seats upon the
+elevated rocks; with their bodies full of vigour, and their eyes
+looking on the spheres with defiance.</p>
+
+<p>5. They saw the lords of the elephantine tribe, with their big trunks
+as large as the palm trees, and plunging in the lakes covered with
+flowers, falling incessantly from the beachening boughs, and branches
+of flowering trees.</p>
+
+<p>6. They saw the mountain bulls (Bos guavus) dozing in their giddiness,
+and sitting as ebriety in person; while their bodies were reddened by
+the red dust of flowers, and their tails flushed with the crimson
+farina blown by the breeze.</p>
+
+<p>7. There were the brisk and beautiful <i>chowri</i> deer serving as flappers
+of the mountain king, and dousing in the pools filled with falling
+flowers.</p>
+
+<p>8. They saw the Kinnara lads sitting on the tops of straight and
+stately date trees, and sporting with pelting the date fruits upon one
+another, which stuck to the reeds below as their fruits.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_455">[455]</span></p>
+
+<p>9. They beheld big monkeys, jumping about with their hideous reddish
+cheeks, and hiding themselves in the coverts of widespreading creepers.</p>
+
+<p>10. They saw the Siddhas, to be hit by the celestial damsels with
+blossoms of mandara flowers, and clad with vests of the tawny clouds by
+which they were shrouded.</p>
+
+<p>11. The uninhabited skirts of the mountain, were as the solitary walks
+of Buddhist vagrants; and the rivulets at its foot, were gliding with
+their currents covered under the <i>kunda</i> and <i>mandara</i> flowers, as if
+they were running to meet the sea, mantled in their yellow vests of the
+spring season.</p>
+
+<p>(It is well known that the vernal vesture of damsels, is of the yellow
+colour of the farina of flowers, and the rivulets are poetically
+figured as females hastening towards their lord the sea
+(saritám-pathih)).</p>
+
+<p>12. The trees decorated with wreaths of flowers, and shaken by the
+breeze, seemed as bacchanals giddy with the honey of the flowers, and
+rolling their dizzy eyes formed of the fluttering bees.</p>
+
+<p>13. They walked about here and there, and looked at and admired the
+grandeur of the mountain, till at last they alighted on the nether
+earth, decorated with its cities and human habitations.</p>
+
+<p>14. They arrived in a moment at the bank of Samangá, flowing with the
+loosened flowers of all kinds, as if it were a bed of flowers by itself.</p>
+
+<p>15. Bhrigu beheld his son on one of its banks, with his body changed to
+another form, and his features quite altered from his former state.</p>
+
+<p>16. His limbs were stiff, and his sense at a stand still, as he sat
+with his mind fixed on steady meditation. He seemed to be long at rest,
+in order to get his rest from the turmoils of the world.</p>
+
+<p>17. He thought upon the course of the currents of the world, which are
+continually gliding with successive joy and sorrow to man, who gets rid
+of them after his long trial.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_456">[456]</span></p>
+
+<p>18. He became motionless as a wheel, after its long winded motion; and
+found his rest after his prolonged whirling, in the whirlpool of the
+ocean of the world.</p>
+
+<p>19. He sat retired as a lover, solely reclined on the thought of his
+beloved object in his retirement; and his mind was at rest, after its
+long wanderings.</p>
+
+<p>20. He sat in a state of uniform meditation, without a shadow of
+biplicity in it; and was smiling with a cold apathy at all the pursuits
+of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>21. Liberated from all concerns, and released from the enjoyments of
+life, and disenthralled from the snare of desires and fancies, he
+rested in the supreme bliss of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>22. His soul was at rest, in the everlasting rest of God; as the pure
+crystal catches the colour of the gem, which is contiguous to it.</p>
+
+<p>23. Bhrigu beheld his son in the calmly composed and awakened state of
+his mind, and freed alike both from his thoughts of what was desirable,
+as also from his hatred against what was disgusting. (God is said to be
+eternally at rest the six days creation, but an act of his Mind, Will,
+Word, Fiat, Logos or Brahmá).</p>
+
+<p>24. Yama seeing the son of Bhrigu, said to the father in a voice,
+hoarse as the sounding sea. ‘Lo there thy son.’</p>
+
+<p>25. “Awake”, said he to Bhárgava, which startled him from his
+meditation, as the roaring of a cloud, rouses the slumbering peacock
+from his summer sleep.</p>
+
+<p>26. Upon opening and lifting up his eyes, he beheld the god standing
+with his father on one side, who being pleased at his sight, glowed in
+their countenances like the disks of the sun and moon.</p>
+
+<p>27. He rose from his seat of Kadamba leaves, and made his obeisance to
+them, who appeared to have come to him like the gods Hari and Hara in
+the disguise of a couple of Bráhmans.</p>
+
+<p>28. After their mutual salutations, they were seated on a slab of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_457">[457]</span>stone, and appeared as the venerable gods Vishnu and Siva, were seated
+on the pinnacle of Meru.</p>
+
+<p>29. The Bráhman boy, having ended the muttering of his mantras on the
+bank of Samangá, accosted them with a voice distilling as the sweet
+nectarine juice of ambrosia <i>amrita</i> or water of life (<i>aqua-vitae</i> or
+<i>abi haiyát</i>).</p>
+
+<p>30. “I am emancipated, my lords, at your sight this day (from all
+earthly cares), as you have blessed me by your sights, resembling those
+of the sun and moon, appearing together to view.” (Lit. as the orbs of
+the cooling and dazzling beams. (<i>himánsu and ushnánsu</i>)).</p>
+
+<p>31. The darkness, which reigned in my mind, and which no light of the
+sástras or spiritual or temporal knowledge, nor even my austerities
+could remove, is dispelled today by the light of your presence.</p>
+
+<p>32. A kind look of the great, gives as much joy to the mind, as
+draughts of pure ambrosia, serve to satisfy the heart.</p>
+
+<p>33. Tell me who are you, whose feet have sanctified this place; as the
+glorious orbs of the day and night, enlighten the firmament.</p>
+
+<p>34. Being addressed in this manner, Bhrigu desired him to remember his
+prior births, which he could well do, by his enlightened understanding.</p>
+
+<p>35. Bhrigu made him acquainted with the state of his former birth, and
+he remembered it instantly by the clairvoyance of his inward sight.</p>
+
+<p>36. He was struck with wonder at the remembrance of his former state,
+and smiled with a joyous face and gladsome heart, to ponder on what he
+had been; and then uttered as follows.</p>
+
+<p>37. Blessed is the law of the Supreme Being, which is without its
+beginning or end, and is known as destiny here below; and by whose
+power the world is revolving as a curricle.</p>
+
+<p>38. I see my countless and unknown births, and the innumerable
+accidents to which they were subject, for the period of a whole kalpa
+or duration of the world from first to last. (The Soul being immortal,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_458">[458]</span>has to pass into infinite births under various shapes and forms of
+bodies. If it were to lie dormant in the grave for ever what is the
+good of its being made or created to be immortal?)</p>
+
+<p>39. I have undergone great hardships, and known prosperity also with
+the toil of earning; have had my wanderings also in different lives,
+and remember to have roamed for a long time, over the mountainous
+regions of Meru.</p>
+
+<p>40. I drank the water reddened with the pollen of mandara flowers, and
+roved along the bank of the heavenly stream of Mandákiní filled with
+lotuses.</p>
+
+<p>41. I wandered about the Mandara groves, filled with flowering creepers
+like gold, and under the shade of the kalpa arbors of Meru, and in the
+flowery plains above and about it.</p>
+
+<p>42. There is naught of good or evil, which I have not tasted or felt or
+done myself; nor is there anything, which I have not seen and felt and
+known in my past lives.</p>
+
+<p>43. I have now known the knowable (that is to be known), and seen the
+imperishable one in whom I have my repose. I have now rested after my
+toils were over, and have passed beyond the domain of error and
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>44. Now rise, O father! and let us go to see that body, lying on the
+Mandara mount, and which is now dried as a withered plant.</p>
+
+<p>45. I have no desire to remain in this place, nor go anywhere of my own
+will; it is only to see the works of fate, that we wander all about.</p>
+
+<p>46. I will follow you, with my firm belief in the one adored Deity of
+the learned. Let that be the desirable object of my mind, and I will
+act exactly in conformity with my belief.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_459">[459]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.<br>
+<span class="small">LAMENTATION AND EXPOSTULATION OF SUKRA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Sukra laments on seeing his former body, and his
+consolation at its ultimate anaesthesia.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—Thus contemplating on the course of nature, these
+philomaths moved with their spiritual bodies, from the bank of Samangá
+(towards the Mandara mountain).</p>
+
+<p>2. They ascended to the sky, and passed through the pores of the clouds
+to the region of the Siddhas; whence they descended to the lower world,
+and arrived at the valley of Mandara.</p>
+
+<p>3. There Sukra saw on a cliff of that mountain, the dried body of his
+former birth, lying covered under the dark and dewy leaves of trees.</p>
+
+<p>4. He said, here is that shriveled body, O father! which thou hadst
+nourished with many a dainty food before.</p>
+
+<p>5. There is that body of mine, which was so fondly anointed with
+camphor, agallochum and sandal paste, by my wet-nurse before.</p>
+
+<p>6. This is that body of mine, which was used to repose on the cooling
+beds, made with heaps of mandara flowers, in the airy spots of Meru.</p>
+
+<p>7. This is that body of mine, which was so fondly caressed by heavenly
+dames of yore, and which is now lying, to be bitten by creeping insects
+and worms, on the bare ground below.</p>
+
+<p>8. This is that body of mine, which was wont of yore to ramble in the
+parterres of sandalwood; now lying a dried skeleton on the naked spot.</p>
+
+<p>9. This is that body of mine, now lying impassive of the feelings of
+delight in the company of heavenly nymphs, and withering away
+unconscious of the actions and passions of its mind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_460">[460]</span></p>
+
+<p>10. Ah my pitiable body! how dost thou rest here in peace, forgetful of
+thy former delights in the different stages of life; and insensible of
+the thoughts of thy past enjoyments and amusements of yore.</p>
+
+<p>11. O my body! that hast become a dead corpse and dried by sun-beams;
+thou art now become so hideous in thy frame of the skeleton, as to
+frighten me at this change of thy form.</p>
+
+<p>12. I take fright to look upon this body, in which I had taken so much
+pleasure before, and which is now reduced to a skeleton.</p>
+
+<p>13. I see the ants now creeping over that breast of mine, which was
+formerly adorned with necklaces studded with starry gems.</p>
+
+<p>14. Look at the remains of my body, whose appearance of molten gold,
+attracted the hearts of beauteous dames, bearing now a load of dry
+bones only.</p>
+
+<p>15. Behold the stags of the forest flying with fear, at the sight of
+the wide open jaws, and withered skin of my carcass; which with its
+horrid mouth, frightens the timid fawns in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>16. I see the cavity of the belly of the withered corpse, is filled
+with sun shine, as the mind of man is enlightened by knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>17. This dried body of mine, lying flat on the mountain stone,
+resembles the mind of the wise, abased at the sense of its own
+unworthiness.</p>
+
+<p>18. It seems to be emaciating itself like an ascetic, in his supine
+hypnotism on the mountain, dead to the perceptions of colour and sound,
+and of touch and taste, and freed from all its desires and passions.</p>
+
+<p>19. It is freed from the demon of the mind (mental activity), and is
+resting in its felicity without any apprehension of the vicissitudes of
+fate and fortune, or fear of fall.</p>
+
+<p>20. The felicity which attends on the body, upon the calmness of the
+demon of the mind; is not to be had, from possession of the vast
+dominion of the world.</p>
+
+<p>21. See how happily this body is sleeping in this forest, by being
+freed from all its doubts and desires in the world; and by its being
+liberated from the net work of its fancies.</p>
+
+<p>22. The body is disturbed and troubled like a tall tree, by the
+restlessness of the apish mind; and it is hurled down by its excitation
+like a tree uprooted from its bottom.</p>
+
+<p>23. This body being set free from the impulses of the mischievous mind,
+is sleeping in its highest and perfect felicity, and is quite released
+from the jarring broils of the world, clashing like the mingled
+roarings of lions and elephants in their mutual conflict.</p>
+
+<p>24. Every desire is a fever in the bosom, and the group of our errors
+is as the mist of autumn; and there is no release of mankind from
+these, save by the impassionateness of their minds.</p>
+
+<p>25. They have gone over the bounds of worldly enjoyments, who have had
+the high-mindedness, to lay hold on the tranquility of their minds.</p>
+
+<p>26. It is by my good fortune, that I came to find this body of mine,
+resting in these woods without its troublesome mind; and freed from all
+its tribulations and feverish anxieties.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_461">[461]</span></p>
+
+<p>27. Ráma said:—Venerable Sir, that art versed in all knowledge, you
+have already related of Sukra’s passing through many births in
+different shapes; and feeling all their casualties of good and evil.</p>
+
+<p>28. How was it then that he regretted so much for his body begotten by
+Bhrigu; in disregard of all his other bodies; and the pains and
+pleasures which attended upon them?</p>
+
+<p>29. Vasishtha answered:—Ráma! the other bodies of Sukra were merely the
+creations of his imagination; but that of Bhárgava or as the son of
+Bhrigu, was the actual one, as produced by the merit of his pristine
+acts. (Here the gloss is too verbose on the theory of metempsychosis;
+but the literal meaning of the couplet is what is given above).</p>
+
+<p>30. This was the first body with which he was born by the will of his
+Maker, being first formed in the form of subtile air, and then changed
+into the shape of wind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_462">[462]</span></p>
+
+<p>31. This wind entered into heart of Bhrigu in a flux of the vital and
+circulating breaths, and being joined in time with the semen, formed
+the germ of Sukra’s body. (So called from the seed—sukra).</p>
+
+<p>32. The person of Sukra, received the Bráhmanical sacraments, and
+became an associate of the father; till at last it was reduced to the
+form of a skeleton in course of a long time.</p>
+
+<p>33. Because this was the first body which Sukra had obtained from
+Brahmá the creator, it was on this account that he lamented so much for
+it. (Sukra the son of Bhrigu, was the grandson of Manu—the first human
+being, after creation of the world called kalpárambha).</p>
+
+<p>34. Though impassionate and devoid of desire as Sukra was, yet he
+sorrowed for his body, according to the nature of all being born of
+flesh (dehaja). (All flesh is subject to sorrow).</p>
+
+<p>35. This is the way of all flesh, whether it be the body of a wise or
+unwise man (to mourn for its loss). This is usual custom of the
+world, whether the person was mighty or not.</p>
+
+<p>36. They who are acquainted with the course of nature, as also those
+that are ignorant of it as brutes and beasts; are all subject to the
+course of the world, as if they are bound in the net of fate and liable
+to grief and sorrow. (It is not the greatness of a great mind, to be
+insensible of the tender feelings of his nature, but to keep his joys
+and sorrows under proper bounds).</p>
+
+<p>37. The wise as well as the unwise, are on an equal footing with
+respect to their nature and custom. It is only the difference in desire
+that distinguishes the one from the other, as it is the privation of or
+bondage to desires, that is the cause of their liberation or
+enthralment in this world. It is also the great aim that distinguishes
+the great, from the mean-mindedness of the base.</p>
+
+<p>38. As long as there is the body, so long is there the feeling of
+pleasure in pleasure and that of pain in pain. But the mind which is
+unattached to and unaffected by them, feigns to itself the show of
+wisdom. (Unfeelingness is a mere show and not reality).</p>
+
+<p>39. Even great souls are seen to feel happy in pleasure and become
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_463">[463]</span>sorrowful in matters of pain; and show themselves as the wise in their
+outward circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>40. The shadow of the sun, is seen to shake in the water, but not so
+the fixed sun himself; so the wise are moved in worldly matters, though
+they are firm in their faith in God.</p>
+
+<p>41. As the unmoved and fixed sun, seems to move in his shadow on the
+wave, so the wiseman who has got rid of his worldly concerns, still
+behaves himself like the unwise in it.</p>
+
+<p>42. He is free who has the freedom of his mind, although his body is
+enthraled in bondage; but he labours in bondage whose mind is
+bethraled by error, though he is free in his body. (True liberty
+consists in moral and not in bodily freedom).</p>
+
+<p>43. The causes of happiness and misery as also those of liberty and
+bondage, are the feelings of the mind; as the sun-beams and flame of
+fire, are the causes of light.</p>
+
+<p>44. Therefore conform thyself with the custom of the society in thy
+outward conduct; but remain indifferent to all worldly concerns in thy
+inward mind.</p>
+
+<p>45. Remain true to thyself, by giving up thy concerns in the world; but
+continue to discharge all thy duties in this world by the acts of thy
+body. (Keep your soul to yourself, but devote your body to the service
+of the world).</p>
+
+<p>46. Take care of the inward sorrows and bodily diseases, and the
+dangerous whirlpools and pitfals in the course of thy life; and do not
+fall into the blackhole of selfishness (meitatem), which gives the
+soul its greatest anguish.</p>
+
+<p>47. Mind, O lotus-eyed Ráma, that you mix with nothing, nor let
+anything to mix with you; but be of a purely enlightened nature, and
+rest content in thy inward soul.</p>
+
+<p>48. Think in thyself the pure and holy spirit of Brahmá, the universal
+soul and maker of all, the tranquil and increate All, and be happy for
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>49. If you can rescue yourself from the great gloom of egotism, and
+arrive at the state of pure indifference to all objects; you will
+certainly become great in your mind and soul, and be the object of
+universal veneration.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_464">[464]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.<br>
+<span class="small">RESUSCITATION OF SUKRA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Sukra’s Revival at the word of Yama, and his becoming
+the preceptor of Daityas.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Then the god Yama, interrupted the long
+lamentation of Sukra, and addressed him in words, sounding as deep as
+the roaring of a cloud.</p>
+
+<p>2. Yama said:—Now, O Sukra! cast off thy body of the Samangá devotee,
+and enter this dead body in the manner of a prince entering his palace.</p>
+
+<p>3. Thou shalt perform austere devotion with this thy first born body,
+and obtain by virtue of that, the preceptorship of the Daitya tribe.</p>
+
+<p>4. Then at the end of the great kalpa, thou shalt have to shuffle off
+thy mortal coil for ever, as one casts off a faded flower.</p>
+
+<p>5. Having attained the state of living liberation, by merit of thy
+prior acts; thou shalt continue in the preceptorship of the leader of
+the great Asuras for ever.</p>
+
+<p>6. Fare you well, we shall now depart to our desired habitation; know
+for certain that there is nothing desirable to the mind, which it
+cannot accomplish (by perseverance).</p>
+
+<p>7. Saying so, the god vanished from before the weeping father and son,
+and moved amidst the burning sky, like the dispenser of light (sun).</p>
+
+<p>8. After the god had gone to the place of his destination, and gained
+his destined state among the gods, the Bhrigus remained to ruminate on
+the inexplicable and unalterable course of destiny (or divine
+ordinance).</p>
+
+<p>9. Sukra entered into his withered corpse, as the season of spring
+enters into a faded plant, in order to adorn it again with its vernal
+bloom, and its re-springing blossoms.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_465">[465]</span></p>
+
+<p>10. His Bráhmanical body fell down immediately on the ground,
+staggering as when a tree is felled or falls down with its uprooted
+trunk; and it became disfigured in a moment in its face and limbs.</p>
+
+<p>11. The old sage Bhrigu finding the revivification of the dead body of
+his son, sanctified it with propitiatory mantras and sprinkling of
+water, from his sacerdotal water pot (kamandalu).</p>
+
+<p>12. The veins and arteries and all the cells and cavities of the dead
+body, were again supplied with their circulating blood; as the dry beds
+of rivers, are filled again with floods of water in the rainy weather.</p>
+
+<p>13. The body being filled with blood, gave the limbs to bloom; like the
+growth of lotuses in rainy lakes, and the bursting of new shoots and
+buds in vernal plants.</p>
+
+<p>14. Sukra then rose up from the ground, breathing the breath of life,
+like the cloud ascending to the sky by force of the winds.</p>
+
+<p>15. He bowed down to his father, standing in his holy figure before
+him; as the rising cloud clings to, and kisses the foot of the lofty
+mountain.</p>
+
+<p>16. The father then embraced the revived body of his son, and shed a
+flood of his affectionate tears upon him; as the high risen cloud
+washes the mountain top with showers.</p>
+
+<p>17. Bhrigu looked with affection on the new risen old body of his son;
+and smiled to see the resuscitation of the body that was begotten by
+him.</p>
+
+<p>18. He was pleased to know him as the son born of himself; and to find
+his features engrafted in him.</p>
+
+<p>19. Thus the son and sire graced each other by their company, as the
+sun and lotus-lake rejoice to see one another, after the shade of night.</p>
+
+<p>20. They rejoiced at their reunion, like the loving pair of swans at
+the end of the night of their separation; and as the joyous couple of
+peacocks, at the approach of the rainy clouds.</p>
+
+<p>21. The worthy sire and son, sat awhile on the spot, to halt after all
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_466">[466]</span>their toils and troubles were at an end, and then they rose up to
+discharge the duties that were then at hand.</p>
+
+<p>22. They then set fire to the body of the Samangá Bráhman, and reduced
+it to ashes; for who is there among the earth-born mortals, that ought
+to set at naught aught of the customary usages of his country?</p>
+
+<p>23. Afterwards the two devotees Bhrigu and Bhárgava, continued to dwell
+in that forest, like the two luminaries—the sun and moon, in the region
+of the sky.</p>
+
+<p>24. They both continued as the living liberated guides of men, by their
+knowledge of all that was to be known; and preserving the equanimity of
+their minds, and the steadiness of their dispositions, amidst all the
+vicissitudes of time and place (and the changes of their fortune and
+circumstances).</p>
+
+<p>25. In course of time Sukra obtained the preceptorship of the demons,
+and Bhrigu remained in his patriarchal rank and authority among the
+sons of men (mánavas).</p>
+
+<p>26. Thus the son of Bhrigu, who was born as Sukra at first, was
+gradually led away from his holy state by his thought of the heavenly
+nymph, and subjected to various states of life to which he was prone
+(by the bent of his mind and inward proclivities).</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_467">[467]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.<br>
+<span class="small">ATTAINMENT OF THE IDEAL REALM.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Mutual sympathy of pure hearted souls, the
+reciprocities of their affections, and their union with one
+another.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> said:—Tell me sir, why the ideal reflexion of others, is not
+attended with equal result, with that of the son of Bhrigu (though one
+is given to the like reveries as the other).</p>
+
+<p>2. Vasishtha replied:—The reason is, that the body of Sukra issued at
+first from the will of Brahmá, and was born of the pure family of
+Bhrigu, without being vitiated by any other birth (either prior to it
+or of a lower kind).</p>
+
+<p>3. The purity of mind which follows upon subsidence of desires, is
+called its coolness, and the same is known as the unsullied state of
+the soul. (Nirmalátmá).</p>
+
+<p>4. Whatever the man of a pure and contrite spirit, thinks in his mind,
+the same comes to take place immediately; as the turning of the sea
+water turns into the eddy. (Turning over in the mind, turns out into
+being).</p>
+
+<p>5. As the errors of various wanderings, occurred to the mind of Sukra;
+so it is with every body (from his observation of the world), as it is
+instanced in the case of Bhrigu’s son.</p>
+
+<p>6. As the serum contained in the seed, developes itself in the shoots
+and leaves; so the mind evolves in all the forms which are contained
+therein.</p>
+
+<p>7. Whatever forms of things are seen to exist in this world, are all
+false appearances; and so are their disappearances also, (mere
+creations of the mind).</p>
+
+<p>8. 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.</p>
+
+<p>9. As it is our notion of this part of the world, which presents its
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_468">[468]</span>form to our view; so the appearance of thousands of such worlds in the
+mind, is mere ideal; and as false as the show of a magic-lantern.</p>
+
+<p>10. As the sights in our dream, and the images of our imagination, are
+never apart from our minds; and as they cannot show themselves to the
+view of others; such is our erroneous conception of the world (confined
+within ourselves).</p>
+
+<p>11. So are all places and things but imaginary ideas, and show
+themselves as real objects, to the purblind sight of the ignorant only.</p>
+
+<p>12. So also are the ghosts and goblins, demons and devils, but
+imaginary figures of the mind; born in the shallow brain of men, to
+terrify them with their hideous shapes.</p>
+
+<p>13. Thus have we all become, like the dreaming son of Bhrigu; to
+understand the false creations of our imagination, as sober realities.</p>
+
+<p>14. So the creation of the world, and all created things, are situated
+(pictured) in the mind of Brahmá; and make their repeated appearance,
+as the phantoms of a phantasmagoria before him.</p>
+
+<p>15. All things appearing unto us, are as false as these phantoms; and
+they proceed from the mind of Brahmá, as the varieties of trees and
+shrubs, are produced from the same sap of the vernal season. (The one
+is the source of many).</p>
+
+<p>16. Considering in a philosophical light (tatwadarsana), it will be
+found, that it is the will or desire of every body, which is productive
+of the objects of his desire. (Lit. which evolves itself in its
+productions. And as it is with the will of the creator, so is it with
+that of every one).</p>
+
+<p>17. Every body beholds everything in the world, according to the nature
+of the thoughts in his mind, and then perishes with his wrong view of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>18. It is in its ideality, that anything appears as existent, which in
+reality is inexistent, though it is apparent to sight. The existence of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_469">[469]</span>the world, is as that of a lengthened dream; and the visible world is a
+wide spread snare of the mind, like fetters at the feet of an elephant.</p>
+
+<p>(The world is existent in the ideal, but inexistent in its apparent
+real and visual form. It is a network of the mind, like a longspun
+dream, and binds it as fast as fetters at the feet of an elephant).</p>
+
+<p>19. The reality of the world depends upon the reality of mind, which
+causes the world to appear as real. The loss of the one, destroys them
+both; because neither of them can subsist without the other.</p>
+
+<p>20. The pure mind has the true notions of things, as the gem polished
+from its dross, receives the right reflection of every thing, (or)
+reflects the true image of every thing.</p>
+
+<p>21. The mind is purified by its habit of fixed attention to one
+particular object; and it is the mind undisturbed by desires, that
+receives the true light and reflexion of things.</p>
+
+<p>22. As the gilding of gold or any brilliant colour, cannot stand on
+base metal or on a piece of dirty cloth, so it is impossible for the
+vitiated mind, to apply itself intensely to any one particular object.</p>
+
+<p>23. Ráma asked:—Will you tell me sir, in what manner the mind of Sukra,
+received the reflexion of the shadowy world, and its temporaneous
+movement in itself, and how these fluctuations rose and remained in his
+mind?</p>
+
+<p>24. Vasishtha said:—In the same manner as Sukra was impressed with the
+thoughts of the world, from the lectures of his father; so did they
+remain in his mind, as the future peacock resides in the egg.</p>
+
+<p>25. It is also naturally situated in the embryo of the mind, of every
+species of living being, and is gradually evolved from it, in the
+manner of the shoots and sprouts, and leaves and flowers of trees,
+growing out of the seed.</p>
+
+<p>26. Every body sees in his mind, what its heart desires to possess, as
+it is in the case of our prolonged dreams.</p>
+
+<p>27. Know it thus, O Ráma! that a partial view of the world, rises in
+the mind of every body; in the same manner, as it appears in the mind
+in a dream at night.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_470">[470]</span></p>
+
+<p>28. Ráma said:—But tell me sir, whether the thought and the things
+thought of, simultaneously meet themselves in the mind of the thinker;
+or it is the mind only that thinks of the object which is never met
+with by it.</p>
+
+<p>29. Vasishtha replied:—But the sullied mind cannot easily unite with
+the object of its thought, as a dirty and cold piece of iron, cannot
+join with a pure red-hot one, unless it is heated and purified from its
+dross.</p>
+
+<p>30. The pure mind and its pure thoughts, are readily united with one
+another, as the pure waters mix together into one body of the same
+kind, which the muddied water cannot do.</p>
+
+<p>31. Want of desire constitutes the purity of the mind, which is readily
+united with immaterial things of the same nature like itself. The
+purity of the mind conduces to its enlightenment, and these being
+united in one, leads it to the Supreme.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_471">[471]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.<br>
+<span class="small">THE INCARNATION OF THE LIVING SPIRIT</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The Impure state of the soul; and its Purity leading to
+the knowledge of the only One.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—The living souls (Jivátman), residing in the seeds
+of material bodies (bhúta-víja) in all parts of the world, differ from
+one another; and there according to the difference in their knowledge
+of themselves (<i>tanmátra</i>), or self identity with the <i>Unity</i>.</p>
+
+<p>2. 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 (susupti).</p>
+
+<p>3. But living souls addicted to their wishes, view their identity with
+the same; and find themselves born in their desired shapes here below.</p>
+
+<p>4. The <i>tanmátras</i> of the living soul and its proclivities, run in one
+channel to the reservoir of life, and are thickened into one living
+being by their mutual coalition.</p>
+
+<p>5. Some of them are situated apart from one another, and are dissolved
+also separately; and some are joined together, and are born as two
+<i>gunja</i> fruits growing together.</p>
+
+<p>6. The world consisting of thousands of orbs like <i>gunja</i> fruits,
+contains the assemblage of atoms on atoms; and these unconnected with
+one another, form the great garden of God.</p>
+
+<p>7. These being joined also with one another, became dense and thick;
+and remain in the same place, where it has grown.</p>
+
+<p>8. The different states of the mind, ensuing upon the absence of its
+present objects under its province, brings on a change in its
+constitution, which is called its regeneration (in a new life).</p>
+
+<p>(Thus the change of the mind under the change of circumstances, is
+reckoned its transformation to a different being).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_472">[472]</span></p>
+
+<p>9. Thus every regeneration of the mind in a new life, is accompanied
+with its concomitant desires, and their results. The new life is
+attended with its proper body, unless the mind has lost its
+reminiscence.</p>
+
+<p>10. 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.</p>
+
+<p>11. The souls of all living beings are subject to the three states of
+waking, dreaming, and sound sleep, which are caused by the mind and not
+by the body.</p>
+
+<p>12. Thus the soul passing under the triple condition in its living
+state, does not give rise to the body, as the sea-water gives rise to
+the waves. (The body is caused by the mind, and not by the soul which
+has no connection with it).</p>
+
+<p>13. The living soul having attained its intellectual state, and the
+rest of the conditions of sound sleep (susupti), is awakened to the
+knowledge of itself, and is released from its rebirth; while the
+ignorant soul is subjected to be born again.</p>
+
+<p>14. And though the knowing and unknowing souls attain the state of
+<i>susupti</i>, and resemble each other in kind; yet the unknowing <i>susupta</i>
+soul, which is not awakened to the knowledge of its spirituality, is
+doomed to be reborn in the mortal world.</p>
+
+<p>15. 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).</p>
+
+<p>16. Among these repeated births, the subordinate regenerations resemble
+the many folded coatings of a plantain tree; and the spirit of Brahmá
+is contiguous to, and pervades the whole, like the lofty leaves of the
+same tree.</p>
+
+<p>17. The influence of the Divine spirit, is as cool as the cooling shade
+of a plantain arbour. It is of its own nature; and is as unchangeable
+as the pith of the plantain tree, notwithstanding the changes in all
+its outer coats and coverings.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_473">[473]</span></p>
+
+<p>18. There is no difference or diversity in the nature of Brahmá the
+creator, in his repeated and manifold creations of worlds; for he being
+the seed of the world, shoots forth by his moisture into the form of
+the expanded tree of the world, and becomes the same seed again.</p>
+
+<p>19. So Brahmá taking the form of the mind, becomes the same Brahmá by
+reminiscence of his mind; as the sap of the soil makes the seed to
+bring forth the fruit, which reproduces the like seed.</p>
+
+<p>20. So the productive seed proceeding from Brahmá, displays itself in
+the form of the world. But as no body can say what is the cause of the
+sap in the seed, so no one can tell why the spirit of God, teems with
+productive seed (of Brahmá) in it.</p>
+
+<p>21. So no one should inquire into the cause of Brahmá; because his
+nature being inscrutable and undefinable, it is improper to say him
+this or the other.</p>
+
+<p>22. He must not attribute causality to what is not the cause, nor
+impute the causation of material bodies to the immaterial spirit of
+God, that is the prime and supreme cause of all (as the Prototype). We
+must reason rightly regarding what is certain truth, and not argue
+falsely about what transcends our knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>23. The seed casts off its seedy form, and assumes the shape of the
+fruit; but Brahmá (the seed of all) contains the fruit (of the
+universe) in his bosom, without laying aside the seed.</p>
+
+<p>24. The seed of the fruit bears a material form, but Brahmá—the
+universal seed, has no form at all; therefore it is improper to compare
+the visible seed, with the invisible Brahmá; who is beyond all
+comparison.</p>
+
+<p>25. Brahmá evolves himself in his creation and does not produce the
+world like the fruit from the seed; therefore know the world as the
+vacuous heart of Brahmá, and is neither born nor unborn of itself.</p>
+
+<p>26. The viewer viewing the view, is unable to see himself (his inward
+soul) because his consciousness being engrossed by external objects, is
+disabled from looking into itself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_474">[474]</span></p>
+
+<p>27. Of what avail is sagacity to one, whose mind labours under the
+error of water in a mirage; and what power has the mirage over a mind,
+which is possessed of its sagacity?</p>
+
+<p>28. As the looker on the clear sky does not see every part of it, and
+as the eye that looks on all others does not see itself; so we see
+everything about us besides ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>29. As the looker on the clear sky, does not see what is above the
+skies; so we see ourselves and others as material beings; but cannot
+see the inward part of the immaterial soul, as the wise men do.</p>
+
+<p>30. Brahmá who is as clear as the firmament, cannot be perceived by all
+our endeavours; because the sight of the sky as a visible thing, cannot
+give us an insight into the invisible Brahmá; (which fills all space
+with his presence).</p>
+
+<p>31. Such a sight cannot present itself to us, unless we can see the
+true form of God; but it is far from being visible to the beholder, as
+the sight of subtilest things.</p>
+
+<p>32. We see the outward sight because we cannot see the beholder of the
+sight (<i>i.e.</i> God himself who beholds his works). The beholder (God) is
+only the existent being, and the visibles are all nothing.</p>
+
+<p>33. 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. Because whatever the Almighty King proposes to do, he instantly
+forms their notions, and becomes the same himself.</p>
+
+<p>34. As the sweet saccharine juice of the sugarcane, thickens itself
+into the form of the sugarcandy; so the will of God, becomes compact in
+the solid body of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>35. As the moisture of the ground and of the vernal season, becomes
+incorporated in vegetable life, bringing forth the fruits and flowers;
+so the energy of the Divine Intellect, turns itself into the living
+spirit; which shortly appears in a corporeal form (of the body and its
+limbs).</p>
+
+<p>36. As every thing is beheld in our sight, without being separated from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_475">[475]</span>its idea in the mind; so the inward notion, shows itself in the shape
+of the visible object, like the vision in a dream, which is but a
+representation of the thoughts entertained in our minds. (<i>i.e.</i> The
+thought is the archetype of the appearance).</p>
+
+<p>37. The ideas of self and others, are as granules in the mind, and are
+like the grains of salt, which are produced in the briny grounds from
+moisture of the earth (<i>i.e.</i> saline particles, produced of terrene and
+marine serosity). So the multitudes of thoughts in the mind, are
+exactly as the globules of salt or sand on the seashore: (almost
+infinite in their number).</p>
+
+<p>38. As the serum of the earth appears in various shapes (of minerals
+and vegetables); so the sap of the intellect, produces the infinity of
+ideas and thoughts, growing as trees in the wilderness of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>39. These trees again shoot forth in branches and leaves, of which
+there is no end; and so is every other world like a forest, supplying
+its sap to innumerable plants, like the thoughts in the mind.</p>
+
+<p>40. The intellect perceives in itself the existence of everything, as
+distinctly as the inherent power of the living soul exhibits itself in
+creation. (The power of the soul is its reminiscence (sanskára) of the
+past, which reproduces and presents the former impressions in its
+subsequent states of birth).</p>
+
+<p>41. Every one’s intellect, perceives the existence of the world, in the
+same manner as his living soul, happens to meet with every thing, as
+present before it, by virtue of its former acts, and their reminiscence
+stampt in it.<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>42. 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.</p>
+
+<p>43. You must observe with your keensightedness and well discerning
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_476">[476]</span>mind, in order to look into the different states and thoughts of
+others. (Read the minds in their outward look and indications).</p>
+
+<p>44. There are thousands of worlds like atoms of earth, contained in the
+mind; as in the ample space of the sky and in the particles of water;
+and these reside in those atoms like oil in the mustard seeds.</p>
+
+<p>45. When the mind becomes perfect, it comes to be the living being; and
+the intellect being purified, becomes all pervasive. Hence is the union
+of the intellect with the living spirit.</p>
+
+<p>46. The self-entity of the lotus-born Brahmá and all other living
+beings, is only their self-deception; and the sense of the existence of
+the world, is as a protracted dream rising and setting in the mind.</p>
+
+<p>47. Some beings pass into successive states of existence, as a man
+passes from one dream to another; and they think themselves to be
+firmly established in them, as one supposes to be settled in some
+house, appearing to him in his dream.</p>
+
+<p>48. Whatever the intellect dwells upon at any time or place, it
+immediately sees the same appearing therein before it; as anything
+which is seen in dream, appears to be true to the dreamer all that time.</p>
+
+<p>49. The atom of the intellect, contains the particles of all our
+notions; as the seed-vessel contains the farinaceous atoms of the
+future fruits and flowers, and branches and leaves (of very large
+trees).</p>
+
+<p>50. 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.</p>
+
+<p>51. So the intellect conceives within itself and of its own particles,
+many other atomic germs, under the influence of particular times and
+places and actions and circumstances; which cannot be extraneous from
+itself. (<i>i.e.</i> All notions are the making of the mind, and not
+impressions from without).</p>
+
+<p>52. It is this particle of the intellect which displays the creation,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_477">[477]</span>like the vision of a dream before it; and it is this conception, that
+led the gods Brahmá and others to the idea of their visible bodies, as
+it makes the little insects to think of their own bodies. (<i>i.e.</i> The
+minds of all display the outer world subjectively to all beings).</p>
+
+<p>53. All that is displayed in this (outer) world, is in reality nothing
+at all; and yet do these living beings, though possessing the particles
+of intellect in them, erroneously conceive the duality of an extraneous
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>54. Some intellects (of particular persons), display themselves in
+their bodies, and derive the pleasure of their consciousness, through
+the medium of their eyes and external organs. (<i>i.e.</i> Some men believe
+their bodily senses as the intellect, and no mind besides).</p>
+
+<p>55. Others look on outward objects as receptacles of the intellect,
+from the belief that the all pervasive, inseparable and imperishable
+intellect (soul), must abide in all and every one of them. (It is the
+intellect which contains the material world, and not this the other, as
+many think omnipresence to mean).</p>
+
+<p>56. Some men view the whole gross world within the body, instead of the
+all pervading intellect of Brahmá; as Viswarúpa, and these being
+hardened by long habit of thinking so, are plunged in the gulph of
+error. (These are the materialists and the Tántrika microcosmists).</p>
+
+<p>57. 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.</p>
+
+<p>58. Some persons rely on the union of the body and soul, and others
+relying in the soul alone, are placed beyond the reach of error; while
+there are many, who rely on their consciousness alone, and shine
+thereby as rational beings. (<i>The Cartesians and conscientionalists</i>).</p>
+
+<p>59. They that perceive in themselves the errors of other people, are to
+be considered as under the influence of false dreams in their sleep
+(but mind not themselves, that labour under the error as the dreamer).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_478">[478]</span></p>
+
+<p>60. God being the all pervading spirit of nature, is verily seen in the
+spirit of every body; and as he is ubiquitous, his omnipresence is
+present in every thing in all places. (This doctrine is the source of
+pantheism, and gives rise to universal idolatry, which adores the
+presiding spirit of the idol, and not the idol itself).</p>
+
+<p>61. God that shines is the living soul of every body, resides also in
+the soul of that soul, as also in all the living souls and mind which
+are contained within the body of another. (Such as in living beings
+born inside the body of another).</p>
+
+<p>62. One living being in born in another, and that again within another,
+like the coatings of plantain trees, which grow one under the other
+over the inmost pith. (So God is the inmost marrow of all external
+lives and souls, which are as crusts of the same).</p>
+
+<p>63. By reverting the cognition of visibles, to the recognition of their
+essence (tanmátra) in the invisible plenum, we get rid of our error of
+the reality of the formal world, as we do of the ornament in the
+material gold. (<i>i.e.</i> The substances of gold is the material cause of
+the formal and changeable jewels). Gloss. The knowledge of the
+consequent (parák) and antecedent (pratyak), must blend in that of the
+sameness (samáni) of both (yugupat), the internal (antar) and external
+(báhya) (existences).</p>
+
+<p>64. He who does not inquire into the question “who he is” and “what is
+the world” beside himself; is not liberated in his inward soul, and
+suffers under the continuous fever of an erroneous life.</p>
+
+<p>65. He is successful in his inquiry, who by his good understanding,
+comes to know how to curb his worldly avarice day by day.</p>
+
+<p>66. As proper regimen is the best medicine to secure the health of the
+body; so is the habit of keeping the organs of sense under control, the
+only means of edifying the understanding.</p>
+
+<p>67. He who is discoursive in his words, and not discerning in his mind,
+is like a blazing fire in a picture (which lightens no body). No one
+can be wise until he gets rid of his false wit.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_479">[479]</span></p>
+
+<p>68. As the perception of air, comes by the feeling and not by words of
+the mouth; so wisdom proceeds from the curtailing of desires (and not
+by lengthy or loud vociferation).</p>
+
+<p>69. As the ambrosia in the painting is no ambrosial food, nor the fire
+in a picture is burning flame; so a beauty in a drawing is no beauteous
+maid, and wisdom in words is want of wisdom only.</p>
+
+<p>70. Wisdom serves at first to weaken our passions and enmity, and then
+uproot them at once, and at last it lessens our desires and endeavours,
+and gives an appearance of holiness to its possessor.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_480">[480]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.<br>
+<span class="small">INVESTIGATION INTO THE NATURE OF THE LIVING SOUL.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The quadruple conditions of the soul in its waking,
+dreaming, sound sleep and its anaesthesia.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Brahmá is the seed of life, and remains as empty
+air everywhere. Hence there are many kinds of living beings, situated
+in the world within the womb of universal Life. (God is the light and
+life of all we see).</p>
+
+<p>2. All living beings composed of the dense intellect and soul, contain
+other living animals under one another, like the manifold crusts of the
+plantain tree, and the insects contained in the womb of earth. (So also
+the parasite plants and worms growing upon the bodies of trees and
+animals).</p>
+
+<p>3. The worms and insects, that grow out of the dirt and scum of earth
+and water in the hot season, and appear filthy to our sight; are
+nevertheless full of the particles of intellect, becoming to them as
+living beings. (Even the dirty worms, are full with the holy spirit of
+god).</p>
+
+<p>4. According as living beings strive for their progress, so they
+prosper in their lives, agreeably to the various scope of their
+thoughts and actions.</p>
+
+<p>5. The worshippers of gods, get to the region of gods, and those of
+Yakshas meet at the place of Yakshas, and the adorers of Brahmá ascend
+to Brahmaloka. Resort therefore to what is best and the greatest refuge.</p>
+
+<p>6. So the son of Bhrigu, obtained his liberation at last by the purity
+of his conscience; though he was enslaved of his own nature to the
+visibles, at his first sight of them (as of the Apsara and others).</p>
+
+<p>7. The child that is born on earth with the purity of its soul at
+first, becomes afterwards of the same nature, as the education he gets
+herein, and not otherwise.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_481">[481]</span></p>
+
+<p>8. Ráma said:—Please sir, tell me the difference of the states of
+waking and dreaming, and what are the states of waking watchfulness,
+waking dream and waking delusion.</p>
+
+<p>9. Vasishtha answered:—The waking state is that wherein we have a sure
+reliance; and that is called dreaming, in which we place no certain
+reliance and are believed to be untrue.</p>
+
+<p>10. That which is seen for a moment (as true), and as it were in the
+waking state, is called a dream; but if the object is seen at a
+distance of time and place, it is said to be waking dream or dreaming
+wakefulness.</p>
+
+<p>11. 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.</p>
+
+<p>12. Dreaming also appears as waking, as long as it lasts; but waking
+seems as dreaming, when the objects of its vision are not lasting.</p>
+
+<p>13. A dream which is understood as an occurrence of the waking state,
+is believed as waking, (as the prolonged dream of Harish Chandra); but
+the inward consciousness of dreaming makes it a dream.</p>
+
+<p>14. As long as one knows anything to be lasting before him, so long he
+believes himself to be waking, but no sooner is it lost to him, than he
+thinks himself to have been dreaming of it.</p>
+
+<p>15. Hear now how it is. There is the principle of life in the body,
+which causes it to live; this vital element is an electric force, which
+is termed the life.</p>
+
+<p>16. When the body has its activity with the powers of the mind, speech
+and the other members of action, it is to be understood, that its vital
+element is put to motion by the vital breath which it breathes.</p>
+
+<p>17. This breath circulating through out 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.</p>
+
+<p>18. The mind circulates about the outer world, through the passages of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_482">[482]</span>sight and other organs; and sees within itself the forms of many
+mutable shapes and figures.</p>
+
+<p>19. As long as these forms, remain permanent in the mind, it is called
+the waking state. So far have I told you about the cause of waking; now
+hear me expound to you the laws of sleep and dreaming.</p>
+
+<p>20. When the body is weary with action of its limbs, mind or speech,
+the living element then becomes still, and remains in its composure,
+with the calm and quiet soul residing within the body.</p>
+
+<p>21. The internal actions of the body and mind being quieted, and the
+motion of the heart being at rest, the living principle becomes as
+still, as the flame of a lamp unshaken by the wind.</p>
+
+<p>22. The vital power ceases to exert itself in the members of the body,
+and to keep the consciousness awake. The senses of sight and others do
+not act upon their organs, nor receive the sensations from without.</p>
+
+<p>23. Life lies latent in the inner heart, as the liquid oil resides in
+the sesamum seed; it lies as dormant in the interior part, as frigidity
+within the frost, and fluidity in the clarified butter.</p>
+
+<p>24. 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.</p>
+
+<p>25. One feeling the impassibility of his mind, and dealing
+unconcernedly with every one, and reaching to the fourth stage of
+consciousness, beyond the three states of waking, dreaming and
+sleeping, is said to be <i>turíya</i> or deadened in life.</p>
+
+<p>26. When the vital principle comes again to action, after the enjoyment
+of its sound sleep, either in this or the other world (<i>i.e.</i> when it
+is restored to or reborn in life); it takes the name of the living
+element or the mind or self-consciousness (in the living body).</p>
+
+<p>27. This principle of life and thought, sees the multitudinous worlds
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_483">[483]</span>situated with all their vicissitudes within itself, as the large tree
+and all its parts and productions, are observed to be contained within
+the seed. (This is the picture of life in its dreaming state).</p>
+
+<p>28. When the element of life is put to slight motion, by the breeze of
+the vital breath, it becomes conscious of its self-existence as “I am”;
+but the motion being accelerated, it finds itself to be flying in the
+air.</p>
+
+<p>29. When it is immerged in the water (phlegm) of the body: it gets the
+feeling of humidity in itself, as a flower perceives its own fragrance.</p>
+
+<p>30. When it is assailed by the internal bile, it has then the feeling
+of its inward heat, and sees all outward objects with its splenetic
+humour.</p>
+
+<p>31. When it is full of blood, it perceives a fiery redness in itself,
+like that of a rubicund rock, or as the crimson red of the setting sun
+in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>32. 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.</p>
+
+<p>33. When the organs are not besieged by external objects, which disturb
+the inward senses of the mind; it indulges itself in the reflexion of
+many things, which is called its dreaming state.</p>
+
+<p>34. But when the organs are besieged by outward objects, and the mind
+is moved by flatulence (বাযু váyu), to their sight and
+perception, it is called the state of waking.</p>
+
+<p>35. Now O great-minded Ráma! you have learnt the inward process of your
+mind; but there is no reality in them nor in this existent world, which
+is subject to the evils of death, desire and destruction.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_484">[484]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.<br>
+<span class="small">DESCRIPTION OF THE MIND.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The delusion of the world and reliance in the true
+Spirit, which is the same with the heart, soul and mind.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—Now Ráma! I have told you all this, in order to explain
+the nature of the mind to you, and for no other reason.</p>
+
+<p>2. Whatever the mind often thinks upon with a strong conviction of its
+reality, it immediately assumes that form, as the iron-ball becomes
+ignited by its contact with fire.</p>
+
+<p>3. Therefore the convictions of being or not being, and of receiving or
+rejecting of a thing, depend upon the imagination of the mind; they are
+neither true nor untrue, but are mere fluctuations of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>4. The mind is the cause of error, and it is the mind which is the
+framer of the world. The mind also stretches itself in the form of the
+universe (Viswarúpa) in its gross state. (The first is the human mind,
+second the mind of Brahmá, and the third is the mind of Virát).</p>
+
+<p>5. The mind is styled the <i>purusha</i> or regent of the body, which being
+brought under subjection, and directed in the right course, is
+productive of all prosperity (or supernatural powers).</p>
+
+<p>6. If the body were the <i>purusha</i>, how could the highminded Sukra, pass
+into various forms in his very many transmigrations (as mentioned
+before)?</p>
+
+<p>7. Therefore the mind (<i>chitta</i>) is the <i>purusha</i> or regent of the
+body, which is rendered sensible (chetya) by it: Whatever form the mind
+assumes to itself, it undoubtedly becomes the same.</p>
+
+<p>8. So inquire into what is great, devoid of attributes and error, and
+which is easily attainable by every body. Be diligent in your inquiry,
+and you will surely succeed to obtain the same.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_485">[485]</span></p>
+
+<p>9. Hence whatever is seated in the mind, the same comes to pass on the
+body; but what is done by the body never affects the mind. Therefore, O
+fortunate Ráma! apply your mind to truth, and shun whatever is untrue.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_486">[486]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.<br>
+<span class="small">ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIND.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Inquiry into the cause of the fulness of the mind.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> said:—Venerable sir! that art acquainted with the mysteries of all
+things, I have a great doubt swelling in my breast like a huge surge of
+the sea.</p>
+
+<p>2. How is it sir, that any foulness could attach to the mind, when it
+is situated in the eternal purity of the infinite Spirit, which is
+unbounded by time and space.</p>
+
+<p>3. Again as there is nothing, nor was there ever, nor anything ever to
+be at any time, or place, beside the entity of the Holy one, how and
+whence could this foulness come in Him?</p>
+
+<p>4. Vasishtha answered: Well said Ráma! I see your understanding
+approaching to the way of your liberation, and exhaling the sweetness
+of the blossoms of the garden of paradise (Nandana).</p>
+
+<p>5. I see your understanding is capable of judging both <i>a priori</i> and
+<i>a posteriori</i>, and is likely to attain that <i>acme</i> which was gained by
+the gods, Sankara and others.</p>
+
+<p>6. It is not now the proper time and place for you to propose this
+question, it should be adduced when I would come to the conclusion of
+the subject.</p>
+
+<p>7. This question should be asked by you when I come to the conclusion,
+and it will be demonstrated to you as clearly as the situation of a
+place in a map or globe, placed in the palm of your hand (hastámalaka).</p>
+
+<p>8. This question of yours will be most suitable at the end, as the
+sounds of the peacock and swan, are best suited to the rainy season and
+autumn.</p>
+
+<p>9. The blueness of the sky, is pleasant to look upon at the end of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_487">[487]</span>rainy weather; but it is odd to speak of it during the rains. (So the
+question must have its proper place and occasion).</p>
+
+<p>10. It is best to investigate into the mind by the nature of its acts
+and operations, which tend to be the causes of the repeated births of
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p>11. It is by its nature, that the mind has its power of thinking, and
+leading all the organs and members to their several actions, as it is
+ascertained by the seekers of salvation.</p>
+
+<p>12. Men learned in the sástras and eloquent in speech, have given
+various appellations to the mind, in different systems of philosophy,
+according to its various perceptive faculties and different functions
+and operations in the body. (Gloss. It is called the mind (<i>mana</i>) from
+its power of minding (<i>manana</i>); it is termed internal sight (pasyanti)
+from its seeing inwardly; it is the ear (<i>srotra</i>) from its
+hearing—<i>sravana</i> from within, and so on).</p>
+
+<p>13. Whatever nature the mind assumes by the fickleness of its thoughts,
+it receives the same name and nature for itself, as the same fleeting
+air receives from its exhaling of different odours.</p>
+
+<p>14. So the mind delights itself with the thoughts of its desired
+objects, and assimilating itself into their natures.</p>
+
+<p>15. It receives the same form in which it delights, and which it
+assumes to itself in its imagination.</p>
+
+<p>16. The body being subject to the mind, is moulded in the same form of
+the mind; just as the wind is perfumed by the odour of the flowerbed,
+through which it passes (and the fragrance it carries).</p>
+
+<p>17. The inward senses being excited, actuate the outward organs of
+sense in their own ways, as the exciting motion of the winds, drives
+the dust of the earth before their course.</p>
+
+<p>18. The mind exerts its powers in the action of the external organs in
+the performance of their several functions; just as the flying winds
+drive the dust in different directions.</p>
+
+<p>19. Such are the acts of the mind which is said to be the root of
+action, and these combine together as inseparably as the flower and its
+fragrance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_488">[488]</span></p>
+
+<p>20. Whatever nature the mind adopts to itself by its wonted habit, the
+same shoots forth in the form of its two kinds of motion (the will and
+action).</p>
+
+<p>21. And according as the mind does its action, and brings about the
+result by its assiduity, in like manner does it enjoy the fruition
+thereof, and enslaves itself to the enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>22. It understands that as its right course, which agrees well with its
+temperament; and knows for certain that there is no other way to its
+real good (beside its wonted course).</p>
+
+<p>23. Minds of different casts follow different pursuits, according to
+their particular proclivities; and employ themselves in the acquisition
+of wealth and virtues, desired objects and liberation according to
+their best choice.</p>
+
+<p>24. The mind is ascertained by the Kápila (Sánkhya) philosophers, as a
+pure substance, like the immaterial intellect (under the title of
+<i>pradhána</i>); and this view of it is adopted in their system or sástra
+(in opposition to the doctrine of Vedánta).</p>
+
+<p>25. These men relying on the error of their own hypothesis, inculcate
+their supposed view of the mind to others, as the only light to guide
+them in the way of their salvation.</p>
+
+<p>26. But the professors of Vedánta doctrines, acknowledge the mind as
+Brahmá himself; and preach peace and self-control, as the only means of
+the attainment of liberation.</p>
+
+<p>27. But that there is no other way to the salvation of the supposed
+mind (than by these means), is an <i>ipse dixit</i> of the Vedánta, and an
+assumed dogma (<i>kalpitániyama</i>) as those of other schools.</p>
+
+<p>28. The Vijnánavádi philosophers also, have ascertained and upheld
+peace and self-government as the leaders to liberation, but this too is
+an effusion of their erroneous understandings.</p>
+
+<p>29. Thus all sects give out their own views, in the false rules they
+have adopted for the salvation of their supposed minds; and assert that
+there is no other way to it, beside what is laid down by them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_489">[489]</span></p>
+
+<p>30. So the Arhatas (Buddhists) and the other sectarians, have proposed
+a variety of fictitious methods for the liberation of the mind, of
+their arbitrary will in their respective sástras.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>31. The arbitrary rules of the learned, and those unsupported by the
+srutis, are as numerous and varying from one another, as the bubbles of
+clear water (but are never lasting like the dicta of the holy writ).</p>
+
+<p>32. Know mighty Ráma, the mind to be the source of all these rules and
+methods, as the sea is the source of every kind of gem (lying hid in
+its bosom).</p>
+
+<p>33. There is no innate sweetness in the sugarcane nor bitterness in the
+<i>nimba</i>, both of which are sucked by insects; nor is there any heat or
+cold inherent in the sun or moon (as both of them are peopled by gods
+and spirits). It is the intrinsic habit of the mind that makes the
+difference.</p>
+
+<p>34. Those that want to enjoy the unadulterated happiness of their
+souls, should habituate their minds to assimilate themselves to that
+happy state, and they are sure to have the same.</p>
+
+<p>35. The mind having fled from the sphere of the phenomenal world,
+becomes exempt from all its pleasure and pain, like the fledged bird
+flying in the air by casting its shell and leaving its cage below.</p>
+
+<p>36. O sinless Ráma! Cherish no fondness for the phenomenal world, which
+is an unreal illusion, full of fear and unholiness, and is stretched
+out to ensnare the mind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_490">[490]</span></p>
+
+<p>37. The wise have styled our consciousness of the world as a magic
+scene (máyá), an appearance of ignorance—avidyá, a mere thought
+(bhávaná), and the cause and effect of our acts.</p>
+
+<p>38. Know that it is the delusive mind, which stretches the visible
+world before thee, rub it off therefore as dirty mud from the mind.</p>
+
+<p>39. This visible appearance which naturally appears before thee in the
+form of the world, is called the production of ignorance by the wise.</p>
+
+<p>40. Men being deluded by it, are at a loss to know their real good, as
+the blinded eye is incapable to perceive the brightness of the day.</p>
+
+<p>41. It is the contemplation of objects (sankalpa), that presents the
+phenomena to our view, like arbors in the empty sky; and it is their
+incogitancy (asankalpana), which effaces their images from the inward
+and outward sights.</p>
+
+<p>42. It is the abstract meditation of the thoughtful yogi, that weakens
+the outward impressions, and by dissociating the soul from all external
+things, keeps it steady and sedate in itself.</p>
+
+<p>43. The mind being inclined to the right view of things, by its
+abstraction from the unreal sights, produces the clearness of the
+understanding, and an insouciant tranquility of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>44. The mind that is regardless of realities as well as of unrealities
+(that is of its inward and outward reflections); and is insensible of
+pleasure and plain, feels in itself the delight of its singleness or
+unity.</p>
+
+<p>45. Application of the mind to unworthy thoughts, and to the internal
+or external sights of things, debars the soul from tasting the sweets
+of its solity (apart from other considerations).</p>
+
+<p>46. The mind that is subject to its endless desires, is like the clear
+firmament obscured by the clouds; and ranges in the maze of doubt
+between truth and untruth, as of supposing the rope for the serpent.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_491">[491]</span></p>
+
+<p>47. Man obstructs to himself the sight of the clear firmament of his
+intellect, by the mist of his doubts; but he thinks it as unobstructed
+by his error, and indulges the fancies of his imagination which tends
+the more to his error.</p>
+
+<p>48. He takes the true, incorruptible and supreme Brahmá in a different
+light (of base and corruptible things), as one mistakes one thing for
+another in the dark or in his error.</p>
+
+<p>49. Having got rid of his false imagination, man comes to the knowledge
+of true God and his happiness, as one freed from his false apprehension
+of a tiger in a copse, is set at rest with himself.</p>
+
+<p>50. The bugbear of one’s (soul’s) imprisonment in the vacuity (cavity)
+of the body, is dispersed by his insight into it, as the fear of a lion
+lurking in the jungle, is removed upon finding no such thing therein.</p>
+
+<p>51. So on looking deeply, you will find no bondage in the world; the
+notions that this is the world and this is myself, are only errors of
+the mind.</p>
+
+<p>52. It is flight of fancy, that fills the mind with chimeras of good
+and evil; just as the shade of evening, presents spectres of <i>vetála</i>
+ghosts to little children.</p>
+
+<p>53. Our fancies alight on us at one time, and depart at another, and
+assume different forms at will; just as our consorts act the part of
+wives in our youth, and of nurses in our old age.</p>
+
+<p>54. She acts the part of a house wife in her management of household
+affairs, and taken as a mistress, she embraces us in her bosom (or She
+hangs on us by the neck).</p>
+
+<p>55. And like an actress, the mind forgets to display its parts, when it
+plays another, so every body is betaken by the thoughts he has in his
+head, in neglect of others which are absent.</p>
+
+<p>56. The ignorant do not perceive the selfsame unity, in all things he
+beholds in the world; but they view every thing in the light, as they
+have its idea imprinted in their minds.</p>
+
+<p>57. They meet also with the results of the forms, which they have in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_492">[492]</span>view for the time; though they are not in reality what they seem to be,
+nor are they entirely false (being the idealities of their mind).</p>
+
+<p>58. Man views every thing in the same manner as he thinks it in
+himself; as his fancy of an elephant in the sky, makes him view the
+elephants in clouds.</p>
+
+<p>59. He believes these elephants pursuing their mates, in his thought;
+so it is the thought, that gives the outward forms of things.</p>
+
+<p>60. Ráma! repel your drowsiness, and behold the supreme soul in thy
+soul; and be as a bright gem by repelling the shadows of all external
+things.</p>
+
+<p>61. It is impossible, O Ráma, that one so enlightened as thyself, will
+receive the reflexion of the world, as dull matter like others (rather
+than a reflexion of the Spirit).</p>
+
+<p>62. Being certain of its immateriality, never taint thy mind with its
+outward colouring, or the knowledge of its reality; but know it as no
+way distinct from the Supreme Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>63. Mind in thyself the Being that is without beginning or end, and
+meditate on the Spirit in Spirit. Do not let the reflexions of thy
+mind, imbue their tinge in the pure crystal of thy soul.</p>
+
+<p>64. Be on thy guard, as never to allow the reflexions of your mind, to
+taint the clear crystal of thy soul; but remain unmindful of the
+visibles, and regardless of all worldly desires (which are causes of
+misery and repeated births and deaths).</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_493">[493]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.<br>
+<span class="small">RESTING IN SUPREME FELICITY.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Remission of the sins of the enlightened, and their
+sight of the pure Spirit.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Men of sound judgment, are freed from mental
+perturbation, and are perfected in their mastery over themselves, by
+restraining the flight of the mind, and fastening it to its inward
+cogitation. (Gloss. The Yogi given to meditation is master of his soul
+and mind).</p>
+
+<p>2. They swerve from the sight of the visibles as unworthy of their
+notice, and seek after the knowledge of their chief good; they behold
+the all-seeing God in their mental and external sights, and have no
+perception of the unintelligent perceptibles. (<i>i.e.</i> They perceive the
+noumenon only in the phenomenon).</p>
+
+<p>3. They are dormant amidst the thick gloom of error, overspreading the
+mazy paths of life, and are awake under the transcendent light (of
+divine knowledge), requiring the vigilance of the living.</p>
+
+<p>4. They are utterly indifferent to the sweet pleasures of this life, as
+also to the cheerless prospects of future enjoyments (in the next
+world). (The Yogi is equally averse to the present and prospective
+pleasures of both worlds).</p>
+
+<p>5. They are mixed (like salt) with the water of spiritual (divine)
+unity, and in the boundless ocean of omnipresence; and they melt away
+as the ice in a river, by their rigorous austerities, resembling the
+vigorous heat of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>6. All their restless desires and passions are set to rest, at the
+disappearance of their ignorance; as the turbulent waves of rivers
+subside of themselves, in the absence of stormy clouds.</p>
+
+<p>7. The net of desires, which ensnares men as birds in their traps, is
+cut asunder by a spirit of dispassionateness; as the meshes of a net,
+are torn into twain, by the teeth of a mouse.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_494">[494]</span></p>
+
+<p>8. As the seeds of <i>kata</i> fruits, serve to purify the foul water; so
+doth philosophy tend to expurgate human nature, from all its errors.</p>
+
+<p>9. The mind that is freed from passions, from worldly connections and
+contentions, and from dependance on any one (person or thing); is
+liberated also from the bonds of ignorance and error, as a bird is set
+free from its imprisoning cage. (True freedom is the freedom from all
+cares, concerns and connections, which are but bondages of the soul).</p>
+
+<p>10. When the disturbances of doubts are settled, and the wandering of
+curiosity is over, it is then that the fullmoon of internal fulness,
+sheds its lustre over the mind.</p>
+
+<p>11. As the mind has its true magnanimity, after its setting from the
+height of its dignity and highmindedness, so it begins to have its
+equanimity in a state, resembling the calmness of the sea after the
+storm.</p>
+
+<p>12. As long as the shadow of solicitude, hangs over the mind, it is
+darkened and stupified and broken in the heart, until the sun of
+inappetency rises to dispel its gloom.</p>
+
+<p>13. It is by the sunshine of the intellect, that the lotus-bed of
+intelligence, shines in its pure lustre; and unfolds the foliage of its
+virtues before the dawning light above it.</p>
+
+<p>14. Intelligence is charmer of hearts and delighter of all in the
+world; it is fostered by the quality of goodness (sattwaguna), as the
+moon becomes full by her increasing digits.</p>
+
+<p>15. What more shall I say on this subject, than that he who knows the
+knowable (God), has his mind expanded as the sphere of heaven, which
+has no beginning nor end.</p>
+
+<p>16. The mind which is enlightened by reasoning, is as exalted in its
+nature, as to take pity even on the great gods Hari, Hara, Brahmá, and
+Indra (on account of their incessant avocations in the management of
+the world).</p>
+
+<p>17. They are far from tasting the happiness of the egoistic yogis, who
+are continually seeking to quench their thirst (after pleasure), from
+the waters appearing in the mirage, as the parching deer (running to
+them by mistake).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_495">[495]</span></p>
+
+<p>18. It is the heart’s desire of all beings, that subjects them to
+repeated births and deaths, which cause the ignorant only and not the
+wise, to appear and disappear like waves of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>19. The world presents no other show in its course, except that of the
+appearance and disappearance of bodies, which are now seen to move
+about at the sport of time, and now fall as a prey to it for ever.</p>
+
+<p>20. But the spiritual body (the spirit or one knowing the spirit), is
+neither born nor dies in this world; nor is it affected by the
+decoration or perdition of the material body; but remains unchanged as
+the vacuity of a pot, both when it is in existence or broken to pieces.
+(The vacuous soul is aloof from the body).</p>
+
+<p>21. As the understanding rises with its cooling moon-beams within us,
+it dispels the mist of erroneous desires rising before us like the
+mirage of the dreary desert.</p>
+
+<p>22. So long does the pageant of the world, present its dusky appearance
+to our view, as we do not deign to consider the questions “what am I,
+and what are all these about me”. (That is; “whether I or these or all
+other things are true or false?”)</p>
+
+<p>23. He sees rightly, who sees his body as an apparition of his error,
+and the abode of all evils; and that it does not serve for the
+spiritual meditation of his soul and his maker.</p>
+
+<p>24. He sees rightly, who sees that his body is the source of all the
+pain and pleasure, which betides one at different times and places, and
+that it does not answer his purpose of spiritual edification.</p>
+
+<p>25. He sees rightly, who sees the Ego to pervade the infinite space and
+time, and as the source of all accidents and events, which incessantly
+take place in them. (The Ego is ubiquitous).</p>
+
+<p>26. He knows rightly, who knows the Ego to be as minute as a millionth
+or billionth part of the point of a hair, and pervading all over the
+infinity of space and eternity of time.</p>
+
+<p>27. He perceives rightly, who perceives the universal soul to be
+permeated in all the various objects of his sight; and knows them as
+sparks of the Intellectual Light.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_496">[496]</span></p>
+
+<p>28. He perceives rightly, who perceives within himself the omnipotence
+of the infinite Spirit, to be present in all the states and conditions
+of beings, and the self-same Intellect to abide in and preside over all.</p>
+
+<p>29. He understands rightly, who understands by his wisdom, that he is
+not his body, which is subject to diseases and dangers, to fears and
+anxieties, and to the pain and pangs of old age and death.</p>
+
+<p>30. He understands rightly, who understands his soul to stretch above
+and below and all about him; whose magnitude has no bounds nor an equal
+to it.</p>
+
+<p>31. He knows, full well who kens his soul as a string (Sútrátmá), to
+which all things are strung as gems in a jewel; and that it is not the
+mind or heart, which is seated in the brain or bosom.</p>
+
+<p>32. He kens rightly, who weens neither himself nor any thing else as
+existent, except the imperishable-Brahma; and who knows himself as
+living between the reality and unreality, (<i>i.e.</i> betwixt the present
+and absent, and between the visible and invisible. Gloss).</p>
+
+<p>33. He is right, who beholds what they call the three worlds, to be but
+parts of his self, and have been rolling about him as the waves of the
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>34. He is wise, who looks with pity upon the frail world, and
+compassionates the earth as his younger sister.</p>
+
+<p>35. That great soul looks brightly upon the earth, who has withdrawn
+his mind from it, by retrenching his reliance on his egoism or tuism,
+(<i>i.e.</i> both on his subjectivity and objectivity).</p>
+
+<p>36. He sees the truth, who finds his body and the whole world, filled
+by the colossus figure of the Intellect, without the opposition of any
+sensible object.</p>
+
+<p>37. He that looks on the states of misery and happiness, which attend
+on worldly life, to be but the fluctuating conditions of the ego, has
+no cause to repine or rejoice at them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_497">[497]</span></p>
+
+<p>38. He is the right-sighted man, who sees himself situated amidst the
+world, which is filled with the divine spirit, (and the endless joy
+emanating from it); he has nothing to desire or dislike in this (or in
+his future) state of existence.</p>
+
+<p>39. He is the right (discerning) man, who has weakened his estimation
+and dislike of what is desirable and disgusting to him in the world,
+which is full of the essence of that being, whose nature is beyond
+comprehension and conception. (The world being full with the presence
+of God, we have nothing to like or dislike, or to take or shun in it).</p>
+
+<p>40. That great-souled man is a great god, whose soul like the
+all-pervading sky extends over all, and penetrates through every state
+of existence, without receiving the tincture of any. (Who is informed
+with all and untinged by any).</p>
+
+<p>41. I bow down to that great soul, which has passed beyond the states
+of light, darkness and fancy, (<i>i.e.</i> the state of waking or life, sleep
+or death, and dreaming or transmigration, and which is situated in a
+state of brightness and tranquility in supreme felicity or heavenly
+bliss).</p>
+
+<p>42. I bow down to that Siva, of transcendental understanding; whose
+faculties are wholly engrossed in the meditation of that eternal Being,
+who presides over the creation, destruction and preservation of the
+universe, and who is manifest in all the various wondrous and beauteous
+grandeurs of nature.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_498">[498]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.<br>
+<span class="small">MEDITATION OF THE WONDERS IN THE REALM OF THE BODY.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The dominion of the enlightened man over the realm of
+his Body, and the pleasure of the government of the mind.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—The man that is liberated in this life, and is
+settled in the Supreme state of felicity, is not tarnished by his
+reigning over the realm of his body, and turning about like a wheel.</p>
+
+<p>2. The body of the wise man is as a princedom to him, and calculated
+for his benefit and no disadvantage. It is comparable with the bower of
+a holy hermit, for the consummation of his fruition and liberation.</p>
+
+<p>3. Ráma said:—How do you call, O great sage! the body to be the
+dominion of a man, and how the Yogi can enjoy his princely felicity in
+it?</p>
+
+<p>4. Vasishtha replied:—Beautiful is this city of the body, and fraught
+with every good to mankind, and being enlightened by the light of the
+mind, it is productive of endless blessings in both worlds.</p>
+
+<p>5. The eyes are the windows of this city, letting out the light for the
+sight of distant worlds, the two arms are as the two valves of this
+city-gate, with the hands like latches reaching to the knees.</p>
+
+<p>6. The hairs on the body are as the moss and grass on the walls, and
+the porous skin resembles the netted covering of the palace; the thighs
+and legs are as the columns of the edifice, and the feet with the
+ancles and toes, are as pedestals of the pillars.</p>
+
+<p>7. The lines marked under the soles of the feet, are as inscriptions
+marked on the foundation stone, and upon those at the base of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_499">[499]</span>pedestals of the pillars; and the outer skin which covers the flesh,
+marrow, veins and arteries, and the joints of the body, is as the
+beautiful plaster of the building, hiding the mortar and bricks inside.</p>
+
+<p>8. The middle part of the body above the two thick thighs, contains the
+aqueducts, beset by the hairy bushes about them, and likening to rivers
+running amidst a city, between rows of trees on both sides of the banks.</p>
+
+<p>9. The face is as the royal garden beautified by the eye-brows,
+forehead and the lips; the glancing of the eyes, are as the blooming
+lotuses; and the cheeks are as flat planes in it.</p>
+
+<p>10. The broad bosom is as a lake with the nipples like buds of lotuses;
+the streaks of hairs on the breast, are as its herbage, and the
+shoulders are as the projecting rocks (ghats) upon it.</p>
+
+<p>11. The belly is the store-house, which is eager to receive the
+delicious articles of food; and the long lungs of the throat, are blown
+loudly by the internal winds.</p>
+
+<p>12. The bosom is considered as the depository of jewels (from their
+being worn upon it); and the nine orifices of the body, serve as so
+many windows for the breathing of the citizens.</p>
+
+<p>13. There is the open mouth like the open door-way, with its tooth-bones
+slightly seen as its gratings; and the tongue moving in the door way
+like a naked sword, is as the projecting tongue of the goddess Kálí,
+when she devours her food. (The voracity of the goddess is well known
+whence she is called Kálí, the consort of the all devouring Kála—death).</p>
+
+<p>14. The ear-holes are covered by hairs like long grass, and the broad
+back resembles a large plain, beset by rows of trees on its borders.</p>
+
+<p>15. The two private passages serve as sewers and drains of the city, to
+let out its dirt, and the heart is the garden-ground, where the
+passions parade about as ladies. (Or, the region of the mind is the
+garden-ground for the rambling thoughts as ladies).</p>
+
+<p>16. Here the understanding is fast bound in chains as a prisoner, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_500">[500]</span>the organs of sense are let loose as monkies to play about. The face is
+as a flower garden, the smiles whereof are its blooming blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>17. The life of the man, knowing the proper use of his body and mind,
+is prosperous in everything; it is attended by happiness and
+advantages, and no disadvantage whatever.</p>
+
+<p>18. This body is also the source of infinite troubles to the ignorant;
+but it is the fountain of infinite happiness to the wise man.</p>
+
+<p>19. Its loss is no loss to the wise; but its continuance is the cause
+of continued happiness to the wise man.</p>
+
+<p>20. The body serves as a chariot to the wise, who can traverse
+everywhere by riding in it; and can produce and procure everything
+conducive to his welfare and liberation.</p>
+
+<p>21. The possession of the body, is of no disadvantage to the wise man;
+who can obtain by it, all the objects of his hearing and seeing, of his
+touch and smelling, and his friends and prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>22. It is true that the body is subject to a great amount of pain and
+pleasure; but the wise man can well bear with them, (knowing them to be
+concomitant to human life).</p>
+
+<p>23. Hence the wise man reigns over the dominion of his body, without
+any pain or trouble, in the same manner as one remains the lord of his
+house, without any anxiety or disturbance.</p>
+
+<p>24. He is not addicted to licentiousness like a high mettled steed; nor
+parts with the auspicious daughter of his prudence, from his avarice
+after some poisonous plant.</p>
+
+<p>25. The ignorant can see the cities of others, but not observe the gaps
+and breaks of their own. It is better to root out the fears of our
+worldly enemies (passions) from the heart, than live under their
+subjection.</p>
+
+<p>26. Beware of diving in the perilous river, which flows fast by the
+dreary forest of this world, with the current of desire, whirl-pools of
+avarice, and the sharks of temporal enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>27. Men often bathe their outer bodies in holy streams, without looking
+to the purification of their inward souls; and they shave their persons
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_501">[501]</span>at the confluence of rivers with the sea, in hopes of obtaining their
+object. ((Bathing in the sauger) (Sagora sangama stána), is said to
+confer every object of desire).</p>
+
+<p>28. All sensual people are averse to the unseen happiness of the next
+world; and dwell on the pleasure of their own imagination in the inward
+recesses of their minds.</p>
+
+<p>29. This city of the body is pleasant to one, acquainted with his
+spiritual nature; because he deems it as the paradise of Indra, which
+is filled with pleasurable fruits, as well as of those of immortality
+(or future life and bliss).</p>
+
+<p>30. All things depend on the existence of the city of the body, yet
+nothing is lost by its loss since the mind is the seat of everything.
+These bodily cities which fill the earth, cannot be unpleasant to any
+body.</p>
+
+<p>31. The wise man loses nothing by loss of the citadel of his body; as
+the vacuity in a vessel is never lost, by the breaking of the vessel.
+(So the death of the body, does not destroy the vacuous soul).</p>
+
+<p>32. As the air contained in a pot, is not felt by the touch like the
+pot itself, so is the living soul, which resides in the city of the
+body.</p>
+
+<p>33. The ubiquitous soul being situated in this body, enjoys all worldly
+enjoyments, until at last it comes to partake of the felicity of
+liberation, which is the main object it has in view.</p>
+
+<p>34. The soul doing all actions, is yet no doer of them; but remains as
+witness of whatever is done by the body; and sometimes presides over
+the actions actually done by it.</p>
+
+<p>35. The sportive mind rides on the swifting car of the body, as one
+mounts on a locomotive carriage for the place of its destination, and
+passes in its unimpeded course to distant journeys. (So the body leads
+one to his journey from this world to the next).</p>
+
+<p>36. Seated there, it sports with its favourite and lovely objects of
+desire, which are seated in the heart as its mistresses. (The embodied
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_502">[502]</span>mind enjoys the pleasurable desires, rising before it from the recess
+of the heart).</p>
+
+<p>37. These two lovers reside side by side in the same body, as the moon
+and the star visákhá, remain gladly in the same lunar mansion.</p>
+
+<p>38. The sage, like the sun, looks down from above the atmosphere of the
+earth, on the hosts of mortals that have been hewn down by misery, like
+heaps of brambles and branches scattered in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>39. The sage has the full satisfaction of his desires, and full
+possession of his best riches, and shines as the full-moon without the
+fear of waning.</p>
+
+<p>40. The worldly enjoyments of the wise, do not tend to vitiate their
+nature; as the poisonous draught of Siva, was not capable of doing him
+any injury. (The baneful effects of worldliness, do not affect the
+wise).</p>
+
+<p>41. The food which is habitual to one (as the poison of Siva) is as
+gratifying to him; as a thief by long acquaintance forgets his
+thievishness, and becomes friendly to his neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>42. The wise man looks upon the separation of his friends and
+possessions, in the light of the departures (exits), of the visitant
+men and women and actors and actresses, at the end of a play from the
+theatre.</p>
+
+<p>43. As passengers chance to meet unexpectedly, at the exhibition of a
+play on their way; so the wise people look unconcernedly, at their
+meeting with and separation from the occurrences of life.</p>
+
+<p>44. As our eye-sight falls indifferently on all objects about us, so
+doth the wise man look unconcernedly upon all things and transactions
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>45. The wise man is selfsufficient in all conditions of life; he
+neither rejects the earthly blessings that are presented to him; nor
+longs or strives hard for what is denied to him.</p>
+
+<p>46. The regret of longing after what one does not possess, as also the
+fear of losing what he is in possession of, does not vacillate the mind
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_503">[503]</span>of the wise; as the plumes of the dancing peacock do not oscillate the
+unshaking mountain.</p>
+
+<p>47. The wise man reigns as a monarch, free from all fears and doubts,
+and devoid of all cares and curiosity; and with a mind freed from false
+fancies (of subtile and gross bodies).</p>
+
+<p>48. The soul which is immeasurable in itself, is situated in the
+Supreme Soul; as the boundless Milky ocean, is contained in the body of
+the one universal ocean.</p>
+
+<p>49. Those that are sober in their minds, and tranquil in their spirits,
+laugh to scorn the vile beasts of sensuality as madmen; as also those
+that have been bemeaned by the meanness of their sensual appetites to
+the state of mean reptiles.</p>
+
+<p>50. The sensualist eager for the gratification of his senses, are as
+much ridiculed by the wise; as a man who takes to him a woman deserted
+by another, is derided by his tribe.</p>
+
+<p>51. The unwiseman becomes wise by relinquishing all the pleasures of
+his body, and subduing the emotions of his mind by his reason; as the
+rider subdues the ungovernable elephant by the goad (ankusa) in his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>52. He whose mind is bent to the enjoyment of carnal pleasures, should
+first of all check the inclination, as they draw out the poisonous
+plants from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>53. The well governed mind, being once let loose, recurs like a spoiled
+boy to its former habits; as the tree withered in summer heat, grows
+luxuriant at a slight rain-fall.</p>
+
+<p>54. That which is full out of its time, does not become fuller in its
+season; as the river which is everfull, receives no addition in the
+rains over its fulness. (The full never becomes fuller).</p>
+
+<p>55. The mind that is naturally greedy, wishes for more with all its
+fulness; as the sea with the sufficiency of its water to overflood the
+earth, receives the rain waters and the outpourings of innumerable
+rivers in its insatiate womb. (The greedy mind like the insatiate sea,
+is neverfull).</p>
+
+<p>56. The mind that is restrained in its desires, is gladdened at its
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_504">[504]</span>little gains; and these being increased are reckoned as blessings by
+the stinted mind.</p>
+
+<p>57. A captive prince when enfranchised, is content with his morsel of
+bread, who ere before had been discontented with a realm in his free
+and uncaptured state.</p>
+
+<p>58. With the writhing of your hands and gnashing of your teeth, and
+twisting of your limbs and body, you must chastise your reprobate
+members and mind. (So is Plato said to have chastised his angry self).</p>
+
+<p>59. The brave and wise man, who intends to overcome his enemies; must
+first of all strive to subdue the internal enemies of his own heart and
+mind, and the members of his body. (Subdue yourself, ere you subdue
+others).</p>
+
+<p>60. Those men are reckoned the most prosperous, and best disposed in
+their minds in this earth; who have the manliness to govern their
+minds, instead of being governed by them.</p>
+
+<p>61. I revere those pure and holy men, who have quelled the huge and
+crooked serpent of their minds, lying coiling in the cave of their
+hearts; and who rest in the inward tranquility and serenity of their
+souls.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_505">[505]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.<br>
+<span class="small">THE NON-ENTITY OF THE MIND.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The means of repressing the force of the senses, and of
+curbing the sensual desires of men.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—The vast domain of death, in region of hell,
+is full of the furious elephants of our sins; and the ungovernable
+enemies of the senses with the arrows of desires. (<i>i.e.</i> Hell is the
+abode of sinners, sensualists and the greedy).</p>
+
+<p>2. Our senses are our invincible enemies, being the sources of all
+misdeeds and wicked actions. They are the ungrateful miscreants against
+the body, in which they have found their refuge.</p>
+
+<p>3. The roving senses like flying birds, have found their nest in the
+body; whence with their outstretched wings of right and wrong, they
+pounce on their prey like vultures.</p>
+
+<p>4. He who can entrap these greedy birds of the senses, under the snare
+of his right reason, is never ensnared in his person in the trap of
+sin, but breaks its bonds as the elephant does his fetters.</p>
+
+<p>5. He who indulges himself in sensual pleasures which are pleasant at
+first, will have to be cloyed in them in process of time. (Pleasure is
+followed by pain. Or: Rills of pleasure not sincere.)</p>
+
+<p>6. He who is fraught with the treasure of knowledge in his frail body,
+is not to be overcome by his inward enemies of sensual appetites.</p>
+
+<p>7. The kings of earth are not so happy in their earthly citadels, as
+the lords of the cities of the own bodies, and the masters of their own
+minds. (Mastery over one’s self, is better than over a realm).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_506">[506]</span></p>
+
+<p>8. He who has brought the senses under his slavery, and reduced the
+enemy of his mind to subjection; has the blossoms of his understanding
+ever blooming within him as in the vernal meadow.</p>
+
+<p>9. He who has weakened the pride of his mind, and subdued the enemies
+of his senses; has his desires all shrunken as the lotuses in the cold
+weather.</p>
+
+<p>10. So long do the demons of our desires, infest the region of our
+hearts, as we are unable to bring the mind under the subjection of our
+knowledge of the True one.</p>
+
+<p>11. He is the faithful servant, who acts according to the will of his
+master, and he is the true minister who does good services to his
+prince. He is the best general who has command over the force of his
+own body, and that is the best understanding which is guided by reason.</p>
+
+<p>12. The wife is loved for her endearments, and the father is revered
+for his protection of the child. A friend is valued by his confidence,
+and the mind for its wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>13. The mind is called our father, for its enlightening our
+understanding with the light of the sástras derived by itself, and for
+its leading us to perfection by losing itself in the Supreme spirit.
+(The mind like the father, is the instructor and bequeather of its all
+to man, ere it is extinct in the universal soul).</p>
+
+<p>14. The mind that has well observed and considered all things, that is
+enlightened and firm in its belief, and is employed in laudable
+pursuits, is verily a valuable gem within the body.</p>
+
+<p>15. The mind as a counsellor of our good, teaches us how to fell down
+the tree of our transmigration, and produce the arbour of our future
+bliss.</p>
+
+<p>16. Such is the gem of the mind, O Ráma! unless it is soiled by the
+dirt and filth of sin and vice; when it requires to be washed and
+cleansed with the water of reason, in order to throw its light on thee.</p>
+
+<p>17. Be not dormant to cultivate reason as long as you abide in the
+darksome abode of this world; nor thrust yourself to every accident,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_507">[507]</span>which awaits upon the ignorant and unreasonable men.</p>
+
+<p>18. Do not overlook the mist of error which overspreads this world of
+illusion, abounding with multitudes of mishaps and mischiefs. (Harm
+watch, harm catch. Hold arms, against harms).</p>
+
+<p>19. Try to cross over the wide ocean of the world, by riding on the
+strong barque of your reason, espying the right course by your
+discretion, against the currents of your sensual desires.</p>
+
+<p>20. Know your body to be a frail flower, and all its pleasure and pain
+to be unreal; so never take them for realities, as in the instance of
+the snare, snake and the matting; but remain above sorrowing for any
+thing as in the instance of Bhíma and Bhása (which will be shortly
+related to you).</p>
+
+<p>21. Give up, O high minded Ráma! your misjudgments of the reality of
+yourself, and of this and that thing; but direct your understanding to
+the knowledge of the Reality which is beyond all these; and by
+forsaking your belief and reliance in the mind, continue in your course
+of eating and drinking as before.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_508">[508]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.<br>
+<span class="small">NARRATIVE OF DÁMA, VYÁLA AND KATA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The demon Sambara defeated by the deities, and his
+production of other demons by magic and sorcery.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—O intelligent Ráma! that dost shine as the delight of
+mankind in this world, and endeavourest after the attainment of thy
+chief good, by the accomplishment of thy best objects.</p>
+
+<p>2. Do not let the instance of the demons Dáma and Vyála or the snare
+and snake, apply to thy case; but try to extricate thyself from vain
+sorrowing (at the miseries of the world), by the lesson of fortitude as
+given in the story of Bhíma and Bhása.</p>
+
+<p>3. Ráma asked:—What is that parable of the snare and snake, which thou
+sayest must not apply to my case? Please relate it in full, to remove
+the sorrows of my mind and of all mankind.</p>
+
+<p>4. And how is that fortitude which thou pointest out for my imitation,
+from the instance of Bhíma and Bhása, in order to get rid from all
+earthly sorrow?</p>
+
+<p>5. Kindly relate the whole, and enlighten me with thy purifying words,
+as the roaring of the rainy clouds, serves to alleviate the summer heat
+of peacocks.</p>
+
+<p>6. Vasishtha replied:—Hear me Ráma! relate to you both these anecdotes,
+that you may derive the benefit of aping according the same.</p>
+
+<p>7. There lived one Sambara—the chief of demons, and a profound sorcerer
+in a subterraneous cell, filled with enchanting wonders like a sea of
+gems.</p>
+
+<p>8. He constructed a magic city in the sky, with gardens and temples of
+gods in it; and artificial suns and moons emblazoning its vault.</p>
+
+<p>9. It was beset with rich stones, resembling the gems of the Sumeru
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_509">[509]</span>mountain; and the palace of the demon was full with opulence and
+treasures of every kind.</p>
+
+<p>10. The beauties in his seraglio, vied with the celestial dames in
+their charming strains; and the arbors of his pleasure garden, were
+shaded by an awning of bright moon-beams on high.</p>
+
+<p>11. The blue lotuses blooming in his bed room, put to blush the blue
+eyed maids of his court; and the gemming swans in the lakes, cackled
+about the beds of golden lotuses in them.</p>
+
+<p>12. The high branches of aureate plants, bore the blossoms of
+artificial lotuses on them; and the rows of <i>Karanga</i> arbours dropped
+down showers of <i>mandára</i> flowers on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>13. His garden-house consisted both of cold and hot baths, and
+refrigeratories and fire-places for the hot and cold seasons; and the
+<i>tarku</i> (?) weapons of the demons, had baffled the arms of Indra
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>14. The flower-gardens on all sides, had surpassed the <i>mandara</i> groves
+of paradise; and the magical skill of the demon, had set rows of sandal
+trees, with their encircling snakes all around.</p>
+
+<p>15. The inner compound which was strewn over with gold dust, vanquished
+the glory of heaven; and the court-yard of the palace, was filled with
+heaps of flowers upto the knee.</p>
+
+<p>16. The earthen figure of Siva which was exposed for show, had
+surpassed the image of Hari holding his discus and the mace; and the
+gems sparkling as fire-flies in the inside apartment, resembled the
+twinkling stars in the arena of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>17. The dark night of the subterrene dwelling, was lightened by a
+hundred moon-lights like the starry heaven, and he chaunted his martial
+songs before his idol deity.</p>
+
+<p>18. His magical elephant, drove away the Airávata of Indra; and his
+inward apartment was hoarded with the precious treasures of the three
+worlds.</p>
+
+<p>19. All wealth and prosperity and grandeur and dignity, paid their
+homage to him; and the whole host of demons, honoured him as their
+commander.</p>
+
+<p>20. The umbrage of his arms, gave shelter to the whole body of demons;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_510">[510]</span>and he was the receptacle of all sagacity, and reservoir of every kind
+of treasure.</p>
+
+<p>21. This destroyer of the <i>devas</i> (gods), had a gigantic and terrific
+appearance; and commanded a large army of Asura—demons to defeat the
+Sura—deities.</p>
+
+<p>22. The gods also sought every opportunity of harassing the demoniac
+force, whenever this exorcist demigod, went to sleep or somewhere out
+of his city.</p>
+
+<p>23. This enraged Sambara to a degree, that he broke the trees in his
+rage, and employed his generals for protection of his legions.</p>
+
+<p>24. The devas finding their fit opportunities, killed the demons one by
+one; as the aerial hawks pounce upon and kill the feeble and timid
+sparrows.</p>
+
+<p>25. The king of the demons then appointed other generals over his army,
+and they were as swift-footed and hoarse sounding as the waves of the
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>26. The Devas destroyed these also in a short time; when the leader of
+the demon band pursued his enemies to their station above the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>27. The gods fled from their heavenly abode for fear of them, as the
+timorous deer fly from before the sight of Siva’s and Gaurí’s bull into
+the thick thickets.</p>
+
+<p>28. The gods were weakened with weeping, and the faces of Apsaras were
+suffused in tears. The demon saw the heavenly abode abandoned by the
+celestials, as it was the desolation of the world.</p>
+
+<p>29. He wandered about in his rage, and plundered and took away all the
+valuables of the place. He burnt down the cities of the regents of
+heaven, and then returned to his own abode.</p>
+
+<p>30. The enmity between the deities and demons, was so inveterate on
+both sides, that it forced the Devas to quit their heavenly abodes, and
+hide themselves in distant parts of the world.</p>
+
+<p>31. But the enraged gods, succeeded at last by their perseverance, to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_511">[511]</span>defeat and slay all the generals and combatants, that were set against
+them by Sambara.</p>
+
+<p>32. The discomfited demon, then gave vent to his fury, and began to
+breathe out living fire from his nostrils like a burning mountain.</p>
+
+<p>33. He after much search in the three worlds, found out the hiding
+place of the gods, as a wicked man succeeds in his purpose by his best
+endeavours.</p>
+
+<p>34. Then he produced by his sorcery three very strong and fearful
+Asuras for the protection of his army, with their hideous appearances
+as that of death.</p>
+
+<p>35. These horrible leaders of his army, being produced in his magic,
+flew upward with their enormous bodies, resembling the flying mountains
+of old.</p>
+
+<p>36. They had the names of Dáma—the snare, Vyála—the snake, and Kata—the
+mat given them for their entrapping, enfolding and enwrapping the
+enemy, according to the demon’s wish.</p>
+
+<p>37. They were preadamite beings and devoid of changing desires; and the
+want of their prior acts (like those of the human kind), made them move
+about as free as spiritual beings in one uniform tenor of their course.</p>
+
+<p>38. These were not born as men from the seeds of their previous acts,
+with solid and substantial bodies; but mere artificial forces and airy
+forms, as facsimiles of the images in the demon’s mind.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_512">[512]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.<br>
+<span class="small">BATTLE OF THE DEITIES AND DEMONS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The war of the gods with the Demons, rising from the
+Rasátala or Infernal regions.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—So saying, the chief of the demons despatched his
+generals Dáma, Vyála and Kata, to lead his armies for the destruction
+of the Deities upon earth.</p>
+
+<p>2. The demoniac army rose out of the foaming sea and infernal caverns,
+in full armour and begirt with fiendish arms; and then bursting forth
+with hideous noise, soared aloft with their huge bodies, like mountains
+flying on high.</p>
+
+<p>3. Their monstrous and mountainous bodies, hid the disk of the sun in
+the sky; and their stretching arms smote him of his rays. They
+increased also in their number and size under the leadership of Dáma,
+Vyála and Kata.</p>
+
+<p>(This is the war of the Gods and Titans, wherein Sambara is the Satan,
+and his generals are the devils, Damon, Baal or Bel and etc.)?</p>
+
+<p>4. Then the dreadful hosts of the celestials also, issued out from the
+forests and caverns of the heavenly mountain—Meru, like torrents of the
+great deluge.</p>
+
+<p>5. The forces under the flags of the deities and demons, fought
+together with such obstinacy, that it seemed to be an untimely and
+deadly struggle between the gods and Titans as of the prior world.</p>
+
+<p>6. The heads of the decapitated warriors, decorated with shining
+earrings, fell down on the ground like the orbs of the sun and moon;
+which being shorn of their beams as at the end of the world, were
+rolling in the great abyss of chaos.</p>
+
+<p>7. Huge hills were hurled by the heroes, with the hoarse noise of
+roaring lions; and were blown up and down, by the blast of an all
+destroying tornado.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_513">[513]</span></p>
+
+<p>8. The broken weapons of the warriors, fell on mountain tops, and
+ground them to granules; that fell down as hailstones upon the lions,
+that had been resting by their sides below.</p>
+
+<p>9. The sparks of fire that flew about by the commingled clashing of the
+weapons, were as the scattered stars of the sky, flying at random on
+the last day of dissolution.</p>
+
+<p>10. The ghosts of Vetálas as big as the <i>tálas</i> or palmtrees, were
+beating the <i>tála</i> or time of their giddy dance, with the <i>táli</i> or
+clapping of their palms, over the heaps of carnage, floating on floods
+of blood flowing as a sanguinary sea, on the surface of earth.</p>
+
+<p>11. Showers of shedding blood, had put down the flying dust of the
+battlefield; and numbers of the crowned heads separated from their
+bodies, glistened amidst the clouds, like so many stars sparkling in
+the sky.</p>
+
+<p>12. All sides were filled by the demons, who blazed like burning suns
+with their luminous bodies, and held the tall <i>kalpa</i> branches in their
+hands for striking the enemy therewith, and with which they broke down
+the tops and peaks of mountains.</p>
+
+<p>13. They ran about with their brandished swords in hand, and broke down
+the buildings by the rapidity of their motion, like the blast of a
+gale; and the rocks which they hurled at the foe, were reduced to dust,
+like the ashes of a burning mountain.</p>
+
+<p>14. The gods also pursued them as sacrificial horses, and drove the
+weaponless Asuras, like clouds before the storm.</p>
+
+<p>15. They fell upon and laid hold of them like cats pouncing upon rats,
+and seizing them for their prey; while the Asuras also were seizing the
+<i>devas</i> as bears lay hold on men, mounting on high trees for fear of
+them.</p>
+
+<p>16. Thus the gods and demigods dashed over one another, as the forest
+trees in a storm, striking each other with their branching arms, and
+strewing the flowers of mutual bloodshed.</p>
+
+<p>17. Their broken weapons lay scattered on all sides, like heaps of
+flowers lying on the sides of a hill after a strong gale is over.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_514">[514]</span></p>
+
+<p>18. There was a close fight of both armies, with a confused noise
+filling the vault of the sky; which like the hollow of the Udumbara
+tree, resounded to the commingled hum of the gnats rumbling within it.</p>
+
+<p>19. The elephants that were the regents of the different quarters of
+the skies, sent their loud roars, answering the tremendous peal of the
+world-destroying cloud.</p>
+
+<p>20. The thickened air grew as hard as the solid earth with the
+gathering clouds, and the thickened clouds that became as dense as to
+be grasped in the fist, were heavy and slow in their motion.</p>
+
+<p>21. The broken weapons which were repelled by the war-chariots and hit
+against the hills, emitted a rattling noise from their inward
+hollowness, like the cacophony of a chorus.</p>
+
+<p>22. The mountain forests were set on fire by the fiery weapons, and the
+burning rocks melted down their lava with as dreadful a noise, as that
+of the volcanic mount of Meru with its melting gold, and blazing with
+the effulgence of the twelve suns of the zodiac.</p>
+
+<p>23. The clamour of the battle, was as that of the beating waves of the
+boisterous ocean, filling the vast deep of the earth, and resounding
+hoarsely by their concussion.</p>
+
+<p>24. The huge rocks which were hurled by the demons, flew as birds in
+the air with their flapping wings sounding as thunder claps; while the
+hoarse noise of the rocky caverns, sounded as the deep sounding main.</p>
+
+<p>25. The clamour of the warfare resembled the rumbling of the ocean, at
+its churning by the Mandara mountain, and the clashing arms sounded as
+the clappings of the hands of the gods, in their revelry for the
+ambrosial draughts.</p>
+
+<p>26. In this warfare of the two armies, the haughty demons gained the
+day; and laid waste the cities and villages of the gods, together with
+whole tracts of their hills and forests.</p>
+
+<p>27. The mountainous bodies of the demons also, were pierced by the
+great weapons of the gods; and the vault of heaven was filled with the
+flying weapons, flung by the hands of both parties.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_515">[515]</span></p>
+
+<p>28. The bursting rockets broke the peaks and pinnacles of the rocks by
+hundreds; and the flying arrows pierced the faces of both parties of
+the gods and demigods.</p>
+
+<p>29. The whirling disks lopped off the heads of the warriors like blades
+of grass, and the clamour of the armies rolled with an uproar in the
+midway sky.</p>
+
+<p>30. Struck by the flying weapons, the heavenly charioteers fell upon
+the ground; and their celestial cities were deluged by the hydraulic
+engines of the demons.</p>
+
+<p>31. Flights of swords, spears and lances were flying in the air, like
+rivers running down the sides of mountains; and the vault of heaven was
+filled by war-whoops and shouts of the combatants.</p>
+
+<p>32. The habitation of the regnant divinities, were falling under the
+blows of demons from behind; and their female apartments reechoed to
+the lamentations and jingling trinkets of the goddesses.</p>
+
+<p>33. The stream of the flying weapons of the demons, washed the bodies
+of fighting men with blood, and made them fly off from the battle-field
+with hideous cries.</p>
+
+<p>34. Death was now lurking behind, and now hovering over the heads of
+the gods and leaders of armies; like a black-bee now skulking in, and
+then flitting over the lotuses; while the armies on both sides, were
+discomfited by the blows of the gods and demigods on the battle field.</p>
+
+<p>35. The demons flew in the air like winged mountains, moving around the
+sky; and making a whizzing rustle that was dreadful to hear.</p>
+
+<p>36. The mountainous bodies of the demons, being pierced by the weapons
+of the gods, were gushing out with streams of blood; which converted
+the earth below to a crimson sea, and tinged the air with purple clouds
+over the mountain heights.</p>
+
+<p>37. Many countries and cities, villages and forests, vales and dales
+were laid waste; and innumerable demons and elephants, horses and human
+beings were put to death.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_516">[516]</span></p>
+
+<p>38. Also numbers of elephants were pierced, with long and pointed
+shafts of steel and iron; and huge Airávatas were bruised in their
+bodies, by the blows of steeled fists.</p>
+
+<p>39. Flights of arrows falling in showers like the diluvian rains,
+crushed the tops of mountains; and the friction of thunderbolts, broke
+down the bodies of the mountainous giants.</p>
+
+<p>40. The furious flames of heavenly fire, burned the bodies of the
+infernal hosts; who in their turn, quenched the flame with water-spouts
+drawn out of the subterranean deep.</p>
+
+<p>41. The enraged demons flung up and hurled, the huge hills to oppose
+the falling fires of the gods; which like a wild conflagration, melted
+down the hardstones to liquid water.</p>
+
+<p>42. The demons spread a dark night in the sky, by the shadow of their
+arms; which the gods destroyed by the artificial flame of lightenings,
+blazing as so many suns in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>43. The fire of the lightenings, dried up the waters of the raining
+clouds; and the clashing of arms, emitted a shower of fire on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>44. The shower of thunder-arms, broke down the battery of mountain
+ramparts; and the Morphean weapon of slumber dispelled by that of its
+counteraction.</p>
+
+<p>45. Some bore the sawing weapon, while others held the Brahmástra—the
+invincible weapon of warfare, that dispelled the darkness of the field
+by its flashing.</p>
+
+<p>46. The air was filled with shells and shots, emitted by the fire-arms;
+and the machine of hurling stones, crushed the missile weapons of fire
+(agneyastra).</p>
+
+<p>47. The war chariots with their up-lifted flags and moon-like disks,
+moved as clouds about the horizon, while their wheel rolled with loud
+roaring under the vault of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>48. The incessant thunders of heaven were killing the demons in
+numbers, who were again restored to life by the great art of Sukra,
+that gave immortality to demoniac spirits.</p>
+
+<p>49. The gods that were now victorious and now flying away with loss,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_517">[517]</span>were now looking to their good stars, and now to the inauspicious ones
+in vain.</p>
+
+<p>50. They looked upon heaven for signs of good and evil with their
+uplifted heads and eyes, but the world appeared to them as a sea of
+blood from the heaven above to the earth below.</p>
+
+<p>51. The world seemed to them as a forest of full blown rubicund
+(Kinsuka) flowers, by the rage of their obstinate enmity, and appeared
+as a sea of blood filled with mountains of dead bodies in it.</p>
+
+<p>52. The dead bodies hanging pendant on the branches of trees, appeared
+as their fruits moving to and fro by the breath of winds.</p>
+
+<p>53. The vault of the sky was filled with forests of long and large
+arrows, and with mountains of headless trunks with their hundred arms
+(as those of Briareus).</p>
+
+<p>54. These as they leaped and jumped in the air, plucked the clouds and
+stars and the heavenly cars of the celestials with their numerous arms;
+and hurled their mountain like missile arms and clubs and arrows to the
+heavens.</p>
+
+<p>55. The sky was filled with the broken fragments of the edifices,
+falling from the seven spheres of heaven, and their incessant fall
+raised a noise like the roaring of the diluvian clouds.</p>
+
+<p>56. These sounds were resounded by the elephants of the deep (pátála);
+while the bird of heaven—<i>Garuda</i>, was snatching the gigantic demons as
+his prey.</p>
+
+<p>57. The dread of the demons drove the celestial deities, the Siddhas
+and Sáddays and the gods of the winds, together with the Kinnaras,
+Gandharvas and Cháranas, from all their different quarters to one
+indistinct side. (There was no distinction of the sides in the chaotic
+state).</p>
+
+<p>58. Then there blew a tremendous tornado like the all-destroying Boreas
+of universal desolation; laying waste the trees of the garden of
+paradise, and threatening to destroy the gods; while the thunders of
+heaven were splitting and breaking down the mountains flung to the face
+of the sky.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_518">[518]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII<br>
+<span class="small">ADMONITION OF BRAHMÁ.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The defeated Devas have recourse to Brahmá in their
+danger, who tells them the way of their averting it.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> related:—As the war of the gods and Titans, was raging
+violently on both sides, and their bodies were pierced by the weapons
+of one another:—</p>
+
+<p>2. Streams of blood, gushed out of their wounds like water-falls in the
+basin of Ganges; and the gods caught into the snares of the demigods,
+groaned and roared aloud like lions.</p>
+
+<p>3. Vyála (Baal) with his stretching arms, was crushing the bodies of
+the gods; and Kata was harassing them in their unequal challenge with
+them.</p>
+
+<p>4. The Daityas waged their battle with the rage of the mid-day sun, and
+put to flight the Airávata elephant of Indra—the leader of the gods.</p>
+
+<p>5. The Devas dropped down with their bodies gored with wounds, and
+spouting with blood; and their armies fled on all sides, like the
+currents of a river overflowing and breaking down its bank.</p>
+
+<p>6. Dáma, Vyála and Kata pursued the flying and run away gods, in the
+same manner as a raging fire runs after the wood for its fuel.</p>
+
+<p>7. The Asuras sought and searched long after the gods in vain, for they
+had disappeared like the deer and lions, among the thickets after
+breaking loose of their snares.</p>
+
+<p>8. Failing to find out the gods, the generals Dáma, Vyála and Kata,
+repaired with cheerful hearts to their chief in his abode in the
+infernal region.</p>
+
+<p>9. The defeated gods after halting awhile, had then their recourse to
+the almighty Brahmá, in order to consult him on the means of gaining
+their victory over the demons.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_519">[519]</span></p>
+
+<p>10. Brahmá then appeared to the blood besmeared Devas with his purple
+countenance, as the bright and cooling moonbeams appear in the evening
+on the surface of the sea, tinged with the crimson hues of the setting
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>11. They bowed down before him, and complained of the danger that was
+brought upon them by Sambara, through his generals Dáma, Vyála and
+Kata, whose doings they fully related to him.</p>
+
+<p>12. The judging-Brahmá having heard and considered all this, delivered
+the following encouraging words to the host of gods before him.</p>
+
+<p>13. Brahmá said:—“You shall have to wait a hundred thousand years more,
+for the destruction of Sambara under the arms of Hari in an open
+engagement.”<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>14. You have been put to flight to-day by the demoniac Dáma, Vyála and
+Kata, who have been fighting with their magical art (and deceitful
+weapons).</p>
+
+<p>15. They are elated with pride at their great skill in warfare, but it
+will soon vanish like the shadow of a man in a mirror.</p>
+
+<p>16. These demons who are led by their ambition to annoy you, will soon
+be reduced under your might, like birds caught in a snare.</p>
+
+<p>17. The gods being devoid of ambition, are freed from the vicissitudes
+of pain and pleasure; and have become invincible by destroying the
+enemy by their patience.</p>
+
+<p>18. Those that are caught and bound fast in the net of their ambition,
+and led away by the thread of their expectation, are surely defeated in
+their aims, and are caught as birds by a string.</p>
+
+<p>19. The learned that are devoid of desire, and are unattached to
+anything in their minds, are truly great and invincible, as nothing can
+elate or depress them at any time.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_520">[520]</span></p>
+
+<p>20. A man however great and experienced he may be, is easily overcome
+by a boy, when he is enticed to pursue after every thing by his avarice.</p>
+
+<p>21. The knowledge that, this is I and these are mine (and apart from
+all others), is the bane of human life; and one with such knowledge of
+his self and egoism, becomes the receptacle of evils like the sea of
+briny waters.</p>
+
+<p>22. He who confines his mind within a narrow limit, for want of his
+great and extended views, is called dastardly and narrow-minded man
+notwithstanding with all his learning and wisdom. (Why then do you
+compress the unlimited soul, within the limited nut-shell of your
+body?).</p>
+
+<p>23. He that puts a limit to his soul or <i>átmá</i>, which is unbounded and
+infinite, both surely reduce his magnanimity or <i>garimá</i> to the
+minuteness or anima by his own making.</p>
+
+<p>24. If there be anything in the world beside the oneself, that may be
+thine or worth thy desiring, thou mayst long to have it; but all things
+being but parts of the universe, there is nothing particular for any
+one to have or seek.</p>
+
+<p>25. Reliance on earthly things is the source of unhappiness, while our
+disinterestedness with all things, is the fountain of everlasting
+felicity.</p>
+
+<p>26. As long as the Asuras are independent of worldly things, they must
+remain invincible; but being dependent on them, they will perish as a
+swarm of gnats in the flame of wild fire.</p>
+
+<p>27. It is the inward desire of man that makes him miserable in himself,
+and became subdued by others; otherwise the worm-like man is as firm as
+a rock. (Cringing avarice makes one a slave to others, but its want
+makes a lion of a weak man).</p>
+
+<p>28. Where there is any desire in the heart, it is thickened and
+hardened in time; as every thing in nature increases in its bulk in
+time; but not so the things that are not in existence, as the want of
+desires (<i>i.e.</i> all what exists, has its increase likewise, but a
+nullity can have no increase).</p>
+
+<p>29. Do you, O Indra! try to foster both the egoistic selfishness, as
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_521">[521]</span>well as the ambition of Dáma and others for their universal dominion,
+if you want to cause their destruction.</p>
+
+<p>30. Know, it is avarice which is the cause of the poverty, and all
+dangers to mankind; just as the <i>Karanja</i> tree is the source of its
+bitter and pernicious fruits.</p>
+
+<p>31. All those men who rove about under the bondage of avarice, have bid
+farewell to their happiness, by subjecting themselves to misery.</p>
+
+<p>32. One may be very learned and well-informed in every thing, he may be
+a noble and great man also, but he is sure to be tied down by his
+avarice, as a lion is fettered by his chain.</p>
+
+<p>33. Avarice is known as the snare of the mind, which is situated like a
+bird in its nest of the heart, as it is within the hollow of the tree
+of the body.</p>
+
+<p>34. The miserable man becomes an easy prey to the clutches of death by
+his avarice, as a bird is caught in the birdlime by a boy; and lies
+panting on the ground owing to its greediness.</p>
+
+<p>35. You gods, need not bear the burden of your weapons any more, nor
+toil and moil in the field of war any longer; but try your best to
+inflame the pernicious avarice of your enemies to the utmost.</p>
+
+<p>36. Know, O chief of the gods, that no arm nor weapon, nor any polity
+or policy, is able to defeat the enemy, until they are defeated of
+themselves by their want of patience, through excess of their avarice.</p>
+
+<p>37. These Dáma, Vyála and Kata, that have become elated with their
+success in warfare, must now cherish their ambition and foster their
+avarice to their ruin.</p>
+
+<p>38. No sooner these ignorant creatures of Sambara, shall have gained
+their high desires, than they are sure to be foiled by you in their
+vain attempts. (The great height must have its fall).</p>
+
+<p>39. Now ye gods! excite your enemies to the war by your policy, of
+creating in them an ambition and intense desire for conquest, and by
+this you will gain your object.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_522">[522]</span></p>
+
+<p>40. They being subjected by their desire, will be easily subdued by
+you; for nobody that is led blindfold by his desires in this world, is
+ever master of himself.</p>
+
+<p>41. The path of this world, is either even or rugged, according to the
+good or restless desires of our hearts. The heart is like the sea in
+its calm after storm, when its waves are still as our subsided desires,
+or as boisterous as the stormy sea with our increasing rapacity.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_523">[523]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII<br>
+<span class="small">THE RENEWED BATTLE OF THE GODS AND DEMONS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The rising Desires of the Demons, causing them to
+resume the Battle.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Saying so, the god Brahmá vanished from the sight
+of the gods, as the wave of the sea retires and mixes with its waters,
+after having dashed and crashed against the shore.</p>
+
+<p>2. The gods, having heard the words of Brahmá, returned to their
+respective abodes; as the breeze bearing the fragrance of the lotus,
+wafts it to the forests on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>3. They halted in their delightsome houses for some days, as the bees
+rest themselves in the cells of flowers after their wanderings.</p>
+
+<p>4. Having refreshed and invigorated themselves in the course of time,
+they gave the alarm of their rising, with the beating of their drums,
+sounding as the peal of the last day.</p>
+
+<p>5. Immediately the demons rose from the infernal regions, and met the
+gods in the midway air, and commenced their dreadful onset upon them.</p>
+
+<p>6. Then there was a clashing of the armours, and clattering of swords
+and arrows, the flashing of lances and spears, and the crackling of
+mallets and various other weapons, as battle axes and discuses,
+thunderbolts, and hurling of rockstones and huge trees and the like.</p>
+
+<p>7. There was also many magical instruments, which ran on all sides like
+the torrents of rivers; while rocks and hills, high mountains and huge
+trees, were flung and hurled from both sides, filling the earth with
+confused noise and rumbling.</p>
+
+<p>8. 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_524">[524]</span></p>
+
+<p>9. Many big bodies of the gods and demons, rose and fought and fell by
+turns, as the elemental bodies of earth and the other elements, rise to
+and disappear from view by the act of Máyá or illusion. (The enormous
+bodies of the warriors, fought with one another in the same manner, as
+the jarring elements clash against each other).</p>
+
+<p>10. Big bombs broke the heads of mountains, and the earth became a vast
+sheet of blood like a sanguine sea. The heaps of dead bodies on both
+sides, rose as forests to the face of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>11. Living lions with iron bodies, and rows of saw-like teeth and nails
+white as Kása 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.</p>
+
+<p>12. The serpentine weapons flew with their mountainous shapes in the
+ocean of the sky; having their eyes flashing with their venomous heat,
+and burning with the fire of the twelve suns on the last day of
+desolation.</p>
+
+<p>13. The hydraulic engine sent forth floods of weapons, whirling as
+whirlpools, and sounding loud as the rattling thunder; and sweeping the
+hills and rocks in their current.</p>
+
+<p>14. The stone missiles which were thrown by the Garuda engine, to the
+aerial battle-field of the gods, emitted at intervals water and fire,
+and sometimes shone as the sun, and at others became altogether dark.</p>
+
+<p>15. The Garuda weapons flew and roared in the sky, and the fire-arms
+spread a conflict of burning hills above; the burning towers of the
+gods fell upon the earth and, the world became as unendurable as in its
+conflagration on the last day.</p>
+
+<p>16. The demons jumped up to the sky from the surface of the earth, as
+birds fly to heaven from mountain tops. The gods fell violently on the
+earth, as the fragment of a rock falls precipitately on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>17. The long weapons sticking to the bodies of the deities and demons,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_525">[525]</span>were as bushes with their burning pain; thus their big statures
+appeared as rocks decorated with arbors growing upon them.</p>
+
+<p>18. The gods and demons, roving with their mountainous bodies, all
+streaming in blood, appeared as the evening clouds of heaven, pouring
+the purple floods of celestial Gangá (Mandákiní).</p>
+
+<p>19. Showers of weapons were falling as water-falls or showers of rain,
+and the tide of thunders flowed as fast as the fall of meteoric fire in
+promiscuous confusion.</p>
+
+<p>20. Those skilled in the arts, were pouring floods of purple fluids,
+mixed with the red clay of mountains, from the pipes of elephants’
+trunks; as they sputter the festive water of Phagua, mixed with the red
+powder (phága) through the syringe (phichkári). (The pouring, of holy
+(hori) water is a sacrament of Krishnites, as well as of Christians;
+but this baptismal function of Krishna among his comrades, is now
+become a mockery and foolery even among the coreligionist-vaishnavites.
+The text expresses it as—<i>punyavarsana</i> or purifying sprinkling).</p>
+
+<p>21. The <i>Devas</i> and Asuras, though worried by one another, did not yet
+give up their hope of victory, but hurled the weapons from their hands
+for mutual annoyance; and riding on the broad backs of big elephants,
+they wandered in the air, spreading their effulgence all around.</p>
+
+<p>22. They then wandered in the sky like flights of inauspicious locusts,
+with their bodies pierced in the heads, hands, arms, and breasts, and
+filled the vault of the world like the flying clouds, obscuring the sun
+and the sides of heaven, and the surface and heights of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>23. The earth was battered and rent to pieces by the fragments of
+broken weapons, falling from the waists of the combatants, who assailed
+one another with their loud shouts.</p>
+
+<p>24. The sky re-echoed to the thunder-claps of the mutual strokes of the
+weapons, the clattering of the stones and trees, and the blows of the
+warriors on one another, as it was the bustle of the day of universal
+destruction.</p>
+
+<p>25. The disordered world seemed to approach its untimely end, by the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_526">[526]</span>blowing of the furious winds mixed with fire and water (as in the
+chaotic state); and the many suns of the deities and demons, shining
+above and below (as it is predicted of the dreaded last day).</p>
+
+<p>26. All the quarters of heaven, seemed to be crying aloud, with the
+sounds of the hurling weapons, rolling as mountain peaks, roaring as
+lions, and borne by the blowing winds on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>27. The sky appeared as an ocean of illusion, burning with the bodies
+of the warriors like flaming trees, and rolling in surges of the dead
+bodies of the gods and demons, floating on it like mountains; while the
+skirts of the earth, seemed as forest, made by the clubs and lances and
+spears, and many other weapons incessantly falling upon them.</p>
+
+<p>28. The horizon was surrounded by the big and impenetrable line of
+demoniac bodies, resembling the chain of Sumeru mountains girding the
+earth; while the earth itself resembled the ocean filled with the
+mountainous bodies of fallen warriors, and towers of the celestial
+cities blown down by the winds.</p>
+
+<p>29. The sky was filled with violent sounds, and the earth and its
+mountains, were washed by torrents of blood; the blood-sucking goblins
+danced on all sides, and filled the cavity of the world with confusion.</p>
+
+<p>30. 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>i.e.</i> The world is a field of continued
+warfare of good and evil, like the battle-field of the gods and demons).</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_527">[527]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX.<br>
+<span class="small">DEFEAT OF THE DEMONS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The Demons elated with the pride of their bodily
+strength, are at last foiled and put to flight by the gods.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—In this manner, the energetic and murderous
+Asuras, repeated their attacks and waged many wars with the gods.</p>
+
+<p>2. They carried on their warfare sometimes by fraud and often by their
+aggressiveness; and frequently after a truce or open war was made with
+the gods. They sometimes took themselves to flight, and having
+recruited their strength, they met again in the open field; and at
+others they lay in ambush, and concealed themselves in their
+subterranean caves.</p>
+
+<p>3. Thus they waged their battle for five and thirty years against the
+celestials, by repeatedly flying and withdrawing themselves from the
+field, and then reappearing in it with their arms.</p>
+
+<p>4. They fought again for five years, eight months and ten days, darting
+their fire arms, trees and stones and thunders upon the gods.</p>
+
+<p>5. Being used to warfare for so long a period, they at last grew proud
+of their superior strength and repeated successes, and entertained the
+desire of their final victory.</p>
+
+<p>6. Their constant practice in arms made them sure of their success, as
+the nearness of objects casts their reflection in the mirror. (Constant
+application makes one hopeful of success).</p>
+
+<p>7. But as distant objects are never reflected in the glass, so the
+desire for any thing, is never successful without intense application
+to it.</p>
+
+<p>8. So when the desires of the demons Dáma and others, became identified
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_528">[528]</span>with their selves, their souls were degraded from their greatness, and
+confined to the belief of the desired objects.</p>
+
+<p>9. 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.</p>
+
+<p>10. Falling into the errors of egotism and selfishness, they were led
+to the blunder of <i>mei tatem</i> or thinking these things as mine; just as
+a man mistakes a rope for a snake.</p>
+
+<p>11. Being reduced to the depravity of selfishness, they began to think
+their personalities to consist in their bodies, and to reflect how
+their bodies from the head to foot could be safe and secure from harm.</p>
+
+<p>12. They lost their patience by continually thinking on the stability
+of their bodies, and their properties and pleasures of life. (<i>i.e.</i>
+The eager desire of worldly gain and good, grows into impatience at
+last).</p>
+
+<p>13. Desire of their enjoyments, diminished their strength and valour;
+and their former acts of gallantry now became a dead letter to them.</p>
+
+<p>14. They thought only how to become lords of the earth, and thus became
+lazy and enervated, as lotus-flowers without water. (As the thought of
+grandeur enervated the Romans to impotence).</p>
+
+<p>15. Their pride and egoism led their inclination to the pleasures of
+good eating and drinking, and to the possession of every worldly good.
+(Luxury is the bane of valour).</p>
+
+<p>16. They began to hesitate in joining the warfare, and became as timid
+as the timorous deer, to encounter the furious elephants in their
+ravages of the forest.</p>
+
+<p>17. 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.</p>
+
+<p>18. These cowards wishing to preserve their bodies from the hands of
+death, became as powerless as to rest satisfied with having the feet of
+their enemies set up on their heads. (<i>i.e.</i> They fell at the feet of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_529">[529]</span>their foes to spare their lives; (as they say; that cowards die many
+times before their death)).</p>
+
+<p>19. Thus these enervated demons, were as disabled to kill the enemy
+standing before them; as the fire is unable to consume the sacred
+<i>ghee</i> offering, when it is not kindled by its fuel.</p>
+
+<p>20. They became as gnats before the aggressive gods, and stood with
+their bruised bodies like beaten soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>21. What needs saying more, than that the demons being overpowered by
+the gods, fled away from the field of battle for fear of their lives.</p>
+
+<p>22. When the demons Dáma, Vyála, Kata and others, who were renounced
+before the gods in their prowess, fled cowardly in different ways:—</p>
+
+<p>23. The force of the Daityas, fell before the deities, and fled from
+the air on all sides, like the falling stars of heaven, at the end of a
+kalpa age or last day (of judgment).</p>
+
+<p>24. They fell upon the summits of mountains, and in the arbours of the
+Sumeru range; some were enwrapt in the folds of the clouds above, and
+others fell on the banks of distant seas below.</p>
+
+<p>25. Many fell in the cavities of the eddies of seas, and in the abyss
+of the ocean, and in the running streams; some fell into far distant
+forests, and others dropped down amidst the burning woods of wild fire.</p>
+
+<p>26. 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. (<i>i.e.</i> The demons were hurled down by the gods from
+high heaven to the earth below).</p>
+
+<p>27. Many fell in the polar regions, some alighting on the mountain
+tops, and others sinking in the lakes below; while several of them were
+tossed over the countries of Ándhra, Dravida, Kashmir and Persia.</p>
+
+<p>28. Some sank in billowy seas and in the watery maze of Ganges, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_530">[530]</span>others fell on distant islands, in different parts of the Jambudwípa,
+and in the nets of fisher-men.</p>
+
+<p>29. Thus the enemies of the gods, lay everywhere with their mountainous
+bodies, all full of scars from head to foot; and maimed in their hands
+and arms.</p>
+
+<p>30. Some were hanging on the branches of trees, by their outstretched
+entrails, gushing out with blood; others with their cropt off crowns
+and heads, were lying on the ground with open and fiery eyes.</p>
+
+<p>31. 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.</p>
+
+<p>32. Their helmets which were terrific by their blaze, were hanging down
+their necks; and the braids of their hairs woven with stones, hung
+loosely about their bodies.</p>
+
+<p>33. Their heads which were covered with hard brazen and pointed
+coronets, were broken by slabs of stone, which were pelted upon them
+from the hands of the gods.</p>
+
+<p>34. In this manner the demons were destroyed on all sides, together
+with all weapons at the end of the battle; which devoured them, as the
+sea water dissolves the dust.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_531">[531]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX.<br>
+<span class="small">ACCOUNT OF THE SUBSEQUENT LIVES OF THE DEMONS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Account of the torments of the Demons in the regions of
+Pluto, and their succeeding births.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Upon destruction of the demons, the gods were
+exceedingly joyous; but Dáma and the other leaders of the Daityas,
+became immerged in sorrow and grief.</p>
+
+<p>2. Upon this Sambara was full of wrath, and his anger was kindled like
+the all destroying fire against his generals, whom he called aloud by
+their names and said, where are they?</p>
+
+<p>3. But they fled from their abodes for fear of his ire, and hid
+themselves in the seventh sphere of the infernal regions.</p>
+
+<p>4. 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.</p>
+
+<p>5. Dauntless warders of the hell-gate received them into their favour,
+and having given them shelter in the hell-pit, gave them their three
+maiden daughters in marriage.</p>
+
+<p>6. They there passed in their company, a period of ten thousand years,
+and gave a free vent to their evil desires up to the end of their
+lives. (The evil thoughts being the progeny of hell).</p>
+
+<p>7. 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.</p>
+
+<p>8. It happened on one occasion that Yama—the god of retributive
+justice, gave his call to that spot, in order to survey the state of
+affairs in the doleful pits of hell.</p>
+
+<p>9. The three Asuras, being unware of his rank and dignity, (by seeing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_532">[532]</span>him unattended with his ensigns), failed to make their obeisance to the
+lord of hell, by taking him to their peril as one of his servants.</p>
+
+<p>10. Then a nod of his eyebrows, assigned to them a place in the burning
+furnace of hell; where they were immediately cast by the stern porters
+of hell gate.</p>
+
+<p>11. There they lay burning with their wives and children, until they
+were consumed to death, like a straw-hut and withered trees.</p>
+
+<p>12. The evil desires and wicked propensities, which they contracted in
+the company of the hellish train, caused their transmigration to the
+forms of Kirátas, for carrying on their slaughters and atrocities like
+the myrmidons of Yama.</p>
+
+<p>13. 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).</p>
+
+<p>14. They were then transformed to the forms of hogs in the land of
+Trigarta, and then as mountain rams in Magadha, and afterwards of
+heinous reptiles in caves and holes.</p>
+
+<p>15. Thus after passing successively into a variety of other forms, they
+are now lying as fishes in the wood-land lakes of Cashmir.</p>
+
+<p>16. Being burnt in hell fire at first, they have now their respite in
+the watery lake, and drink its filthy water, whereby they neither die
+nor live to their hearts content.</p>
+
+<p>17. Having thus passed over and over into various births, and being
+transformed again and again to be reborn on earth, they are rolling
+like waves of the sea to all eternity.</p>
+
+<p>18. Thus like their endless desires, they have been eternally rolling
+like weeds in the ocean of the earth; and there is no end of their
+pains until the end of their desires.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_533">[533]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI.<br>
+<span class="small">INVESTIGATION OF REALITY AND UNREALITY</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Egoism the cause of Poverty and Calamity, illustrated
+in the instance of Dáma and others.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—It was for your enlightenment, O high minded Ráma!
+that I have related to you the instance of Dáma and Vyála, that you may
+derive instruction thereby, and not let it go for nothing as a mere
+idle story.</p>
+
+<p>2. Following after untruth by slighting the truth, is attended with the
+danger of incurring endless miseries, which the careless pursuer after
+it, is little aware of.</p>
+
+<p>3. Mind! how great was the leadership of Sambara’s army, (once held by
+Dáma and his colleagues), and whereby they defeated the hosts of the
+immortal deities, and reflect on the change of their state to
+contemptible fishes in a dry and dirty quagmire.</p>
+
+<p>4. Mind their former fortitude, which put to flight the legions of the
+immortals; and think on their base servility as hunters, under the
+chief of Kirátas afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>5. 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.</p>
+
+<p>6. 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.</p>
+
+<p>7. Therefore, O Ráma! be diligent to wipe off from thy heart the sense
+of thy egoism, and try to be happy by thinking always of the nullity of
+thyself.</p>
+
+<p>8. The error of egoism like a dark cloud, hidst the bright disk of the
+moon of truth under its gloom, and causes its cooling beams to
+disappear from sight.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_534">[534]</span></p>
+
+<p>9. The three Daityas Dáma, Vyála and Kata, being under the demoniac
+influence of Egoism, believed their nonentity as positive entity by the
+excess of their illusion.</p>
+
+<p>10. They are now living as fishes in the muddy pool of a lake, among
+the forest lands of Kashmira, where they are content at present with
+feeding with <i>zest</i> upon the moss and weeds growing in it. (The watery
+land of Kashmir is well-known to abound in fishes feeding on aquatic
+herbs and moss).</p>
+
+<p>11. Ráma said:—Tell me sir, how they came to existence when they were
+nonexistent before; for neither can a <i>nil</i> be an <i>ens</i>, nor an entity
+become a nonentity at any time.</p>
+
+<p>12. Vasishtha replied:—So it is, O strong armed Ráma! that nothing can
+ever be something, or anything can ever be nothing. But it is possible
+for a little thing to be great, as for a great one to be reduced to
+minuteness. (As it is the case in the evolution and involutions of
+beings).</p>
+
+<p>13. Say what nonentity has come to being, or what entity has been
+lasting for ever. All these I will explain to you by their best proofs
+and examples.</p>
+
+<p>14. Ráma answered:—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 Dáma and the demons, as mere nullities and yet to be in
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>15. Yes Ráma, it was in the same way, that the non-existent and unreal
+Dáma and others seemed to be in existence by mere illusion, as the
+mirage appears to us to be full of water by our optical delusion (or
+deception of vision).</p>
+
+<p>16. It is in like manner that ourselves, these gods and demigods, and
+all things besides, are unrealities in fact, and yet we seem to turn
+about and speak and act as real persons.</p>
+
+<p>17. My existence is as unreal as thine, and yet it appears as real as
+we dream our death in sleep. (So we dream of our existence while we are
+awake).</p>
+
+<p>18. As the sight of a dead friend in a dream is not a reality, so the
+notion of the reality of the world, ceases upon the conviction of its
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_535">[535]</span>unreality, as that of the demise of the person seen in a dream.</p>
+
+<p>19. But such assertions of our nihility are not acceptable to them, who
+are deluded to the belief of the reality of sensible objects. It is the
+habit of thinking its reality, that will not listen to its
+contradiction.</p>
+
+<p>20. This mistaken impression of the reality of the world, is never to
+be effaced without the knowledge of its unreality, derived from the
+sástras, and the assuetude of thinking it so.</p>
+
+<p>21. He who preaches the unreality of the world and the reality of
+Brahma, is derided by the ignorant as a mad man; (for his negation of
+the seeming reality, and assertion of the unseen God).</p>
+
+<p>22. The learned and the ignorant cannot agree on this subject, as the
+drunken and sobermen can not meet together. It is one who has the
+distinct knowledge of light and darkness, that knows the difference
+between the shade and sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>23. It is as impossible to turn the ignorant to truth, from their
+belief in the reality of unrealities, as to make a dead body to stand
+on it legs by any effort.</p>
+
+<p>24. It is in vain to preach the doctrine of “<i>to pan</i>”, that “Brahma is
+all” to the vulgar, who for want of their knowledge of abstract
+meditation, are devoted to their sensible notions.</p>
+
+<p>25. There 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).</p>
+
+<p>26. The intelligent man, who believes that the supremely quiescent
+spirit of Brahma, pervades the whole universe, is not to be led away by
+any from his firm belief.</p>
+
+<p>27. So nothing can shake the faith of that man, who knows himself as no
+other, beside the Supreme Being who is all in all; and thinks himself
+to be dependent on the substantiality of God, as the formal ring
+depends on its substance of gold.</p>
+
+<p>28. The ignorant have no notion of the spirit, beside that of matter,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_536">[536]</span>which they believe as the cause and effect (Kárya Kárana) 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.</p>
+
+<p>29. The ignorant man is composed of his egoism only, and the sage is
+fraught with his spirituality alone; and neither of them is ever
+thwarted from his own belief.</p>
+
+<p>30. What is one’s nature or habit (of thinking), can hardly be altered
+at any time; for it would be foolish in one, who has been habituated to
+think himself as a man, to take himself for a pot or otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>31. Hence though ourselves and others, and that Dáma and the demons are
+nothing in reality; yet who can believe that we or these or those and
+not what ourselves to be.</p>
+
+<p>32. There is but One Being that is really existent, who is truth and
+consciousness himself, and of the nature of the vacuum and pure
+understanding. He is immaculate, all pervading, quiescent and without
+his rise or fall.</p>
+
+<p>33. Being perfect quietude and void, he seems as nothing existent; and
+all these creations subsist in that vacuity as particles of its own
+splendour.</p>
+
+<p>34. As the stars are seen to shine resplendent in the darkness of
+night, and the worms and waves are seen to float on the surface of the
+waters, so do all these phenomena appear to occur in his reality.</p>
+
+<p>35. Whatever that being purposes himself to be, he conceives himself to
+be immediately the same: it is that vacuous Intellect only which is the
+true reality, and all others are also real, as viewed in it and rising
+and setting in it out of its own will (volition or bidding).</p>
+
+<p>36. Therefore there is nothing real or unreal in the three worlds, but
+all of or the same form as it is viewed by the Intellect, and rising
+before it of its own spontaneity. (The three worlds are composed of
+this earth and the worlds above and beneath it, called as swarga,
+martya and pátála).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_537">[537]</span></p>
+
+<p>37. We have also sprung from that Will Divine as Dáma and others; hence
+there is neither any reality or unreality in any of us, except at the
+time (when we exist or cease to do so).</p>
+
+<p>38. This infinite and formless void of the Intellect, is ubiquitous and
+all pervading; and in whatever form this intellect manifests itself in
+any place, it appears there just in the same figure and manner.</p>
+
+<p>39. As the divine consciousness expanded itself with the images of Dáma
+and others, it immediately assumed those shapes by its notions of the
+same. (But here it was the consciousness of Sambara or Satan, which
+manifested itself in those shapes, and implies every thing to be but a
+manifestation of our notion of it).</p>
+
+<p>40. So it is with every one of us, that all things are produced to our
+view, according to their notions which are presented to our
+consciousness. (This is the tenet of conceptualism or idealism, which
+bears resemblance to the doctrine of Realism. See Cousin’s treatise “De
+Intellectibus”).</p>
+
+<p>41. What we call the world, is the representation of things to us as in
+our dream; it is a hollow body as a bubble rising in the empty ocean of
+the Intellect, and appearing as the water in the mirage.</p>
+
+<p>42. 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 (<i>átyantika dukkha nivritti
+moksha</i>).</p>
+
+<p>43. But the Intellect which never sleeps, nor has to be awakened at any
+time (but is ever wakeful), is the vacuity of the Divine Mind, in which
+the world is ever present in its visible form (and to which nothing is
+invisible).</p>
+
+<p>44. There the work of creation is united with the rest of <i>nirvána</i>,
+and the cessation from the act of creation, is joined with
+uninterrupted quiescence; and no difference of alternate work and rest
+whatever subsists in God any time. (There is no such thing as “God
+rested from his works”).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_538">[538]</span></p>
+
+<p>45. The Divine Intellect views its own form in the world, and the world
+in itself in its true sense; as the blinded eye sees the internal light
+in its orbit. (?)</p>
+
+<p>46. 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.</p>
+
+<p>47. There are all these things every where, as we have ideas of them in
+our minds; but there is never any thing any where, of which we have no
+previous idea in the mind. It is the one quiet spirit of God, which
+lies extended in all these forms coming to our knowledge. Therefore
+knowing him as all in all, give up all your fears and sorrows and
+duality, rest in peace in his unity.</p>
+
+<p>48. The great intellect of God, is as solid and clear as a block of
+crystal, which is both dense and transparent in the inside. They appear
+to be all hollow within, but replete with the images of all things from
+without.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_539">[539]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXII">CHAPTER XXXII.<br>
+<span class="small">ON GOOD CONDUCT.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Passing from the meaner to higher births, is the way to
+the attainment of Liberation, and supreme felicity.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> said:—Tell me sir, how Dáma, Vyála and Kata obtained their
+liberation at last like all other virtuous souls, and got released from
+the torments of hell, like children getting rid of the fear of Yakshas
+and Pisáchas.</p>
+
+<p>2. Vasishtha replied:—Hear, O thou support of Raghu’s race! what Yama
+said in respect of Dáma, Vyála and their companions, when they besought
+for their liberation through his attendants in hell.</p>
+
+<p>3. That Dáma and others would obtain their liberation, upon their
+release from their demoniac bodies by death; and upon hearing the
+account of their lives and actions.</p>
+
+<p>4. Ráma said:—Tell me sir, how, when and from what source, Dáma and
+others, came to learn the accounts of their lives, and in what manner
+they obtained their release from hell.</p>
+
+<p>5. Vasishtha replied:—These demons being transformed to fishes in a
+pool, by the bank of the great lotus lake in Kashmere, underwent many
+miserable births, in their finny forms in the same bog.</p>
+
+<p>6. 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.</p>
+
+<p>7. There they fed upon the moss and mushrooms and tender petals of
+lotuses, and had to live upon the leaves of aquatic plants and
+creepers, that floated on the surface of the waves.</p>
+
+<p>8. They swung in cradles of flowers, and rested on beds of blue
+lotuses; and dived in vortices of the waters, or flew under the cooling
+showers of rainy clouds.</p>
+
+<p>9. These charming cranes and herons, were at last becleansed of their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_540">[540]</span>brutish foulness, by their vegetable food of sweet fruits and flowers,
+and by their pure beverage of the crystal lake, the food of holy saints.</p>
+
+<p>10. Having by these means obtained a clear understanding, they were
+prepared for their release from the brutish state, as men when enabled
+to distinguish and get hold of the qualities of <i>satva</i> and <i>rajas</i>
+(<i>i.e.</i> of goodness and virtue), from that of <i>tamas</i> or wrong and
+evil, are entitled to their liberation.</p>
+
+<p>11. Now there is a city by name of Adhisthána, in the happy valley of
+Kashmere, which is beset by mountains and trees on all sides, and very
+romantic in its appearance.</p>
+
+<p>12. There is a hill in the midst of that city known as Pradyumna
+Sekhara, which bears resemblance to a pistil, rising from the pericarp
+within the cell of a lotus-flower.</p>
+
+<p>13. On the top of that hill, there is an edifice towering above all
+other buildings; and piercing the sky with its high turrets, which
+appears like pinnacles above its summit.</p>
+
+<p>14. 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.</p>
+
+<p>15. There the demon Vyála built his nest in the form of a sparrow, and
+chirped his meaningless notes, as one repeats the Vedic hymns without
+knowing their meanings. (This chanting is elsewhere compared with the
+croaking of frogs).</p>
+
+<p>16. There was at that time a prince in the same city, by name of
+<i>Yasaskara</i> or the renowned, who reigned there like Indra over the gods
+in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>17. Then the demon Dáma became a gnat and dwelt in that dwelling, and
+continued to buzz his low tune in the crevice of a lofty column of that
+building.</p>
+
+<p>18. It then came to pass, that the citizens of Adhisthána, prepared a
+play ground by name of Ratnávatí-vehara in that city.</p>
+
+<p>19. There the minister of the king known as Narasinha by name, took his
+residence. He understood the fates of human kind, as the astronomer
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_541">[541]</span>knows the stars of heaven on a small celestial globe, which he holds in
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>20. It happened at that time, that the deceitful demon Kata, is as
+reborn as a parrot, and became the favourite of the minister, by being
+kept in a silver cage in his house.</p>
+
+<p>21. It then turned out that the minister recited this poetical
+narrative of the Titan war to the inmates of the house.</p>
+
+<p>22. And the parrot Kata, happening to hear it, remembered his past
+life, whereby he was absolved of his sins, and attained his final
+liberation.</p>
+
+<p>23. The sparrow dwelling on the top of the Pradyumna hill, also chanced
+to hear the narration of his life in that place, and obtained his
+emancipation thereby.</p>
+
+<p>24. Dáma who in the form of a gnat, resided in the palace, happened
+also to hear the minister’s recital of his tale, and obtained thereby
+his peace and release.</p>
+
+<p>25. In this manner, O Ráma! the sparrow on the Pradyumna mount, the
+gnat in the palace, and the parrot on the play ground, had all their
+liberation.</p>
+
+<p>26. Thus I have related to you the whole of the story of the demon Dáma
+and others, which will fully convince you of the vanity of the world.</p>
+
+<p>27. It is the ignorant only that are tempted to vanity by their error,
+as they are led to the delusion of water in a mirage; and so the great
+also are liable like these demons, to fall low from their high stations
+by their error.</p>
+
+<p>28. Think of one of these, that reduced the high Meru and Mandara
+mountains with a nod of his eyebrows, was constrained to remain as a
+contemptible gnat in the chink of a pillar in the palace. (So the huge
+Satan entered the body of the small and hateful serpent, and the
+gigantic devils in the hateful bodies of the herd of swine).</p>
+
+<p>29. Look at another who threatened to destroy the sun and moon with a
+slap, living at last as a poor sparrow in a hole of the peak of the
+Pradyumna mountain.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_542">[542]</span></p>
+
+<p>30. Look at the third who balanced the mount Meru like a flower bouquet
+in his hand, lying imprisoned as a parrot in the cage at the house of
+Nrisingha.</p>
+
+<p>31. 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).</p>
+
+<p>32. It is because of the wrong desire of a man that he takes the
+untruth for truth, as if by the excessive thirst of a person, that he
+mistakes the mirage for water, and thereby loses both his way and his
+life.</p>
+
+<p>33. Those men only can ford across the ocean of the world, who by the
+natural bent of their good understanding, are inclined to the study of
+the sástras, and look forward to their liberation, by rejecting
+whatever is vicious and untrue.</p>
+
+<p>34. 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.</p>
+
+<p>35. But those who walk by the dictates of conscience, and follow the
+path pointed by the Ágama (Veda), are saved from destruction, and
+attain their best state (of perfection and bliss).</p>
+
+<p>36. O highminded Ráma! he whose mind always longs after having this
+thing and that, loses the best gain of his manliness (parama
+purushártha) by his avarice, and leaves not even ashes or traces behind.</p>
+
+<p>37. The high-minded man regards the world as a straw, and shuns all its
+concerns as a snake casts off its slough.</p>
+
+<p>38. He whose mind is illumined by the wondrous light of truth, is
+always taken under the protection of the gods, as the mundane egg is
+protected by Brahmá (or rather under the wings of Brahmá’s swan,
+hatching over its egg).</p>
+
+<p>39. Nobody should walk in paths which are long and wearisome, crooked
+and winding, and encompassed by dangers and difficulties; because
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_543">[543]</span>Ráhu—the ascending node, lost its life by its curvilinear course, to
+drink the nectarine beams of the moon.</p>
+
+<p>40. He who abides by the dictates of the true sástras, and associates
+with the best of men, are never subject to the darkness of error.</p>
+
+<p>41. Those who are renowned for their virtues, have the power to bring
+their destiny under their command, convert all their evils to good, and
+render their prosperity perpetual.</p>
+
+<p>42. Those who are unsatisfied with their qualifications (but wish to
+qualify themselves the more), and those who thirst after knowledge and
+are seekers of truth, are truly called as human beings, all others are
+but brutes.</p>
+
+<p>43. Those, the lakes of whose hearts are brightened by the moonbeams of
+fame (<i>i.e.</i> whose heart are desirous of fame); have the form of Hari
+seated in their hearts, as in the sea of milk.</p>
+
+<p>44. The repeated desire of enjoying what has been enjoyed, and of
+seeing what has often been seen, is not the way to get rid of the
+world; but is the cause of repeated birth, for the same enjoyments.</p>
+
+<p>45. Continue to abide by the established rule of conduct, act according
+to the sástras and good usages, and break off the bonds of worldly
+enjoyments, which are all but vanities.</p>
+
+<p>46. Let the world resound with the renown of your virtues reaching to
+the skies; because thy renown will immortalize thy name, and not the
+enjoyments thou hast enjoyed.</p>
+
+<p>47. Those whose good deeds shine as moonbeams, and are sung by the
+maidens of heaven, are said to be truly living, while all others
+unknown to fame are really dead.</p>
+
+<p>48. They that aspire to their utmost perfection by their unfailing
+exertions, and act according to the precepts of the sástras, are surely
+successful in their attempt.</p>
+
+<p>49. Abiding patiently by the Sástra, without hastening for success; and
+perfecting one’s self by long practice, produce the ripe fruits of
+consummation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_544">[544]</span></p>
+
+<p>50. Now Ráma, renounce all your sorrow and fear, your anxieties, pride
+and hastiness; conduct yourself by the ordinances of law and sástras,
+and immortalize your name.</p>
+
+<p>51. 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.</p>
+
+<p>52. Do not allow yourself henceforward to be degraded below the vulgar;
+but consider well the sástras as the best weapons, for defeating the
+dangers and difficulties of the world.</p>
+
+<p>53. Why do you endanger your life in the muddy pit of this world, like
+an elephant falling in a pitfall under the keen arrows of the enemy?
+Avoid only to taste of its enjoyments, and you are free from all danger.</p>
+
+<p>54. Of what avail is wealth without knowledge; therefore devote
+yourself to learning, and consider well your riches to be but trash and
+bubbles.</p>
+
+<p>55. The knowledge of heretical sástras, has made beasts of men, by
+making them only miserable and unhappy by their unprofitable arguments.</p>
+
+<p>56. Now wake and shake off the dullness of your long, deep and
+death-like sleep, like the torpor of the old tortoise lying in the bog.</p>
+
+<p>57. Rise and accept an antidote to ward off your old age and death; and
+it is knowledge of this prescription, that all wealth and property are
+for our evils, and all pleasures and enjoyments, tend only to sicken
+and enervate our frames.</p>
+
+<p>58. Know your difficulty to be your prosperity, and your disrespect to
+be your great gain. Conduct yourself according to the purport of the
+sástras, as they are supported by good usage.</p>
+
+<p>59. Acts done according to the sástras and good usage also, are
+productive of the best fruits of immortality.</p>
+
+<p>60. He who acts well according to good usage, and considers everything
+by good reasons, and is indifferent to the pains and pleasures of the
+world; such a one flourishes like an arbor in the spring, with the
+fruits and flowers of long life and fame, virtues and good qualities
+and prosperity.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_545">[545]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII">CHAPTER XXXIII.<br>
+<span class="small">CONSIDERATION OF EGOISM.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Of good attempts, good company and good studies; also
+of liberation by Renunciation of Egoism and Worldly Bondage.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Seeing the complete success of every undertaking,
+depending on your own exertion at all times and places, you should
+never be slack in your energy at all.</p>
+
+<p>2. See how Nandi gratified the wishes of all his friends and relations
+by his own exertions, and how he became victorious over death itself,
+by his adoration of Mahádeva by the side of a lake.</p>
+
+<p>3. See also, how the Dánavas too got the better of the gods, who were
+fraught with every perfection, by their greater wealth and prowess, as
+the elephants destroy a lake of lotuses.</p>
+
+<p>4. See, how Marutta the King of demons, created another world like that
+of Brahmá, by means of his sacrifice through the great sage Samvarta
+(the law giver).</p>
+
+<p>5. See, how Viswámitra (the military chief) obtained the dignity of
+Bráhmanhood by his great energy and continued exertions. He obtained by
+his austerities what is impossible to be gained by another.</p>
+
+<p>6. See, how the poor and unfortunate Upamanyu, obtained his nectarious
+food of the cake and curdled milk, by his worship of Siva, from the
+milky ocean in days of yore.</p>
+
+<p>7. See how the god Vishnu devoured (destroyed), like a wild fire the
+demons of the triple world, likening the tender filaments of lotuses;
+and how the sage Sweta became victorious over death by means of his
+firm faith in Siva (as it is described in the Linga Purána).</p>
+
+<p>8. Remember, how the chaste Sávitrí, brought back her spouse Satyavána
+from the realm of death, by her prevailing on stern Yama with the
+suavity of her discourse.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_546">[546]</span></p>
+
+<p>9. There is no great exertion of any kind that goes unrewarded in this
+world; all impossibility is thought possible by ardent pursuit after it
+(or to the ardent pursuer, as it is said: Fortune is found by the
+swiftest pursuer).</p>
+
+<p>10. So men having full knowledge of the spirit, and exerting their
+utmost devotion, are enabled to root out their destiny of
+transmigration, which is fraught with so much pain and pleasure (both
+of which are equally hurtful to the soul).</p>
+
+<p>11. All visible things are full of danger to the sight of the
+intelligent. There is no pleasure to be had from anything, without its
+concomitant pain (either preceding or following it).</p>
+
+<p>12. Though it is difficult to know the Supreme Brahma, and facile to
+attain supreme felicity; yet should Brahma be sought at first, as the
+giver of all felicity. (Seek happiness through its giver—the Great God).</p>
+
+<p>13. Forsake your pride, and rely on your unalterable peace of mind;
+consider well your worthiness in your understanding, and stick to your
+attendance on the wise and good.</p>
+
+<p>14. There is no other way for your salvation in this ocean of the
+world, save by your attendance on the wise. All your pilgrimage,
+austerity and learning of the sástras, are of no avail to your
+liberation.</p>
+
+<p>15. He is called the wise, whose greediness, anger and erroneous
+conceptions, are on their wane day by day; and who walks in the path of
+rectitude, as it is inculcated in the Sástra.</p>
+
+<p>16. The society of spiritual guides, serves to dispel the visibles from
+the sight of the devout, as the invisibles are hidden from sight
+(<i>i.e.</i> as they are not in being).</p>
+
+<p>17. In the absence of all other objects, there remains the Supreme
+Spirit alone in view, and the human soul having nothing else to rest
+upon, rests at last in the Supreme Soul only.</p>
+
+<p>18. The visibles did not exist before, nor are they produced from
+naught; they are not in existence though seen in our presence, nor are
+they to exist in future. The supreme alone exist for ever without
+change or decay.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_547">[547]</span></p>
+
+<p>19. I have already shown you by various instances the falsehood of the
+visibles (in the book of Genesis); I will now show you the falsity of
+existence, as it is known to the learned.</p>
+
+<p>20. Now that our passive consciousness of the three worlds, being the
+sober truth with the wise, there can be no room for the unrealities of
+matter and <i>máyá</i>—illusion, to enter into our belief. (We know nothing
+of the external world, except our inward consciousness of it. Berkeley).</p>
+
+<p>21. Whatever wonders are displayed by the active intellect to the
+inactive soul, the same is thought to be the world. (There is no
+outward world, beside the working of the intellect).</p>
+
+<p>22. The notion of the sphere of the world, is derived from the rays of
+the central intellect, stretching to the circumference of the
+understanding, and there being no difference between the radiating
+point and the radiated circle, acknowledge the identity of the
+radiator, the radii and the periphery. (<i>i.e.</i> Of the intellect, its
+intelligence and the world).</p>
+
+<p>23. The twinklings of the intellectual eye in its acts of opening and
+shutting, cause the notions of the appearance and disappearance of the
+world in continued succession.</p>
+
+<p>24. One unacquainted with the true sense of Ego, is blind amidst the
+luminous sphere of the intellect, but he who knows its true meaning,
+finds himself amidst the sphere of spiritual light (or rather loses
+himself in the divine light).</p>
+
+<p>25. He that understands the Divine Ego, does no more retain the notion
+of his own egoism; but mixes with the Supreme soul, as a drop of water
+is lost in the waters of the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>26. In reality there exists no I or thou nor the visible world nor
+anything else; but all these blend upon right reasoning in the One Ego,
+which remains and subsists after all other existences.</p>
+
+<p>27. Even clear understandings are sometimes clouded by false
+apparitions, as those of ogres &c.; when there are no such things, just
+as children are seized with false fear of goblins.</p>
+
+<p>28. As long as the moonlight of the intellect, is obscured by the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_548">[548]</span>darkness of egoism, so long the lotus lake of spirituality, will not
+come to its bloom.</p>
+
+<p>29. The feeling of egoism being wiped off from the mind, the sense of
+self and selfish passions, will vanish of themselves from the heart;
+and there will be an utter end of the fears of death and hell, as also
+of the desires of heaven and liberation.</p>
+
+<p>30. So long as the egoistic feelings float about, like clouds over the
+sphere of the mind, there will be no end of desires, growing in the
+heart like weeds in the plains.</p>
+
+<p>31. As long as the cloud of egotism continue to overcast the mind and
+obscure its intelligence, the humidity of dullness will fill its
+sphere, and prevent the light of intellect to pierce through it.</p>
+
+<p>32. Egoistic pride is unmannerly in men, and is taken in the light of
+vanity, it is the cause of sorrow and not delight; and is as bug-bears
+to boys.</p>
+
+<p>33. The vain assumption of egoism, is productive of a great many
+errors, it leads to the ambition of gaining an infinity of worlds, as
+it was in the cases of the foolish demons.</p>
+
+<p>34. The conceit that I am such and such (a great man), is an error than
+which there is none other, nor is ever likely to be a greater error to
+lead us to utter darkness.</p>
+
+<p>35. Whatever joy or grief betides us at any time in this changeful
+world, is all the effect of the rotatory wheels of egoism, turning up
+and down at every moment.</p>
+
+<p>36. He who weeds and roots out the germs of egoism from his heart, he
+verily prevents the arbor of his worldliness (<i>Samsára Vriksha</i>), from
+jutting out in a hundred branches.</p>
+
+<p>37. Egoism is the sprout of the trees of our lives, in their
+interminable revolutions through the world; and meity or the sense that
+“this is mine,” is the cause that makes them expand in a thousand
+branches. (I am one, but claim many things as mine).</p>
+
+<p>38. Swift as the flight of birds, do our desires and desirable objects
+disappear from us; and upon mature consideration, they prove to be but
+bubbles, bursting on the evanescent waves of our lives.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_549">[549]</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>39. It is for want of the knowledge of the one Ego, that we think
+ourselves as I, thou, this or the other; and it is by shutting out our
+view of the only soul, that we see the incessant revolutions of this
+world and that.</p>
+
+<p>40. As long as the darkness of egoism reigns over the wilderness of
+human life, so long doth the goblin of selfishness infest it with its
+wanton revelry.</p>
+
+<p>41. The vile man that is seized by the avaricious demon of selfishness,
+is at an utter loss of any moral precept, and any <i>mantra</i> of his
+religion to satisfy his wants.</p>
+
+<p>42. Ráma said:—Tell me, O venerable Bráhman, how we may be enabled to
+suppress our egoism or selfishness, for evading the dangers and
+difficulties in our course through the world.</p>
+
+<p>43. Vasishtha replied:—It is by seeking to settle mind in the
+resplendent soul, as it shines in the transparent mirror of the
+intellect, that it is possible for any body to suppress the
+consciousness, of his self or personal existence. (<i>i.e.</i> By losing
+one’s self in the self-existence of the Supreme Soul).</p>
+
+<p>44. A closer investigation into human life, proves it to be a maze full
+with the false shows of magic. It is not worth loving or hating, nor
+capable of causing our egoism or pride.</p>
+
+<p>45. He whose soul is free from egoism, and devoid of the impression of
+the phenomenals; whose course of life runs in an even tenor, is the man
+who can have no sense of egoism in him. (Whose life doth in one even
+tenor run, and end its days as it has begun. Pope.)</p>
+
+<p>46. He who knowing his internal self to be beyond the external world,
+and neither desires nor dislikes anything in it, but preserves the
+serenity of his temper at all times, is not susceptible of egoism.</p>
+
+<p>47. Whoso thinks himself to be the inward noumena, and distinct from
+the outward phenomena, and keeps the calm equanimity of his mind, is
+not ruffled by the feeling of his egoism.</p>
+
+<p>48. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_550">[550]</span>Ráma said:—Tell me, sir, what is the form of egoism, and whether it
+consists in the body or mind or of both of these, and whether it is got
+rid of with the riddance of the body.</p>
+
+<p>
+49. Vasishtha replied:—There are three sorts of egoism, Ráma! in this
+triple world, two of which are of superior nature, but the third is of
+a vile kind and is to be abandoned by all.</p>
+
+<p>50. The first is the supreme and undivided Ego, which is diffused
+throughout the world; it is the Supreme soul (Paramátma), beside which
+there is nothing in nature.</p>
+
+<p>51. The feeling of this kind of egoism, leads to the liberation of men,
+as in the state of the living-liberated; but the knowledge of the ego,
+as distinct and apart from all, and thought to be as minute as the
+hundredth part of a hair, is the next form of self-consciousness, which
+is good also.</p>
+
+<p>52. This second form of egoism, leads also to the liberation of human
+souls, even in the present state of their existence, known as the state
+of living-liberation (Jívan-Mukta).</p>
+
+<p>53. The other kind of egoism, which is composed of the knowledge of the
+body, with all its members as parts of the Ego, is the last and worst
+kind of it, which takes the body for the soul or self.</p>
+
+<p>54. This third and last kind, forms the popular belief of mankind, who
+take their bodies as parts of themselves; it is the basest form of
+egoism, and must be forsaken in the same manner, as we shun our
+inveterate enemies.</p>
+
+<p>55. The man that is debased by this kind of egoism, can never come to
+his right sense; but becomes subject to all the evils of life, under
+the thrall of the powerful enemy.</p>
+
+<p>56. Possest with this wrong notion of himself, every man is incessantly
+troubled in his mind by various desires, which expose him to all the
+evils of life.</p>
+
+<p>57. By means of the better egoisms, men transform themselves to gods;
+but the common form of it, debases a man to the state of a beast and
+its attendant evils.</p>
+
+<p>58. That I am not the body, is the certainty arrived at by the great
+and good, who believing themselves to be of the first two kinds, are
+superior to the vulgar.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_551">[551]</span></p>
+
+<p>
+59. Belief in the first two kinds, raises men above the common level;
+but that in the lower kind, brings every misery on mankind.</p>
+
+<p>60. It was owing to their baser egoism, that the demons Dáma, Vyála and
+others, were reduced to that deplorable state, as it is related in
+their tale.</p>
+
+<p>61. Ráma said:—Tell me, sir, the state of that man, who by discarding
+the third or popular kind of egoism from his mind, attains the well
+being of his soul in both the present and future worlds.</p>
+
+<p>62. Vasishtha replied:—Having cast off this noxious egoism, (which is
+to be got rid of by every body), a man rests in the Supreme Spirit in
+the same manner, as the believers in the two other sorts of it. (<i>i.e.</i>
+Of the Supreme and superior sorts of spiritual egoisms, consisting in
+the belief of one’s self, as the impersonal or personal soul—the
+undivided or individual spirit).</p>
+
+<p>63. The two former views of egoism, place the egotist in the all
+pervasive or all exclusive spirit (in the Ego of the Divine Unity).</p>
+
+<p>64. But all these egoisms which are in reality but different forms of
+dualism, being lost in the unity, all consciousness of distinct
+personality, is absorbed in the Supreme monism.</p>
+
+<p>65. The good understanding should always strive to its utmost, to get
+rid of its common and gross egotism, in order to feel in itself the
+ineffable felicity of the unity.</p>
+
+<p>66. Renunciation of the unholy belief of one’s self personality in his
+material body, is the greatest good that one can attain to for his
+highest state of felicity <i>parama padam</i>.</p>
+
+<p>67. The man that forsakes the feeling of his egoism (or personality)
+from his mind, is not debased nor goes to perdition by either his
+indifference to or management of worldly affairs. (<i>i.e.</i> The doing or
+refraining from bodily or worldly actions, is equally indifferent to
+the philosophic mind).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_552">[552]</span>68. The man who has got rid of his egoism by the subsidence of his
+selfishness in himself, is indifferent to pain and pleasure, as the
+satiate are to the taste of sweet or sour.</p>
+
+<p>
+69. The man detesting the pleasures of life, has his full bliss
+presented before himself; as the mind cleared of its doubts and
+darkness, has nothing hidden from its sight.</p>
+
+<p>70. It is by investigation into the nature of egoism, and forsaking
+this gross selfishness, that a man crosses over the ocean of the world
+of his own accord.</p>
+
+<p>71. The man who having nothing of his own, and knowing himself as
+nothing, yet has all and thinks himself as all in all, and who though
+possessed of wealth and properties, has the magnanimity of his soul to
+disown them to himself; he is verily situated in the Supreme soul, and
+finds his rest in the state of Supreme bliss. (<i>i.e.</i> The world is the
+Lord’s, and human soul as a particle of the Divine, has its share in
+all and every thing).
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_553">[553]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXIV.<br>
+<span class="small">END OF THE STORY OF DÁMA AND VYÁLA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The Gods annoyed by Bhíma and others apply to Hari, who
+thereupon destroys them with Sambara also.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Now, hear me relate to you, what Sambara did after
+the flight of Dáma and his train; and how he remained in his rocky
+stronghold in the infernal region (Pátála).</p>
+
+<p>2. After the complete overthrow of the whole army of Sambara, and their
+downfall from heaven like innumerable rain drops, falling from an
+over-spreading cloud, and afterwards dispersing itself and disappearing
+in autumn:—</p>
+
+<p>3. Sambara remained motionless for many years in his strong citadel, at
+the loss of his forces defeated by the gods; and then thought within
+himself, about the best means of overcoming the celestials.</p>
+
+<p>4. He said, “the demons Dáma and others, that I produced by my
+black-art of exorcism, are all overthrown in battle, by their
+foolishness and vanity of pride and egotism.</p>
+
+<p>5. “I will now produce some other demons by the power of my charm, and
+endue them both with the power of reason and acquaintance with
+spiritual science, in order that they may know and judge for
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>6. “These then being acquainted with the true nature of things, and
+devoid of false views, will not be subject to pride or vanity, but be
+able to vanquish the deities in combat”.</p>
+
+<p>7. Thinking so in himself, the arch-fiend produced a host of good
+demons by his skill in sorcery; and these creatures of his spell filled
+the space of the sky, as bubbles foam and float on the surface of the
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>8. They were all knowing and acquainted with the knowables; they were
+all dispassionate and sinless, and solely intent on their alloted
+duties, with composed minds and good dispositions.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_554">[554]</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>9. They were known under the different names of Bhíma, Bhása and
+Dridha; and they looked upon all earthly things as straws, by the
+holiness of their hearts.</p>
+
+<p>10. These infernal spirits burst out of the ether and sprang up to the
+upper world, and then spread over the face of the sky as a flight of
+locusts. They cracked as guns, and roared and rolled about as the
+clouds of the rainy season.</p>
+
+<p>11. They fought with the gods for many cycles of years, and yet they
+were not elated with pride, owing to their being under the guidance of
+reason and judgement.</p>
+
+<p>12. For until they were to have the desire of having anything, and
+thinking it as “this is my own”, so long were they insensible of their
+personal existence, such as “this is I, and that one is another”; and
+consequently invincible by any. (Selfishness reduces <one> to slavery and
+subjections).</p>
+
+<p>13. They were fearless in fighting with the gods, from the knowledge of
+their being equally mortal as themselves; and from their want of the
+knowledge of any difference subsisting between one another. (<i>i.e.</i>
+They regarded themselves and their adversaries with an equal eye of
+indifference, as all were equally doomed to death, and therefore never
+feared to die).</p>
+
+<p>14. They rushed out with a firm conviction that, the unsubstantial body
+is nothing, and the intellect is lodged in the pure soul; and that
+there is nothing which we call as I or another.</p>
+
+<p>15. Then these demons who were devoid of the sense of themselves and
+their fears were necessarily dauntless of the fear of their decease or
+death; and were employed in their present duties, without the thoughts
+of the past and future.</p>
+
+<p>16. Their minds were attached to nothing, they slew their enemies
+without thinking themselves as their slayers; they did their duties and
+thought themselves as no doers of them; and they were utterly free from
+all their desires.</p>
+
+<p>17. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_555">[555]</span>They waged the war under the sense of doing their duty to their
+master; while their own nature was entirely free from all passion and
+affection, and of even tenor at all times.</p>
+
+<p>18. The infernal force under the command of Bhíma, Bhása and Dridha,
+bruised and burned and slew and devoured the celestial phalanx, as men
+knead and fry and boil the rice and afterward eat up as their food.</p>
+
+<p>
+19. The celestial army being harassed on all sides by Bhíma, Bhása, and
+Dridha, fled precipitately from the height of heaven, as the Ganges
+runs down from Himálayan height.</p>
+
+<p>20. The discomfited legion of the deities, then resorted to the god
+Hari, sleeping on the surface of the ocean of milk; as the bodies of
+the clouds of heaven, are driven by the winds to the tops of mountains
+(beyond the region of storm).</p>
+
+<p>21. The god lying folded in the coils of the serpent, as a consort in
+the arms of his mistress; gave the gods their hope of final success in
+future. (Hari or Krishna on the serpent, is typical of Christ’s
+bruising the head of the satanic serpent).</p>
+
+<p>22. The gods kept themselves hid in that ocean, until it pleased the
+lord Hari, to proceed out of it for the destruction of the demons.</p>
+
+<p>23. Then there was a dreadful war between Vishnu and Sambara, which
+broke and bore away the mountains as in an untimely great deluge of the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>24. The mighty demon being at last overthrown by the might of Náráyana,
+was sent to and settled in the city of Vishnu after his death. (Because
+those that are either saved or slain by Vishnu, are equally entitled to
+his paradise).</p>
+
+<p>25. The demons of Bhíma, Bhása and Dridha, were also killed in their
+unequal struggle with Vishnu, and were extinguished like lamps by the
+wind.</p>
+
+<p>26. They became extinct like flames of fire, and it was not known
+whither their vital flame had fled. Because it is the desire of a
+person that leads him to another state, but these having no wish in
+them, had no other place to go.</p>
+
+<p>27. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_556">[556]</span>Hence the wishless soul is liberated, but not the wistful mind;
+therefore use your reason, O Ráma, to have a wishless mind and soul.</p>
+
+<p>28. A full investigation into truth, will put down your desires at
+once; and the extinction of desires, will restore your mind to rest
+like an extinguished candle.</p>
+
+<p>
+29. Consummate wisdom consists in the knowledge of there being nothing
+real in this world, and that our knowledge of reality is utterly false,
+and that nihility of thing, is the true reality.</p>
+
+<p>30. The whole world is full with the spirit of God, whatever otherwise
+one may think of it at any time; there can be no other thought of it
+except that it is a nihility, and this forms our perfect knowledge of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>31. The two significant words of the will and mind are mere
+insignificant fictions, as head and trunk of the ascending and
+descending nodes of a planet; which upon their right understanding, are
+lost in the Supreme Spirit. (<i>i.e.</i> It is only the divine will and
+spirit that is all in all).</p>
+
+<p>32. The mind being accompanied by its desires, is kept confined in this
+world, but when that is released from these, it is said to have its
+liberation.</p>
+
+<p>33. The mind has gained its existence in the belief of men, owing to
+the many ideas of pots and pictures (<i>ghata-patadí</i>); and other
+things which are imprinted in it; but these thoughts being repressed,
+the mind also vanishes of itself like the phantoms of goblins
+(yakshas—yakkas).<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>34. The demons Dáma, Vyála and Kata, were destroyed by reliance on
+their minds (<i>i.e.</i> by thinking their bodies as their souls); but
+Bhíma, Bhása and Dridha were saved by their belief in the Supreme soul,
+as pervading all things. Therefore, O Ráma! reject the examples of the
+former, imitate that of the latter.</p>
+
+<p>35. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_557">[557]</span>“Be not guided by the example of Dáma, Vyála and Kata,” is the
+lesson that was first delivered to me by Brahmá—the lotus-born and my
+progenitor himself.</p>
+
+<p>36. This lesson I repeat to you, O Ráma, as my intelligent pupil, that
+you may never follow the example of the wicked demons Dáma and others;
+but imitate the conduct of the good spirits, Bhíma and others in your
+conduct.</p>
+
+<p>37. It is incessant pain and pleasure that forms the fearful feature of
+this world, and there is no other way of evading all its pangs and
+pains, save by your apathetic behaviour, which must be your crowning
+glory in this life.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_558">[558]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXV.<br>
+<span class="small">DESCRIPTION OF INSOUCIANCE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. On the Abandonment of worldly desires, as conducive to
+the composure of the Mind, and society of the good, accompanied
+with rationality and spiritual knowledge, constituting the
+<i>Samádhi</i> of the soul.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Blessed are the virtuous, who have cleansed their
+hearts from the dirt of ignorance; and victorious are those heroes, who
+have conquered their insatiable and ungovernable minds.</p>
+
+<p>2. It is self-control or the government of one’s own mind, that is the
+only means of wading through all the troubles and distresses, and
+amidst all the dangers and difficulties of this world.</p>
+
+<p>3. Hear the summary of all knowledge, and retain and cultivate
+constantly it in your mind; that the desire of enjoyment (avarice) is
+our bondage in the world, and its abandonment is our release from it.</p>
+
+<p>4. What need is there of many precepts, learn this one truth as the sum
+substance of all, that all pleasures are poisonous and pernicious, and
+you must fly from them as from venomous snakes and a raging fire.</p>
+
+<p>5. Consider well and repeatedly in yourself, that all sensible objects
+are as hydras and dragons; and their enjoyment is gall and poison.
+Avoid them at a distance and pursue after your lasting good.</p>
+
+<p>6. The cupidinous mind is productive of pernicious evils, as the
+sterile ground is fertile only in thorns and brambles. (The vitiated
+mind brings forth but vice, as the vicious heart teems with guilt).</p>
+
+<p>7. The mind devoid of desire, lacks its expansion, as the heart wanting
+its passions and affections, is curbed and contracted in itself.</p>
+
+<p>8. The goodly disposed mind ever teems with virtues, that are opposed
+to wrong acts and vice, as the ground of a good quality, grows only the
+good and useful trees in spite of weeds and bushes.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_559">[559]</span>
+
+<p>9. When the mind gains its serenity by culture of good qualities, the
+mist of its errors and ignorance gradually fade and fly away, like
+clouds before the rising sun.</p>
+
+<p>10. The good qualities coming to shine in the sphere of the mind, like
+stars in the moonlight sky, gives rise to the luminary of reason to
+shine over it, like the bright sun of the day.</p>
+
+<p>11. And as the practice of patience grows familiar in the mind, like
+the medicinal <i>vansa-lochana</i> within the bamboo; it gives rise to the
+quality of firmness in the man, as the moon brightens the vernal sky.</p>
+
+<p>12. The society of the good is an arbour, affording its cooling shade
+of peace, and yielding the fruit of salvation. Its effect in righteous
+men, is like that of the stately <i>sarala</i>-tree, distilling the juice of
+spiritual joy from the fruitage of samádhi (sang-froid).</p>
+
+<p>13. Thus prepared, the mind becomes devoid of its desires and enmity,
+and is freed from all troubles and anxieties. It becomes obtuse to the
+feelings of grief and joy, and of pain and pleasure also, and all its
+restlessness dies in itself.</p>
+
+<p>14. Its doubts in the truths of the scriptures die away, as the
+ephemerides and all its curiosities for novelties, are put to a stop. Its
+veil of myths and fictions is unveiled, and its ointment of error is
+rubbed out of it.</p>
+
+<p>15. Its attempts and efforts, malice and disdain, distress and disease,
+are all removed from it; and the mist of its grief and sorrow, and the
+chain of affections, are all blown and torn away.</p>
+
+<p>16. It discards the progeny of its doubts, repudiates the consorts of
+its avarice, and breaks loose from the prison-house of its body. It
+then seeks the welfare of the soul, and attains its godly state of
+holiness.</p>
+
+<p>17. It abandons the causes of its stoutness (<i>i.e.</i> its nourishments
+and enjoyments), and relinquishes its choice of this thing and that;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_560">[560]</span>and then remembering the dignity of the soul, it casts off the covering
+of its body as a straw.</p>
+
+<p>18. The elevation of the mind in worldly affairs, tends to its
+destruction, and its depression in these leads to its spiritual
+elevation. The wise always lower their minds (pride); but fools are for
+elevating them (to their ruin).</p>
+
+
+<p>19. The mind makes the world its own, and ranges all about it; it
+raises the mountains and mounts over them; it is as the infinite
+vacuum, and comprehends all vacuity in itself; and it makes gods of
+friends and foes of others unto us.</p>
+
+<p>20. The understanding being soiled by doubts, and forgetting the true
+nature of the intellect, takes upon it the name of the mind, when it is
+full of all its worldly desires.</p>
+
+<p>21. And the intellect being perverted by its various desires, is called
+the living soul; the animal soul being distinct from the rational soul.</p>
+
+<p>22. The understanding which forgets its intellectuality, and falls into
+the error of its own personality, is what we call the internal
+principle of the mind which is all hollow within.</p>
+
+<p>23. The soul is not the man of the world (<i>i.e.</i> no worldly being), nor
+is it the body or its blood. All material bodies are but gross and dull
+matter; but the soul in the body is empty air and intangible.</p>
+
+<p>24. The body being dissected into atoms, and analysed in all its
+particles, presents nothing but blood and entrails as the plantain
+tree, which when cut into pieces, presents naught but its folded rinds.</p>
+
+<p>25. Know the mind and living soul as making a man, and assuming his
+mortal form; the mind takes its form by itself according to his own
+option.</p>
+
+<p>26. Man stretches his own sphere of action by his own option only to
+entrap himself in it, as the silkworm weaves its cocoon for its own
+imprisonment.</p>
+
+<p>27. The soul lays down its error of being the body, when it has to
+forsake the same at some time or other (<i>i.e.</i> sooner or <span class="pagenum" id="Page_561">[561]</span>later), and
+assume another form as the germ sprouts forth into leaves. (<i>i.e.</i> The
+body is not the soul, nor is the soul the same with the body, as the
+materialist would have it; because the soul has its transmigration,
+which the body has not).</p>
+
+<p>28. As is the desire or thought in the mind, so is it born in its next
+state of metempsychosis. Hence the new born babe is given to sleeping,
+because it thinks itself to be dead, and lying in the night-time of his
+death. It is also given to the dreaming of those things, which had been
+the objects of its desire or thought in its previous state or birth.
+(This establishes the doctrine of innate ideas in the dreaming state of
+new-born babies).
+29. So sour becomes sweet by mixture with sugar, and the bitter seed
+produces sweet fruits by being sown with honey. So on the contrary,
+sweet becomes bitter by intermixture of gall and wormwood. (This is a
+fact in horticulture.—Áráma Sástra, and applies to the goodness and
+badness of the human mind, according to its good and bad associations).</p>
+
+<p>30. Aiming after goodness and greatness, makes a man good and great; as
+one wishing to be an Indra or a lord, dreams of his lordliness in his
+sleep. (The mind makes the man).</p>
+
+<p>31. Inclination to meanness bemeans a man, and a tendency to vileness
+vilifies his conduct in life; as one deluded by his fancy of devils,
+comes to see their apparitions in his nightly visions.</p>
+
+<p>32. But what is naturally foul or fair, can hardly turn otherwise at
+any time; as the limpid lake never becomes muddy, nor the dirty pool
+ever becomes glassy. (Nature of a thing is unchangeable).</p>
+
+<p>33. The perverted mind produces the fruits of its perversion in all its
+actions, while puremindedness is fraught with the effects of its purity
+everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>34. Good and great men never forsake their goodness and greatness, even
+in their fall and decline; so the glorious sun fills the vault of
+heaven with his glory, even when he is sinking below (the horizon).</p>
+
+<p>35. There is no restriction or freedom of the human soul, to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_562">[562]</span>or from
+any action or thing herein; it is a mere passive and neutral
+consciousness, of all that passes before it as a magic scene.</p>
+
+<p>36. The world is a magical city, and as a mirage appearing to sight; it
+is of the nature of the delusive panorama, showing many moons of the
+one, whose unity admits of no duality. So the one Brahma is represented
+as many by delusion. (The Hindus, contrary to Europeans, have many suns
+but one moon. Escas—Chandra).</p>
+
+<p>37. All this is verily the essence of Brahma, and this is the sober
+reality; the substantive world is an unsubstantiality, and peers out to
+view as a hollow phantom. (It is a phantasmagoria of phantasms).</p>
+
+<p>38. That I am not the infinite but an infinitesimal, is the misjudgment
+of the ignorant; but the certitude of my infinity and supremacy, is the
+means of my absorption in the Infinite and Supreme.</p>
+
+
+<p>39. The belief of one’s individuality in his undivided, all pervasive
+and transparent soul, as “I am this,” is the cause of his bondage to
+his personality, and is a web spun by his erroneous dualism. (Knowledge
+of a separate existence apart from solity, amounts to a dualistic
+creed).</p>
+
+<p>40. Want of the knowledge of one’s bondage or freedom, and of his unity
+or duality, and his belief in the totality of Brahma, is the supreme
+truth of true philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>41. Perfect transparency of the soul, amounting to its nihility, and
+its want of attachment to visible appearances, as also its
+unmindfulness of all that is, are the conditions for beholding Brahma
+in it. There is no other way to this.</p>
+
+<p>42. The purity of the mind produced by acts of holiness, is the
+condition for receiving the sight of Brahma; as it is the whiteness of
+the cloth that can receive any colour upon it.</p>
+
+<p>43. Think thy soul, O Ráma! as same with the souls of all other
+persons, and abstain from all other thoughts, of what is desirable or
+undesirable, what invigorates or enfeebles the body, and what brings
+liberation after bondage, or Salvation after <span class="pagenum" id="Page_563">[563]</span>
+sinfulness. (Since none of
+these states appertains to the universal soul, which is quite free from
+them).</p>
+
+<p>44. The mirror of the mind being cleansed by the knowledge of the
+sástras, and dispassionateness of the understanding, it receives the
+reflexion of Brahma, as the clear crystal reflects the images of things.</p>
+
+<p>45. The sight which is conversant with visible objects and not with
+images and ideas in the mind, is called false vision of what is soon
+lost from view. (<i>i.e.</i> Mental sight is more lasting than that of the
+visual organs).</p>
+
+<p>46. When the mind is fixed upon God, by abstracting its sight from all
+mental and ocular visions, it has then the view of the Supreme before
+it. (This is called spiritual vision).</p>
+
+<p>47. The visible sights which are obvious to view, are all but unreal
+phantoms; it is the absorption of the mind in the Divine, that makes it
+identical with the same and no other.</p>
+
+<p>48. The visibles now present before us being absent from our view,
+either before or after our sight of them, must be considered as absent
+in the interim also. Therefore one unacquainted with his mind, is as
+insensible as the man that knows not what he holds in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>49. One having no knowledge that “the world is the same with the
+Supreme spirit,” is always subject to misery; but the negation of the
+visibles as distinct from God, gives us both the pleasure of our
+enjoyments here, and our liberation in future.</p>
+
+<p>50. It is ignorance to say the water is one thing and its wave is
+another; but it shows one’s intelligence, who says they are the one and
+the same thing.</p>
+
+<p>51. The vanities of the world, are fraught with sorrow, therefore
+discard all its appendages from thee. The abandonment of superfluity,
+will conduce to thy attainment of wisdom at last.</p>
+
+<p>52. The mind being composed of vain desires, is an unreality in itself;
+say therefore, O Ráma! why should you sorrow for something which in
+reality is nothing.</p>
+
+<p>53. Do you, O Ráma! look upon all things as traps set to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_564">[564]</span>
+ensnare the
+soul; and regard them with the eye of an unkind kinsman looking upon
+his relatives, with an eye of apathy and unconcern.</p>
+
+<p>54. As the unkind relative is unconcerned with the joys and griefs of
+his relations; so shouldst thou remain aloof from all things, by
+knowing the falsehood of their natures.</p>
+
+<p>55. Rely on that eternal Spirit, which is infinite knowledge and
+felicity, and which is between the viewer and the view (<i>i.e.</i> betwixt
+the noumenon and the phenomenon). The mind being fixed to that truth,
+will adhere to it as clay, after the swiftness of its flight is at an
+end.</p>
+
+<p>56. The airy flight of the mind being restrained, the sluggish body
+must cease to run about; and the cloud of the dust of ignorance, will
+no more spread over the city of the world.</p>
+
+<p>57. When the rains of our desires are over, and the calmness of the
+mind is restored; when the shuddering coldness of dulness has fled,
+and when the mud of worldliness is dried up:—</p>
+
+<p>58. When the channel of our thirst is dried up, and the drinking pots
+are sucked up and emptied; when the forest of the heart is cleared, and
+its brambles are rooted out, and the frost of false knowledge has
+disappeared:—</p>
+
+<p>59. It is then that the mist of error vanishes from view, like the
+shadow of night on the approach of dawn; and the frigidity of dullness
+is put to flight, like the poison of snake-bite by the potent charm of
+mantras.</p>
+
+<p>60. Then the rivulets of our desires, do not run down the rock of the
+body; nor do the peacocks of our fleeting wishes, fly and sport on its
+top.</p>
+
+<p>61. The sphere of our consciousness becomes as the clear sky; and the
+luminary of the living soul, shines as brightly over it as the midday
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>62. The cloud of error is dispelled and succeeded by the light of
+reason; and the longings of the soul, being purified of their dross,
+make it shine brilliantly amidst its sphere.</p>
+
+<p>63. Then raptures of serene delight, shoot forth in the soul like
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_565">[565]</span>blooming blossoms in the open air; and a cool light is shed upon it,
+like the cooling beams of the autumnal moon.</p>
+
+<p>64. This ecstacy of the soul, unfolds all prosperity before it, and
+fructifies with abundance the well cultivated ground of the reasoning
+mind. (Truth is the fruit of holy joy in the reasonable mind).</p>
+
+<p>65. It sheds its clear lustre all over the world, and shows the depths
+of the hills and forests, and everything on earth in their clearest
+light. (Heavenly joy unfolds all things to light).</p>
+
+<p>66. It expands the mind and makes it translucent, and the heart as a
+clear lake, renders blooming with blossoms of the lotus of <i>satva</i>, and
+without the dust—<i>rajas</i> of egoism. It is never infested by the
+swarming passions of pride or <i>tamas</i>.</p>
+
+<p>67. The mind then being purged of its selfishness, turns to universal
+benevolence and philanthropy; and being quite calm in itself without
+any desire of its own, it reigns as lord over the city of its body.</p>
+
+<p>68. The man whose investigation has made him acquainted with all
+things, whose soul is enlightened with truth; whose mind is melted down
+from his highmindedness; who is calm and quiet in his understanding,
+and looks at the unpleasant course of the births and deaths of men with
+pity; he verily lives happily in the realm of his body, without his
+feverish anxieties about anything.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_566">[566]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXVI.<br>
+<span class="small">DESCRIPTION OF THE INTELLECTUAL SPHERE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The Intellect as pervading all things, and making us
+acquainted with them.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> said:—Tell me O Bráhman! how the mundane system subsists in the
+extra mundane immaterial soul, for the sake of my advancement in
+knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>2. Vasishtha replied:—The worlds having no separate existence (before
+or after their formation) except in the Supreme mind, they are all
+situated in the Divine Intellect, like the unheaving and unseen
+would be waves of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>3. As the all-pervading sky is not to be seen owing to its extreme
+tenuity; so the undivided nature of the all-pervasive intellect, is not
+to be perceived on account of its rarity.</p>
+
+<p>4. As the gem has its brilliancy in it, whether it is moved or unmoved
+by any body, so the unreal world has its potential existence in the
+Divine Spirit, both in its states of action and inactivity. (Hence the
+eternity of the world in the Eternal Mind).</p>
+
+<p>5. As the clouds abiding in the sky, do not touch the sky or have a
+tangible feeling of its vacuity; so the worlds subsisting in the
+receptacle of the Intellectual soul, have no contact with the
+extraneous (pará) intellect, which is unconnected with its contents.</p>
+
+<p>6. As the light residing in the waters of the sea or a pot of water, is
+not connected either with the water or pot, nor is it felt by us but by
+its reflexion; so the intangible soul abides unconnected in its
+receptacle of the body, and reflects itself to our knowledge only.</p>
+
+<p>7. The intellect is devoid of every desire and designation; it is the
+indestructible soul, and is named by our intelligence of it as (Chetya)
+intelligible; or from some one of our intelligible ideas as the living
+soul &c.</p>
+
+<p>8. It is clearer than the translucent air, and finer than it by a
+hundred times; it is known as an undivided whole by the learned; who
+view it as identic with the whole undivided world, which it comprehends
+within itself.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_567">[567]</span>
+
+<p>9. As the sea water shows itself in various forms in all its waves, so
+the intellect does not differ from it, in showing us its various
+representations of its own motion.</p>
+
+<p>10. The diversities of our subjective and objective knowledge of myself
+and thyself and these (ego, tu &c.), are like the varieties of waves
+and billows in the ocean of the intellect, these are but erroneous
+notions, since they are representations of the same element, and the
+very same intellect.</p>
+
+<p>11. The various states of the intellect (Chit), intellection (Chintá),
+intelligence (Chittam) and intelligibles (Chetyas), all appertain to
+the main principle of the soul. They are differently conceived by the
+learned and ignorant, but the difference is a mere conceit (Kalpaná).</p>
+
+<p>12. The intellect presents its two different aspects to the wise and
+unwise people; to the ignorant, it shows its unreal nature in the
+realistic conception of the world, while to the learned it exhibits its
+luminous form in the identity of all things (with God).</p>
+
+<p>13. The intellect enlightens the luminous bodies of the sun and stars,
+by its internal (intellectual) light; it gives a relish to things by
+its internal taste; and it gives birth to all beings from its inborn
+ideas of them.</p>
+
+<p>14. It neither rises nor sets, nor gets up nor sits; it neither
+proceeds nor recedes to or fro, it is not here nor is it no where.
+(Omniscience is present everywhere and is ever the same).</p>
+
+<p>15. The pure and transpicuous intellect which is situated in the soul,
+displays in itself the phantasmagoria which is called the world.</p>
+
+<p>16. As a heap of fire emits its flame, and a luminous body blazes with
+its rays; and as the sea swells in surges and breaks in with its arms,
+so the intellect bursts out in its creations. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_568">[568]</span>
+(Omniscience is the cause
+and not percipience of the world—God makes all things, and does not
+perceive them like us).</p>
+
+<p>17. Thus the intellect which is selfmanifest and omnipresent of its
+own nature, developes and envelopes the world by its own manifestation
+and occultation, and by its acts of integration and segregation
+(<i>sánhára</i> and <i>nirhára</i>); or the acts of accretion and secretion.</p>
+
+<p>18. It is led by its own error and of its own accord, to forget and
+forsake its state of infinitude; and then by assuming its individual
+personality of egoism (that I am), it is converted to an ignoramus. (So
+men of contracted views turn to be dunces).</p>
+
+<p>19. It falls from its knowledge of generals to that of particulars, by
+its act of specialization; and comes to the discrimination of the
+positive, and negative, and of inclusion and exclusion (or admission or
+rejection).</p>
+
+<p>20. It strives and struggles within the confines of the sensuous body
+(owing to its degradation from spirituality); and it multiplies in
+these bodies like the weeds sprouting out of the bosom of the earth.
+(<i>i.e.</i> From its unity becomes a multiplicity in the many animal
+bodies).</p>
+
+<p>21. It is the intellect that stretches the spacious vacuum, to make
+room for the subsistence and growth of every thing; and makes the all
+and ever moving air and the liquid water, for the vitality and
+nourishment of all.</p>
+
+<p>22. It makes the firm earth (terrafirma) and the light-some fire and
+the fixed worlds all around; and employs time by its injunctions and
+prohibitions, (to do or undo any thing).</p>
+
+<p>23. It gives fragrance to flowers, and grows by degrees their filaments
+and pistils; and it makes the moisture of the porous ground, to grow
+vegetables on earth.</p>
+
+<p>24. The rooted trees fructify with fruits, by their juicy saps from
+beneath; and they produce their fruitage, and display their foliage
+with lineaments in them, as their veins and arteries.</p>
+
+<p>25. It renovates the forest with its gifts of various hues, and dyes
+them with the variety of colours in the rainbow of Indra.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_569">[569]</span>
+26. It bids the folia, fruits and flowers to wait on the flowery season
+of spring; and then brings their fruitage to perfection, under the heat
+of the summer sun.</p>
+
+<p>27. It makes the dark blue clouds of heaven, to wait on the approach of
+the rainy weather; and causes the harvest of fields, to follow in the
+train of autumn.</p>
+
+<p>28. The cold season is decorated with its smiling frost, in its faces
+of the ten sides of the sky; and the dewy weather is made to waft its
+icicles of dew drops, on the pinions of the chilling winds of winter.</p>
+
+<p>29. It makes the ever moving time, to revolve in its rotation of years
+and cycles and Yuga—ages; and causes the tide of creation to roll on in
+its waves of worlds, on its bosom of the ocean of eternity.</p>
+
+<p>30. Its decrees remain fixed with a wonderful stability, and the earth
+(terra or dhara), continues firm (dhíra or sthira), with its quality of
+containing all things. (In this sloka there is both a homonym and
+paronym of similar sound and sense in the word <i>dhará</i> derived from the
+root <i>dhri</i>: namely, <i>dhírá</i>, <i>dhará</i>, = <i>sthirá</i>, terra and <i>dharana</i>
+and <i>dharini</i>).</p>
+
+<p>31. It made the universe teem with fourteen kinds of beings in its as
+many worlds of the chaturdasa-bhuvanas; and these are as different in
+their modes of life as in their forms and figures. (The Atharvan or
+last Veda reckons tri-sapta or thrice seven worlds).</p>
+
+<p>32. These are repeatedly produced from and reduced to nothing, and move
+in their wonted courses for ever, as bubbles in the waterless ocean of
+eternity.</p>
+
+<p>33. Here the miserable multitudes, moving mad in vain struggles after
+their desired objects, and in their imbecility under the subjection of
+disease and death. They are incessantly coming to life and going away
+in their exits, remaining in their living states and acquiring their
+ends, and for ever running to and fro, in their repeated births and
+deaths in this world.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_570">[570]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXVII.<br>
+<span class="small">UPASAMA. THE SAMENESS OR QUIETISM OF THE SOUL.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument:—The sameness of the Spirit from its want of
+perturbation by worldly matters; and equanimity of the mind in
+all circumstances.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> added:—In this manner are these series of worlds, revolving
+in their invariable course, and repeatedly appearing and disappearing
+in the substantiality of Brahma.</p>
+
+<p>2. 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.</p>
+
+<p>3. But as the motion of the waters on the surface, does not affect the
+waters in the depth of the sea; so the fluctuations of the changing
+scenes of nature, make no alteration in the ever tranquil spirit of
+Brahma.</p>
+
+<p>4. As the desert in summer heat, presents the waters of mirage to the
+clear sky, so the false world, shows its delusive appearances to the
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>5. As the calm soul seems to be giddy in the state of one’s
+drunkenness, so the essence of the intellect which is always the same,
+appears as otherwise in its ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>6. 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.</p>
+
+<p>7. Ráma! that soul of yours whereby you have the perception of form and
+figures and of sound and smell, is the Supreme Brahma pervading all
+things.</p>
+
+<p>8. The pure soul being one in many, and inherent in all external
+objects, cannot be thought as distinct from those, that appear
+otherwise than itself.</p>
+
+<p>9. Ráma! it is the difference of human thoughts, that judges
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5611">[571]</span>
+differently of the existence and non-existence of things, and of their
+good and bad natures also; it judges the existence of the world, either
+as situated in or without the Divine Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>10. Whereas it is impossible for any thing to exist beside the Spirit
+of God, it was the Spirit that “willed to become many”. And as there
+was nothing beside itself, which it could think of or find for itself,
+it was necessary that it became so of itself, and without the aid of
+any extraneous matter. (Prose).</p>
+
+<p>11. (Prose). Therefore the will to do this or that, or try for one
+thing or other, does not relate to the soul but to the mind. Thus the
+optionless soul, having no will of its own, does nothing except
+cogitating on what is in itself. It is no active agent, owing to the
+union of all agency, instrumentality and objectivity in itself. It
+abides nowhere, being both the recipient and content, or the container
+and the contained of everything in itself. Neither is the will-less
+soul actionless likewise, when the acts of creation are palpable in
+itself (karmaprasidhi). Nor is it possible that there is any other
+cause of them. (<i>Nanyakartá dvítiryakam. Sruti</i>).</p>
+
+<p>12. Ráma! you must know the nature of Brahma to be no other
+(<i>vetara—non alter</i>) than this; and knowing him as no agent and without
+a second, be free from all anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>13. I will tell you further that:—Though you may continue to do a great
+many acts here, yet tell me in a word, what dost thou do that is worth
+doing. Rely on the want of your own agency, and be quiet as the sapient
+sage. Remain as calm and still, as the clear ocean when unshaken by the
+breeze.</p>
+
+<p>14. Again knowing well, that it is not possible for the swiftest
+runners to reach their goal of perfection, how far so ever they may go.
+You must desist in your mind from pursuing after worldly objects, and
+persist to meditate on the spirituality of your inward and intellectual
+soul.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_572">[572]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXVIII.<br>
+<span class="small">THE SAME QUIETNESS OR QUIETUDE OF THE SPIRIT.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The unconnected Soul being connected with the Mind, is
+believed as the Active Spirit by the unwise. But the quiet spirit
+of the wise, which is unaffected by its actions, is ever free and
+emancipate from the acts.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> resumed:—(Prose). Such being the state of the wise, the
+actions they are seen to do, whether of goodness or otherwise or
+pleasurable or painful, in and whatsoever they are engaged, are <i>nil</i>
+and as nothing, and do not affect them as they do the other worldly
+mortals. (The unconcernedness of the wise, is opposed to the great
+concern of fools in their actions).</p>
+
+<p>2. 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. (Gloss)).</p>
+
+<p>3. The production of an act by appliance of the proper means, and the
+exertion and action of the body in conformity with one’s ability, and
+the completion of the effect compatible with one’s intention, together
+with the enjoyment of the result of such agency, are defined and
+determined as the action of the man. (It is the deliberate and
+voluntary doing of an act, and not the unintentional physical action,
+that constitutes human agency. Gloss).</p>
+
+<p>4. (Verse). Moreover, whether a man is agent or no agent of an action,
+and whether he goes to heaven or dwells in hell, his mind is subject to
+the same feelings, as he has the desires in his heart. (The mind makes
+a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven by its good or bad thoughts.
+Milton).</p>
+
+<p>5. (Prose). Hence the agency of the ignorant, arises from their wishing
+to do a thing, whether they do it or not; but not <span class="pagenum" id="Page_573">[573]</span>
+so of the wise, who
+having no will, are not culpable even for their involuntary actions.
+Untutored minds are full with the weeds of vice, but well cultivated
+souls are quite devoid of them. Gloss. (So: “If good we plant not, vice
+will fill the place: And rankest weeds the richest soils deface”).</p>
+
+<p>6. He who has the knowledge of truth (tatwajnána), becomes relaxed in
+his earthly desires; and though he acts his part well, he does not long
+eagerly for its result as others. He acts with his body but with a
+quiet unconcerned mind. When successful, he attributes the gain to the
+will of God; but the worldly minded arrogate the result to themselves,
+though they could not bring it about.</p>
+
+<p>7. Whatever the mind intends, comes verily to pass, and nothing is
+achieved without the application of the mind; whereupon the agency
+belongeth to the mind and not to the body. (An involuntary action is
+not a deed).</p>
+
+<p>8. The world doth proceed from the Mind (Divine); it is the mind (by
+being a development of it), and is situated in the (infinite and
+eternal) mind; knowing all things as such manifestations of the powers
+of the intellect, the wise man remains in the coolness of his desire or
+luke warmness.</p>
+
+<p>9. 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 <i>turya—sans souci</i> or
+impassibility).</p>
+
+<p>10. This is not the felicity of the <i>gusto</i> of pleasure, nor the dolour
+of sorrow or discontent; it consists not in the liveliness of living
+beings, nor in the torpidity of stones. It is not situated in the midst
+of these antitheses (<i>i.e.</i> in the <i>sandhisthána</i> or golden medium
+between these); but in the knowing mind which is <i>Bhumánanda</i>—all
+rapture and ravishment. (Neither is <i>il allegro</i> nor <i>il spinseroso</i>,
+the true bliss of man).</p>
+
+<p>11. But the ignorant mind (which is unacquainted with this state of
+transport) is transported by its thirst after the moving waters of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_574">[574]</span>
+earthly pleasures; as an elephant is misled to the foul pool, where he
+is plunged in its mud and mire, without finding any thing that is
+really good.</p>
+
+<p>12. Here is another instance of it based upon a stanza in the Sruti,
+which says that:—A man dreaming himself to be falling into a pit, feels
+the fear of his fall in his imagination even when he has been sleeping
+in his bed; but another who actually falls in a pit when he is fast
+asleep, is quite insensible of his falls. Thus it is the mind which
+paints its own pleasure and pains, and not the bodily action or its
+inactivity.</p>
+
+<p>13. Hence whether a man is the doer of an action or not, he perceives
+nothing of it, when his mind is engrossed in some other thought or
+action; but he views every thing within himself, who beholds them on
+the abstract meditation of his mind. The thinking mind sees the outward
+objects, as reflexions of his pure intellect cast without him. (The
+spiritualist regards the outward as images of his inward ideas, in
+opposition to the materialist, who considers the internal ideas to be
+but reflexions derived from external impressions).</p>
+
+<p>14. Thus the man knowing the knowable soul, knows himself as
+inaccessible to the feelings of pleasure and pain. Knowing this as
+certain, he finds the existence of no other thing, apart from what is
+contained in the container of his soul, which is as a thousandth part
+of a hair. This being ascertained, he views every thing in himself.
+With this certainty of knowledge, he comes to know his self as the
+reflector of all things, and present in all of them. After these
+ascertainments, he comes to the conclusion that he is not subject to
+pain or pleasure. Thus freed from anxieties, the mind freely exercises
+its powers over all customary duties, without being concerned with them.</p>
+
+<p>15. He who knows the self, remains joyous even in his calamity, and
+shines as the moonlight, which enlightens the world. He knows that it
+is his mind and not hisself, that is the agent of his actions although
+he is the doer of them: and knowing the agency of the mind in all his
+actions, he does not assume to himself the merit of the exercise of his
+limbs, hands and feet, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_575">[575]</span>
+nor expects to reap the rewards of all his
+assiduous labours and acts.</p>
+
+<p>16. Mental actions (thoughts) being brought to practice, tend to
+involve their unguarded agents of ungoverned minds, into the endurance
+of its consequence. Thus the mind is the seed (root) of all efforts and
+exertions, of all acts and actions, of all their results and
+productions, and the source of suffering the consequences of actions.
+By doing away with your mind, you make a clean sweep of all your
+actions, and thereby avoid all your miseries resulting from your acts.
+All these are at an end with the <i>anaesthesia</i> of the mind. It is a
+practice in <i>Yoga</i> to allay (laisser aller), the excitement of the mind
+to its ever varying purposes.</p>
+
+<p>17. Behold the boy is led by his mind (fancy) to build his toy or
+hobby-horse, which he dresses and daubs at his wilfull play, without
+showing any concern or feeling of pleasure or pain, in its making or
+breaking of it at his pleasure. So doth man build his aerial castle,
+and level it without the sense of his gain or loss therein. It is by
+his acting in this manner in all worldly matters, that no man is
+spiritually entangled to them. (Do your duties and deal with all with a
+total unconcernedness and indifference).</p>
+
+<p>18. What cause can there be for your sorrow, amidst the dangers and
+delights of this world, but that you have the one and not the other.
+But what thing is there that is delectable and delightful to be desired
+in this world, which is not evanescent and perishable at the same time,
+save yourself (soul), which is neither the active nor passive agent of
+your actions and enjoyments; though they attribute the actions and
+their fruitions to it by their error.</p>
+
+<p>19. The importance of actions and passions to living beings, is a
+mistake and not veritable truth. Because by the right consideration of
+things, we find no action nor passion bearing any relation to the soul.
+Its attachment or aversion to the senses and sensible actions and
+enjoyments, is felt only by the sensualist, and not by them that are
+unconscious of sensuous affections (as the apathetic ascetics).</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_576">[576]</span>
+<p>20. There is no liberation in this world for the worldly minded, while
+it is fully felt by the liberal minded Yogi, whose mind is freed from
+its attachments to the world, in its state of living liberation.
+(Jívan-mukta).</p>
+
+<p>21. Though the Sage is rapt in the light of his self-consciousness, yet
+he does not disregard to distinguish the unity and duality, the true
+entity from the non-entities, and to view the omnipotence in all
+potencies or powers that are displayed in nature (for these display His
+power and goodness beyond our thought).</p>
+
+<p>22. (Verse). To him there is no bond or freedom, nor liberation nor
+bondage whatever, and the miseries of ignorance are all lost in the
+light of his enlightenment. (Bondage and freedom here refer to their
+causes or acts (কর্ম্ম) by the figure of metonymy; and that
+these bear no relation to the abstracted or spiritualistic Yogi).</p>
+
+<p>23. It is in vain to wish for liberation, when the mind is tied down to
+the earth; and so it is redundant to talk of bondage, when the mind is
+already fastened to it. Shun them both by ignoring your egoism, and
+remain fixed to the true Ego, and continue thus to manage yourself with
+your unruffled mind on earth. (The whole of this is a lesson of the
+Stoical and Platonic philosophic and unimpassioned passivity).
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_577">[577]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXIX.<br>
+<span class="small">ON THE UNITY OF ALL THINGS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Explanation of Divine Omnipotence, and inability of
+Vasishtha to give full exposition of it.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> rejoined:—(Prose) Tell me, O high-minded sage, how could the
+creation proceed from the Supreme Brahma, whom you represent to remain
+as a painting in the tableau of vacuity.</p>
+
+<p>2. Vasishtha replied:—O prince, such is the nature of Brahma, that all
+power incessantly flows from him, wherefore every power is said to
+reside in him. (It is unvedantic to say, that Brahma is omnipotent or
+the reservoir of power, and not omnipotence or identic with all power
+himself).</p>
+
+<p>3. In him resides entity and non-entity, in him there is unity, duality
+and plurality, and the beginning and end of all things. (Because
+omnipotence has the power to be all things, which limited powers cannot
+do).</p>
+
+<p>4. This is one and no other else (<i>i.e.</i> it is all that is, and there
+is none else beside it (<i>Id est non alter</i>). 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).</p>
+
+<p>5. The density of the Intellect makes the mind, and the mind brings
+forth all the powers of thinking, willing or volition, and of acting or
+action. These it produces, accumulates, contains, shows and then
+absorbs in itself.</p>
+
+<p>6. (Verse) Brahma is the source of all living beings, and of all things
+seen all around us. His power is the cause of exhibiting all things, in
+their incessant course or quiescence.</p>
+
+<p>7. All things spring from the Supreme Spirit, and they reside in his
+all comprehensive mind. They are of the same <span class="pagenum" id="Page_578">[578]</span>
+nature with that of their
+source, as the water of the sweet and saltish lakes.</p>
+
+<p>8. Ráma interrupted here and said:—Sir, your discourse is very dark,
+and I cannot understand the meaning of the words of your speech.</p>
+
+<p>9. There is that nature of Brahma, which you said to be beyond the
+perception of the mind and senses, and what are these perishable
+things, which you say to have proceeded from him. If your reasoning
+comes to this end, I cannot then rely upon it.</p>
+
+<p>10. Because it is the law of production, that anything that is produced
+from something, is invariably of the same nature with that of its
+producer.</p>
+
+<p>11. 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.</p>
+
+<p>12. And so the productions of the immutable Spirit, must also be
+unchangeable and spiritual too in their nature.</p>
+
+<p>13. Beside this the Intellectual Spirit of God, is pure and immaculate;
+while this creation is all impure and gross matter.</p>
+
+<p>14. The great Sage said upon hearing these words:—Brahma is all purity
+and there is no impurity in him; the waves moving on the surface of the
+sea may be foul, but they do not soil the waters of the deep.</p>
+
+<p>15. You cannot conceive Ráma, 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).</p>
+
+<p>16. Ráma rejoined:—Sir, Brahma is devoid of sorrow, while the world is
+full of sorrows. I cannot therefore clearly understand your words; when
+you say this to be the offspring of that. (The maculate equal to the
+immaculate or the perishable to the imperishable is absurd).</p>
+
+<p>17. Válmíki said to Bharadwája:—The great Sage Vasishtha remained
+silent at these words of Ráma; and stopped in his lecture with the
+thoughtfulness of his mind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_579">[579]</span>
+18. His mind lost its wonted clearness (in its confusion), and then
+recovering its perspicacity, he pondered within himself in the
+following manner.</p>
+
+<p>19. 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 Ráma.</p>
+
+<p>20. It is no fault of the educated to be doubtful of something, until
+it is explained to them to their full satisfaction, as in the case of
+Rághava. (Relating the identity of the cause and its effect).</p>
+
+<p>21. 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).</p>
+
+<p>22. But he who has come to the sight of transcendental light, and got a
+clear insight of spiritual truths, feels no desire for sensual
+enjoyments; but advances in course of time to the conclusion, that
+Brahma is All in all things (<i>to pan</i>).</p>
+
+<p>(The transcendental philosophy of modern German schools, has arrived at
+the same conclusion of Pantheism, <i>Ho Theos to pan</i>).</p>
+
+<p>23. The disciple is to be prepared and purified at first, with the
+precepts and practice of quietism and self-control (<i>Sama</i> and <i>damá</i>);
+and is then to be initiated in the creed that “All this is Brahma, and
+that thyself art that pure Spirit.”</p>
+
+<p>24. But who so teaches the faith of “all is Brahma” to the half taught
+and the ignorant; verily entangles him in the strong snare of hell.
+(Because they take the visible for the invisible, which leads them to
+nature and idol worships which casts them to hell).</p>
+
+<p>25. The well discerning Sage should tell them, that are enlightened in
+their understandings, whose desire of sensual gratifications has
+abated, and who are freed from their worldly desires, that they are
+purged of the dirt of their ignorance, and are prepared to receive
+religious and spiritual instruction.</p>
+
+<p>26. The spiritual guide who instructs his pupil without <span class="pagenum" id="Page_580">[580]</span>
+weighing well
+his habits and conduct, is a silly pedagogue and sinks into hell and
+has to dwell there until the last day of judgment; (to answer for
+misleading his disciples).</p>
+
+<p>27. The venerable Vasishtha, who was the chief of sages, and like the
+luminous sun on earth, having considered these things, spoke to Ráma as
+follows. (The sages are said to be luminous both from the fairness of
+their Aryan complexions, as also on account of their enlightened
+understandings).</p>
+
+<p>28. Vasishtha said:—I will tell thee Ráma at the conclusion, of this
+lecture, whether the attribution of the dross of gross bodies, is
+applicable to Brahma or not. (<i>i.e.</i> How a spiritual body may assume a
+material form &c.).</p>
+
+<p>29. Know now that Brahma is almighty, all pervading, ubiquitous and is
+all himself, because of his omnipotence, which can do and become all
+and every thing of itself.</p>
+
+<p>30. As you see the various practices of magicians and the trickeries of
+jugglers, in producing, presenting, and abstracting many things in the
+sight of men, that are all but unreal shows; so doth Brahma produce,
+present and retract all things from and into himself.</p>
+
+<p>31. The world is filled with gardens as those in fairy lands, and the
+sky is replenished with the airy castles of Gandharvas and the abodes
+of gods; and men are seen to descend from the cloudless sky, to the
+surface of the earth, and rise upwards to heaven (in vimánas or
+balloons).</p>
+
+<p>32. Fairy cities like the palaces of the Gandharvas of the etherial
+regions, are shown on earth, and filled with the fairies of the Fairy
+land. (<i>i.e.</i> The courts and palaces of princes, which vie with the
+abodes of gods).</p>
+
+<p>33. Whatever there is or has been or is to be in this world in future,
+are like reflexions of the revolving sky and heavenly bodies, or a
+brazen ball affixed to the top of a tower, and darting its golden light
+below.</p>
+
+<p>34. All these are but exhibitions of the various forms of
+manifestations of the selfsame God. (“These as they change,—these are
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_581">[581]</span>
+but the varied God.” Thomson. So Wordsworth and the Persian Mystics).</p>
+
+<p>35. Whatever takes place at any time or place and in any form, is but
+the variety of the One Self-existent reality. Why therefore, O Ráma!
+should you give vent to your sorrow or joy, or wonder at any change of
+time or place or nature and form of things, which are full of the
+spirit of God, and exhibit the endless aspects of the Infinitive Mood.</p>
+
+<p>36. Let the intelligent preserve the sameness (<i>samata</i>) of their minds
+and dispositions amidst all changes; knowing them as the varying
+conditions of the same unvarying Mind.</p>
+
+<p>37. He who sees his God in all, and is fraught with equanimity, has no
+cause of his wonder of surprise, his grief or delight or any
+fluctuation of his mind, in any change in nature or vicissitude of his
+fortune (because the one Omnipresence is present in all events, and its
+Omnipotence directs all potentialities).</p>
+
+<p>38. The unaltered mind continues to view the varieties of the power of
+his Maker, in all the variations of time and place, and of all external
+circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>39. The Lord proposes these plans in the formation of his creation, and
+exhibits as the sea does its waves in endless varieties and successions
+from the plenitude of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>40. So the Lord manifests the powers situated in himself, as the sea
+does its waves in itself. Or as the milk forms the butter, the earth
+produces the pot (<i>ghata</i>), and the thread is woven into the cloth
+(<i>pata</i>). So the <i>bata</i> or fig tree brings forth its fruit, and all
+other varied forms are contained in their sources. But these formal
+changes are phenomenal not real. They are mere appearances of the
+spectrum, as those of apparitions and spectres.<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>41. There is no other agent or object, nor an actor and its act, or any
+thing which is acted upon, nor is there any thing that becomes nothing
+except it by but a variety of the one unity. (<i>In nihilo riverti
+posse</i>).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_582">[582]</span>42. The mind that witnesses the spiritual truths, and remains with its
+unimpaired equanimity, and is undepressed by external accidents, comes
+to see the light of truth in itself. (Truth like the sun shineth in the
+inmost soul).</p>
+
+<p>43. (Verse). There being the lamp, there is its light also; and the sun
+shining brings the day with him. Where there is the flower, there is
+its odour likewise; so where there is the living soul, there is the
+light or knowledge of the world in it.</p>
+
+<p>44. The world appearing all around, is as the light of the soul; it
+appears as the motion of the wind, whereof we have no notion of its
+reality or unreality. (So says Herbert Spencer concerning our notion of
+motion. We see the wheel in motion and changing its place, but have no
+idea of its motion).</p>
+
+<p>45. The immaculate Soul, is the prime mobile power of the appearance
+and disappearance of the myriads of gross bodies which like the
+revolving stars of the sky, and the season flowers of the spring,
+appear and reappear to us by turns, like the ups and downs of wheels in
+motion. (We see their revolutions, but neither see their motion nor the
+soul the giver of motion).</p>
+
+<p>46. All things die away when our souls are without us, but how can any
+thing be null when we are in possession of our souls? (Everything
+exists with ourselves, but we lose all, with loss of our souls).</p>
+
+<p>47. All things appear before us in the presence of our souls, and they
+vanish from before us in their absence from the body. (Every thing is
+existent with us with the existence of our souls, and nothing is
+perceived by us without them, as when we are dead).</p>
+
+<p>48. Everything is born with us with our souls, and is lost with loss of
+them. (The living have all, but the dead are lost to view. And the
+human soul, when in conjunction with the Divine, has a clear <span class="pagenum" id="Page_583">[583]</span>view of
+everything).</p>
+
+<p>51. The minds of men are endowed with their knowledge at their very
+birth. Then growing big by degrees in course of time, they expand
+themselves in the form of this spacious forest of the world.</p>
+
+<p>52. The wood of the world is the fastening post of the soul, where our
+blooming desires are fraught with fruits of poignant griefs. It
+branches out with gratifications, blossoms with hoary age, and is
+breaking its goodly post, and wandering at large of its free will.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_584">[584]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXX.<br>
+<span class="small">BRAHMA IDENTIC WITH THE WORLD or IDENTITY OF THE WORLD WITH BRAHMA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Production and names of the Varieties of Animal Life
+and their spiritual Natures.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> said:—Tell me, sir, about the production of animal beings from
+Brahma, and let me know their different names and natures in full
+length.</p>
+
+<p>2. Vasishtha replied:—The manner in which the different species of
+beings are produced from Brahma, and how they are destroyed afterwards,
+as also how they obtain their liberation at last:—</p>
+
+<p>3. Also the manner of their growth and sustentation, and fitness in the
+world, are all what you must hear me now tell you in brief.</p>
+
+<p>4. 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.</p>
+
+<p>5. The intellection becomes condensed to a certain subtile form, which
+having the powers of conception (<i>sankalpa</i>), becomes the principle
+entitled the Mind.</p>
+
+<p>6. The mind then by an effort of its conception (called the Will),
+expands itself to an unreal (ideal) scenery like that of the Fairyland,
+by falling off from the nature of Brahmic Incogitancy.</p>
+
+<p>7. The intellect when remaining in its original state, appears as a
+vacuum or vacancy; but upon manifesting itself in the form of the mind,
+it is seen as the visible sky by men.</p>
+
+<p>8. Taking the conception of the lotus-born, it finds itself in its
+conceived form of the lotus (Brahmá), and then it thinks of creation in
+the form of Prajápati or lord of creatures.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_585">[585]</span>
+
+<p>9. He then formed from his thought (chitta) this creation, containing
+the fourteen worlds with all the bustle of living beings in them.</p>
+
+<p>10. The mind itself is a vacuity with a vacuous body; its conception is
+the field of its action, and its sphere is full with the false workings
+of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>11. Here there are many kinds of beings, labouring under great
+ignorance as the beasts and brute creatures. There are some with
+enlightened minds as the sages; and others staggering in the
+intermediate class, as the majority of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>12. Among all living beings that are confined in this earth, it is only
+the human race living in this part (India), that are capable of
+receiving instruction and civilization.</p>
+
+<p>13. But as most of these are subject to diseases and distress, and are
+suffering under the thrall of their ignorance, enmity and fear; it is
+for them that I will deliver my lecture on social and saintly
+conduct—<i>rájatwikí níti</i> (in the 42nd chapter of this book).</p>
+
+<p>14. I will also treat there about the everlasting, imperishable and
+omnipresent Brahma, who is without beginning and end, whose mind is
+without error, and of the form of Intellectual light.</p>
+
+<p>15. How endless beings are put to motion, by the momentum of a particle
+of his motionless body; and resembling the rolling of boisterous waves
+on the surface of the clear and tranquil ocean.</p>
+
+<p>16. Ráma asked:—How sir, do you speak of a part of the infinite Spirit,
+and of the momentum of the motionless God; as also of a change and
+effort of it, that is altogether without them (vikárávikrama).</p>
+
+<p>17. Vasishtha replied:—It is the usual and current mode of expression,
+both in the sástras and language of the people to say, “all this is
+made by or come from Him”, but it is not so in its real and spiritual
+sense.</p>
+
+<p>18. No change or partition, and no relation of space or time, bear any
+reference to the Supreme, who is unchangeable, infinite and eternal;
+nor is there any appearance or disappearance of Him at any time or
+place, who is ever invisible every where.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_586">[586]</span>
+
+<p>19. There never was nor can there ever be any way, of representing the
+incomprehensible, except by symbolical expressions; it was therefore in
+accordance to common speech, that I have made use of those words.</p>
+
+<p>20. Whatever words or sentences are used here as symbolical of some
+sense, whether they express as “produced from it <i>tajja</i>” or as a
+change of the same—“<i>tanmaya</i>”, the same should be used, in that sense
+all along.</p>
+
+<p>21. It is tajja, as when we say “fire proceeds from fire” (meaning, the
+“mundane Brahma comes out of the spiritual Brahma.” Here fire is
+symbolical of Brahma and the world). It is <i>tanmaya</i> in the expression
+“Brahma is the producer and produced” (which means the identity—and
+transformation of the creator to the creation).</p>
+
+<p>22. 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.</p>
+
+<p>23. The expression <i>idam—anyat</i> = <i>idem alius</i> or this is one thing and
+that another, is false, the difference is verbal and not real; because
+there is no proof of it in the nature of God, which is one and all.</p>
+
+<p>24. The mind, by reason of its birth (tajja) from Brahma, is possessed
+both of the power and intelligence of his Intellect, and is enabled to
+accomplish its intended purpose, by means of its intense application.</p>
+
+<p>25. To say that one flame of fire, is the producer of another, is mere
+logomachy, and there is no truth in this assertion. (Because it is no
+other thing produced by another, but the very thing).</p>
+
+<p>26. That one is the producer of another is also a paralogy; because the
+one Brahma being infinite, could produce no other thing, beside
+reproducing himself. (For where and whence <span class="pagenum" id="Page_587">[587]</span>
+could he get another thing
+to create a thing anew beside in himself?).</p>
+
+<p>27. It is the nature of disputation to contradict one another by
+replies and rejoinders; but it is not right to foil the adversary by
+false sophistry.</p>
+
+<p>28. 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.</p>
+
+<p>29. Brahma is the Intellect—<i>Chit</i>, Brahma is the mind—<i>manas</i>, Brahma
+is intelligence—<i>Vijnána</i>, and Brahma is substance—<i>Vasthu</i>; He is
+Sound—<i>sabda</i>, He is understanding—<i>chit</i>, and He is in the principles
+of things—<i>Dhátus</i>.</p>
+
+<p>30. The whole universe is Brahma, and yet He is beyond all this. In
+reality the world is a nullity, for all is Brahma alone.</p>
+
+<p>31. 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.</p>
+
+<p>32. The spirit rises as the flame of fire, and this flame is
+significant of the mind. Its tremor signifies the fluctuation of the
+mind, which in reality is not the case, there being no rise or fall of
+the Divine Mind.</p>
+
+<p>33. It is untruth that wavers and equivocates in <i>double entendres</i>. It
+prevaricates the truth, as the defective eye views the double moon in
+the sky.</p>
+
+<p>34. Brahma being all (<i>to pan</i>) of himself, and all pervading and
+infinite of his own nature, there can be no other thing beside himself,
+and anything that is produced of him, is likewise himself.</p>
+
+<p>35. Beside the truth of the existence of Brahma, there is nothing which
+can be proved as absolutely certain; and it is a scriptural truth which
+says, “verily all this is Brahma.”</p>
+
+<p>36. This also must be the conclusion, which you will arrive at by your
+reasoning, and which I will propound with many instances and tenets in
+the Book of Nirvána or Extinction.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_588">[588]</span>
+37. There are many things here in connection with this single question
+of which you are ignorant, and all which you will come to know fully in
+future, for dispelling your doubts on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>38. The unreality having disappeared, the reality appears to view, as
+the darkness of night being dispelled, the visible world comes to sight.</p>
+
+<p>39. The spacious world which appears to your false sight of it, will
+vanish, O Ráma! 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.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_589">[589]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLI.<br>
+<span class="small">DESCRIPTION OF IGNORANCE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Delusion the cause of error.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> said:—Sir, I feel your speech to be as cooling and shining as the
+water of the milky sea; it is as deep and copious as the vast ocean:—</p>
+
+<p>2. I am sometimes darkened and enlightened at others, by the variety of
+your discourses, as a rainy day is now obscured by the cloud, and again
+shines forth brightly with sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>3. I understand Brahma as infinite and inconceivable, and the life and
+light of all that exists. I know that light never sets; but tell me,
+how they attribute many qualities that are foreign to his nature.</p>
+
+<p>4. Vasishtha replied:—The wording and meaning of my lectures to you,
+are all used in their right and ordinary sense, they are neither
+insignificant or meaningless, equivocal or ambiguous, or contradictory
+of one with another.</p>
+
+<p>5. You will understand the proper import of my phraseology, when the
+eyesight of your understanding becomes clearer, and when the light of
+reason will rise in your mind.</p>
+
+<p>6. Do not mistake the meanings of my words, or the phraseology I have
+used all along, in order to explain the subject of my lectures, and
+purport of the sástras, for your acquaintance with them.</p>
+
+<p>7. When you will come to know the clear Truth of Brahma, you will know
+more regarding the distinctions of significant words, and their
+significations and significates.</p>
+
+<p>8. The distinctive verbal signs are invented for the communication of
+our thoughts, in conveying our instructions to others, and for our
+knowledge of the purport of the sástras.</p>
+
+<p>9. Words and their meanings, phrases and their constructions, are used
+for the instruction of others; they are applied to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_590">[590]</span>
+the use of the
+ignorant, and never apply to those who are acquainted with truth (by
+their intention).</p>
+
+<p>10. There is no attribute, nor imputation, that bears any relation with
+the free and unsullied soul. It is the dispassionate spirit of the
+supreme Brahma, and the same is the soul of the existent world.</p>
+
+<p>11. This subject will again be fully discussed and dilated upon with
+various arguments, on the occasion of our arriving to the conclusion of
+this subject (in the book of Nirvána).</p>
+
+<p>12. I have said so far about verbiology at present, because it is
+impossible to penetrate into the deep darkness of ignorance, without
+the means of verbiage (flux de mots).</p>
+
+<p>13. As conscious ignorance offers herself a willing sacrifice to the
+shrine of knowledge, she bids her adversary—the destroyer of error, to
+take possession of her seat in the bosom of man. (Here is a double
+entendre of the word <i>avidyá</i>, the former meaning ignorance as well as
+a concubine, and the latter signifying the wife and knowledge; hence it
+implies the advance of knowledge upon disappearance of her rival
+ignorance).</p>
+
+<p>14. As one weapon is foiled by another, and one dirt is removed by the
+other (<i>cow dung</i> and ashes), and as one poison is destroyed by
+another, and also as one foe is driven out by another enemy (<i>similes
+curantur</i>).</p>
+
+<p>15. So Ráma, the mutual destruction of errors, brings joy to the soul.
+It is hard however to detect the error; but no sooner it is found out
+than it is put to destruction. It means the confutation of false
+doctrines by one another.</p>
+
+<p>16. Ignorance obscures our perspicacity, and presents the false and
+gross world before us. We all view this wonderful universe, but know
+not what and how it is.</p>
+
+<p>17. Unobserved it rushes to our view, but being examined with
+attention, it flies upon keen observation. We know it is a phantasm,
+and yet find it appearing with its dimensions and figures before us.</p>
+
+<p>18. O the wonderful enchantment, which has spread out this world, and
+made the unreality to appear as a sober reality, to the knowledge of
+every one of us.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_591">[591]</span>
+
+<p>19. This earth is a distinct wide extended superfices, resting on the
+indistinct surface of an unknown substratum. He is the best of beings
+that has stretched this enchantment.</p>
+
+<p>20. When you are enlightened with the thought, that all this is
+inexistent in reality; you will then become the knower of the knowable
+(God), and understand the import of my lectures.</p>
+
+<p>21. So long as you are not awakened to true knowledge, rely upon my
+words, and know this immensity as the creature of the incorrigible and
+immovable ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>22. All this immensity, that appears to sight, is but the picture of
+your mistaken thought; it is all unsubstantial, and a mere
+manifestation of your deluded mind only.</p>
+
+<p>23. He is entitled to liberation, whose mind is certain of the reality
+of Brahma; and knows the moving and unmoving figures without, as the
+thoughts of the mind presented to the sight.</p>
+
+<p>24. The whole scale of the earth, is as a net of birds to catch the
+fleeting mind; it is as false as a landscape in the dream; which
+represents the unreal as real ones to the mind.</p>
+
+<p>25. He who looks upon the world without his attachment to it, is never
+subject to grief or sorrow on any account. And he who thinks all these
+forms as formless, sees the formless spirit.</p>
+
+<p>26. The forms of the formless spirit, is the formation of ignorance,
+and when the blemishes of passions and mutations, do not even belong to
+great souls, how can these attributes relate to the greatest God.</p>
+
+<p>27. The attributes given to the Supreme Spirit, are as dust thrown upon
+the surface of limpid water; it is our thoughts only that attribute
+these qualities to the inconceivable One, as we attribute certain
+meanings to words (that bear no relation to them).</p>
+
+<p><28.> It is usage that establishes the meanings of words, which continue
+to be inseparably joined with them; and it is usage that determines
+their use in the sástras.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_592">[592]</span>
+
+<p>29. As the cloth cannot be thought of without its thread, so the soul
+is unintelligible without the medium of words giving its true
+definition.</p>
+
+<p>30. It is possible to gain the knowledge of the soul from the sástras,
+without one’s self-consciousness of it; as it is possible to get over
+the sea of ignorance, by means of spiritual knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>31. Ráma! it is impossible to arrive at the state of what is called
+imperishable life and bliss, when the soul is any how polluted by the
+blemishes of ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>32. The existence of the world verily depends on the existence of the
+Supreme; know this, and do not question how and whence it came to exist.</p>
+
+<p>33. Let it be for thee to think only how thou shalt get rid of this
+unreality; for it is upon the disappearance of the unreality, that thou
+canst know the real truth.</p>
+
+<p>34. Leave off thinking whence is all this, how it is and how it is
+destroyed at last; believe it to be really nothing, but only appearing
+without being actually seen.</p>
+
+<p>35. How can one know, how the unreality appears as reality by his
+mistake of it, when the error of reality, in the unreal, has taken a
+firm footing in his mind?</p>
+
+<p>36. Try your best to destroy this prejudice of yours, and then you will
+know the truth. And verily such men are the greatest heroes and most
+learned in the world, who are freed from prejudices.</p>
+
+<p>37. Strive to destroy your baneful ignorance, or it is sure to
+overpower on thee as upon the rest of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>38. Take care, lest it should enthral thee to the pain of thy repeated
+transmigrations, and know ignorance to be the root of all evils and
+companion of every vice. It creates a man’s interest in what proves his
+peril.</p>
+
+<p>39. Avoid quickly this false view, the baneful cause of your fears and
+sorrows, and of your diseases and dangers; and the germ of errors in
+the mind; and thereby ford over this perilous ocean of the world.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_593">[593]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLII.<br>
+<span class="small">PRODUCTION OF JÍVA OR LIVING SOULS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Condensation of Desires in the Intellect. And Formation
+of living souls thereby.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Hear now Ráma! the antidote against the wide
+extended malady of Ignorance, and the raging endemic of unreality,
+which vanishes from view upon your close inspection of it.</p>
+
+<p>2. That which was proposed to be said (in chapter XL), concerning the
+sátwika and rájasika qualities. I am now going to expound the same, on
+account of investigating into the powers of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>3. The same Brahma who is all-pervading, undecaying and immortal; is
+known as intellectual light and without beginning and end, and free
+from error.</p>
+
+<p>4. The Intellect, which is body of Brahma, and has its vibration in
+itself, becomes agitated and condensed at intervals, as the translucent
+water of the ocean has its motion of itself, and becomes turbid and
+thickened by its perturbation.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>i.e.</i> The mind is possest of motion contrary to dull and motionless
+matter, and it is by its moving force, that it forms the gross bodies,
+as the huge surges of the sea).</p>
+
+<p>5. As the water of the sea, is agitated in itself without any motion or
+excitation from without; so the Almighty power exerts its force in
+itself, throughout all its eternity and infinity. (The water composed
+of the <i>gases</i>, is always in motion).</p>
+
+<p>6. As the air stirs in its own bosom of vacuity for ever, so the power
+of the Divine Spirit, exerts itself spontaneously and freely in its own
+sphere of the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>7. And as the flame rises high of its own accord, so the power of the
+spirit, extends in itself in all directions. (It is the nature of the
+flame to rise upward only, but that of the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_594">[594]</span>
+Spirit, is to move in every
+way and all round the great circle of creation).</p>
+
+<p>8. As the sea seems to move with its sparkling waters, reflecting the
+sun and moonbeams upon its surface, so the almighty spirit appears to
+shake with the fleeting reflections of creation in its bosom.</p>
+
+<p>9. As the sea sparkles with the golden beams of the starry frame; so
+the translucent vast soul of God, shines with the light of its own
+intellectual sphere.</p>
+
+<p>10. As chains of pearly rays, glitter to our sight in the empty sky; so
+sundry forms of things fly about in the vast vacuity of the intellect.
+(These are as bubbles in the vast expanse of the Divine Mind).</p>
+
+<p>11. These intellectual images, being pushed forward by the force of
+intellect, they begin to roll in its vacuous sphere like waves in the
+sea. (They are the same in substance, though different in appearance).</p>
+
+<p>12. These images though inseparable from the intellect of the Divine
+spirit, yet they seem to be apart from it, like the light in the holes
+of needles and other cavities. (The glory of God, is the light and life
+of all).</p>
+
+<p>13. The universal Omnipotence exhibits itself in those particular
+forms, as the moon shows her various horns in her different phases.</p>
+
+<p>14. Thus the intellectual power of the Supreme spirit, coming to shine
+forth as light, refracts itself in various forms as the very many
+semblances of that great light.</p>
+
+<p>15. The Supreme spirit, though conscious of its nature of infinity and
+indivisibility, yet assumes to itself the state of its individuality,
+in every separate and limited form of created beings.</p>
+
+<p>16. When the supreme Entity takes upon itself these several forms, it
+is immediately joined by a train of qualities and properties, with
+quantity, modality and the like as followers in its train.</p>
+
+<p>17. The unsubstantial intellect, deeming itself as a substance by its
+being separated from the supreme soul; becomes divided <span class="pagenum" id="Page_595">[595]</span>
+into infinity
+like the waves of the sea water (which is one and many).</p>
+
+<p>18. As there is no material difference of the armlet and bracelet, from
+their matter of the same gold; so it is the intellect and the soul the one
+and same thing. It is the thought that makes the difference in their
+different modes.</p>
+
+<p>19. As there is no difference between one lamp and the others, that are
+lighted from the same light; so it is of all souls and intellects,
+which are alike in their nature, but differ only in their particular
+attributes—<i>upadhis</i>.</p>
+
+<p>20. The Intellect, being put to action by the force of the soul on
+particular occasions, pursues its desires and the objects of its fancy.</p>
+
+<p>21. The same intellect also, taking its volitive and active forms at
+different times and places; is styled the embodied soul or spirit, and
+known as <i>Kshetrajna</i>.</p>
+
+<p>22. It is so named from its familiarity with the body or <i>Kshetra</i>, and
+its knowledge of the inward and outward actions of it (or from its
+knowing its person and personality).</p>
+
+<p>23. This being fraught with its desires, is designated as Egoism or
+selfishness; and this again being soiled by its fancies, takes the name
+of the understanding.</p>
+
+<p>24. The understanding leaning to its wishes, is termed the mind; which
+when it is compacted for action, takes the name of the senses or
+sensation.</p>
+
+<p>25. The senses are next furnished with their organs called the organs
+of sense, which being joined with the organs of action, the hands and
+feet are jointly denominated the body.</p>
+
+<p>26. Thus the living soul being tied to its thoughts and desires, and
+being entrapped in the net of pain and sorrow, is termed <i>Chitta</i> or
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>27. Thus the gradual development of the intellect, produces its
+successive results (or phases as said above); so these are the
+different states or conditions of the living soul, and not so many
+forms of it, but all these are the impurities of the soul.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_596">[596]</span>
+28. The living soul becomes associated with egoism in its embodied
+state, and this being polluted by its egoistic understanding, it is
+entangled in the net of selfish desires, which becomes the mind.</p>
+
+<p>29. The concupiscent mind becomes eager to engraft itself in its
+consorts and offspring, and to secure the false possessions of the
+world to itself and without a rival.</p>
+
+<p>30. The tendencies of the mind, pursue their desired objects, as the
+cow follows the lusty bull; and the mind runs after its objects only to
+be polluted by them, as the sweet stream of the river, meets the sea to
+become bitter and briny.</p>
+
+<p>31. Thus the mind being polluted by its selfishness, loses the freedom
+of its will; and becomes bound to its desires, as the silkworm is
+enclosed in the cocoon.</p>
+
+<p>32. It is the mind that exposes the body to confinement, by its pursuit
+after its desires, until it comes to feel the gall of its own thraldom,
+and the bitter regret of the conscious soul.</p>
+
+<p>33. Knowing itself to be enslaved, it bids farewell to the freedom of
+its thought and knowledge; and begets within itself the gross
+ignorance, which rages and ranges free in the forest of this world,
+with its horribly monstrous appearance.</p>
+
+<p>34. The mind containing within it the flame of its own desires, is
+consumed to death like the fettered lion in a fire.</p>
+
+<p>35. It assumes to itself the agency of all its various acts, under its
+subjection to a variety of desires; and thus exposes itself to the
+changes of its state, in this life and all its future births.</p>
+
+<p>36. It labours continually under all its octuple state of
+understanding; namely that the knowledge, intelligence and activity
+or active agency, and its egoism or selfishness, all of which are
+causes of all its woe.</p>
+
+<p>37. It is sometimes styled the <i>prakriti</i> or character, and at others
+the <i>máyá</i> or seat of self delusion. The mind—<i>manas</i> is often
+converted to <i>malas</i> or foulness, and very often to <i>karman</i> or
+activity.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_597">[597]</span>
+38. It is sometimes designated as bondage, and is often synonymous with
+the heart; it is called also as <i>avidyá</i> or ignorance, and frequently
+identified with the will or volition likewise.</p>
+
+<p>39. Know Ráma, the heart is tied to the earth by a chain of sorrow and
+misery; it is brimful of avarice and grief, and the abode of passions.</p>
+
+<p>40. It is living dead with the cares of age and the fear of death, to
+which the world is subject; it is troubled with desire and disgust, and
+stained by its ignorance and passions.</p>
+
+<p>41. It is infested by the prickly thorns of its wishes, and the
+brambles of its acts; it is quite forgetful of its origin, and is beset
+by the evils of its own making.</p>
+
+<p>42. It is confined as the silkworm in its own cell, where it is doomed
+to dwell with its sorrow and pain; and though it is but a minim in its
+shape, it is the seat of endless hell-fire. (A hair as heart. Pope. The
+heart is hell &c. Milton).</p>
+
+<p>43. It is as minute as the soul, and yet appears as huge as the highest
+hill; and this world is a forest of wild poisonous trees, branching out
+with their fruits of decay and death.</p>
+
+<p>44. The snare of desire is stretched over the whole world; its fruits
+are as those of the Indian fig trees, which has no pith or flavour
+within.</p>
+
+<p>45. The mind being burnt by the flame of its sorrow, and bitten by the
+dragon of its anger; and being drowned in the boisterous sea of its
+desires, has entirely forgotten its Great Father.</p>
+
+<p>46. It is like a lost stag straying out of its herd, and like one
+demented by his sorrows; or more like a moth singed by the flame of
+world affairs.</p>
+
+<p>47. It is torn away as a limb from its place in the Spirit, and thrown
+in an incongenial spot; it is withering away like a lotus plant plucked
+from its root.</p>
+
+<p>48. Being cast amidst the bustle of business, and among men who are
+inimical or as dumb pictures to him, every man is groveling in this
+earth amidst dangers and difficulties.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_598">[598]</span>
+
+<p>49. Man is exposed to the difficulties of this dark and dismal world,
+like a bird fallen in the waters of the sea; he is entangled in the
+snare of the world, like one snatched to the fairy land in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>50. The mind is carried away by the current of business, like a man
+borne by the waves of the sea. Lift it, O brave Ráma! from this pit, as
+they do an elephant sinking in the mud.</p>
+
+<p>51. Lift up thy mind by force, O Ráma! like a bullock from this
+delusive puddle (<i>palvala</i>) of the world, where it is shorn of its
+brightness and is weakened in its frame.</p>
+
+<p>52. Ráma! the man whose mind is not troubled in this world, with
+successive joy and grief, and the vicissitudes of decrepitude, disease
+and death, is no human being: but resemble a monstrous Rákshasa,
+although he may have the figure of a man on him. (It is not humanity to
+<be> devoid of human feeling).
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_599">[599]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLIII.<br>
+<span class="small">THE REPOSITORIES OF LIVING SOULS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The Transmigrations of Souls by virtue of their Acts,
+and the way of their salvation.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Thus the living soul being derived from Brahma,
+assumes to itself the form of the mind, and is tossed about with the
+thoughts and cares of the world. It is then changed into thousands and
+millions of forms, as it figures to itself in its imagination.</p>
+
+<p>2. It has undergone many prior births, and is in the course of
+migrating into many more; it will transmigrate into many more also,
+which are as multitudinous as the flitting particles of a water-fall
+(splitting to many atoms).</p>
+
+<p>3. These atomic souls of living beings, being subjected to their
+desires by the great variety of their wishes; are made to wander under
+many forms, to which they are bound by their desires.</p>
+
+<p>4. They rove incessantly to different directions, in distant countries
+both by land and water; they live or die in those places, as the
+bubbles blow out but to float and burst, and then sink in the water
+below.</p>
+
+<p>5. Some are produced for the first time in a new <i>kalpa</i> age, and
+others are born a hundred times in it; some have had only two or three
+births, while the births of others are unnumbered (in a kalpa).</p>
+
+<p>6. Some are yet unborn and are to be born yet on earth, and many others
+have passed their births by attainment of their liberation at last.
+Some are alive at present, and others are no more to be born.</p>
+
+<p>7. Some are born again and again, for myriads of kalpas, some remaining
+in one state all along, and many in various states repeatedly changing
+their forms and natures.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_600">[600]</span>
+8. Some are subjected to the great misery of hell, and some are
+destined to a little joy on earth; some enjoying the great delights of
+the gods in heaven, and others raised to the glory of heavenly bodies
+above.</p>
+
+<p>9. Some are born as Kinnaras and Gandharvas and others as Vidyádharas
+and huge serpents; some appear in the forms of Sol, Indra and Varuna
+(Ouranas), and others in those of the triocular Siva and the lotus-born
+Brahmá.</p>
+
+<p>10. Some become the Kushmánda and Vetála goblins, and others as Yaksha
+and Rákshasa cannibals; some again become the Brahmánas and the ruling
+class, and others become Vaisyas and Súdras. (The four tribes of
+Indo-Aryans).</p>
+
+<p>11. Some become Swapacha and Chandála (eaters of dog and hog-flesh),
+and others as Kirátas and Puskasa (eaters of rotten bodies); some
+become the grass and greens on earth, and others as the seeds of fruits
+and roots of vegetables, and as moths and butterflies in the air.</p>
+
+<p>12. Some are formed into varieties of herbs and creeping plants, and
+others into stones and rocks; some into <i>Jáma</i> and <i>Kadamba</i> trees, and
+others into <i>Sála</i>, <i>Tála</i> and <i>Tamála</i> forests.</p>
+
+<p>13. There are some placed in prosperous circumstances, and become as
+ministers and generals and rulers of states; while others are clad in
+their rags and remain as religious recluses, munis and taciturn hermits
+in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>14. Some are born as snakes and hydras, worms, insects and ants; whilst
+there are others in the forms of great lions, big buffaloes, stags and
+goats, the bos guavas and fleet antelopes in forests.</p>
+
+<p>15. Some are begotten as storks and cranes, ruddy geese and cuckoos;
+and others are become their pastures in the shapes of lotuses and water
+lilies, the nilumbium and other aquatic shrubs and flowers.</p>
+
+<p>16. Some are brought forth as elephants and their cubs, and as wild
+boars, bulls and asses; and others come into being as bees and beetles,
+flies and gadflies, gnats and musquitoes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_601">[601]</span>
+17. Many are born to difficulties and dangers, and many to prosperity
+and adversity; some are placed in hell pits and others in their
+heavenly abodes.</p>
+
+<p>18. Some are situated in the stars, and some in the hollows of trees;
+some move upon the wings of the winds, and others rest in the still air
+above or fly freely in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>19. Many dwell in the sunlight of the day, and many subsist under the
+moonbeams at night; while there be others subsisting upon the beverage,
+which they draw from the herbaceous plants.</p>
+
+<p>20. Some are liberated in their life-time, and rove about freely in
+this earth; while others live in their blissful states (in holy and
+lonely hermitage). Some are altogether emancipate in their reliance in
+the Supreme Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>21. There are some that require long periods for their blessed and
+ultimate liberation; and others there are that disbelieve the
+intellectuality and spirituality of mankind, and dislike their being
+reduced to the solity of the soul, or to be reduced to their oneness or
+unity with the Supreme soul—Kaivalya.</p>
+
+<p>22. Some become regents of the skies above, and others roll down in the
+form of mighty streams; some become females of beautiful appearances,
+and others as ugly hermaphrodites and abnormalities.</p>
+
+<p>23. Some are of enlightened understandings, and some are darkened in
+their minds. Some are preachers and lecturers of knowledge, and others
+in their ecstatic trance of Samádhi.</p>
+
+<p>24. 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.</p>
+
+<p>25. They rove about the world, now flying up and then falling down in
+their hopes and fears; and are incessantly tossed up and down, like
+playing balls flung on all sides, by the relentless hands of playful
+Death.</p>
+
+<p>26. Entrapped in the hundred fold snare of desire, and converted to the
+various forms of their wishes, they pass from one body to another, as
+the birds fly from one tree to alight on another.</p>
+
+<p>27. The endless desires of the living soul, bred and led by the false
+imaginations of the mind, have spread this enchanted snare of magic or
+máyá, which is known by the name of the great world.</p>
+
+<p>28. So long are the stupefied souls doomed to rove about in the world,
+like the waters in a whirlpool; as they do not come to understand the
+true nature of their selves, as selfsame with the Supreme-Self.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_602">[602]</span>
+
+<p>29. Having known and seen the true Self, by forsaking their false
+knowledge of it, they come to their consciousness of themselves, as
+identic with the divine Self; and having attained this in process of
+time, they are released from their doom of revisiting this world of
+pain and sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>30. There are however some insensible beings, who notwithstanding their
+attainment of this knowledge, are so perverted in their natures, that
+they have to return again to this earth, after passing into a hundred
+lives in it in various shapes (owing to their disbelief in the self).</p>
+
+<p>31. Some there are who after having attained to higher states, fall
+down again by the lowness of their spirits, and appearing in the shapes
+of brute creatures, have to fall into hell at last.</p>
+
+<p>32. There are some great minded souls, who having proceeded from the
+state of Brahma, have to pass here a single life, after which they are
+absorbed in the Supreme soul. (Such were the sage Janaka and the sagely
+Seneca).</p>
+
+<p>33. There are multitudes of living beings in other worlds also, some of
+whom have become as the lotus-born Brahmá, and others as Hara (the
+Horus of the Egyptian trinity).</p>
+
+<p>34. There are others who have become as gods and brute creatures in
+them, and there are snakes and other reptiles also in them as well as
+in this earth. (Astronomers have descried kine in the moon, and Hindoos
+have found it to abound in deer, whence the moon is called mrigánka by
+them. So are the constellations in the heavens).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_603">[603]</span>
+35. There are other worlds as obvious to view as this earth (in the
+starry heavens), and there are many such worlds that have gone by, and
+are yet to appear (in the immensity of space).</p>
+
+<p>36. There are various other creatures of different shapes, produced by
+various unknown causes in the other worlds also, which have their
+growths and deaths like those of this earth.</p>
+
+<p>37. Some are produced as Gandharvas, and others as Yakshas (the Yakkas
+at Ceylon); and some are generated as Suras (Sorians); and some others
+as Asuras (Assyrians) and Daityas (demons).</p>
+
+<p>38. The manners and modes of life of the peoples in other parts of the
+globe, are as those of the men living in this part of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>39. All creatures move according to their own natures and mutual
+relations for ever more, as the waves and currents of a river move
+forward, following and followed by others in regular succession.</p>
+
+<p>40. 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.</p>
+
+<p>41. In this manner do the multitudes of living beings, proceed from the
+Supreme Spirit, who with the consciousness of their self-existence,
+rise from and fall at last into it. (The consciousness of the universal
+soul, is divided into the individual souls of beings, that are derived
+and detached from it).</p>
+
+<p>42. All created beings are detached from their source, like the light
+from the lamp and the solar rays from the sun; they are like sparks of
+red hot iron, and the scintillation of fire.</p>
+
+<p>43. They are as the particles (or minute moments) of time, and the
+flying odours of flowers; or as the cold icicles and the minutial of
+rain water, borne by breeze and cooling the air all around.</p>
+
+<p>44. So the flitting particles of life, flying from one spot to another,
+and filling different bodies with animation, are at last absorbed in
+the main spring of vitality whence they had risen.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_604">[604]</span>45. The particles of vital air, being thus spread out and scattered
+over the universe, come to assume the various forms of animated beings
+in all the worlds, but they are all mere creations of our ignorance,
+and are in reality like the rolling waves of water in the vast ocean of
+eternity.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_605">[605]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLIV.<br>
+<span class="small">THE INCARNATION OF HUMAN SOULS IN THE WORLD.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Discussion about incarnation of the spirit, and its
+extinction by death and liberation.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> asked:—I understand now how the particles of the Divine Spirit,
+take the forms of the living souls; but I cannot conceive how it
+assumes the corporeal body composed of bones and ribs.</p>
+
+<p>2. Vasishtha replied:—Why don’t you know it Ráma, when I have explained
+it to you before? Where have you lost your deductive reasoning of
+arriving to the conclusion from those premises.</p>
+
+<p>3. All these corporeal bodies in the world, and all these moving and
+unmoving persons and things, are but false representations, rising
+before us as the visions in our dreams.</p>
+
+<p>4. The phenomenal world differs only in its being but a longer and
+more delusive dream; it is as the sight of the double moon by optical
+deception, and of a mountain in the delusion of darkness.</p>
+
+<p>5. The enlightened mind which is cleared of its drowsiness of
+ignorance, and is freed from the fetters of its desire, views the world
+to be no more than a dream.</p>
+
+<p>6. 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.</p>
+
+<p>7. The fleeting essence of the soul, is like the eddy of waters; or
+like the germ of the seed, or more like the leaflet of a sprout.</p>
+
+<p>8. And as the flower is contained in the branch, and the fruit within
+its flowers; so this creation of the imagination, is contained in the
+receptacle of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>9. As the ever-changing form of the chameleon, exhibits but a
+particular hue at a time; so the ever-varying mind <span class="pagenum" id="Page_606">[606]</span>
+shows only the
+figure, which is prominent in its thought for the time being (and this
+inward figure is reflected by the visual organs).</p>
+
+<p>10. The same thought assumes a visible form, as the clay takes the form
+of a pot; and the good thoughts and actions of the prior state of life,
+serve to give the soul a goodly form in its next birth on earth.</p>
+
+<p>11. We see the mighty lotus-born Brahmá situated in the cell of that
+flower, and find it to be the effect of the good thoughts he had in his
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>12. This unlimited creation is the false fabrication of imagination;
+whereupon the living soul in conjunction with the mind, obtained the
+state of Virinchí the Brahmá (vir inchoatious or <i>incipiens</i> the
+primary man, otherwise called <i>ádima-purusha</i>—Adam or the first male).</p>
+
+<p>13. Ráma said:—I require, Sir, to be fully informed, whether all other
+beings sprang from the same cause as Brahmá—the lotus-born.</p>
+
+<p>14. Vasishtha answered:—Hear me tell you, O long-armed Ráma, the manner
+of Brahmá’s having the body; and from his instance, you will learn
+about the existence of the world.</p>
+
+<p>15. The Supreme soul, which is unlimited by time or space, takes of his
+own will, and by the power of his Omnipotence, the limited forms of
+time and space upon himself.</p>
+
+<p>16. The same becomes the living soul, and is fraught with various
+desires in itself, of becoming many:—<i>aham bahu syáma</i>.</p>
+
+<p>17. When this limited power which is Brahmá, thinks on the state of his
+having been the Hiranyagarbha, in his former state of existence in the
+prior Kalpa; he is immediately transformed to that state which is in
+his mind, and which is ever busy with its thoughts and imaginations.</p>
+
+<p>18. It thinks first of the clear sky, the receptacle of sound, and
+which is perceptible by the auditory organs; and this thought being
+condensed in the mind, makes it vibrate as by the wind of the air.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_607">[607]</span>
+19. It thinks then on the vibrations of air, which are the objects of
+feeling, through the porous skin and the mind; and is moved by the
+thoughts of air and wind to assume that form, which are invisible to the
+naked eye.</p>
+
+<p>20. The condensation of the elements of air and wind together, produced
+the idea of light which is the cause of sight, and which has the
+colours and figures for its objects; and thus the mind being actuated
+by its triple thoughts of air, wind and light, produced the property of
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>21. These joined immediately to produce the idea of coldness the
+property of water; and the mind then came to form the quadruple ideas
+of the four elements of air, wind, fire and water.</p>
+
+<p>22. 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 (<i>panchabhautika</i>)).</p>
+
+<p>23. It saw this body shining as a spark of fire in the sky, which
+joined with its egoism and understanding, formed its personality.</p>
+
+<p>24. This is called the spiritual body (lingasaríra),—the embodying
+octuple, which is situated as the bee in the pericarp of the lotus like
+heart, and which gives growth to the outer body by its inner working
+(as the inner seed grows the outer tree).</p>
+
+<p>25. It is thickened by the action of the heart of its internal process
+of calefaction, like the bel fruit or woodapple. And the outer body
+receives the qualities of the inner mind, as the jewel shines with the
+lustre of the little particle of gold, which is infused in the melted
+state of the metal in the crucible.</p>
+
+<p>26. The quality of the inner soul or mind, manifests itself in the
+outer body, as the quality of the seed appears in the form and taste of
+its fruit. The mind then dwells upon the thoughts of its actions, which
+have their display in the several organs, and members of the bodily
+actions, which are produced by the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_608">[608]</span>
+motions of the inner thoughts and
+acts, as the leaves and branches of trees are projected by the inner
+process and operations of the seed.</p>
+
+<p>27. Its thoughts of upside and below, lifts and lowers its head and
+feet upward and down-ward; and its thought of both sides, extends its
+two arms to the right and left.</p>
+
+<p>28. Its thoughts of the backward and forward, places its back behind,
+and its breast and belly before it; and the hairs on the head and
+fingers of the hands, are as the filaments and twigs of trees.</p>
+
+<p>29. In this manner did Brahmá, who is called a <i>muni</i> or mental being,
+from his having sprung <from> the mind of Brahma, produced the several
+parts of his body, according to his thoughts of their usefulness to it.</p>
+
+<p>30. He brought the body and its limbs to compactness, as the seasons
+bring their fruits and grains to perfection. Thus is every thing
+perfected in time, and all beings have their beautiful bodies and
+figures.</p>
+
+<p>31. He, the lord Brahmá was the progenitor of all beings, and fraught
+with the qualities of strength and understanding, activity, dignity and
+knowledge. (The Smriti attributes the <i>Siddhi chatushtaya</i> or quadruple
+perfections to him).</p>
+
+<p>32. Being begotten by the vacuous Brahma, he resides in the lap of
+vacuity; and is of the form of melted gold, like every other luminous
+body in the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>33. Though situated in the Supreme, yet the mind of Brahmá is liable
+to the mistakes of its own making; and at times it quite forgets its
+having no beginning, middle nor end, like its source.</p>
+
+<p>34. Sometimes the lord thinks himself, as identic with the waters which
+existed before creation in his mind; and at another as the mundane egg,
+which was as bright as the fire of universal destruction (see Manu I).</p>
+
+<p>35. Sometimes the lord thought himself as the dark wood, which covered
+the earth before creation of living animals, and them as the lotus bed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_609">[609]</span>
+(wherein he was born). Afterwards he became of many forms at each phase
+and epoch of creation. (These epochs are called <i>kalpas</i> or periods, in
+which the divine mind manifested itself according to its wish within
+the different stages of creation).</p>
+
+<p>36. Thus Brahmá became the preserver of many kinds of beings, which he
+created of his own will from his mind at each stage or <i>kalpa</i>-period;
+of which he was the first that issued from Brahma himself. (He was the
+first begotten, and nothing was created but by him).</p>
+
+<p>37. When Brahmá was first begotten, he remained in his happy state of
+insensibility and forgetfulness (of his former existence); but being
+delivered from his torpor in the womb, he came to see the light.
+(<i>i.e.</i> He saw the light of heaven, after his delivery from the
+darkness of the womb).</p>
+
+<p>38. He took a corporeal body, with its breathings and respirations
+(pránápána); it was covered with pores of hair, and furnished with gums
+of two and thirty teeth. It had the three pots of the thighs, backbone,
+and bones, standing on the feet below; with the five air, five
+partitions, nine cavities, and a smooth skin covering all the limbs.
+(The five airs are pránápána &c. The five partitions are, the head, the
+legs, the breast, belly and the hands).</p>
+
+<p>40. It is accompanied by twice ten fingers and their nails on them; and
+with a couple of arms and palms and two or more hands and eyes (in the
+cases of gods and giants).</p>
+
+<p>41. The body is the nest of the bird of the mind, and it is hole of the
+snake of lust; it is the cave of the goblin of greediness, and the den
+of the lion of life.</p>
+
+<p>42. It is a chain at the feet of the elephant of pride, and a lake of
+the lotuses of our desire; The lord Brahmá looked upon his handsome
+body, and saw it was good.</p>
+
+<p>43. Then the lord thought in himself, from his view of the three times
+of the past, present and future, and from his sight of the vault of
+heaven, with a dark mist as a group of flying locusts.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_610">[610]</span>
+44. “What is this boundless space, and what had it been before. How
+came I to being?” Thus pondering in himself, he was enlightened in his
+soul. (Thus did Adam inquire about his birth, and the production of the
+world in Milton’s Paradise Lost).</p>
+
+<p>45. He saw in his mind the different past creations, and recollected
+the various religions and their various sects, which had grown upon
+earth one after the other.</p>
+
+<p>46. He produced the holy Vedas as the spring does its flowers; and
+formed with ease all varieties of creatures from their archetypes in
+his mind.</p>
+
+<p>47. He set them in their various laws and customs, as he saw them in
+the city of his mind, for the purpose of their temporal and spiritual
+welfare.</p>
+
+<p>48. He thought upon the innumerable varieties of sástras which had
+existed before, and all of which came to exist on earth in their
+visible forms, from their prototypes in his eternal mind; like the
+flowers springing from the womb of the vernal season.</p>
+
+<p>49. Thus O Ráma! did Brahmá take upon him the form of the lotus-born,
+and create by his activity, all the different creatures upon their
+models existent in his mind, which took their various forms in the
+visible world at his will. (So the Sufi and Platonic doctrine of the
+phenomenal, as a copy of the noumena, or the <i>suari zahiri</i> as but a
+shadow of the <i>suvari manavi</i> or <i>catini</i>. See Allami).
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_611">[611]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLV.<br>
+<span class="small">DEPENDANCE OF ALL ON GOD.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The mind being a finite production, its product of the
+world, is as unreal as the thoughts of the mind.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—The world appearing as substantial, has nothing
+substantive in it; it is all a vacuity and mere representation of the
+imageries and vagaries of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>2. Neither is time nor space filled by any world at all, but by the
+great spirit, who has no form except that of vacuum. (The spirit of God
+fills the infinite vacuity from all eternity).</p>
+
+<p>3. This is all imaginary, and as visionary as a city seen in a dream;
+whatever is seen any where is fallacy, and existing in the infinite
+vacuity. (All is void amidst the great void of Brahma’s Mind).</p>
+
+<p>4. It is a painting without its base, and a vision of unrealities;
+it is an uncreated creation, and a variegated picture in empty air
+(without its canvas).</p>
+
+<p>5. It is the imagination of the mind, that has stretched the three
+worlds, and made the many bodies contained in them. Reminiscence is the
+cause of these creations, as the eyesight is the cause of vision.</p>
+
+<p>6. The pageantry of the world is an erroneous representation, like the
+elevations and depressions in a painting; they are not distinct from
+the supreme spirit, in which they are situated as buildings stand on
+their foundation. (Or as statues in bas-relief).</p>
+
+<p>7. The mind has made the body for its own abode, as some worms make
+their cortices or coatings, and the soul also has its sheaths or koshas
+(namely the <i>annamaya kosha &c.</i>).</p>
+
+<p>8. There is nothing which the mind can not get or build in its empty
+imagination, however difficult or unattainable it may appear to be.</p>
+
+<p>9. What impossibility is there of the same powers residing in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_612">[612]</span>
+Omnipotence, which are possessed by the mind in its secluded cell? (The
+spiritual powers must be greater than the mental).</p>
+
+<p>10. It is not impossible, O Ráma! for any thing to be or not to be at
+any time or always, when there is the omnipotent Lord, who can create
+or annihilate all things at his will. (The positive and the negative
+are co-eternal with the eternal Mind, though it is an impossibility in
+the order of nature, as; “It is impossible for the same thing to be,
+and not to be at the same time.” Locke).</p>
+
+<p>11. Mind that, when the mind is empowered to make its own body, and
+to form others in its imagination, how much more is the power of the
+almighty to make and unmake all things at his will.</p>
+
+<p>12. It is divine will that has brought the gods, the demigods and all
+mankind into existence; and it is by the cessation of the (creative)
+will, that they cease to exist as the lamp is extinguished for want of
+its oil.</p>
+
+<p>13. Behold the sky and all things under it to be displayed by the
+divine will, and understand the universe as the visionary scene of thy
+dream laid open to thy sight.</p>
+
+<p>14. There is nothing that is born or dies here at any time, because
+every thing is a nullity in its true sense.</p>
+
+<p>15. There is also nothing, that becomes more or less in any wise when
+there is nothing in existence; for how can that (soul) have a body when
+it is bodyless, and can it be parted, when it is an undivided
+whole?</p>
+
+<p>16. Ráma! seeing by thy keen sightedness, that all these bodies are
+bodiless (<i>i.e.</i> only imaginary beings), why shouldst thou fall into
+the error (of taking them for realities?).</p>
+
+<p>17. As the mirage is made to appear by the heat of the sun, so do these
+false appearances seem as true to thee from the certainty of thy mind.
+So also are Brahmá and others but creatures of thy fancy.</p>
+
+<p>18. They are as false as the sight of two moons in the sky by thy false
+imagination, it is the great fallacy of thy mind, that represents these
+false forms of the world before thee.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_613">[613]</span>
+
+<p>19. As the passenger in a boat sees the fixed objects on earth to
+be moving about him, so these varieties of visible objects offer
+themselves to thy view.</p>
+
+<p>20. Know the world as an enchanted scene, presented by the magic of thy
+error (<i>máyá</i>); it is a fabrication of the working of thy mind, and is
+a nullity though appearing as a reality.</p>
+
+<p>21. All this world is Brahma, what else is there beside him? What other
+adjunct can he have, what is that? Whence did it come, and where is it
+situated?</p>
+
+<p>22. That this is a mountain and that is a tree, are appendages affixed
+by our error and mistake, it is the prejudgment of the mind, that makes
+the unreality appear as a reality.</p>
+
+<p>23. The world is the creation of error and idol of fools; shun your
+fond desire and thoughts of it, Ráma, and think of thy unworldly soul.</p>
+
+<p>24. It is as false as the visionary scene of a prolonged dream, and an
+aerial building of the fancies of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>25. Shun this grand display of the world, which is so substantial to
+sight, and so inane when felt; It is the den of the dragons of desire,
+foaming with the poison of their passions.</p>
+
+<p>26. Knowing the world as unreal, try to regard it as nothing; because
+the wise will never go after a mirage knowing it such.</p>
+
+<p>27. The foolish man that runs after some imaginary object of his
+heart’s desire, is surely exposed to trouble and disappointment for his
+folly.</p>
+
+<p>28. Whoever desires to have any thing in this world, after knowing it
+as an unreality, surely perishes with his soul for his forsaking the
+reality.</p>
+
+<p>29. It is only that error of the mind, which makes it mistake a rope
+for a snake; and it is the variety of the thoughts and pursuits of men,
+that makes them roll about in the world.</p>
+
+<p>30. When some vain thought labors in the mind, like the moon appearing
+to move under the water; it beguiles little children only, and not the
+wise as yourself.</p>
+
+<p>31. He who pursues the virtues for his future happiness, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_614">[614]</span>
+surely kindles
+the fire of his intelligence to destroy the frost of his ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>32. All the gross bodies that are seen here in this world, are all the
+creatures of the working of the mind, as the building of aerial castles
+in our thought.</p>
+
+<p>33. It is the heart’s desire that produces these things, as it is want
+of desire that destroys them all. The unrealities appear as true as
+the fairylands appearing to view. (Fairy cities like the sight of
+castles in the icebergs).</p>
+
+<p>34. Know Ráma, that nothing that is existent is lost on the dissolution
+of the world, nor what is inexistent of its nature, can ever come into
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>35. Say Ráma, what things you call as entire or broken, or to be
+growing or decaying, when these ideas are but the formations of your
+sound or unsound mind or the working of your fancy.</p>
+
+<p>36. As children make and break their toy-dolls of clay at will, so the
+mind raises and erases its thoughts of all things in the world (by its
+repeated recollections and oblivions of them).</p>
+
+<p>37. 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
+(samsára ságara).</p>
+
+<p>38. The unrealities being all untrue, it is true that nothing is lost
+by their loss. Hence there is no cause for our joy or sorrow in this
+unreal world. (Why sorrow, when a fragile is broken, or a mortal is no
+more).</p>
+
+<p>39. If the world is altogether an unreality, I know not what may be
+lost in it; and if nothing whatever is really lost in it, what reason
+can there be for the wise to sorrow for it?</p>
+
+<p>40. 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 any thing whatever.</p>
+
+<p>41. If the unreality can never come to existence, it cannot <span class="pagenum" id="Page_615">[615]</span>
+have its
+growth also. What cause is there of our sorrow for their want of growth
+or existence?</p>
+
+<p>42. Thus every thing is but unreal and mere cause of our delusion, what
+is there that may be reckoned as the best boon for us, that the wiseman can have to desire. (No real bliss is to be found on earth).</p>
+
+<p>43. But all this when taken in the sense of their being full with the
+Divine Spirit, what thing is there so very trifling for the wise man to
+dispose or refuse to take?</p>
+
+<p>44. But he who considers the world as an unreality, is never subject to
+joy or sorrow at his gain or loss of any thing. It is only the ignorant
+that is elated or depressed at the one or the other.</p>
+
+<p>45. That which was not before nor will remain afterwards, is likewise
+the same nihility at present; therefore who so desires the nullity, is
+said in the Sruti to be null himself. (The Sruti says: Nothing there
+was, nothing there is, and nothing will last in the end except the
+being of God).</p>
+
+<p>46. What was before and what will be in the end, the same is in being
+(<i>in esse</i>) even at present; therefore, what is always <i>in esse</i>, it is
+that entity alone that is seen everywhere and at all times.</p>
+
+<p>47. There are the unreal sky and moon and stars, seen underneath the
+water; it is only the deluded boys that like to look at them, but never
+the wise (who look at the reality and not at its shadow).</p>
+
+<p>48. Children take a liking for light, empty and gaudy baubles; which
+are of no good or use to them nor any body at all, and are rather led
+to sorrow at their loss, than derive any good from their gain whatever.</p>
+
+<p>49. Therefore act not as a child, O lotus-eyed Ráma! but conduct
+yourself as the wise, and by looking at these fleeting baubles as ever
+evanescent, rely in the Everlasting alone.</p>
+
+<p>50. Ráma! be not sad or sorry to learn, that all these with thyself and
+myself are nothing in reality; nor be glad or joyous to know, that all
+these and ourselves are real entities. But reckon <span class="pagenum" id="Page_616">[616]</span>
+alike whether these
+be or not be; because it is the One Being, that becomes and unbecomes
+anything, it is the only Being, and all things that becomes.</p>
+
+<p>51. Válmíki said:—As the sage was saying in this manner, the day glided
+away to its dusk; the sun departed to his even tide and evening service,
+and with him the assembly parted to their evening ablutions and rest,
+after which they assembled again to the court with the rising sun.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_617">[617]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLVI.<br>
+<span class="small">DESCRIPTION OF LIVING LIBERATION.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The emancipation of Living souls from the thraldom of
+the World.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—No man knows sorrow as long as he is in possession of
+his pleasant home, family and wealth; but why should he be sorrowful
+upon their disappearance, knowing them as a short-lived enchantment and
+accompaniment.</p>
+
+<p>2. What pleasure or pain can one derive, either from the grandeur or
+destruction of his aerial castle, and what cause of joy can he have in
+his ignorant children, or of sorrow upon their death? (An ignorant son
+is sorrow to his father. Solomon).</p>
+
+<p>3. What joy is there in the increase of our wealth or family, seeing
+them as the increasing mirage of water which can never satisfy the
+thirsty. (The thirst for riches is never satisfied. Lat. <i>Auri sacra
+fames.</i> Verg.).</p>
+
+<p>4. 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. (Care follows increasing wealth. Little wealth little care).</p>
+
+<p>5. The abundance of carnal enjoyments, which are delightsome to the
+ignorant voluptuary, is quite distasteful and disgusting to the
+abstemious, wise and learned. (Carnal pleasures are brutish, but mental
+delights are relished by the wise).</p>
+
+<p>6. What joy is there in the possession of temporary wealth and family
+to the wise, that seek their lasting welfare, and are quite indifferent
+about these?</p>
+
+<p>7. Therefore, O Ráma! be truly wise in thy conduct in this world; shun
+the transient as they are transitory, and lay hold on whatever offers
+of itself unto thee. (Be content with what thou gettest).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_618">[618]</span>
+8. Inappetency of what is ungotten, and enjoyment of what is in present
+possession; are the true characteristic of the wise and learned.
+(Contentment is abundance; and a contented mind as a continued feast).</p>
+
+<p>9. Take care of this bewildering world, where thy enemies are lurking
+in many a deceitful shape; and conduct thyself as the wise man, evading
+the dangers that wait upon the unwise. (The enemies are of seven
+shapes, viz.: a swordsman, a poisoner, an incendiary, a curser, an
+exorcist, a backbiter and an adulterer).</p>
+
+<p>10. They are great fools who do not look deeply into the things, and
+think the world to be without any fraud or guile. (The credulous are
+most imposed upon).</p>
+
+<p>11. Fools are led by the deceitful speech of cheats, to fall into the
+temptations of the world; but men of right understanding place no
+reliance in them, nor plunge themselves into the pit of errors. (It is
+cunningness to keep from the cunning).</p>
+
+<p>12. He who knowing the unrealities, place no reliance in anything;
+is said to have mastered all knowledge, and is never liable to
+error. (Discrimination of truth and untruth, and of right and wrong,
+constitute the highest wisdom of man).</p>
+
+<p>13. Who so knowing himself as frail as any thing in this frail world,
+has his faith in neither, is never liable to fall into the error of
+taking either of them for real.</p>
+
+<p>14. Placed between the unreality and reality of this and next life, you
+must have the good sense of sticking to the Truth, and neither wholly
+reject or stick to this or the next. (The text says, stick not to the
+outward or inward alone: <i>i.e.</i> either to the outer world or <the>
+inner spirit entirely, but attend to your interests in both of them).</p>
+
+<p>15. Though engaged in business, yet you must remain, O Ráma! quite
+indifferent to all things; because the apathetic and inappetent are
+truly happy in this world.</p>
+
+<p>16. He who has nothing to desire or leave, but lives as he is obliged
+to live, has his intellect as unsullied as the lotus-leaf, to which the
+laving waters never stick.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_619">[619]</span>
+17. Let thy accessory organs manage thy outward affairs or not; but
+keep thy apathetic soul quite unconcerned with all. (<i>i.e.</i> The body
+and mind may attend to business; but the soul must remain aloof from
+all).</p>
+
+<p>18. Let not thy mind be plunged in and deeply engaged with the
+objects of sense, by thinking them in vain to be thy properties and
+possessions; but manage them or not with utter indifference of thy
+mind. (<i>i.e.</i> Observe a stoical indifference in all thy worldly
+concerns).</p>
+
+<p>19. When thou comest to feel, Ráma! 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.</p>
+
+<p>20. The embodied or disembodied soul whether living or dead, that has
+ceased to have any taste for sensuous enjoyments, has attained its
+liberation without its wishing for it.</p>
+
+<p>21. Try Ráma! by your superior intelligence, to separate your mind from
+its desires, as they extract the perfume from flowers.</p>
+
+<p>22. They that have not been swept away by the waves of their desires,
+to the midst of the ocean of this world, are said to have got over it;
+but the others are no doubt drowned and lost in it. (This is the first
+time that I found the word <i>budita</i> to occur in Sanskrit in the sense
+of drowned. See the vernacular Bengali <i>dubita</i> also).</p>
+
+<p>23. 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.</p>
+
+<p>24. Move about as those who have attained to true knowledge, and
+elevated their minds with true wisdom; and do not act as the ignorant
+worldling: who is mindful of the present state, and unmindful of the
+future.</p>
+
+<p>25. In conducting yourself in this world, you should imitate them that
+are liberated in their life time, who are great in their <span class="pagenum" id="Page_620">[620]</span>
+souls and
+understandings, and who are ever satisfied with themselves, and not
+follow the examples of the greedy and wicked.</p>
+
+<p>26. Those having the knowledge of both worlds, neither slight nor
+adhere to the customs of their country, but follow them like other
+people during their life time. (<i>i.e.</i> Act in harmony and conformity
+with approved custom and usage).</p>
+
+<p>27. Great men knowing the truth, are never proud of their power or good
+qualities, nor of their honour or prosperity like the vulgar people.</p>
+
+<p>28. Great men are not depressed by adversity, nor elated by prosperity;
+but remain fixed like the sun in the sky without anything to support it.</p>
+
+<p>29. Great minds like warriors ride in the chariots of their bodies,
+clad in the armour of their knowledge; they have no desire of their
+own, but conduct themselves according to the course of the time.</p>
+
+<p>30. You too Ráma! have gained your extensive learning in philosophy,
+and it is by virtue of your prudence, that you can manage yourself with
+ease.</p>
+
+<p>31. Suppress the sight of the visibles, and avoid your pride and
+enmity; then roam wherever you will, and you will meet with success.</p>
+
+<p>32. Be sedate in all circumstances, unattached to the present, and
+wishing to know all other things in future; have the calm composure of
+your mind, and go where you will.</p>
+
+<p>33. Válmíki said:—Ráma, being advised in this manner by the pure
+doctrines of the sage, brightened in his countenance; and being full
+within himself with the ambrosia of his knowledge; shone forth like the
+ambrosial moon with her cooling beams.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_621">[621]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLVII.<br>
+<span class="small">DESCRIPTION OF THE WORLDS AND THEIR DEMIURGI.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Relation of many past and Future Worlds, and of the
+gods and other beings contained in them.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>2. I am never satiate with hearing your speech, which is equally
+copious, clear and elegant.</p>
+
+<p>3. You have said sir, of the birth of Brahmá in course of your lecture
+on the productions of the satva and rájasa qualities. I want you to
+tell me more on that subject.</p>
+
+<p>4. Vasishtha answered:—There have been many millions of Brahmás
+and many hundreds of Sivas and Indras, together with thousands of
+Náráyanas, that have gone by (in the revolution of ages).</p>
+
+<p>5. There have been various kinds of beings also in many other worlds,
+having their manners and customs widely differing from one another.</p>
+
+<p>6. There will also be many other productions in the worlds, synchronous
+with others, and many to be born at times remotely distant from one
+another.</p>
+
+<p>7. Among these, the births of Brahmá and the other gods in the
+different worlds, are as wonderful as the productions of many things in
+a magic show.</p>
+
+<p>8. Some creations were made with Brahmá as the first born, others with
+Vishnu and some with Siva as the next created beings. There were some
+other (minor productions), having the munis for the patriarchs. (These
+are the different periods of the formation of the world under the
+different Demiurgi).</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_622">[622]</span>
+
+<p>9. One Brahmá was lotus-born, another was produced from the water; and
+a third was born of an egg, and the fourth was produced in the air.
+(These are named as the Padmaja, Náráyana, Andaja and Maruta).</p>
+
+<p>10. In one egg the sun was born with all his eyes, and in another
+Vásava—the Indra; in some one was born the lotus-eyed Vishnu, and in
+another he with his three eyes as Siva.</p>
+
+<p>11. In one age was born the solid earth, having no holes for the growth
+of vegetables, in another it was overgrown with verdure; it was again
+filled with mountains, and at last covered by living creatures.</p>
+
+<p>12. The earth was full of gold in some place, and it was hard ground at
+others; it was mere mud in many places, and incrusted with copper and
+other metals in some.</p>
+
+<p>13. There are some wondrous worlds in the universe, and others more
+wondrous still than they; some of them are luminous and bright, and
+others whose light have never reached unto us.</p>
+
+<p>14. There are innumerable worlds scattered in the vacuum of Brahma’s
+essence, and they are all rolling up and down like waves in the ocean.
+(Here the infinite vacuity, is represented as the body of Brahma, and
+the sole substance of all other bodies).</p>
+
+<p>15. The splendours of worlds, are seen in the SUPREME like waves in
+the sea, and as the mirage in the sandy desert; they abide in Him as
+flowers on the mango tree.</p>
+
+<p>16. It may be possible to count the particles of the solar rays, but
+not the number of worlds abounding in the Supreme Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>17. These multitudes of worlds rise and fall in the Universal Spirit,
+like gnats flying and following others in swarms in the rainy season.</p>
+
+<p>18. 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.</p>
+
+<p>19. They have been rolling without beginning like the billows of the
+sea; those that are past and gone had their previous ones, and they
+their prior ones also.</p>
+
+<p>20. 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_623">[623]</span>
+21. There are series of mundane worlds like the egg of Brahmá, which
+pass away by thousands like the hours in course of the year.</p>
+
+<p>22. There are many such bodies revolving at present, in the spacious
+mind of Brahma; beside the mundane system of Brahmá (Brahmánda).</p>
+
+<p>23. There will grow many more mundane worlds in the infinity of the
+divine mind, and they will also vanish away in course of time, like the
+evanescent sounds in the air. (The sounds are never lost, but remain in
+the air. <i>Sabdonityam</i>).</p>
+
+<p>24. 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. (Here Brahma is made the material
+cause of all).</p>
+
+<p>25. So long doth the glory of the three worlds appear to the sight, as
+long as it is not seen in the intellect, in the manner as it exists in
+the divine mind.</p>
+
+<p>26. The rising and falling of worlds are neither true nor wholly false;
+they are as the <i>fanfaronade</i> of fools, and as orchids of the air.</p>
+
+<p>27. All things are of the manner of sea waves, which vanish no sooner
+than they appear to view, and they are all of the nature of paintings,
+which are impressed in the mind.</p>
+
+<p>28. 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.</p>
+
+<p>29. The learned in divine knowledge, consider the creations proceeding
+from the Spirit of God, as showers of rain falling from the waters
+contained in the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>30. The visible creation is no more distinct from God, than the sea
+water exuding from the earth and the earth itself, and the leaves and
+seeds of the <i>Simul</i> tree from the tree itself.</p>
+
+<p>31. 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_624">[624]</span>
+32. Sometimes the subtile air is solidified in the form of the
+atmosphere, and therefrom is produced the great Brahmá, thence called
+the air-born lord of creatures.</p>
+
+<p>33. Sometimes the atmospheric air is condensed into a solid form, and
+that gives birth to a Brahmá; under the title of the atmospheric lord
+of creation.</p>
+
+<p>34. At another time it is light that is thickened to a luminous body,
+and thence is born another Brahmá, bearing the appellation of the
+luminous lord of all creatures.</p>
+
+<p>35. Again the water being condensed at another time, produced another
+Brahmá designated the aqueous lord of creation.</p>
+
+<p>36. Sometimes the particles of earth take a denser form, and produce a
+Brahmá known as the terrene Brahmá. (Such was Adam made out of the dust
+of the ground).</p>
+
+<p>37. It is by extraction of the essences of these four Brahmás, that
+a fifth is formed under the name of the quintuple Brahmá, who is the
+creation of the present world.</p>
+
+<p>38. It is sometimes by the condensation of water, air or heat, that a
+being is produced in the form of a male or female.</p>
+
+<p>39. It is sometimes from the speaking mouth of this being, and from
+his feet and back and the eyes, that different men are produced under
+the appellations of Bráhmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Súdras. (These
+Kshatriyas are born from the arms and eyes according to Manu).</p>
+
+<p>40. Sometimes the great Being causes a lotus to grow out of his navel;
+in which is born the great Brahmá known as the lotus-born.</p>
+
+<p>41. All these theories of creation (in the different sástras) are idle
+dreams, and as false as the dreams in our sleeping state; they are the
+reveries of fancy like the eddies of water.</p>
+
+<p>42. Tell me what do you think of these theories in your own judgment;
+do they not appear as the tales told to boys?</p>
+
+<p>43. Sometimes they imagine a being produced in the pure <span class="pagenum" id="Page_625">[625]</span>
+vacuity of the
+Divine mind, this they call the golden and mundane egg, which gave
+birth to the egg-born Brahmá.</p>
+
+<p>44. It is said also that the first and divine Male, casts his seed in
+the waters, which grows up to a lotus-flower which they call the great
+world.</p>
+
+<p>45. This lotus is the great womb of the birth of Brahmá, and at another
+time of the sun also; sometimes the gods Varuna and Vayu also are born
+of it, and are thence called oviparous.</p>
+
+<p>46. Thus Ráma, are the different accounts of the production of
+Brahmá—the creator, so various also is the description of this unsolid
+and unsubstantial creation.</p>
+
+<p>47. I have related to you already about the creation of one of
+these Brahmás, and mentioned about the production of others without
+specifying their several works.</p>
+
+<p>48. It is agreed by all, that the creation is but the development of
+divine mind; although I have related for your acquaintance, the various
+processes of its production.</p>
+
+<p>49. The sátwika and other productions, of which I told you before, have
+all come to existence, in the manner I have narrated to you.</p>
+
+<p>50. Now know the endless succession of all things in the world;
+creation is followed by destruction as pleasure by pain; and as
+ignorance is followed by knowledge, and bondage by liberation.</p>
+
+<p>51. Past creations and objects of affection being gone, others come to
+rise in future, as the lamps are lighted and extinguished by turns at
+home.</p>
+
+<p>52. The production and destruction of all bodies, are as those of
+Brahmá and the lamps, they assume their forms in their time, but become
+an undistinguishable mass after death.</p>
+
+<p>53. The four ages of the world, namely, the Satya, Tretá, Dwápara and
+Kali Yugas, revolve in endless rotation, like the wheel of the potter
+or of any other engine.</p>
+
+<p>54. The Manvantaras and Kalpa cycles succeed one another, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_626">[626]</span>
+as the day
+and night, the morning and evening, and the times of work follow those
+of rest by turns.</p>
+
+<p>55. All worlds and things are under the subjection of time. They are
+subject to repeated successions, and there is nothing without its
+rotation.</p>
+
+<p>56. They all proceed of their nature from the vacuum of Divine
+Intellect, as the sparks of fire scintillate from the red-hot iron.</p>
+
+<p>57. All things once manifest, are next concealed in the divine mind;
+just as the season fruits and flowers, disappear after their appearance
+in season.</p>
+
+<p>58. All productions are but fluctuations of the mind of the Supreme
+spirit; their appearances to our view, are as the sight of two moons to
+infirm eyes.</p>
+
+<p>59. It is the intellect alone, which exhibits these appearances to our
+view; they are always situated in the intellect, though they appear
+without it like the beams in the inner disk.</p>
+
+<p>60. Know Ráma, the world to be never in existence; it is a motionless
+show of that power, which resides only in the Supreme spirit.</p>
+
+<p>61. 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.</p>
+
+<p>62. What the world exists since the <i>mahá kalpa</i> or great will of God,
+and there is no more any other world to come into existence in future,
+is the conclusion of the learned holds good to the present time. (This
+belief is based on the holy text, “<i>so aikshata</i>—God willed—‘Let there
+be’, and there was all”).</p>
+
+<p>63. All this is Brahma to the intelligent, and there is no such thing
+as the world, which is a mere theory (upapádya) of the unintelligent.</p>
+
+<p>64. The insapient consider the world as eternal, from the continued
+uniformity of its course; but it is the effect of the everlasting
+error, which raises the false supposition of the world.</p>
+
+<p>65. It is their theory of repeated transmigrations, that they <span class="pagenum" id="Page_627">[627]</span>
+cannot
+say anything otherwise; but must conclude the world as such, in
+order to keep pace with their doctrine. (The doctrine of perpetual
+metempsychosis of the Mímámsaka materialists, naturally makes them
+suppose the eternity of the world).</p>
+
+<p>66. 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. (They flash as momentary lightenings in their appearance, to be
+extinguished into nothingness soon after).</p>
+
+<p>67. So others (the Sánkhyas) seeing the continuous course of the sun
+and moon, and the stability of mountains and seas all about, come to
+the conclusion of the indestructibility of the world from these false
+analogies.</p>
+
+<p>68. There can be nothing whatever, which does not reside in the wide
+expanse of the Divine mind; but as these are but the conceptions of the
+mind, they can never have any visible or separate form or existence.</p>
+
+<p>69. All these appear in repetition, and so repeated is the course of
+our births and deaths; as those of pain and pleasure succeeding one
+another, and our rest and actions, following each other for evermore.</p>
+
+<p>70. This same vacuum and these quarters of the sky, with all these seas
+and mountains, appear in the recurrent course of creation with their
+various hues, like those of the solar rays seen through the chink of a
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>71. The gods and demigods appear again and again, and all people come
+and depart by turns, bondage and liberation are ever recurrent, and
+Indras and Somas ever reappear to view.</p>
+
+<p>72. The god Náráyana and the demigods appear by turns, and the sky is
+always revolving with the regents of all its sides, the sun and moon,
+clouds and winds.</p>
+
+<p>73. The heaven and earth appear again like the lotus-flower full open
+to view, and having the mount Meru for its pericarp, and the Sahya peak
+for its filament.</p>
+
+<p>74. The sun resumes his course in the maze of the sky like a lion, and
+destroys the thick darkness with his rays, as the lion kills the huge
+elephant with his beaming nails.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_628">[628]</span>
+75. See again the moving moon shining with her bright beams, resembling
+the white filaments of flowers; and anointing the countenances of the
+etherial goddesses, with sweet ambrosial light, and borne by the air
+and breezes of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>76. Again the holy arbour of heaven sheds its heap of flowers, on the
+deserts of meritorious men, as rewards of their virtuous acts.</p>
+
+<p>77. Behold again the flight of time, riding as the eagle on its two
+wings of acts and actions, and passing with the noise of <i>pat-pat</i> over
+the vast maze of creation.</p>
+
+<p>78. See another Indra appearing, after the by-gone lords of gods have
+passed away; and taking his seat on the lotus-like throne of heaven
+like a contemptible bee. (The passing lords of gods and men are as
+fleeting flies on flowers).</p>
+
+<p>79. Again the wicked age of Kali appears to soil the holy <i>satya yuga</i>,
+as the black body of Náráyana fills the clear waters of the deep, or as
+a blast of wind sweeps the dust of the earth on its pellucid surface.</p>
+
+<p>80. Again doth time form the plate of the earth like a potter, and turn
+his wheel incessantly, to bring on the revolutions of his creations in
+successive <i>kalpas</i>.</p>
+
+<p>81. Again doth the veteran time, who is skilled in the work of
+renovation, wither away the freshness of creation, as the autumnal
+winds blast the foliage of a forest, in order to produce them anew.</p>
+
+<p>82. 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.</p>
+
+<p>83. Again the <i>pushkara</i> and <i>ávartaka</i> clouds, poured down their rain
+water, deluging the tops of the boundary mountains, and filling the
+face of the earth with foaming froth, swimming on the surface of one
+sheet of water.</p>
+
+<p>84. And after the waters had subsided and the winds had ceased to blow;
+the world appeared as a vast vacuum void of all beings.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_629">[629]</span>
+85. Again we see living beings filling the earth, and feeding for some
+years upon the moisture of its verdure, leaving their decayed bodies,
+and being mixed up with their souls in the universal spirit.</p>
+
+<p>86. Again the Divine Mind stretches out other creations at other times,
+and these are drawn like pictures of fairylands (airy castles) in the
+canvas of vacuum.</p>
+
+<p>87. Again the creation appears to view, and again it is submerged in
+the water of deluvion, both of which follow one another like the axles of
+a wheel.</p>
+
+<p>88. Now consider, O Ráma! if there is any stability of any thing
+in this revolutionary world, beside its being a maze of continuous
+delusion.</p>
+
+<p>89. The revolution of the world resembles the hallucination of Dásúra’s
+mind; it is a phantasia without any solidity in it.</p>
+
+<p>90. The world appearing so extensive and thickly peopled, is but a
+fancied unreality like the erroneous appearance of two moons in the
+sky. It is made of unreality though appearing as real, and is not worth
+reliance by our ignorance of its nature.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_630">[630]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLVIII.<br>
+<span class="small">STORY OF DÁSÚRA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Description of the vanity of worldly enjoyments,
+illustrated in the tale of Dásúra.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—All worldly men that are engaged in a variety of
+business, and are perverted in their understandings with a desire of
+opulence and enjoyments; can never learn the truth, until they get rid
+of their worldliness.</p>
+
+<p>2. He only who has cultivated his understanding, and subdued his
+sensual organs, can perceive the errors of the world, as one knows a
+<i>bel</i> fruit held in his hand (<i>i.e.</i> as one knows the places on earth
+in a small globe).</p>
+
+<p>3. Any rational being, who scans well the errors of the world, forsakes
+his delusion of egoism, as a snake casts off his slough.</p>
+
+<p>4. Being thus paralysed (unconscious) of his selfishness, he has no
+more to be born; as a fried grain can never germinate, though it is
+sown in the field, and lies for ever in it.</p>
+
+<p>5. How pitiable is it that ignorant men take so much pains for the
+preservation of their bodies, which are ever subject to diseases and
+dangers; and liable to perish to-day or to-morrow at the expense of
+their souls.</p>
+
+<p>6. Do not therefore, O Ráma! take so much care for the dull body like
+the ignorant; but regard only for the welfare of thy soul.</p>
+
+<p>7. Ráma said:—Tell me Sir, the story of Dásúra, which is illustrative
+of the visionary and air-drawn form of this rotatory universe, which is
+all hollow within.</p>
+
+<p>8. Vasishtha replied:—Hear me rehearse to you, O Ráma! the narrative of
+Dásúra, in illustration of the delusive form of the world, which is no
+more than the air-built utopia of our brains.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_631">[631]</span>
+
+<p>9. There is on the surface of this land, the great and opulent province
+of Magadha, which is full of flower trees of all kinds.</p>
+
+<p>10. There is a forest of wide extending kadamba groves, which was the
+pleasant resort of charming birds of various sorts and hues.</p>
+
+<p>11. Here the wide fields were full of corns and grains, and the skirts
+of the land were beset by groves and arbours; and the banks of rivulets
+were fraught with the lotuses and water lilies in their bloom.</p>
+
+<p>12. The groves and alcoves resounded with the melodious strains of
+rustic lasses, and the plains were filled with blades of blossoms,
+bedewed by the nightly frost, and appearing as arrows of the god of
+love, <i>Káma</i>.</p>
+
+<p>13. Here at the foot of a mountain, decked with <i>karnikara</i> flowers,
+and beset by rows of plantain plants and kadamba trees, was a secluded
+spot over-grown with moss and shrubs.</p>
+
+<p>14. It was sprinkled over with the reddish dust of crimson flowers
+borne by the winds, and was resonant to the warblings of water fowls,
+singing in unison with the melodious strains of aquatic cranes.</p>
+
+<p>15. On the sacred hill overhanging that spot, there rose a kadamba
+arbor, crowded by birds of various kinds; and there dwelt on it a holy
+sage of great austerity.</p>
+
+<p>16. He was known by the name of Dásúra, and was employed in his austere
+devotion; sitting on a branch of his kadamba tree with his exalted
+soul, and devoid of passions.</p>
+
+<p>17. Ráma said:—I want to know Sir, whence and how that hermit came to
+dwell in that forest, and why he took his seat on that high <i>kadamba
+tree</i>.</p>
+
+<p>18. Vasishtha replied:—He had for his father, the renowned sage
+<i>Saraloman</i>, residing in the same mountain, and resembling the great
+Brahmá in his abstract meditation.</p>
+
+<p>19. He was the only son of that sire, like Kacha the only progeny of
+Brihaspati, the preceptor of the gods, with whom he came to dwell in
+the forest from his boyhood.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_632">[632]</span>
+20. Saraloma having passed many years of his life in this manner, left
+his mortal frame for his heavenly abode, as a bird quits its nest to
+fly into the air.</p>
+
+<p>21. Dásúra being left alone in that lonely forest, wept bitterly and
+lamented over the loss of his father, with as loud wailings as the
+shrieks of a heron upon separation from its mate.</p>
+
+<p>22. Being bereft of both his parents, he was full of sorrow and grief
+in his mind; and then he began to fade away as the lotus blossom in
+winter.</p>
+
+<p>23. He was observed in this sad plight by the sylvan god of that wood,
+who taking compassion on the forlorn youth, and accosted him unseen in
+an audible voice and said:—</p>
+
+<p>24. O sagely son of the sage! why weepest thou as the ignorant, and why
+art thou so disconsolate, knowing the instability of worldly things?</p>
+
+<p>25. It is the state of this frail world, that everything is unstable
+here; and it is the course of nature that all things are born to live
+and perish afterwards into nothingness.</p>
+
+<p>26. Whatever is seen here from the great Brahmá down to the meanest
+object, is all doomed to perish beyond a doubt.</p>
+
+<p>27. Do not therefore wail at the demise of thy father, but know like
+the rising and falling sun, every thing is destined to its rise and
+fall. (Here sun—the lord of the day—<i>ahah-pati</i>, is spelt <i>aharpati</i> by
+a <i>várttika</i> of Kátyáyna).</p>
+
+<p>28. Hearing this oracular voice, the youth wiped his eyes red hot with
+weeping; and held his silence like the screaming peacock at the loud
+sound of the clouds. (The pea-cock is said to cry at the sight, but to
+be hushed at the sound of a rainy cloud).</p>
+
+<p>29. He rose up and performed the funeral ceremonies of his sire, with
+devoutness of his heart; and then set his mind to the success of his
+steady devotion.</p>
+
+<p>30. He was employed in the performance of his austerities according to
+the Bráhmanic law, and engaged himself in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_633">[633]</span>
+discharging his ceremonial
+rites by the Srauta ritual, for the accomplishment of his sundry vows.</p>
+
+<p>31. But not knowing the knowable (Brahma), his mind could not find its
+rest in his ceremonial acts, nor found its purity on the surface of the
+stainless earth. (The earth appears sullied to the tainted soul, but it
+is all unstained to the taintless soul, which views it full with the
+holy spirit of God).</p>
+
+<p>32. Not knowing the fulness of the world with divine spirit, and the
+holiness of the earth in every place, he thought the ground polluted
+(by the original sin), and did not find his repose any where.</p>
+
+<p>33. Therefore he made a vow of his own accord, to take his seat on the
+branch of a tree, which was untainted with the pollution of the earth.
+(Because the Lord said, “Cursed is the ground for thy sake”; but not so
+the trees growing upon it).</p>
+
+<p>34. Henceforth said he, “I will perform my austerities on these
+branching arbours, and repose myself like birds and sylvan spirits, on
+the branches and leaves of trees.”</p>
+
+<p>35. Thus sitting on high, he kindled a flaming fire beneath him, and
+was going to offer oblations of living flesh on it, by paring bits of
+his shoulder blade (mixed with blood).</p>
+
+<p>36. When the god of fire thought in himself that, as fire is the mouth
+whereby the gods receive their food, the offering of a Bráhman’s flesh
+to it, would wholly burn down their faces. (Fire is the mouth of gods,
+says Veda, because the gods of early Aryans were distinguished from the
+savages for their taking cooked food and meat, while the latter took
+them raw for want of their knowledge of kindling fire. Again all flesh
+was palatable to the gods, except that of their brotherhood—Bráhmans).</p>
+
+<p>37. Thinking so, the god of fire appeared before him in his full blaze,
+as the luminous sun appeared before the lord of speech—Brihaspati or
+Jupiter.</p>
+
+<p>38. He uttered gently and said, “Accept young Bráhman your desired boon
+from me, as the owner of a store, takes out his treasure from the chest
+in which it is deposited”.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_634">[634]</span>
+
+<p>39. Being thus accosted by the god, the Bráhman boy saluted him with
+a laudatory hymn; and after adoring him with suitable offerings of
+flowers, addressed him in the following manner.</p>
+
+<p>40. “Lord! I find no holy place upon earth, which is <a id="iniquity"></a>full of iniquity
+and sinful beings; and therefore pray of thee to make the tops of
+trees, the only places for my abode.”</p>
+
+<p>41. Being thus besought by the Bráhman boy, the god pronounced “Be it
+so” from his flaming mouth, and vanished from his sight.</p>
+
+<p>42. As the god disappeared from before him, like the day-light from the
+face of the lotus-flower; the son of the sage being fully satisfied
+with his desired boon, shone forth in his face like the orb of the full
+moon.</p>
+
+<p>43. Conscious of the success of his desire, his gladdened countenance
+brightened with his blooming smiles; just as the white lotus blushes
+with its smiling petals, no sooner it perceives the smiling moonbeams
+falling upon it.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_635">[635]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLIX.<br>
+<span class="small">DESCRIPTION OF DÁSÚRA’S KADAMBA FOREST.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Comparisons of the Kadamba tree, and its branches,
+leaves, fruits and flowers and birds.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Thus Dásúra remained in the forest reaching to the
+region of the clouds, and forming a stage for the halting of the tired
+horses of the meridian sun at midday. (<i>i.e.</i> As high as to reach the
+sphere of the sun at noon).</p>
+
+<p>2. Its far stretching boughs spread a canopy under the vault of heaven
+on all sides, and it looked to the skies all around with its full blown
+blossoming eyes.</p>
+
+<p>3. The gentle winds were shedding the fragrant dust from the tufts of
+its hanging hairs, which studded with swarms of fluttering bees, and
+its waving leaves like palms of its hands, were brushing over the face
+of its fairy welkin.</p>
+
+<p>4. The banks with their long shrubbery, and the crimson filaments
+of their milk-white blossoms, were smiling like the fair faces of
+beauties, with their teeth tinged with reddish hue of betel leaves.</p>
+
+<p>5. The creeping plants were dancing with delight, and shedding the dust
+from the pistils of their flowers, which were clustered in bunches and
+beaming with the lustre of the full bright moon.</p>
+
+<p>6. The earth with its thickening thickets, and the warbling chakoras as
+amongst them, appeared as the milky path of heaven studded with stars
+singing their heavenly strains.</p>
+
+<p>7. Groups of peacocks sitting on the tops of branching trees, appeared
+with variegated trains, like rainbows amidst the verdant foliage,
+seeming as bluish clouds in the azure sky.</p>
+
+<p>8. The white <i>chauri</i> deer with half of their bodies hidden under
+the coverts of the woods, and their fore parts appearing <span class="pagenum" id="Page_636">[636]</span>
+without the
+thickets, appeared as so many moons with their dark and bright sides in
+the sky.</p>
+
+<p>9. The warbling of <i>chataks</i>, joined with the trill of <i>cuckoos</i>,
+and the whistling of <i>chakoras</i>, filled the groves with a continuous
+harmony.</p>
+
+<p>10. Flocks of white herons sitting on their nestling boughs, seemed
+as bodies of <i>siddha</i> sylphs, sitting quietly beside their coverts in
+heaven.</p>
+
+<p>11. Waving creepers with their ruddy leaflets shaking with the breeze,
+and their blooming blossoms beset by bees, resembled the Apsaras of
+heaven, flapping their rosy palms and looking at the skies.</p>
+
+<p>12. The clusters of Kumuda or blue lotuses, moving on the sky-blue
+waters with their yellow filaments, and shedding their golden dust
+around, appeared as the rainbow and lightings, darting their radiance
+in the azure sky.</p>
+
+<p>13. The forest with thousands of uplifted branches, seemed as the god
+Visva-rúpa lifting his thousand arms on high, and dancing with the
+breeze, with the pendant orbs of the sun and moon, suspended as the
+earrings to both his ears.</p>
+
+<p>14. The groups of elephants lying underneath the branches, and the
+clusters of stars shining above them, gave the woodlands an appearance
+of the sky, with its dark clouds moving below the blazing stars above.</p>
+
+<p>15. The forest was as the store house of all sorts of fruits and
+flowers, as the god Brahmá was the reservoir of all sorts of
+productions.</p>
+
+<p>16. The ground glistened with the falling florets and the farina of
+the flowers, as the firmament glittered with the lustre of solar and
+stellar light.</p>
+
+<p>17. The flights of birds flying on the boughs of trees, and those
+fluttering about their nests, and the flocks of fowls feeding on the
+ground, made the forest appear as a city with its people above, below
+and all about it.</p>
+
+<p>18. Its bowers resembled the inner apartments of houses, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_637">[637]</span>
+with the
+blossoms waving as flags over them, and strewn over with the white
+farina of flowers, as they decorate the floors with flowers and
+powders, and hung flowers over them, as upon the windows of houses.</p>
+
+<p>19. There was the joint harmony of the humming bees and buzzing
+beetles; the twittering of <i>chakoras</i> and parrots, and cooing of
+<i>cokilas</i> in the deep coverts of the woods; and issuing out of their
+holes like the music of songstresses, coming out in unison from the
+hollows of windows.</p>
+
+<p>20. Birds of various kinds hovered about the coverts of the sylvan
+goddesses; as they were the only guests of their lonely retreats.</p>
+
+<p>21. The bees were continually humming over the farinaceous pistils of
+flowers, and sounding water-falls were incessantly exuding from the
+high hills in its neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>22. Here the gentle zephyrs were continually playing with the waving
+flowers; and the hoary clouds overtopped the lofty trees, as they do
+the tops of mountains.</p>
+
+<p>23. The sturdy woods resembling high hills, were rubbed by the scabby
+cheeks of elephants, and stood unmoved though they were incessantly
+dashed by their huge legs and feet. (See kumára Sambhava).</p>
+
+<p>24. Birds of variegated plumage that dwelt in the hollows of the trees,
+were as the various races of beings dwelling in the person of Vishnu.
+(Vishnu means the residence of beings like Viráta).</p>
+
+<p>25. With the movements of their painted leaves, resembling the fingers
+of their palms, the trees seemed to keep time with the dancing
+creepers, and point out the modes of their oscillation.</p>
+
+<p>26. They danced also with delight with their branching arms and
+clasping armlets of the creepers, to think on the subsistence, that
+every part of their body affords to all kinds of living beings. (The
+produce of trees supplies the supportance of all living creatures).</p>
+
+<p>27. And thinking how they are the support of thousands of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_638">[638]</span>
+creeping
+plants, which entwine round them as their consorts, they sing their
+joyous chime in the buzzing of the bees about them.</p>
+
+<p>28. The flowers dropped down by the kind <i>siddha</i> (sylphs) from the
+trees, were hailed by the bees and cuckoos with their joyous notes and
+tunes.</p>
+
+<p>29. The <i>kadamba</i> tree seemed by its blooming blossoms, to laugh to
+derision, the five woody arbors on the skirts which do not bear their
+flowers. (These are the banian, bata and ficus religiosus, the mango,
+the fig tree and frondos. (<i>i.e.</i> বটাশ্বত্থ, অম্র, উডুম্বর, and পলাস called বনস্পতি or lords
+of woods)).</p>
+
+<p>30. With its uplifted head reaching to the sky, and the flight of
+birds flying over it like the hairs on its head, it seemed to defy the
+<i>párijata</i> tree of Indra’s heaven.</p>
+
+<p>31. The body of bees thronging all about its person, gave it the
+appearance of the thousand eyed Indra, with whom it vied in the greater
+number of its eyes.</p>
+
+<p>32. It had a tuft of flowers on some part of its head, appearing as
+the hood of a snake decorated with gems, and seeming as the infernal
+serpent had mounted its top with his crowned head, in order to survey
+the wonders of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>33. Besmeared with the pollen of its flowers, it appeared as the god
+Siva anointed with his powdered ashes; while its shady bowers overhung
+with luscious fruits, refreshed the passing travellers with rest and
+repast.</p>
+
+<p>34. The <i>kadamba</i> arbour appeared as the garden of paradise, having
+alcoves under its thickening boughs, and grottos formed by the flowery
+creepers below it; while the birds of heaven hovered about it as its
+perpetual inhabitants.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_639">[639]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER L.<br>
+<span class="small">DÁSÚRA’S SURVEY OF THE HEAVENS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Dásúra surveys all the sky from his seat on the Kadamba
+tree.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Dásúra remained in this flowery arbour, as if he
+dwelt on a hill of flowers; and he felt in his mind the delight, which
+the flowery spring and its fruitage could infuse in the heart.</p>
+
+<p>2. He mounted and sat over the high and airy top of the tree, and
+looked on all sides like the god Vishnu surveying the worlds.</p>
+
+<p>3. There sitting on a branch which reached to the sky, he was employed
+in his devotion, devoid of fear and desire.</p>
+
+<p>4. From this his leafy and easy couch of repose, he cast his curious
+eyes to view the wonders of nature on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>5. He beheld a river at a distance glittering as a necklace of gold,
+and the summits of distant hills rising as nipples on the breast of
+the earth. The fair face of the sky appeared as the face of a fairy,
+covered under the blue veil of a cloud.</p>
+
+<p>6. The verdant leaves of trees were as the green garb of this fairy,
+and the clusters of flowers were as garlands on her head; the distant
+lakes appearing as water-pots, were decorated by their aquatic plants
+and flowers.</p>
+
+<p>7. The fragrance of the blooming lotuses, seemed as the sweet breathing
+of the fairy; and the gurgling of the waterfalls, sounded as the
+trinkets fastened to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>8. The trees touching the skies; were as the hairs on her body, the
+thick forests resembled her thighs, and the orbs of the sun and moon,
+were as earrings pendant on her ears.</p>
+
+<p>9. The fields of corn seemed as pots of her sandal paste, and the
+rising hills were as her breasts, covered by the cloudy mantle on their
+tops.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_640">[640]</span>
+10. The seas with their lucent waters were as her mirrors, to reflect
+the rays of her jewels of the starry frame. (The stars are explained in
+the gloss as drops of sweat on her person).</p>
+
+<p>11. The season fruits and flowers were as embroideries on her bodice,
+and the rays of the sun and moon were as powders over her body, or as
+the pasted sandal on her person.</p>
+
+<p>12. The clouds covering the landscape were as her garment, and the
+trees and plants on the borders, were as the fringes or the skirts of
+her raiment. In this manner he beheld all the ten sides of heaven as
+full with the form of a fairy queen.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_641">[641]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LI.<br>
+<span class="small">DÁSÚRA’S BEGETTING A SON.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument:—Mental sacrifices of Dásúra, and his production and
+Instruction of a son begotten by the sylvan goddess.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Thence forward Dásúra remained as an ascetic in his
+hermitage, in that forest, and was known as the Kadamba Dásúra, and a
+giant of austere devotion.</p>
+
+<p>2. There sitting on the leaves of the creepers growing on the branch
+of that tree, he looked up to heaven, and then placing himself in the
+posture of <i>padmásana</i>, he called back his mind to himself.</p>
+
+<p>3. Unacquainted with spiritual adoration, and unpracticed to the
+ceremonial ritual, he commenced to perform his mental sacrifice, with a
+desire of gaining its reward.</p>
+
+<p>4. Sitting on the leaves of the creepers in his aerial seat, he
+employed his inward spirit and mind, in discharging his sacrificial
+rites, of the sacred fire and horse sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>5. He continued there for the space of full ten years, in his acts of
+satisfying the gods with his mental sacrifices of the bull, horse and
+human immolations, and paying their honorariums in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>6. In process of time, his mind was purified and expanded, and he
+gained the knowledge of the beatification of his soul. (It is believed
+that ceremonial acts, lead to the knowledge productive of spiritual
+bliss).</p>
+
+<p>7. His ignorance being dispelled, his heart became purified of the dirt
+of worldly desires; and he came to behold a sylvan goddess, standing
+beside his leafy and mossy seat.</p>
+
+<p>8. She was a body of light and dressed in a robe of flowers; her form
+and face were beautiful to behold, and her large bright eyes turned
+wistfully towards him.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_642">[642]</span>
+
+<p>9. Her body breathed the fragrance of the blue lotus, and her figure
+charmed his inmost soul. He then spoke to the goddess, standing before
+him with her down cast looks.</p>
+
+<p>10. What art thou, O tender dame! That lookest like a creeper fraught
+with flowers, and defiest the god Cupid with thy beauteous form and
+eyes, resembling the petals of the lotus.</p>
+
+<p>11. Why standest thou as Flora, the befriending goddess of flowering
+creepers? Thus accosted, the dame with deer-like eyes and protuberant
+bosom replied to him.</p>
+
+<p>12. She said to the hermit with a sweet and charming voice in the
+following manner:—“Mayst thou prosper in obtaining the objects of thy
+wishes”:—</p>
+
+<p>13. “For any thing which is desirable and difficult of attainment in
+this world, is surely obtainable when sought after with proper exertion
+by the great”:—</p>
+
+<p>14. “I am, O Bráhman! a sylvan goddess of this forest, which is so full
+of creeping plants, and decorated by the beautiful <i>kadamba</i> trees.</p>
+
+<p>15. “Here I strayed to witness the festive mirth of the sylvan
+goddesses, which always takes place on this thirteenth day of the lunar
+month of chaitra in this forest.</p>
+
+<p>16. “I saw here my companions enjoying their festival of love, and felt
+myself sorry to think of my childlessness among them.</p>
+
+<p>17. “Finding thee accomplished in all qualifications, I have resorted
+hither with my suit of begetting a son by thee.</p>
+
+<p>18. “Please Sir, to procreate a son in me, or else I will put my person
+in the flames, to get rid of my sorrow of childlessness.”</p>
+
+<p><19.> Hearing the sylvan dame speaking in this manner, the hermit smiled
+at her, and spoke kindly to her with presenting her a flower with his
+own hand, and said:—</p>
+
+<p>20. Depart O damsel! and betake thyself to the worship of Siva for a
+whole month, and then thou shalt like a tender creeper, beget a boy as
+beautiful as a bud by this time of the year.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_643">[643]</span>
+21. But that son of thine, whom thou didst desire of me at the
+sacrifice of thy life, will betake himself to austerities like mine,
+and become a seer like myself (because he will be born of my blessing
+to thee).</p>
+
+<p>22. So saying the sage dismissed the suppliant dame now gladdened in
+her face, and promised to perform the necessary for her blessing’s sake.</p>
+
+<p>23. The lotus-eyed dame then retired from him, and went to her abode;
+and the hermit passed his months, seasons and years in his holy
+meditation.</p>
+
+<p>24. After a long time the lotus-eyed dame returned to the sage with her
+boy, now grown up to the twelfth year of his age.</p>
+
+<p>25. She made her obeisance and sat before him with her boy of the moon
+bright face; and then uttered her words, sweet as the murmur of the
+humble bee, to the stately Ámra tree.</p>
+
+<p>26. This sir, is the would be son (bhávya) of both of us, who has
+been trained up by me in all the branches of learning. (The Veda and
+its branches. The future <i>bhávya</i>—would be, should be the preter
+<i>bhávita</i>—was to be).</p>
+
+<p>27. He is only untaught in the best knowledge, which releases the soul
+from its return to this world of troubles. (By the best or <i>subha</i>
+knowledge, is meant the <i>para</i>—superior or spiritual learning).</p>
+
+<p>28. Do you now my lord! deign to instruct him in that knowledge, for
+who is there that should like to keep his own boy in ignorance (of his
+future and best welfare)?</p>
+
+<p>29. Being thus besought by her, he bespoke to the tender mother, to
+leave the child there and depart her own way.</p>
+
+<p>30. She being gone, the boy remained submissive to his father, and
+dwelt by his side as his pupil, like Aruna (Ouranus) waiting upon the
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>31. Inured in austerity, the boy continued to receive his best
+knowledge from the various lectures of his father, and passed a long
+time with him in that place, under the name of the sage’s son.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_644">[644]</span>
+<32.> The boy was taught in various narratives and tales, and with
+many examples and ocular instances; as also in historical accounts
+and evidences of the Veda and Vedánta (for his best knowledge of
+spirituality).</p>
+
+<p>33. The boy remained attendant on the lecture of his father, without
+feeling any anxiety; and formed his right notions of things by means
+of their antecedents. (The antecedent or preliminary causes of right
+judgements are, perceptions, inferences, comparisons and testimony or
+authoritative statements of sástras. (These are originally termed as
+pratyaksha, anumiti, Upamiti and Sabda or Sabda-bodha)).</p>
+
+<p>34. The magnanimous father thus instilled true knowledge into the mind
+of his boy, by means (of the quadruple process) of right reasoning and
+correct diction, rather than regarding the elegance of expression; as
+the cloud indicates the approaching rain to the peacock by its hoarse
+sounds. (The quadruple process as mentioned above.)
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_645">[645]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LII.<br>
+<span class="small">GRANDEUR OF THE AIR-BORN KING.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Description of Dominions of the Air-born King, and the
+Frailty of Worldly possessions.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—It was on one occasion that I passed by that
+(Dásúra’s) way in my invisible body, to bathe in the heavenly stream of
+<i>mandákiní</i> (milky way) in the etherial regions.</p>
+
+<p>2. After my departure from that region by the way of the Pleiades
+(saptarshi), I arrived to the spot where Dásúra dwelt on his high
+Kadamba tree.</p>
+
+<p>3. 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.</p>
+
+<p>4. Attend my intelligent son! said he, to a narrative that I will
+relate unto thee by way of a simile of worldly things, and it is
+pleasant to hear.</p>
+
+<p>5. There is a very powerful King renowned in all the three worlds for
+his great prosperity. His name is Khottha or Air-produced, and able to
+grasp the whole world. (Like the air whereof he was born. Kha, Khao and
+Khavi yet un, is empty air in Sanskrit, Hebrew and Arabic, and Khali in
+Persian and Urdu).</p>
+
+<p>6. All the lords of the earth bend their heads lowly under his rule,
+and bear the badge of their submission to him with as great an honour,
+as poor men are proud to carry about a bright gem on the head.</p>
+
+<p>7. 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.</p>
+
+<p>8. His unnumbered acts and exploits, are fraught with successive pain
+and pleasure; and they are as interminable as the continuous waves of
+the sea.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_646">[646]</span>
+
+<p>9. No one has been able to check the prowess of that mighty brave by
+force of fire or sword, as none hath ever been able to press the air or
+wind in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>10. Even the gods Indra, Upendra and Hara, have fallen short of
+following his steps in his ambitious pursuits, and the splendid
+inventions of his imagination.</p>
+
+<p>11. With his triple form of the sátwika, rájasika and támasika
+qualities, he encompasses the world, and is enabled to accomplish all
+sorts of actions. (These are the qualities of goodness, moderation and
+excess, or the three states of deficiency, mediocrity and excess of
+moral acts, according to the text of Aristotelean Ethics. But I would
+prefer to call them the positive, comparative and superlative virtues,
+or rather the minimum, mean and maximum states of virtues).</p>
+
+<p>12. He is born in the extensive vacuity (of the spirit of Brahma), with
+his triple body as that of a bird (viz; the flesh and bones and the
+feathers, and remains in vacuum as the air and the sound).</p>
+
+<p>13. He has built a city in that unlimited space of the Universe, having
+fourteen provinces (<i>chaturdasa Bhuvana</i>) (the planetary spheres), in
+its triple divisions (tribhuvana) of the earth and regions above and
+below it.</p>
+
+<p>14. It is beautified with forests and groves and pleasure-lawns and
+hills, and bounded by the seven lakes of pearly waters on all sides.
+(The city signifies the earth and the lakes the seven oceans in it).</p>
+
+<p>15. 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, as those of righteous and nefarious people. (The
+original words, as the courses <i>divá</i>, and <i>nisácharas</i> or the day and
+nightfarers).</p>
+
+<p>16. The king has peopled this great city of his with many selfmoving
+bodies (animals), which move in their spheres quite ignorant of
+themselves (<i>i.e.</i> of their origin, their course and their fates).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_647">[647]</span>
+17. Some of these are appointed in higher and some in lower spheres,
+and others move in their middle course; some destined to live a longer
+time, and others doomed to die in a day (as the ephemerids).</p>
+
+<p>18. These bodies are covered with black skins and hairs (as thatched
+huts), and furnished with nine holes (as their doors or windows); which
+are continually receiving in and carrying out the air to keep them
+alive.</p>
+
+<p>19. They are supplied with five lights of sensation and perceptions and
+supported by three posts of the two legs and the back bone, and a frame
+work of white bones for the beams and bamboo rafters. It is plastered
+over with flesh as its moistened clay (or mud wall), and defended by
+the two arms as latches on door way.</p>
+
+<p>20. The Great king has placed his sentinel of the Yaksha of egoism as
+a guard of this house; and this guard is as ferocious as a Bhairava
+in dark (ignorance), and as timorous as a <i>Bhairava</i> by the day (i.e.
+egoism brags in ignorance, but flies before the day-light of reason).</p>
+
+<p>21. The masters of these locomotive bodies, play many pranks in them,
+as a bird plays its frolics in its own nest.</p>
+
+<p>22. This triformed prince (the mind) is always fickle, and never steady
+in any; he resides in many bodies and plays his gambles there with his
+guard of egoism, and leaves one body for another at will, as a bird
+alights from one branch upon another.</p>
+
+<p>23. This fickle minded prince is ever changeful in his will; he resides
+in one city and builds another for his future habitation.</p>
+
+<p>24. 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.</p>
+
+<p>25. The Mind sometimes wishes to destroy its former frame and remove to
+another, and effects its purpose at will.</p>
+
+<p>26. It is produced again as the wave of the sea, after it had subsided
+to rest; and it pursues slowly and gradually a different course in its
+renewed course of life.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_648">[648]</span>
+27. 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.</p>
+
+<p>28. He is sometimes dejected by sorrow and at others elated by success,
+like the current of a river, now going down in the hot season, and
+again overflowing its banks in the rains.</p>
+
+<p>29. This king is led by his hobbies like the waters of the sea by the
+winds; it puffs and swells, falls and rises, runs fast and ceases to
+flow at once as in a calm.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_649">[649]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LIII.<br>
+<span class="small">DESCRIPTION OF THE MUNDANE CITY.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Interpretation of the Parable of the Air-born prince,
+and exposition of the Universe as the production of our Desires.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—The boy then asked his holy sire, who was sitting
+reclined on his sacred Kadamba tree, in the midst of the forest of the
+great Jambudvípa in the gloom of the night.</p>
+
+<p>2. 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.</p>
+
+<p>3. You said sir, that this prince constructs for himself a new abode,
+whilst residing in his present body; and removes to the same after he
+has left the old frame. This seems impossible to me, as the joining of
+one tense with another, the present with the future.</p>
+
+<p>4. Dásúra replied:—Hear me tell you my son, the meaning of this
+parable, which will explain to you the nature of this revolutionary
+world in its true light.</p>
+
+<p>5. I have told you at first that a non-entity sprang in the beginning
+from the entity of God, and this non-entity being stretched out
+afterwards (in the form of illusion), gave rise to this illusory world
+called the cosmos.</p>
+
+<p>6. The vacuous spirit of the Supreme Deity, gives rise to his formless
+will, which is thence called Air-born (or the mind). It is born of
+itself in its formless state from the formless Spirit, and dissolves
+itself into the same; as the wave rising from and falling in the bosom
+of the sea. (Thus in the beginning was the Will and not the Word, and
+the Will was in God, and the will was God; and it rises and sets in the
+Spirit of God).</p>
+
+<p>7. It is the will which produces every thing, and there is nothing
+produced but by the Will. The Will is self-same with its <span class="pagenum" id="Page_650">[650]</span>
+object, which
+constitutes and subsists in it; and it lives and dies also along with
+its object. (The will of the willful mind, dwells on some subject or
+other while it is living; but it perishes when it has no object to
+think upon, and melts into insensibility; or else it continues to
+transmigrate with its thoughts and wishes for ever).</p>
+
+<p>8. Know the gods Brahmá, Vishnu, Indra, Siva and the Rudras, as
+offspring of the willful Mind; as the branches are the offshoots of the
+main tree, and the summits are projections of the principal mountain.</p>
+
+<p>9. This Mind builds the city of the triple world, in the vacuum
+of Brahma (like an air-drawn castle); by reason of its being
+endowed with intelligence from Omniscience, in its form of Virinchi
+(vir-incho-ativus).</p>
+
+<p>10. This city is composed of fourteen worlds (planetary spheres)
+containing all their peoples; together with chains of their hills and
+forests and those of gardens and groves.</p>
+
+<p>11. It is furnished with the two lights of the sun and moon, (to shine
+as two fires by day and night); and adorned with many mountains for
+human sports. (Hence the mountainous Gods of old, are said to be the
+sportive <i>Devas</i>; <i>divi deváh divayanti</i>).</p>
+
+<p>12. Here the pearly rivers are flowing in their winding courses, and
+bearing their swelling waves and rippling billows, shining as chains of
+pearls under the sunbeams and moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>13. The seven oceans appear as so many lakes of limpid waters, and
+shining with their submarine fires, resembling the lotus-beds and mines
+of gems beneath the azure sky.</p>
+
+<p>14. It is a distinguished place of gods, men and savages, who make
+their commerce here, with commodities (of virtue and vice), leading
+either to heaven above or to the hell below.</p>
+
+<p>15. The self-willed King (the mind), has employed here many persons
+(as dramatis personae), to act their several parts before him for his
+pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>16. Some are placed high above this stage to act as gods and deities,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_651">[651]</span>
+and others are set in lower pits of this earth and infernal regions, to
+act their miserable parts—as men and Nágas. (The Nágas are snakes and
+snake worshippers, living in subterraneous cells like the serpentine
+race of Satan. The Bara and Chhotá Naghores, and the Naga hill people
+of Assam are remnants of this tribe).</p>
+
+<p>17. Their bodies are made of clay, and their frame work is of white
+bones; and their plastering is the flesh under the skin as a pneumatic
+machine.</p>
+
+<p>18. Some of these bodies have to act their parts for a long while,
+while others make their exits in a short time. They are covered with
+caps of black hairs, and others with those of white and grey on their
+heads.</p>
+
+<p>19. All these bodies are furnished with nine crevices, consisting of
+the two earholes, two sockets of the eyes, and two nostrils with the
+opening of the mouth, which are continually employed in inhaling and
+exhaling cold and hot air by their breathings. (These airs are the
+oxygen and nitrogen gases).</p>
+
+<p>20. The earholes, nostrils and the palate, serve as windows to the
+abode of the body; the hands and feet are the gate ways, and the five
+inner organs are as lights of these abodes.</p>
+
+<p>21. The mind then creates of its own will the delusion of egoism, which
+like a <i>yaksha</i> demon takes possession of the whole body, but flies
+before the light of knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>22. The mind accompanied by this delusive demon, takes great pleasure
+in diverting itself with unrealities (until it comes to perceive their
+vanity by the light of reason).</p>
+
+<p>23. Egoism resides in the body like a rat in the barn-house, and as a
+snake in the hollow ground. It falls down as a dew drop from the blade
+of a reed, upon advance of the sunlight of reason.</p>
+
+<p>24. It rises and falls like the flame of a lamp in the abode of the
+body, and is as boisterous with all its desires, as the sea with its
+ceaseless waves.</p>
+
+<p>25. The Mind constructs a new house for its future abode, by <span class="pagenum" id="Page_652">[652]</span>
+virtue
+of its interminable desires in its present habitation; and which are
+expected to be realized and enjoyed in its future state.</p>
+
+<p>26. But no sooner it ceases to foster its desires, than it ceases to
+exist, and loses itself in that state of Supreme bliss of which there
+can be no end. (Freedom from desire, is freedom from regeneration).</p>
+
+<p>27. But it is born and reborn by its repeated desires, as the child
+sees the ghost by its constant fear of it. (Every desire rises as a
+spectre to bind).</p>
+
+<p>28. It is egoism (or the belief of one’s real entity), 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. (Without the subjective
+there can be no knowledge of the objective).</p>
+
+<p>29. It is by one’s own attempt in this way, that he exposes himself
+to the miseries of the world; and then he wails at his fate like the
+foolish monkey, that brought on its own destruction, by pulling out
+the peg from the chink of the timber (which smashed its testes. See
+Hitopadesa).</p>
+
+<p>30. The mind remains in eager expectation of the enjoyment of its
+desired objects, as the stag stood with its lifted mouth, to have a
+drop of honey fall into it, from a honey-comb hanging on high.</p>
+
+<p>31. The wistful mind now pursues its desired objects, and now it
+forsakes them in disgust; now it longs for joy, and then grows sulky at
+its failure like a fretful child.</p>
+
+<p>32. Now try diligently, my boy, to extricate thy mind from all outward
+objects, and fix thy attention to the inward object of this meditation.</p>
+
+<p>33. The willful mind takes at its will its good, bad and moderate or
+sober forms; known under the names of <i>satva</i>, <i>rajas</i> and <i>tamas</i> (as
+defined before).</p>
+
+<p>34. The bad or vitiated form of the mind delights in worldliness, and
+by bemeaning itself with all its greedy appetites, reduces itself to
+the state of worms and insects in its future births.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_653">[653]</span>
+35. The good disposition of the mind is inclined towards virtuous
+deeds, and the acquisition of knowledge; and by these means advances
+both to its soleness and self enjoyment (<i>i.e.</i> to its full liberation
+and the state of the highest Brahma).</p>
+
+<p>36. In its form of moderation, it is observant of the rules and laws of
+society, and conducts itself in the world in the company of friends and
+members of the family.</p>
+
+<p>37. After relinquishment of all these three forms, and abdication of
+egoism and desires, it reaches to the state of the absolute Supreme
+Being.</p>
+
+<p>38. Therefore shun the sight of the visibles, and repress your fleeting
+mind by your sober intellect; and diminish your desires for all
+internal as well as external goods. (<i>i.e.</i> Both mental qualifications
+and outward possessions).</p>
+
+<p>39. For though you may practice your austerities for a thousand years,
+and crush your body by falling from a precipice upon stones;—</p>
+
+<p>40. Or although you burn your body alive on a flaming pyre, or plunge
+yourself into the submarine fire; or if you fall in a deep and dark pit
+or well, or rush upon the edge of a drawn and sharp sword;—</p>
+
+<p>41. Or if you have Brahmá himself or even Siva for your preceptor,
+or get the very kind and tender hearted ascetic for your religious
+guide;—(The <i>guru</i> of this nature probably alludes to Buddha, or Jina
+according to some, or to Dattátreya or Durvásá according to others.
+Gloss).</p>
+
+<p>42. Whether you are situated in heaven or on earth, or in the regions
+of pátála—the antipodes below; you have no way of liberation, save by
+keeping your desires under subjection.</p>
+
+<p>43. Exert your manliness therefore, in domineering over your
+irresistible and violent desires and passions, which will secure to you
+the pure and transcendent joy of peace and holiness.</p>
+
+<p>44. All things are linked together under the bandage of cupidity; and
+this band being broken asunder, makes the desired objects vanish into
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_654">[654]</span>
+45. 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.</p>
+
+<p>46. As the mind conceives a thing to be, so it perceives the same in
+actuality; therefore have no conception of anything, if you want to
+know the truth of it.</p>
+
+<p>47. Do you act as the world goes, without your liking or disliking of
+any thing; and thus the desires being at an end, the intellect will
+rise to the inscrutable beyond the knowledge of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>48. The mind which having sprung from the Supreme Soul in the form of
+goodness, is inclined afterwards towards the unrealities of the world;
+surely alienates itself from the Supreme, and exposes itself to all
+sorts of misery.</p>
+
+<p>49. We are born to the doom of death, but let us not die to be reborn
+to the miseries of life and death again. It is for the wise and learned
+to betake themselves to that state, which is free from these pains.</p>
+
+<p>50. First learn the truth, and attain to the true knowledge of your
+soul; and then abandon all your desire and dislike of the world. Being
+thus prepared with a dead-like insensibility of your internal feelings,
+you will be enabled to come to the knowledge of that transcendental
+state, which is full of perfect bliss and blessedness.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_655">[655]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LIV.<br>
+<span class="small">CORRECTIVE OF DESIRES.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The rise, progress and decline of Human Wishes.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">T</span>he</span> Son asked:—What is this desire, father? how is it produced and
+grown, and how is it destroyed at last?</p>
+
+<p>2. Dásúra replied:—The desire or will is situated in the mind or mental
+part of the one eternal, universal and spiritual substance of God.
+</p>
+
+<p>3. It gets the form of a monad from a formless unit, and then by its
+gradual expansion extends over the whole mind, and fills it as a flimsy
+cloud soon covers the sky.</p>
+
+<p>4. 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.</p>
+
+<p>5. The desire is produced by the desiring of something, and it
+increases of itself both in its size and quantity, for our trouble
+only, and to no good or happiness at all.</p>
+
+<p>6. It is the accretion of our desires which forms the world, as it is
+the accumulation of waters which makes the ocean; you have no trouble
+without your desire, and being free from it, you are freed from the
+miseries of the world (wherein one has to buffet as in the waves and
+waters of the sea).</p>
+
+<p>7. It is by mere chance, that we come to meet with the objects of our
+desire; as it is by an act of unavoidable chance also, that we are
+liable to lose them. They appear before us as secondary luminaries in
+the sky, and then fly away as the mirage vanishes from view.</p>
+
+<p>8. As a man who has the jaundice by eating a certain fruit, sees every
+thing as yellow as gold with his jaundiced eye; so the desire in the
+heart of man, pictures the unreal as a reality before him.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_656">[656]</span>
+
+<p>9. Know this truth that you are an unreality yourself, and must become
+an unreality afterwards. (Because there is but one self-existent
+entity, and all besides is but suppositions not entities).</p>
+
+<p>10. He who has learnt to disbelieve his own existence and that of all
+others, and knows the vanity of his joy and grief, is not troubled at
+the gain or loss of any thing (which is but vanity of vanities, the
+world is vanity).</p>
+
+<p>11. 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.</p>
+
+<p>12. Do not entertain your desires, nor think of anything which is
+nothing; it is by your living in this manner, that you may be wise and
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>13. Try to relinquish your desire, and you will evade all difficulties;
+and cease to think of anything, and your desire for it will disappear
+of itself.</p>
+
+<p>14. Even the crushing of a flower is attended with some effort, but it
+requires no effort to destroy your desire, which vanishes of itself for
+want of its thought.</p>
+
+<p>15. You have to expand the palm of your hand, in laying hold of a
+flower; but you have nothing to do in destroying your frail and false
+desire.</p>
+
+<p>16. He that wants to destroy his desire, can do it in a trice, by
+forgetting the thought of his desired object.</p>
+
+<p>17. The thoughts being repressed from other objects, and fixed in the
+Supreme Spirit, will enable one to do what is impossible for others to
+effect.</p>
+
+<p>18. Kill your desire by desiring nothing, and turn your mind from
+all things, by fixing it in the Supreme, which you can easily do of
+yourself.</p>
+
+<p>19. Our desires being quieted, all worldly cares come to a stand still,
+and all our troubles are put to a dead lock.</p>
+
+<p>20. Our wishes constitute our minds, hearts, lives, understandings and
+all our desiderative faculties; all which are but <span class="pagenum" id="Page_657">[657]</span>
+different names for
+the same thing without any difference in their signification.</p>
+
+<p>21. There is no other business of our lives than to desire and to be
+doing, and when done to be desiring again: and as this restless craving
+is rooted out of the mind, it sets it free from all anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>22. The world below is as empty, as the hollow sky above us; both of
+those are empty nothings, except that our minds make something or other
+of them, agreeably to its desire or fancy.</p>
+
+<p>23. All things are unsubstantial and unsubstantiated by the
+unsubstantial mind; thus the world being but a creation of our fancy a
+desideratum, there is nothing substantial for you to think about.</p>
+
+<p>24. Our reliance on unrealities proving to be unreal, leaves no room
+for our thinking about them; the suppression of their thoughts produces
+that perfection, <i>insouciance</i>, than which there is nothing more
+desirable on earth. Forget therefore all that is unreal.</p>
+
+<p>25. The nice discernment of things, will preserve you from the excess
+of joy and grief, and the knowledge of the Vanity of things, will keep
+out your affection for or reliance on any person or thing.</p>
+
+<p>26. The removal of reliance upon the world, removes our attachment to
+it; and consequently prevents our joy or sorrow at the gain or loss of
+any thing.</p>
+
+<p>27. The mind which becomes the living principle, stretches out his city
+of the world by an act of its imagination; and then turns it about
+as the present, past, and future worlds, (<i>i.e.</i> the mind produces,
+destroys and reproduces the world, as it builds and breaks and rebuilds
+its aerial castles).</p>
+
+<p>28. The mind being subject to the sensational, emotional and volitive
+feelings; loses the purity of its intellectual nature, and plays many
+parts by its sensuousness.</p>
+
+<p>29. The living soul also forgets the nature of the universal soul from
+which it is derived, and is transformed to a puny animalcule <span class="pagenum" id="Page_658">[658]</span>
+in the
+heart of man, where it plays its pranks like an ape in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>30. Its desires are as irrepressible, as the waves of the ocean, and
+they rise and fall by turns like the waves, in expectation of having
+every object of the senses.</p>
+
+<p>31. Our desire like fire, is kindled by every straw; and it burns and
+blows out in its invisible form within the mind.</p>
+
+<p>32. Our desires are as fickle as flashes of lightning, and proceed
+from the minds of the ignorant, as the lightning darts itself from
+the watery clouds (জলদ); they are equally fleeting and
+misguiding, and must be speedily avoided by the wise.</p>
+
+<p>33. 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.</p>
+
+<p>34. The knowledge of the unreality of the world, quickly cures the
+disease of desire; but the certainty of worldly knowledge, makes it as
+incurable as the impossibility, of removing the blackness of a coal.</p>
+
+<p>35. What fool will attempt to wash a coal white, or convert a
+materialist to a spiritualist? Or turn a raven or Negro to whiteness?</p>
+
+<p>36. But the mind of a man, is as a grain of rice covered under its
+husk, which is soon unhusked upon the threshing-floor.</p>
+
+<p>37. The worldliness of the wise, is as soon removed as the husk of
+rice, and the blackness of a cooking kettle.</p>
+
+<p>38. The blemishes of a man, are blotted out by his own endeavours;
+wherefore you must try to exert yourself to action at all times.</p>
+
+<p>39. He who has not been able to master over his vain desires, and hobby
+whims in this world, will find them vanish of themselves in course of
+time, as nothing false can last for ever.</p>
+
+<p>40. The light of reason removeth the false conception of the world, as
+the light of the lamp dispels the darkness from the room at sight, and
+night vision removes the secondary moon (of optical deception).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_659">[659]</span>
+41. The world is not yours, nor are you of this world; there is no
+body nor anything here akin to you, nor are you so to any; never think
+otherwise, nor take the false for true.</p>
+
+<p>42. Never foster the false idea in your mind, that you are master
+of large possessions and pleasant things; for know yourself and all
+pleasant things, are for the delight of the Supreme Maker and Master of
+all.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_660">[66o]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LV.<br>
+<span class="small">MEETING OF VASISHTHA AND DÁSÚRA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Dásúra’s reception of Vasishtha, their conversation and
+Parting.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—Hear me, Ráma, that art the delight of Raghu’s race,
+and shinest as the moon in the firmament of Raghu’s family; that after
+I heard the conversation that was going on between Dásúra and his son:—</p>
+
+<p>2. 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.</p>
+
+<p>3. I beheld Dásúra there, sitting as a giant by subduing the organs
+of his body, and shining with the lustre of his devotion, as the fire
+blazing with its flame.</p>
+
+<p>4. The lustre issuing from his body, had strewn his seat with purple
+gold, and lighted that spot, as the sun-beams emblazon the world.</p>
+
+<p>5. Seeing me presenting myself before him, Dásúra spread a leafy seat
+for me to sit down, and then honoured me according to the rules of
+ceremonial law.</p>
+
+<p>6. Then I joined with the luminous Dásúra in continuation of his
+discourse, which was meant for the edification of his son, and
+salvation of mankind from the miseries of life.</p>
+
+<p>7. I then with permission of Dásúra, looked into the hollow of the
+tree, and the herds of stags pasturing fearlessly about it, and grazing
+and gathering about it.</p>
+
+<p>8. It was as delightful as a bower overhung with creepers, where
+the smiling flowers were shedding their light, and breathing their
+fragrance to the winds.</p>
+
+<p>9. The choury deer flapped their long hairy and moon-bright <span class="pagenum" id="Page_661">[661]</span>
+tails,
+against the herbaceous arbour, as the white flimsy clouds sweep over
+the sky.</p>
+
+<p>10. The tree was adorned with fringes of pearly dewdrops, and arrayed
+all over with the flowery garb of his blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>11. Smeared with the dust of its flowers, it appeared to be anointed
+with sandal paste; while its blowsy bark mantled it in roseate red.</p>
+
+<p>12. Decorated with flowers, the tree seemed to stand in its bridal
+attire; and resembled the bridegroom in mutual embrace with the twining
+brides.</p>
+
+<p>13. 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 (or banners) in festivity.</p>
+
+<p>14. Shaken by the stages in the act of rubbing their bodies, the trees
+darted their flowers in abundance upon the ground; and the border-lands
+were as shattered, as if they were broken by the horns of fighting
+bulls.</p>
+
+<p>15. Peacocks daubed with dust of flowers, and flying on the top of the
+adjacent hill, appeared as evening clouds gliding over it.</p>
+
+<p>16. 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.</p>
+
+<p>17. The closing buds resembling her eyelids, were lulled to sleep by
+the forest breeze, breathing incessantly with the fragrance of the
+flowers. The clusters of flowers forming her breasts, were hid under
+the bodice of leaves.</p>
+
+<p>18. She sat at the window of her alcove, formed by the twining plants
+and creepers, and was dressed in the purple garb of the flying farina
+of flowers.</p>
+
+<p>19. She swang in her swinging cradle of bluish blossoms, and was
+adorned with various floral ornaments from her head to foot.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_662">[662]</span>
+20. She moved about the flowers in the garb of the sylvan goddess and
+looking with her cerulean eyes of fluttering blue-bees on all sides;
+and sang to them in the sweet notes of the black kokila in the arbours.</p>
+
+<p>21. 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.</p>
+
+<p>22. The couples of bees dwelling in the cells of flowers, and giddy
+with sipping the honey of the flower cups; were humming their love
+tunes to one another.</p>
+
+<p>23. 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.</p>
+
+<p>24. The sages then beheld with their down cast looks on moon-beams,
+which were spread like a sheet of fine linen on the blades of grass
+upon the ground below.</p>
+
+<p>25. They beheld the beautiful antelopes, which slept in their leafy
+beds on the ground, below the stretching boughs of shady trees, as if
+they were the progeny of their native forest.</p>
+
+<p>26. They saw the fearless birds chirping upon the branches, and others
+sleeping confident in their nests; and they beheld the ground covered
+by living creatures, feasting on the ripe fruits fallen below.</p>
+
+<p>27. They saw the long lines of black-bees, lying mute on the ground
+like strings of beads, and blackening it with their sable bodies.</p>
+
+<p>28. 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
+ambergrees, and the Kadamba fruits covered the face of the land.</p>
+
+<p>29. What need is there of saying more, than that there was no part of
+the tree, which was not useful to living beings.</p>
+
+<p>30. Here the deer were sleeping on the fallen leaves and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_663">[663]</span>
+there were
+others resting on the barren ground; the birds sat on the banks and
+beaches of the rivulets all about that lofty tree.</p>
+
+<p>31. As they were viewing in this manner the beauties of the forest, the
+night passed away as soon as a night of festivity.</p>
+
+<p>32. The son of the hermit kept conversing with me on many subjects, and
+derived many useful instructions from my teaching.</p>
+
+<p>33. As we had been conversing with one another on different subjects,
+the night passed away as soon as that of a conjugal pair.</p>
+
+<p>34. 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.</p>
+
+<p>35. I then took my departure, and was followed by the hermit and his
+son to some distance from their Kadamba tree, where I left them for my
+aerial course to the heavenly stream.</p>
+
+<p>36. There having performed my holy ablution, I came down under the
+vault of heaven, and then entered the celestial region of the sages,
+which is situated in the midway sky.</p>
+
+<p>37. Now I have related to you, Ráma, this story of Dásúra, 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).</p>
+
+<p>38. It was for this reason, that I have given you the narrations of
+Dásúra, by way of explanation of the phenomenal world, as a shadow of
+the noumenal.</p>
+
+<p>39. Now therefore know the Spirit like Dásúra, and imitate his example
+in the magnanimity of your soul. Forsake the unreal, and pursue the
+reality for your permanent delight.</p>
+
+<p>40. 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.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_664">[664]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LVI.<br>
+<span class="small">ON THE SOUL AND ITS INERTNESS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Consideration of the activity and inactivity of the
+Soul, and the Vanity of the Visibles.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Knowing the world as a nihility, you must cease to
+take any delight in it; for what reasonable being is there in it that
+would delight in its unreality.</p>
+
+<p>2. 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.</p>
+
+<p>3. Or if you know it to be a temporary existence, why then should you
+take any interest in what is so frail and unstable, rather than care
+for your immortal soul?</p>
+
+<p>4. 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. (And which is refracted into all
+individual minds as in prismatic glasses).</p>
+
+<p>5. The world is neither an agent itself, nor is it the act of any agent
+at all; it is simply the reflexion of the noumenal, without any agency
+of its own.</p>
+
+<p>6. Whether the world is with or without an agent, or has a maker or
+not, yet you can not tell it as a real substance, except that it
+appears so to your mind.</p>
+
+<p>7. The soul is devoid of all organs of action, and with all its
+activity, it remains motionless and without action, as anything that is
+inactive and immovable.</p>
+
+<p>8. The world is the production of a fortuitous chance (Kákatáliya
+Sanyoga), and none but boys place any reliance in it. (The world here
+means our existence in it, which is an act of chance).</p>
+
+<p>9. The world is neither stable nor fragile, but it is mutable <span class="pagenum" id="Page_665">[665]</span>
+from one
+state to another, as it is known by its repeated reproductions and
+visibility to us.</p>
+
+<p>10. It is neither everlasting, nor is it a momenting thing; its
+constant mutability contradicts its firmness; and its nihility, (as
+stated before) is opposed to its temporarity. (The dictum of the Veda
+of the eternity of <i>asat</i>—nullity, nullifies its temporariness).</p>
+
+<p>11. If the soul is the active power without its organs of action, it
+must be unfailing and entire; because the continuance of its inorganic
+operations can not weaken its powers. (<i>i.e.</i> The performance of bodily
+actions debilitates the body; but the immaterial mind is not impaired
+by its activity).</p>
+
+<p>12. Therefore there is an irresistible destiny, which is absolutely
+overruling; it is existence and inexistence itself, it is sedate and
+continuous, and all visible perturbations are but false appearances.</p>
+
+<p>13. The limit of a hundred years of human life, is but a very small
+portion of unlimited duration; it is therefore very astonishing that
+any one should be concerned with this small portion of his existence,
+here (in utter disregard of his eternal life).</p>
+
+<p>14. Granting the durability of worldly affairs, yet they are not
+deserving of your reliance; for what faith can you rely on the union of
+two such opposites as the mind and matter? (The one being sensible and
+the other insensible, the one being infinite and imperishable, and the
+other a finite and frail substance).</p>
+
+<p>15. But if the state of worldly things be unsteady and uncertain, it
+can not be deserving of your confidence. Say, can you be sorry at
+the dissolving of the foam and froth of the milk or water, then why
+should you lament at the loss of the perishable? (So said the Grecian
+philosopher: yesterday I saw a fragile breaking, and today I saw a
+mortal die).</p>
+
+<p>16. Know, O strong armed Ráma! that reliance on the world, is the
+fetter of the soul to it; it does not behove any body to join the
+perishable and imperishable together like the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_666">[666]</span>
+water and its froth. (The
+one being lasting and the other a transient thing).</p>
+
+<p>17. Although the soul is the agent (or source) of all actions, yet it
+remains as no agent at all; it is unconnected with its actions, as the
+lamp with its light. (The mind being the doer of actions and not the
+soul).</p>
+
+<p>18. Doing all it does nothing, but like the sun directs the business of
+the day without doing anything by itself. It moves like the sun without
+moving from its place, but retains its station in its own orbit. (The
+sun is the causal agent of diurnal duties, but men are the active
+agents of their actions).</p>
+
+<p>19. There is some other hidden cause guiding the course of the world,
+beside the soul and body; as there is an unknown cause of the course of
+the Aruna river, notwithstanding its being blocked by stones.</p>
+
+<p>20. When you have known this for certain, O Ráma by your own
+proficience, and have well ascertained this truth by its clearest
+evidence:—</p>
+
+<p>21. You ought no more to place any reliance on material things, which
+are as false as an ambient flame, or a vision in dream, or as any
+falsehood whatever.</p>
+
+<p>22. As a stranger is not to be taken into your friendship, on his first
+appearance; so you must never trust or rely on anything of this world
+through your ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>23. 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.</p>
+
+<p>24. Do you look upon this ideal world (which is born of your brain), as
+you view a creature of your conception, a vision in your dream, or an
+apparition or the appearance of two moons in the sky, by your visual
+deception.</p>
+
+<p>25. Shun your reliance on the fair creation of your imagination (the
+objects of sight &c.), and without minding what you are, conduct
+yourself cheerfully in your sphere.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_667">[667]</span>
+26. Shun your desires and the thought of your agency, even when you are
+doing any thing at all. (The soul residing in the body, is yet aloof
+from all its acts, though its presence in the body, justifies its being
+accessary to if not the accomplice of them. (Gloss)).</p>
+
+<p>27. 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. (An involuntary action is no less the act of the
+actor than a voluntary one).</p>
+
+<p>28. Look at the <i>kurchi</i> tree blooming and blossoming under the
+influence of heavy clouds, and not of its own accord. So it is destined
+for the three worlds to appear to sight, under the influence of the
+Supreme Being (though he may not will or ordain it so). (So also the
+presence of matter, effects the work by material laws, without the
+special behest or employment of the matter to the performance of same.
+Gloss).</p>
+
+<p>29. As the appearance of the sun in the sky, employs all beings
+to their diurnal duties without his will or injunction, so the
+omnipresence of God causes the actions of all beings of their own
+spontaneity, and without his will, act or fiat. (This is called the
+overruling and universal destiny).</p>
+
+<p>30. And as a bright gem reflects its light, without any will on its
+part; so the mere existence of the Deity, causes the existence of all
+worlds (as they are in attendance upon His presence).</p>
+
+<p>31. Thus are causality and its want also both situated in your soul,
+which is thence called the cause of your actions, because of its
+presence in the body; and as no cause likewise owing to its want of
+will (which is the property of the mind; and not of the soul).</p>
+
+<p>32. The entity of the soul being beyond the perception of sense, it is
+neither the agent nor recipient of any action; but being confined in
+the sensible body, it is thought to be both an active and passive agent.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_668">[668]</span>
+33. 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.</p>
+
+<p>34. But by firmly believing yourself to be situated in the body, and
+your doing of actions without thinking yourself as their author, will
+save you from the culpability of all your acts.</p>
+
+<p>35. The man that does not employ his mind to his actions, becomes
+indifferent (virága) to the world; and he is freed from it, who is
+certain of his being no agent of his actions.</p>
+
+<p>36. Whether a man is fond of his enjoyments, or forsakes them in
+disgust; it is all the same to him, if he but think himself to be no
+actor of them. (Set not your mind to act, if you want to be set free in
+fact).</p>
+
+<p>37. But if you wish to remain, Ráma, with your high ambition of doing
+every thing in the world, that is also good, and you may try to do the
+same.</p>
+
+<p>38. But if I do not fall to so great an error, as to have this high
+aspiration of yours, I am never liable to the passions of anger and
+enmity, and other violent emotions in this world.</p>
+
+<p>39. The bodies that we bear, are nourished by some and immolated by
+others: such being the state of our own being; we have no cause for our
+joy or sorrow in it.</p>
+
+<p>40. Knowing ourselves to be the authors of our own happiness and
+misery, and as causes of the rise and dissolution of the world from our
+view, we have no reason to be joyous or sorry in it.</p>
+
+<p>41. Then there is an end of the joys and sorrows of our own making,
+when we have that sweet composure, which is a balm to all the diseases
+in our soul.</p>
+
+<p>42. Fellow feeling to all living beings, makes the best state of
+the mind; and the soul that is so disposed, is not subject to
+transmigration.</p>
+
+<p>43. Or make this the best lesson, Ráma! for your conduct in life, that
+with all your activities, you continue to think <span class="pagenum" id="Page_669">[669]</span>
+yourself as no actor at
+all. (Because the belief of one’s agency, leads him to the fruition of
+this act in repeated births).</p>
+
+<p>44. Remain quiet and steady as thou art, by resigning all things to
+themselves; and never think that it is thou that dost or undoest
+anything (which is destined to be so or otherwise by the Divine will).</p>
+
+<p>45. But if you look to the different modes of your doing one thing
+or the other, you can have no rest or quiet, but must run in the way
+leading to the trap of perpetual toil and misery.</p>
+
+<p>46. The belief of a man’s corporeality, that he is a destructible
+body, and no spiritual being, is to him but a bed of thorns; it must
+therefore be avoided by all means, in order to evade the danger of his
+imminent destruction.</p>
+
+<p>47. Corporeality is to be shunned as a hell-hound feeding on canine
+meat; and after disappearance of the cloud of corporeity from view, the
+light of spirituality will appear before the sight.</p>
+
+<p>48. The pure light of spirituality; presents the appearance of the
+bright moon-beams of holiness, after dispersion of clouds of corporeal
+desires; and it is by the help of this light, that the spiritualist is
+enabled to steer across the ocean of this world.</p>
+
+<p>49. Do you, O Ráma, remain in that best and blessed state, wherein the
+wisest, best and holiest of men have found their rest; and it is the
+constant habit of thinking yourself as nothing nor doing anything; or
+that you are all things and doing every thing; as the Supreme soul
+knows itself to be; and that you are some person, having a personality
+of your own, and yet no body (<i>i.e.</i> not the body in which thou dost
+abide); but a spiritual and transcendent being.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_670">[670]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LVII.<br>
+<span class="small">NATURE OF VOLLEITY AND NOLLEITY.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The bondage of volition causing our perdition, and the
+freedom of Nolition as leading to salvation.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> said:—Thy words, O Bráhman! are true and well spoken also. I
+find the soul to be the inactive agent of actions, and the impassive
+recipient of their effects, as also the spiritual cause of the
+corporeal.</p>
+
+<p>2. I find the soul to be the sole lord of all, and ubiquitous in
+its course; it is of the nature of intelligence and of the form of
+transparency. It resides in all bodies, as the five elements compose
+the terraqueous bodies.</p>
+
+<p>3. I now come to understand the nature of Brahma, and I am as pacified
+by thy speech, as the heated mountain is cooled by rain waters.</p>
+
+<p>4. From its secludedness and nolleity, it neither does nor receives
+any thing; but its universal pervasion, makes it both the actor and
+sufferer.</p>
+
+<p>5. 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.</p>
+
+<p>6. Tell me Sir, whence proceed these dualities, as the reality of one
+and the unreality of the other, and that this is I and this not myself.
+And if the soul is one and indivisible, how is this one thing and that
+another.</p>
+
+<p>7. There being but one self-existent and self-evident soul from the
+beginning, how comes it to be subjected to these oppositions, as the
+bright disk of sun comes to be obscured under the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>8. Vasishtha answered:—Ráma! 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.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_671">[671]</span>
+
+<p>9. You will not be able, Ráma! to comprehend my answers to these
+queries of yours, until you come to be acquainted with my solution of
+the question of liberation.</p>
+
+<p>10. As it is the adult youth only, who can appreciate the beauty of a
+love-song; so it is the holy man only, who can grasp the sense of my
+sayings on these abstruse subjects.</p>
+
+<p>11. Sayings of such great importance, are as fruitless with ignorant
+people, as a work on erotic subjects is useless to children.</p>
+
+<p>12. There is a time for the seasonableness of every subject to men,
+as it is the season of autumn which produces the harvest and not the
+vernal spring.</p>
+
+<p>13. 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.</p>
+
+<p>14. I have ere while mentioned something, which may serve to answer
+your question, although you have not fully comprehended its meaning, to
+remove your present doubts.</p>
+
+<p>15. 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.</p>
+
+<p>16. I will fully expound to you the subject matter of your inquiry, at
+the conclusion of my argument; when you shall have arrived to a better
+knowledge of these things.</p>
+
+<p>17. The spiritualist knows the spirit in his own spirit; and it is the
+good grace of the Supreme spirit, to manifest itself to the spirit of
+the spiritualist.</p>
+
+<p>18. I have already related to you Ráma! the argument concerning the
+agency and inertness of the soul, yet it is your ignorance of this
+doctrine, that makes you foster your doubts.</p>
+
+<p>19. 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 (as you
+are then perfectly free yourself).</p>
+
+<p>20. Forsake first your foul (támasi) desires, and then be <span class="pagenum" id="Page_672">[672]</span>
+freed from
+your desire of worldly possessions; foster your better wishes next, and
+at last incline to your pure and holy leanings.</p>
+
+<p>21. After having conducted yourself with your pure desires, get rid
+of these even at the end; and then being freed from all desires, be
+inclined to and united with your intellect (<i>i.e.</i> knowing all and
+longing for nothing).</p>
+
+<p>22. Then renounce your intellectual propensity, together with your
+mental and sensible proclivities; and lastly having reached to the
+state of staid tranquility, get rid of your mind also in order to set
+yourself free from all other desires.</p>
+
+<p>23. Be an intellectual being, and continue to breathe your vital breath
+(as long as you live); but keep your imagination under controul, and
+take into no account the course of time, and the revolution of days and
+nights.</p>
+
+<p>24. 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.</p>
+
+<p>25. Drive away all feelings and thoughts from your heart and mind; for
+he that is free from anxieties, is superior to all, (who labour under
+anxious thoughts and cares).</p>
+
+<p>26. Let a man practice his hybernation 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.</p>
+
+<p>27. The man devoid of desires, has no need of his observance or
+avoidance of pious acts; the freedom of his mind from its dependence on
+anything, is sufficient for his liberation.</p>
+
+<p>28. A man may have well studied the sástras, and discussed about them
+in mutual conversation; yet he is far from his perfection, without his
+perfect inappetency and taciturnity.</p>
+
+<p>29. There are men who have examined every thing and roved in all parts
+of the world; yet there are few among them that have known the truth.</p>
+
+<p>30. Of all things that are observed in the world, there is nothing
+among them which may be truly desirable, and is to be sought after by
+the wise.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_673">[673]</span>
+31. All this ado of the world, and all the pursuits of men, tend only
+towards the supportance of the animal body; and there is nothing in it,
+leading to the edification of the rational soul.</p>
+
+<p>32. Search all over this earth, in heaven above and in the infernal
+regions below; and you will find but few persons, who have known what
+is worth knowing. (The true nature of the soul and that of God, is
+unknown to all finite beings every where).</p>
+
+<p>33. It is hard to have a wise man, whose mind is devoid of its firm
+reliance on the vanities of the world; and freed from its desire or
+disgust of something or others, as agreeable or disagreeable to its
+state.</p>
+
+<p>34. A man may be lord of the world, or he may pierce through the clouds
+and pry in heaven (by his Yoga); yet he can not enjoy the solace of his
+soul without his knowledge of it.</p>
+
+<p>35. I venerate those highminded men, who have bravely subdued their
+senses; it is from them that we can have the remedy to remove the curse
+of our repeated births. (It is by divine knowledge alone that we can
+avoid the doom of transmigration).</p>
+
+<p>36. I see every place filled by the five elements, and a sixth is not
+to be seen any where in the world. Such being the case every where,
+what else can I expect to find in earth or heaven or in the regions
+below.</p>
+
+<p>37. The wise man relying on his own reason and judgment, outsteps the
+abyss of this world, as easily as he leaps over a ditch; but he who
+has cast aside his reason, finds it as wide as the broad ocean. (The
+original word for the ditch is <i>gospada</i>—the cove of a cows hoof—a
+<i>cul-de-sac</i>).</p>
+
+<p>38. The man of enlightened understanding, looks upon this globe of
+the earth, as the bulb of a Kadamba flower, round as an apple or a
+ball—<i>teres atque rotundus</i>; he neither gives nor receives nor wants of
+aught in this world.</p>
+
+<p>39. Yet fie for the foolish that fight for this mite of the earth, and
+wage a warfare for destruction of millions of their fellow creatures.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_674">[674]</span>
+40. What, if any one is to live and enjoy the blessings of this world
+for a whole Kalpa when, he can not escape the sorrow, consequent on the
+loss of all his friends during that period.</p>
+
+<p>41. He who has known the self, has no craving for heavenly bliss within
+himself; because he knows his gain of all the three worlds, can never
+conduce to the strengthening of his soul.</p>
+
+<p>42. But the avaricious are not content with all they have, and like the
+body of this earth, is not full with all its hills and mountains and
+surrounding seas. (The earth is never full with all its fullness).</p>
+
+<p>43. There is nothing in this earth or in the upper and lower worlds,
+which is of any use to the sage acquainted with spiritual knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>44. The mind of the self-knowing sage, is one vast expanse like the
+spacious firmament, it is tranquil and sedate and unconscious of itself.</p>
+
+<p>45. It views the body as a net work of veins and arteries, pale and
+white as frost, and all cellular within.</p>
+
+<p>46. It sees the mountains floating as froth, on the surface of the
+pellucid ocean of Brahma; it looks upon the intellect blazing as
+brightly as the sun, over the mirage of existence.</p>
+
+<p>47. It finds the nature of the soul, to be as extensive as the vast
+ocean, containing the creations as its billows; and it considers the
+all- pervasive soul as a big cloud, raining down in showers of sástras
+or knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>48. The fire, moon and the sun, appear as the fuel in a furnace,
+requiring to be lighted by the blaze of the intellect, as every opaque
+atom in nature.</p>
+
+<p>49. All embodied souls of men, gods and demigods, rove in the
+wilderness of the world, for feeding upon their fodder of food, as the
+deer graze in their pasturage.</p>
+
+<p>50. The world is a prison house, where every one is a prisoner with
+his toilsome body. The bones are the latches of this dungeon, the head
+is its roof, and the skin its leather; and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_675">[675]</span>
+the blood and flesh of the
+body, are as the drink and food of the imprisoned.</p>
+
+<p>51. Men were as dolls covered with skin for the amusement of boys, and
+they are continually roving in quest of sustenance, like the cattle
+running towards their pasture grounds.</p>
+
+<p>52. But the high minded man is not of this kind; he is not moved by
+worldly temptations, as the mountain is not to be shaken by the gentle
+breeze.</p>
+
+<p>53. The truly great and wise man, rests in that highest state of
+eminence; where the stations of the sun and moon, are seen as the
+nether regions.</p>
+
+<p>54. It is by the light of the Supreme Spirit, that all the worlds are
+lighted, and the minds of all are enlighted. But the ignorant are
+immerged in the ocean of ignorance, and nourish their bodies only in
+disregard of their souls.</p>
+
+<p>55. No worldly good can allure the heart of the wise, who have tested
+the vanity of temporal things; and no earthly evil can obscure their
+souls, which are as bright as the clear sky which no cloud can darken.</p>
+
+<p>56. No worldly pleasure can gladden the soul of the wise man, as the
+dance of monkeys can give no joy to the heart of Hara, that delights in
+the dancing of Gaurí.</p>
+
+<p>57. No earthly delight can have its seat in the heart of the wise, as
+the sun-light is never reflected in a gem hidden under a bushel.</p>
+
+<p>58. The material world appears as a solid rock to the stolid ignorant;
+but it seems as the evanescent wave to the wise. The ignorant take a
+great pleasure in the transitory enjoyments of the world; but the wise
+take them to no account, as the swan disdains to look upon the moss of
+the lake.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_676">[676]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LVIII.<br>
+<span class="small">THE SONG OF KACHA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The Pantheistic views of the soul as the one in all, is
+shown in the song of Kacha.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—On this subject I will tell you, Ráma! the holy song
+which was sung of old by Kacha, the son of Vrihaspati—the preceptor of
+the gods.</p>
+
+<p>2. As this son of the divine tutor, resided in a grove in some part of
+the mount Meru (the Altain chain—the homestead of the gods); he found
+the tranquility of his spirit in the Supreme soul; by means of his
+holy devotion.</p>
+
+<p>3. His mind being filled with the ambrosial draughts of divine
+knowledge, he derived no satisfaction at the sight of the visible
+world, composed of the five elemental bodies.</p>
+
+<p>4. Being rapt in his mind with the vision of the Holy Spirit, he saw
+nothing else beside him, and then fervently uttered to himself in the
+following strain.</p>
+
+<p>5. What is there for me to do or refuse or to receive or reject, and
+what place is there for me to resort or refrain from going to, when
+this whole is filled by the Divine Spirit (<i>to pan</i>), as by the water
+of the great deluge.</p>
+
+<p>6. I find pleasure and pain inherent in the soul, and the sky and all
+its sides contained in the magnitude of the soul. Thus knowing all
+things to be full of the holy spirit, I forget and sink all my pains in
+my spirit.</p>
+
+<p>7. The spirit is inside and outside of all bodies, it is above and
+below and on all sides of all. Here, there and every where is the same
+spirit, and there is no place where it is not.</p>
+
+<p>8. The spirit abides every where and all things abide in the spirit;
+all things are self-same with the spirit, and I am situated in the same
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>9. There is nothing intelligent or insensible which is not the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_677">[677]</span>
+spirit,
+all is spirit and so am I also. The spirit fills the whole space and is
+situated in every place.</p>
+
+<p>10. I am as full of that spirit and its ineffable bliss, as the all
+encompassing water of the great deluge. In this manner was Kacha musing
+in himself in the bower of the golden mountain. (The Altain chain is
+called the golden mountain for its abounding in gold mines).</p>
+
+<p>11. He uttered the sound Om (<i>on</i> or amen), and it rang on all sides as
+the ringing of a bell; he first uttered a part of it the vocal part—o,
+and then the nasal—n, which tops it as a tuft of hair. He remained
+meditating on the spirit in his mind, not as situated in or without it
+(but as the all pervasive soul).</p>
+
+<p>12. Thus Ráma! did Kacha continue to muse in himself and chant his
+holy hymn, being freed from the foulness of flesh, and rarefied in
+his spirit like the breath of the wind. His soul was as clear as the
+atmosphere in autumn, after dispersion of the dark clouds of the rainy
+season.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_678">[678]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LIX.<br>
+<span class="small">WORKS OF BRAHMÁ’S CREATION.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Vanity of the World born of Brahmá’s conception. Its
+Disappearance and Liberation.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—There is nothing in this world except the
+gratification of the carnal appetites, and the pleasure of eating,
+drinking and concupiscence with the vulgar; but it is the lasting good
+of men, which is desired by the good and great.</p>
+
+<p>2. The crooked and creeping beings and things, and beasts and wicked
+men and ignorant people only are gratified with carnal pleasures; they
+are all fond of everything conducing to their bodily enjoyments.</p>
+
+<p>3. They are human asses, who dote on the beauty of female bodies, which
+are no better than lumps of flesh, blood and bones.</p>
+
+<p>4. This may be desirable to dogs and devouring animals, but not to man
+(who is a rational and spiritual being). All animals have their fleshy
+bodies, as the trees have their trunks of wood, and the minerals their
+forms of earth.</p>
+
+<p>5. There is the earth below and the sky above, and nothing that is
+extraordinary before us; the senses pursue the sensible objects, but
+human reason finds no relish in them.</p>
+
+<p>6. The consciousness (or intuition) of men, leads them only to error;
+and true happiness, which is desired by all is situated beyond all
+sensible objects and gratifications.</p>
+
+<p>7. The end of worldly pleasure is sorrow and misery, as the product
+of a flame is soot and blackness; and the functions of the mind and
+senses, are all fleeting having their rise and fall by turns. All
+enjoyments are short lived, owing to the fugacity of the objects, and
+the decay of the powers of our enjoying.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_679">[679]</span>
+8. Prosperity fades away as plant encircled by a poisonous viper; and
+our consorts die away as soon as anything born of blood and flesh.
+(Fortune is fleeting and life a passing dream).</p>
+
+<p>9. The delusion of love and lust, makes one body to embrace another,
+both of which are composed of impure flesh and blood. Such are the
+acts, O Ráma! that delight the ignorant.</p>
+
+<p>10. Wise men take no delight in this unreal and unstable world, which
+is more poisonous than poison itself, by infecting them that have not
+even tasted the bitter gall.</p>
+
+<p>11. Forsake therefore your desire of enjoyment, and seek to be united
+with your spiritual essence; because the thought of your materiality
+(or being a material body), has taken possession of your mind (and
+separated you from yourself and the spirit of God).</p>
+
+<p>12. Whenever the thought of making the unreal world, rises in the mind
+of Brahmá the creator, he takes an unreal body upon him of his own will.</p>
+
+<p>13. It becomes as bright as gold by his own light, and then he is
+called Virinchi (<i>virincipiens</i>) on account of his will; and Brahmá
+also for his being born of Brahmá. (He is represented as of red colour,
+as Adam is said to be made of red earth).</p>
+
+<p>14. Ráma asked:—How does the world become a solid substance, from its
+having been of a visionary form in the spirit or mind of God?</p>
+
+<p>15. Vasishtha replied:—When the lotus-born male (Brahmá), rose from his
+cradle of the Embryo of Brahmá, he uttered the name of Brahmá whence
+he was called Brahmá. (The word Brahm answers the Hebrew Brahum—create
+them, and corresponds with the Latin <i>ficet</i>—bhuya ভুযাৎ).</p>
+
+<p>16. He then had the conception (Sankalpa) of the world in his own
+imagination, and the same assumed a visible and solid form by the power
+of his will, called the conceptional or conceived world. (Sankalpasrí).</p>
+
+<p>17. He conceived at first luminous idea of light, which having assumed
+a visible form spread on all sides, as a creeping <span class="pagenum" id="Page_680">[680]</span>
+plant is outstretched
+all about in autumn. (Light was the first work of creation).</p>
+
+<p>18. The rays of this light pierced all sides like threads of gold; they
+shone and spread themselves both above and below.</p>
+
+<p>19. Concealed amidst this light, the lotus-born Hiranyagarbha,
+conceived in his mind a figure like his luminous form, and produced it
+as the four faced Brahmá.</p>
+
+<p>20. Then the sun sprung forth from that light, and shone as a globe of
+gold amidst his world encircling beams.</p>
+
+<p>21. He held the locks of his flaming hair on his head, which flashed
+as fire all around him; and filled the sphere of heaven with heat and
+light.</p>
+
+<p>22. The most intelligent Brahmá, produced afterwards some other
+luminous forms from portions of that light, which proceeded from it
+<a id="like"></a>like the waves of the ocean (and these are thence called the Maríchis or
+rays, who were the first patriarchs of other created beings).</p>
+
+<p>23. These most potent and competent beings, were also possessed of
+their concepts and will, and they produced in a moment the figures as
+they thought of and willed.</p>
+
+<p>24. They conceived the forms of various other beings also, which they
+produced one after the other, as they desired and willed.</p>
+
+<p>25. Then did Brahmá bring to his recollection the eternal vedas and the
+many ceremonial rites, which he established as laws in his house of
+this world.</p>
+
+<p>26. Having taken the gigantic body of Brahma, and the extensive
+form of the mind—manas, he produced the visible world as his own
+offspring—Santati. (Brahmá means <i>brihat</i>—great; and <i>santate</i> derived
+from the root tan. Latin—<i>leoreo</i> means continuation of race).</p>
+
+<p>27. He stretched the seas and mountains, and made the trees and upper
+worlds. He raised the Meru on the surface of the earth, and all the
+forests and groves upon it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_681">[681]</span>
+28. It was he who ordained happiness and misery, birth and death and
+disease and decay; and he created the passions and feelings of living
+beings, under their threefold divisions of satva, rajas and tamas.</p>
+
+<p>29. Whatever has been wrought by the hands (faculties) of the mind of
+Brahma before, the same continues to be still perceived by our deluded
+vision.</p>
+
+<p>30. He gave the mind and laws to all beings, and makes the worlds anew
+as they are situated in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>31. It is error, that has given rise to the erroneous conception of
+the eternity of the world, whereas it is the conception of the mind
+alone that creates the ideal forms. (The world is neither material nor
+substantial, but a conceptual and ideal creation of the mind).</p>
+
+<p>32. The acts of all things in the world, are produced by their
+conception and wishes; and it is the concept or thought, that binds the
+gods also to their destiny.</p>
+
+<p>33. The great Brahmá that was the source of the creation of the world,
+sits in the meditative mood, contemplating on all that he has made.</p>
+
+<p>34. It was by a motion of the mind, that the wonderful form of the
+living principle was formed; and it was this that gave rise to the
+whole world, with all its changeful phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>35. It made the gods Indra, Upendra and Mahendra and others, and also
+the hills and seas in all the worlds above and below us, and in the ten
+sides of the heaven above:—</p>
+
+<p>36. Brahmá then thought in himself, “I have thus stretched out at large
+the net work of my desire, I will now cease from extending the objects
+of my desire any further”.</p>
+
+<p>37. Being so determined, he ceased from the toil of his creation, and
+reflected on the eternal spirit in his own spirit. (According to the
+Sruti:—the spirit is to be reflected in the spirit).</p>
+
+<p>38. By knowing the spirit, his mind was melted down by its effulgence,
+and reclined on it with that ease, as one finds in his soft sleep after
+long labour.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_682">[682]</span>
+
+<p>39. Being freed from his selfishness and egoism, he felt that perfect
+tranquility which the soul receives by resting in itself, and which
+likens the calmness of the sea by its subsidence in itself.</p>
+
+<p>40. The Lord sometimes leaves off his meditation, as the reservoirs of
+water sometimes overflow their banks and boundaries.</p>
+
+<p>41. He beholds the world as a vale of misery, with very little of
+happiness in it; and where the soul is fast bound to its alternate
+passions, and led by the changes of its hopes and fears.</p>
+
+<p>42. He takes pity on the miserable condition of man, and with a view of
+their welfare, promulgates the sacred sástras and rites, which are full
+of meaning for their guidance.</p>
+
+<p>43. He propounds the Vedas and their branches—the Vedángas, which
+are fraught with spiritual knowledge, and precepts of wisdom, and he
+revealed the Puránas and other sástras for the salvation of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>44. Again the spirit of Brahmá reclined on the supreme spirit, and was
+relieved from its toil; and then remained as tranquil as the becalmed
+ocean, after its churning by the Mandara.</p>
+
+<p>45. Brahmá having observed the efforts of mankind on earth, and
+prescribed to them the rules of their conduct, returned to himself,
+where he sat reclined on his lotus seat.</p>
+
+<p>46. He remains some times entirely devoid of all his desires; and at
+others he takes upon him his cares for mankind from his great kindness
+to them.</p>
+
+<p>47. He is neither simple in his nature, nor does he assume or reject
+his form in the states of his creation and cessation. He is no other
+than intelligence, which is neither present in nor absent from any
+place.</p>
+
+<p>48. He is conversant with all states and properties of things, and is
+as full as the ocean without intermixture of any crude matter in him.</p>
+
+<p>49. Sometimes he is quite devoid of all attributes and desires, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_683">[683]</span>
+and is
+only awakened from his inertness, by his own desire of doing good to
+his creatures.</p>
+
+<p>50. I have thus expounded to you concerning the existence of Brahmá
+(Bráhmi Sthiti), and his real states of Sátwika, Vidhyanika and
+Suranikas creation. (The first is the creation of his intellectual
+nature, and the second that of his mind or will or mental form).</p>
+
+<p>51. The intellectual creation is what rises of itself in the Spirit of
+Brahma, and the mental is the result of his mind and will. The first is
+the direct inspiration of Brahmá into the Spirit of Brahmá.</p>
+
+<p>52. After creation of the material world by the <i>rájasika</i> nature
+of Brahmá, there rises the visible creation in the air by the will
+of the creator. (This is called the <i>madhyanika</i>, because it is the
+intermediate creation, between the elemental and animal creations).</p>
+
+<p>53. In the next step of animal creation, some were born as gods
+(angels) and others as Yakshas—demigods, and this is called the
+<i>suranika</i>, because the suras or gods were created in it.</p>
+
+<p>54. Every creature is born in the shape of its inherent nature, and
+then it is either elevated or degraded, according to the nature of
+its associations. It lays also the foundation of its future state of
+bondage to birth or liberation, by its acts, commenced in the present
+life.</p>
+
+<p>55. In this manner, O Ráma! has the world come to existence. Its
+creation is evidently a work of labour, as it is brought to being by
+various acts of motion and exertion of the body and mind; and all these
+products of the god’s will, are sustained also by continuous force and
+effort on his part.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_684">[684]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LX.<br>
+<span class="small">PRODUCTION OF LIVING BEINGS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Production of the bodies of Living Beings, according
+to the degrees of their Reason.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—O strong armed Ráma! after the great father of
+creation, he took himself to his activity, he formed and supported the
+worlds by his energy and might.</p>
+
+<p>2. All living and departed souls, are tied like buckets by the rope of
+their desire, and made to rise and fall in this old well of the world,
+by the law of their predetermined destiny (or Fate that binds Siva or
+Jove himself).</p>
+
+<p>3. All beings proceeding from Brahmá, and entering the prison house
+of the world, have to be concentrated into the body of the air-born
+Brahmá; as all the waters of the sea have to be whirled into the
+whirlpool in the midst of the sea. (All things were contained in and
+produced from Brahmá the Demiurge).</p>
+
+<p>4. Others are continually springing from the mind of Brahmá, like
+sparks of fire struck out of a red-hot iron; while many are flying to
+it as their common centre.</p>
+
+<p>5. Ráma! all lives are as the waves in the ocean of the everlasting
+spirit of Brahma; they rise and fall in him according to his will.</p>
+
+<p>6. They enter into the atmospheric air, as the smoke rises and enters
+the clouds, and are at last mixed up together by the wind, in the
+spirit of Brahma.</p>
+
+<p>7. They are then overtaken by the elementary particles, or atoms flying
+in the air, which lay hold on them in a few days; as the demons seize
+the host of gods with violence. (These become the living and embodied
+souls, joined with the many properties of the elements).</p>
+
+<p>8. Then the air breathes the vital breath in these bodies; which
+infuses life and vigour in them.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_685">[685]</span>
+
+<p>9. Thus do living beings manifest themselves on earth, while there
+are other flyings in the form of smoke as living spirits. (So the
+spiritualists view the spirits in the etherial clouds).</p>
+
+<p>10. Some of them appear in their subtle elemental forms in their airy
+cells in the sky, and shine as bright as the beams of the luminous
+moon. (These are <i>lingadehas</i> or individual spiritual bodies).</p>
+
+<p>11. Then they fall upon the earth like the pale moonbeams falling upon
+the milky ocean.</p>
+
+<p>12. There they alight as birds in the groves and forests, and become
+stiffened by sipping the juice of fruits and flowers.</p>
+
+<p>13. Then losing their aerial and bright forms of the moon-beams, they
+settle on those fruits and flowers: and suck their juice like infants
+hanging upon the breasts of their mothers. (These are the protozoa, the
+first and embryonic state of living beings).</p>
+
+<p>14. The protozoa are strengthened by drinking the juice of the fruits,
+which are ripened by the light and heat of the sun, and then they
+remain in a state of insensibility; until they enter the animal body.</p>
+
+<p>15. The animated animalcules, remain in the womb with their undeveloped
+desires; in the same manner as the unopening leaves, are contained in
+the seed of the <i>bata</i> or Indian fig tree.</p>
+
+<p>16. All lives are situated in the Great God, as fire is inherent in the
+wood, and the pot resides in the earth; and it is after many processes
+that they have their full development.</p>
+
+<p>17. One that has received no bodily form, and yet moves on without
+manifesting itself, is said to be a <i>satya</i> or spiritual being, and has
+a large scope of action (as the gods).</p>
+
+<p>18. He is said to have a <i>sátvika</i> birth, who gets his liberation in or
+after his life-time; but whoever is obliged to be reborn by his acts,
+is said to belong to the <i>rájas-sátvika</i> class.</p>
+
+<p>19. Any one of this class who is born to rule over others, becomes
+giddy with pride (tamas), he is said to be of the nature<span class="pagenum" id="Page_686">[686]</span>
+ of ignorance
+<i>támasika</i>, and I will now speak of this class of beings.</p>
+
+<p>20. Those who are born originally with their sátwika nature, are pure
+in their conduct and have never to be born again.</p>
+
+<p>21. Men of rája-sátwika temperament have to be reborn on earth; but
+being elevated by their reasoning powers, they have no more to be born
+in this nether world.</p>
+
+<p>22. Those who have directly proceeded from the Supreme Spirit (without
+any intermixture of these natures), are men fraught with every quality,
+and are very rare on earth.</p>
+
+<p>23. The various classes of <i>támasa</i> creatures of ignorance, are
+both insensible and speechless; and are of the nature of immovable
+vegetables and minerals, that need no description.</p>
+
+<p>24. How many among the gods and men, have been reborn to the cares of
+the world, owing to the demerit of their past action; and I myself
+though fraught with knowledge and reason, am obliged to lead a life of
+the rájasa-sátwika kind (owing to my interference in society).</p>
+
+<p>25. It is by your ignorance of the Supreme, that you behold the vast
+extension of the world; but by considering it rightly you will soon
+find all this to be but the One Unity.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="center">NOTES ON THE SURANIKA, SÁTWIKA &C.</p>
+
+<p>1. The <i>Vidhyanika</i>; is the sphere of the eternal laws of God, presided
+over by Brahmá, who is thence styled the Vidhi or dispensator of the
+laws of the creation of the mundane system.</p>
+
+<p>2. The <i>Suranika</i>; is the sphere of the Supernatural powers or the
+divine agencies, governing and regulating the management of created
+nature. This is the angelic sphere of deities.</p>
+
+<p>3. <i>Naráníka</i>; is the sphere of human being, consisting also of the
+subordinate orders of beings, placed under the dominion of man. This is
+the sublunary sphere wherewith we are concerned.</p>
+
+<p>4. The Sátwika; are righteous men, endued with the quality of goodness.</p>
+
+<p>5. The Rájasika; is the body politic, guided by the laws of society.</p>
+
+<p>6. The Támasika; is the ignorant rabble, and infatuated people.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_687">[687]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LXI.<br>
+<span class="small">ON BIRTH, DEATH AND EXISTENCE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The Liberation of the Rájasa-sátwika natures, and
+description of knowledge and Indifference.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Those that are born with the nature of
+<i>Rájasa-sátwika</i>, remain highly pleased in the world, and are as
+gladsome in their faces, as the face of the sky with the serene light
+of the moon-beams.</p>
+
+<p>2. Their faces are not darkened by melancholy, but are as bright as
+the face of heaven; they are never exposed to troubles, like the lotus
+flowers to the frost of night.</p>
+
+<p>3. They never deviate from their even nature, but remain unmoved as the
+immovable bodies; and they persist in their course of beneficence, as
+the trees yield their fruits to all.</p>
+
+<p>4. Ráma! the rája and sátva natured man, gets his liberation in the
+same manner, as the disk of the moon receives its ambrosial beams.</p>
+
+<p>5. He never forsakes his mildness, even when he is in trouble; but
+remains as cool as the moon even in her eclipse. He shines with the
+lovely virtue of fellow-feeling to all.</p>
+
+<p>6. Blessed are the righteous, who are always even tempered, gentle and
+as handsome as the forest trees, beset by creepers with clusters of
+their blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>7. They keep in their bounds, as the sea remains within its boundaries,
+and are meek like yourself in their even tempers. Hence they never
+desire nor wish for any thing in the world.</p>
+
+<p>8. You must always walk in the way of the godly, and not run to the sea
+of dangers; thus you should go on without pain or sorrow in your life.</p>
+
+<p>9. Your soul will be as elevated as the rájasa and sátwika states,
+by your avoiding the ways of the ungodly, and considering well the
+teachings of the sástras.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_688">[688]</span>
+10. Consider well in your mind the frail acts, which are attended with
+various evils; and do those acts which are good for the three worlds,
+both in their beginning and end, and forever to eternity.</p>
+
+<p>11. The intelligent think that as dangerous to them, and not otherwise;
+by reason of their being freed from narrow views, and the false
+spectres—the offspring of ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>12. You should always consider in yourself for the enlightenment of
+your understanding, and say: O Lord! what am I, and whence is this
+multiplicity of worlds?</p>
+
+<p>13. By diligently considering these subjects in the society of the wise
+and righteous, you must neither be engaged in your ceremonial acts, nor
+continue in your unnecessary practices of the rituals.</p>
+
+<p>14. You must look at the disjunction of all things in the world from
+you (<i>i.e.</i> the temporaneousness of worldly things); and seek to
+associate with the righteous, as the peacock yearns for the rainy
+clouds.</p>
+
+<p>15. Our inward egoism, outward body and the external world, are the
+three seas encompassing us one after the other. It is right reasoning
+only which affords the raft to cross over them, and bring us under the
+light of truth.</p>
+
+<p>16. By refraining to think of the beauty and firmness of your exterior
+form, you will come to perceive the internal light of your intellect
+hid under your egoism; as the thin and connecting thread is concealed
+under a string of pearls. (The hidden thread underlying the links of
+souls, is termed <i>Sútrátmá</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>17. It is that eternally existent and infinitely extended blessed
+thread, which connects and stretches through all beings; and as the
+gems are strung to a string, so are all things linked together by the
+latent spirit of God.</p>
+
+<p>18. The vacuous space of the Divine Intellect, contains the whole
+universe, as the vacuity of the air, contains the glorious sun; and as
+the hollow of the earth, contains an emmet.</p>
+
+<p>19. As it is the same air which fills the cavity of every pot <span class="pagenum" id="Page_689">[689]</span>
+on earth,
+so it is the one and the same intellect and spirit of God, which fills,
+enlivens and sustains all bodies in every place. (The text says, “The
+Intellect knows no difference of bodies, but pervades alike in all”).</p>
+
+<p>20. As the ideas of sweet and sour are the same in all men, so is the
+consciousness of the Intellect alike in all mankind (<i>i.e.</i> we are all
+equally conscious of our intellectuality, as we are of the sweetness
+and sourness of things).</p>
+
+<p>21. There being but one and only one real substance in existence, it is
+a palpable error of your ignorant folks to say, “this one exists, and
+the other perishes or vanishes away”. (Nothing is born or extinct, but
+all exist in God. So is Malebranche’s opinion of seeing all things in
+God).</p>
+
+<p>22. There is no such thing, Ráma, which being once produced, is
+resolved into naught at any time; all these are no realities nor
+unrealities, but representations or reflexions of the Real One.</p>
+
+<p>23. Whatever is visible and of temporary existence, is without any
+perceptible substantiality of its own; it is only an object of our
+fallacy, beyond which it has no existence. (Hence they are no more than
+unrealities).</p>
+
+<p>24. Why, O Ráma! should any body suffer himself to be deluded by these
+unrealities? All these accompaniments here, being no better than causes
+of our delusion.</p>
+
+<p>25. The accompaniment of unrealities, tends only to our delusion here;
+and if they are taken for realities, to what good do they tend than to
+delude us the more. (It is better to let the unreal pass as unreal,
+than to take them for real, and be utterly deceived at last).
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_690">[690]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LXII.<br>
+<span class="small">SPEECH OF THE DIVINE MESSENGER.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Relation of the virtues of Ráma as dictated in the
+sástras, and of the advancement of others, by means of good
+company and self-exertion.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">T</span>he</span> diligent and rationalistic inquirer after truth, has a natural
+aptitude to resort to the society of the sapient and good natured Guru,
+and discusses on matters of the sástras by the rules of the sástras he
+has learnt before and not talk at random.</p>
+
+<p>2. It is thus by holding his argumentation on the abstruse science of
+yoga, with the good and great and unavaricious learned, that he can
+attain to true wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>3. The man that is thus acquainted with the true sense of the Sástra,
+and qualified by his habit of dispassionateness in the society of holy
+men, shines like yourself as the model of intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>4. Your liberal mindedness and self-reliance, combined with your
+cool-headedness and all other virtues, have set you above the reach
+of misery and all mental affliction; and also freed you from future
+transmigration, by your attainment of liberation in this life.</p>
+
+<p>5. Verily have you become as the autumnal sky, cleared of its gloomy
+clouds; you are freed from worldly cares, and fraught with the best and
+highest wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>6. He is truly liberated, whose mind is freed from the fluctuations of
+its thoughts, and the flights and fumes of its thickening fancies, and
+ever crowding particulars. (The ultimate generalization of particulars
+into unity, is reckoned the highest consummation of man).</p>
+
+<p>7. Henceforward will all men on earth, try to imitate the noble
+disposition of the equanimity of your mind, which is devoid of its
+passions of love and hatred, as also of affection and enmity.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_691">[691]</span>
+8. Those who conform with their customs of the country, and conduct
+themselves in the ordinary course of men in their outward demeanour,
+and cherish their inward sentiments in the close recesses of their
+bosoms, are reckoned as truly wise, and are sure to get over the ocean
+of the world on the floating raft of their wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>9. The meek man who has a spirit of universal toleration like thine, is
+worthy of receiving the light of knowledge; and of understanding the
+import of my sayings.</p>
+
+<p>10. Live as long as you have to live in this frail body of yours,
+and keep your passions and feelings under the sway of your reason;
+act according to the rules of society, and keep your desires under
+subjection.</p>
+
+<p>11. Enjoy the perfect peace and tranquility of the righteous and wise,
+and avoid alike both the cunning of foxes and silly freaks of boys.</p>
+
+<p>12. Men who imitate the purity of the manners and conduct of those,
+that are born with the property of goodness, acquire in process of time
+the purity of their lives also. (Men become virtuous by imitation of
+virtuous examples).</p>
+
+<p>13. The man who is habituated in the practice of the manners, and the
+modes of life of another person, is soon changed to that mode of life,
+though it be of a different nature, or of another species of being.
+(Habit is second nature).</p>
+
+<p>14. The practices of past lives accompany all mankind in their
+succeeding births, as their preordained destiny; and it is only by our
+vigorous efforts that we are enabled to avert our fates, in the manner
+of princes overcoming the hostile force, by greater might of their own.</p>
+
+<p>15. It is by means of patience only, that one must redeem his good
+sense; and it is by patient industry alone, that one may be advanced to
+a higher birth from his low and mean condition.</p>
+
+<p>16. It is by virtue of their good understanding, that the good have
+attained their better births in life; therefore employ yourself, O
+Ráma! to the polishing of your understanding.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_692">[692]</span>
+17. The godfearing man is possessed of every good, and exerts his
+efforts for attainment of godliness; it is by means of manly efforts
+only, that men obtain the most precious blessings.</p>
+
+<p>18. Those of the best kind on earth, long for their liberation in
+future, which also requires the exertion of devotion and meditation for
+its attainment.</p>
+
+<p>19. There is nothing in this earth, below, or in the heaven of the
+celestials above, which is unattainable to the man of parts, by means
+of his manly efforts.</p>
+
+<p>20. It is impossible for you to obtain the object of your desire,
+without the exercise of your patience and dispassionateness, and the
+exertion of your prowess and austerities of <i>Brahmacharya</i>. Nor is it
+possible to succeed in any without the right use of reason.</p>
+
+<p>21. Try to know yourself, and do good to all creatures by your
+manliness; employ your good understanding to drive all your cares and
+sorrows away; and you will thus be liberated from all pain and sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>22. O Ráma! that art fraught with all admirable qualities, and endued
+with the high power of reason; keep thyself steady in the acts of
+goodness, and never may the erroneous cares of this world betake thee
+in thy future life.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_693">[693]</span><p class="ph2">YOGA VÁSISHTHA.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h2>BOOK V.
+
+<br>THE UPASAMA KHANDA ON QUIETISM.</h2>
+<h2> CHAPTER I.<br>
+
+<span class="small">THE ÁHNIKA OR DAILY RITUAL.</span></h2>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The Book on calm quiet and rest, necessarily follows
+those of Creation and sustentation; as the sleeping time of night
+succeeds the working time of the Day, and as the rest of God
+followed his work of Creation and supportance.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—Hear me, Ráma, now propose to you the subject of
+quietude or rest, which follows that of Existence and sustentation of
+the universe; and the knowledge of which will lead you to <i>nirvána</i> or
+final extinction (as the evening rest, leads to sound sleep at night,
+and quietude is followed by quietus).</p>
+
+<p>2. Válmíki says:—As Vasishtha was delivering his holy words, the
+assembly of the princes remained, as still as the starry train, in the
+clear sky of an autumnal night.</p>
+
+<p>3. The listening princes looking in mute gaze, at the venerable sage
+amidst the assembly, resembled the unmoving lotuses looking at the
+luminous sun from their breathless beds.</p>
+
+<p>4. The princesses in the harem forgot their joviality, at hearing the
+sermon of the sage; and their minds became as cool and quiet as in the
+long absence of their consorts.</p>
+
+<p>5. The fanning damsels with flappers in their hands, remained as still
+as a flock of flapping geese resting on a lotus-bed; and the jingling
+of the gems and jewels on their arms, ceased like the chirping of birds
+on the trees at night.</p>
+
+<p>6. The princes that heard these doctrines, sat reflecting on their
+hidden meanings, with their index fingers sticking to the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_694">[694]</span>
+tip of their
+noses in thoughtfulness; and others pondered on their deep sense, by
+laying the fingers on their lips.</p>
+
+<p>7. The countenance of Ráma flushed like the blushing lotus in the
+morning, and it brightened by casting away its melancholy, as the sun
+shines by dispelling the darkness of night.</p>
+
+<p>8. The king of kings—Dasaratha felt as delighted in hearing the
+lectures of Vasishtha, as the peacock is gladdened at the roaring of
+raining clouds.</p>
+
+<p>9. Sarana the king’s minister removed his apish fickle mind from his
+state affairs, and applied it intensely to attend to the teachings of
+the sage.</p>
+
+<p>10. Laxmana who was well versed in all learning, shone as a digit
+of the bright crescent moon, with the internal light of Vasishtha’s
+instructions, and the radiance of his Spiritual knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>11. Satrughna the subduer of his enemies, was so full of delight in his
+heart at the teaching of the sage; that his face glowed with joy, like
+the full moon replete with all her digits.</p>
+
+<p>12. The other good ministers, whose minds were absorbed in the cares
+of state affairs; were set at ease by the friendly admonition of the
+sage, and they glowed in their hearts like lotus-buds expanded by the
+sunbeams.</p>
+
+<p>13. All the other chiefs and sages, that were present in that assembly,
+had the gems of their hearts purged of their dross by the preachings
+of Vasishtha; and their minds glowed with fervour from his impressive
+speech.</p>
+
+<p>14. At this instant there rose the loud peal of conch shells,
+resembling the full swell of the sounding main, and the deep and
+deafening roar of summer clouds, filling the vault of the sky, and
+announcing the time of midday service. (The <i>trisandhya</i> services are
+performed at the rising, setting and vertical sun).</p>
+
+<p>15. The loud uproar of the shells, drowned the feeble voice of the
+<i>muni</i> under it, as the high sounding roar of rainy clouds, puts <span class="pagenum" id="Page_695">[695]</span>
+down
+the notes of the sweet cuckoo. (It is said, the cuckoo ceases to
+sing in the rains. भद्रं कृतं कृतं मैनं कोकिलेः जलदागमे ।)</p>
+
+<p>16. The <i>muni</i> stopped his breath and ceased to give utterance <to>
+his speech; because it is in vain to speak where it is not heeded or
+listened to. (The wise should hold their tongue, when it has lost its
+power to hold people by their ears).</p>
+
+<p>17. Hearing the midday shout, the sage stopped for a moment, and then
+addressed to Ráma! after the hubbub was over and said:—</p>
+
+<p>18. Ráma! I have thus far delivered to you my daily lecture for this
+day; I will resume it the next morning, and tell you all that I have to
+say on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>19. It is ordained for the twice born classes to attend to the duties
+of their religion at midday; and therefore it does not behove us to
+swerve from discharging our noonday services at this time.</p>
+
+<p>20. Rise therefore, O fortunate Ráma! and perform your sacred ablutions
+and divine services, which you are well acquainted with, and give your
+alms and charities also as they are ordained by law.</p>
+
+<p>21. Saying so, the sage rose from his seat with the king and his
+courtiers, and resembled the sun and moon, rising from the eastern
+mountain with their train of stars.</p>
+
+<p>22. Their rising made the whole assembly to rise after them, as a
+gentle breeze moves the bed of lotuses, with their nigrescent eyes of
+the black bees sitting upon them.</p>
+
+<p>23. The assembled princes rose up with their crowned heads, and they
+marched with their long and massive arms like a body of big elephants
+of the Vindhyan hills with their lubberly legs.</p>
+
+<p>24. The jewels on their persons rubbed against each other, by their
+pushing up and down in hurry, and displayed a blaze like that of the
+reddened clouds at the setting sun.</p>
+
+<p>25. The jingling of the gems on the coronets, resembled the humming of
+bees; and the flashing rays of the crowns, spread the various colours
+of the rainbow around.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_696">[696]</span>
+26. The beauties in the court hall resembling the tender creepers,
+and holding the chouri flappers like clusters of blossoms in their
+leaf-like palms, formed a forest of beauties about the elephantine
+forms of the brave princes. (It means the joint egress of a large
+number of damsels employed to fan the princes in the Court hall).</p>
+
+<p>27. The hall was emblazoned with the rays of the blazing bracelets, and
+seemed as it was strewn over with the dust of <i>mandára</i> flowers, blown
+away by the winds.</p>
+
+<p>28. There were crystal cisterns of pure water, mixed with ice and
+pulverized camphor; and the landscape around was whitened by the <i>kusa</i>
+grass and flowers of autumn.</p>
+
+<p>29. The gems hanging down the head-dresses of the princes, cast a
+reddish colour over the hollow vault of the hall; and appeared as the
+evening twilight preceding the shade of night, which puts an end to the
+daily works of men.</p>
+
+<p>30. The fair faces of the fairy damsels, were like lotuses floating
+on the watery lustre of the strings of pearls pendant upon them; and
+resembling the lines of bees fluttering about the lotuses; while the
+anklets at their feet, emitted a ringing sound as the humming of bees.</p>
+
+<p>31. The large assemblage of the princes, rose up amidst the assembled
+crowds of men; and presented a scene never seen before by the admiring
+people.</p>
+
+<p>32. The rulers of the earth bowed down lowly before their sovereign,
+and departed from his presence and the royal palace in large bodies;
+likening the waves of the sea, glistening as rainbows by the light of
+their gemming ornaments.</p>
+
+<p>33. The chief minister Sumantra and others, that were best acquainted
+with royal etiquette, prostrated themselves before their king and the
+holy sage, and took their way towards the holy stream; for performance
+of their sacred ablutions.</p>
+
+<p>34. The Rishis Vámadeva, Viswámitra and others, stood in the presence
+of Vasishtha; and waited for his leave to make their departure.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_697">[697]</span>
+35. King Dasaratha honored the sages one by one, and then left them to
+attend to his own business.</p>
+
+<p>36. The citizens returned to the city, and the foresters retired to
+their forests, the aerials flew in the air, and all went to their
+respective abodes for rejoining the assembly on the next morning.</p>
+
+<p>37. The venerable Viswámitra, being besought by the king and Vasishtha,
+stayed and passed the night at the abode of the latter.</p>
+
+<p>38. Then Vasishtha being honoured by all the princes, sages and the
+great Bráhmanas, and adored by Ráma and the other princes of king
+Dasaratha’s royal race:—</p>
+
+<p>39. Proceeded to his hermitage, with the obeisance of the assembled
+crowd on all sides; and followed by a large train, as the god Brahmá is
+accompanied by bodies of the celestials.</p>
+
+<p>40. He then gave leave to Ráma and his brother-princes, and to all his
+companions and followers, to return to their abodes from his hermitage
+in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>41. He bade adieu to the aerial, earthly and the subterraneous beings,
+that kept company with him with their encomiums on his merits; and then
+entering his house, he performed his Bráhmanical rites with a duteous
+disposition.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_698">[698]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER II.<br>
+<span class="small">RÁMA’S RECAPITULATION OF VASISHTHA’S LECTURES.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Performance of Daily Rites, and Ráma’s Reflection of
+Vasishtha’s Teaching at night.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>álmíki</span> continued his relation to Bharadwája and said:—After the
+moon-bright princes had got to their residence, they discharged their
+daily services according to the diurnal ritual.</p>
+
+<p>2. Even Vasishtha and the other saints, sages, and Bráhmans not
+excepting the king and the princes, were all engaged in their holy
+services at their own houses.</p>
+
+<p>3. They bathed in the sacred streams and fountains, filled with
+floating bushes of lotuses and other aquatic plants, and frequented by
+the ruddy geese, cranes and storks on their border.</p>
+
+<p>4. After they had performed their ablutions, they made donations of
+lands and kine, of seats and beddings and of sesamum grains, with gold
+and gems, and food and raiments to the holy Bráhmans.</p>
+
+<p>5. They then worshipped the gods Vishnu and Siva in their temples, and
+made oblations to the sun and regents of the skies in their own houses,
+with offerings of gold and gems; which are sacred to particular deities
+and the planets. (Particular gems and metals are sacred to their
+presiding divinities).</p>
+
+<p>6. After their offerings were over, they joined with their sons and
+grandsons, friends, and relatives, and their guests also, in partaking
+of their lawful food. (Unlawful food is hateful to the faithful).</p>
+
+<p>7. Shortly after this, the daylight faded away at the eighth watch
+(yamárdha) of the day; and the charming scene of the city began to
+disappear from sight.</p>
+
+<p>8. The people then employed themselves to their proper <span class="pagenum" id="Page_699">[699]</span>
+duties at the
+decline of the day, and betook to their evening service with the
+failing beams of the setting sun.</p>
+
+<p>9. They recited their evening hymn (Sandhyá), repeated their
+<i>japamantras</i>, and uttered their prayer for the forgiveness of sins
+(<i>agha marshana</i>); they read aloud their hymns and sang their evening
+song of praise.</p>
+
+<p>10. Then rose the shade of night to allay the sorrow of lovelorn
+damsels, as the moon arose from the milky ocean of the east, to cool
+the heat of the setting sun.</p>
+
+<p>11. The princes of Raghu’s race then reclined on their downy and
+flowery beds, sprinkled over with handfuls of camphor powder, and
+appearing as a sheet of spreading moon-light.</p>
+
+<p>12. The eyes of all men were folded in sleep, and they passed the
+live-long night as a short interval; but Ráma kept waking in his bed,
+meditating on all things he had heard from the sage.</p>
+
+<p>13. Ráma continued to reflect on the lectures of Vasishtha, which
+appeared as charming to him, as the cry of the parent elephant, is
+gladsome to its tender young (karabha).</p>
+
+<p>14. What means this wandering of ours, said he, in this world, and why
+is it that all these men and other animals, are bound to make their
+entrances and exits in this evanescent theatre?</p>
+
+<p>15. What is the form of our mind and how is it to be governed? What is
+this illusion (Máyá) of the world, whence hath its rise and how is it
+to be avoided?</p>
+
+<p>16. What is the good or evil of getting rid of this illusion, and how
+does it stretch over and overpower on the soul, or is made to leave it
+by any means in our power?</p>
+
+<p>17. What does the <i>muni</i> say with regard to the means, and effect of
+curbing the appetites of the mind? What does he say regarding the
+restraining of our organs, and what about the tranquility of the soul?</p>
+
+<p>18. Our hearts and minds, our living souls and their delusion, tend to
+stretch out the phenomenal world before us; and our very souls make a
+reality of the unreal existence.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_700">[700]</span>
+
+<p>19. All these things are linked together in our minds, and are weakened
+only by the weakening of our mental appetites. But how are these to be
+avoided in order to get rid of our misery.</p>
+
+<p>20. The slender light of reason is over-shadowed, like a single crane
+in the air, by the dark cloud of passions and appetites; how am I then
+to distinguish the right from wrong, as the goose separates the milk
+from the water?</p>
+
+<p>21. It is as hard to shun our appetites on the one hand, as it is
+impossible to avoid our troubles here, without the utter annihilation
+of our appetency. Here is the difficulty in both ways.</p>
+
+<p>22. Again the mind is the leader to our spiritual knowledge on the
+one hand, and our seducer also to worldliness on the other. We know
+not which way to be led by it. The difficulty is as great as a man’s
+mounting on a mountain, or a child’s escaping from the fear of a yaksha.</p>
+
+<p>23. All worldly turmoil is at an end, upon one’s attainment of true
+felicity; as the anxieties of a maiden are over, after she has obtained
+a husband.</p>
+
+<p>24. When will my anxieties have their quietism, and when will my cares
+come to an end? When will my soul have its holiness, and my mind find
+its rest from acts of merit and demerit?</p>
+
+<p>25. When shall I rest in that state of bliss, which is as cooling and
+complete in itself; as the full-moon with all her digits, and when
+shall I rove about the earth at large, free from worldly cares and ties?</p>
+
+<p>26. When will my fancy stop from its flight, and concentrate into the
+inward soul? When will my mind be absorbed in the Supreme soul, like
+the turbulent wave subsiding in the breast of the quiet sea?</p>
+
+<p>27. When shall I get over this wide ocean of the world, which is
+disturbed by the turbulent waves of our desires, and is full of the
+voracious crocodiles of our greedy avarice, and get rid of this
+feverish passion?</p>
+
+<p>28. When shall I rest in that state of complete quiescence <span class="pagenum" id="Page_701">[701]</span>
+and
+unfeelingness of my mind, which is aimed at by the seekers of
+liberation, and the all-tolerant and indifferent philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>(It is the sullen apathy of stoicism, which constitutes the true wisdom
+and happiness of asceticism also).</p>
+
+<p>29. Ah! when will this continuous fever of my worldliness abate, which
+has irritated my whole body by its inward heat, and deranged my humours
+out of their order!</p>
+
+<p>30. When will this heart of mine cease to throb from its cares, like
+the light of the lamp ceasing to flutter without the wind; and when
+will my understanding gain its light, after dispersion of the gloom of
+my ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>31. When will these organs and members of my body, have their respite
+from their incessant functions; and when will this parched frame of
+mine get over the sea (flame?) of avarice, like the phœnix rising from
+its ashes.</p>
+
+<p>32. When will the light of reason like the clear atmosphere of the
+autumnal sky, dispel this dark cloud of my ignorance, that envelopes my
+heavenly essence under the veil of this sorry and miserable form.</p>
+
+<p>33. Our minds are filled with the weeds of the mandára plants of the
+garden of paradise (<i>i.e.</i> desiring the enjoyments of heaven). But my
+soul pants for its restitution in the Supreme spirit.</p>
+
+<p>34. The dispassionate man is said to be set in the pure light of
+reason; it is therefore that passionless state of my mind which I long
+to attain.</p>
+
+<p>35. But my restless mind has made me a prey to the dragon of despair,
+and I cry out in my sorrow, O my father and mother! help me to get out
+of this difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>36. I exclaim also saying:—O my sister understanding! condescend to
+comply with the request of thy poor brother; and consider well the
+words of the wise sage for our deliverance from misery.</p>
+
+<p>37. I call thee also, O my good sense to my aid, and beg of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_702">[702]</span>
+thee,
+O progeny of thy virtuous mother! to remain firm by my side, in my
+struggle of breaking the bonds of the world.</p>
+
+<p>38. Let me first of all reflect on the sayings of the sage on
+Resignation (Vairágya), and then on the conduct of one who longs for
+his liberation, and next about the creation of the world, (in the
+Srishti Prakarana).</p>
+
+<p>39. Let me remember afterwards all that he has said on the Existence
+of the universe (Sthiti Prakarana), together with its beautiful
+illustrations; all of which are replete with sound wisdom and deep
+philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>40. Although a lesson may be repeated a hundred times over, it proves
+to be of no effect, unless it is considered with good understanding
+and right sense of its purport. Otherwise it is as the empty sound of
+autumn clouds without a drop of rain.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_703">[703]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER III.<br>
+<span class="small">DESCRIPTION OF THE ROYAL ASSEMBLY.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The Meeting of the next morning, and the concourse of
+attendants.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>álmíki</span> continued:—Ráma passed in this manner the live-long night, in
+his lengthened chain of reflection; and in eager expectation of dawn,
+as the lotus longs for the rising sun at day break.</p>
+
+<p>2. Gradually the stars faded away at the appearance of aurora in the
+east, and the face of the sky was dimly pale, before it was washed over
+with the white of twilight.</p>
+
+<p>3. The beating of the morning and the alarm of trumpets, roused Ráma
+from his reverie; and he rose with his moonlike face, blooming as the
+full-blown lotus in its leafy bed.</p>
+
+<p>4. He performed his morning ablution and devotion, and joined with his
+brothers and a few attendants, in order to repair to the hermitage of
+the sage Vasishtha.</p>
+
+<p>5. Having arrived there, they found the sage entranced in his
+meditation in his lonely solitude; and lowly bent down their heads
+before him from a respectful distance.</p>
+
+<p>6. After making their obeisance, they waited on him in the compound,
+until the twilight of morning brought the day-light over the face of
+the sky.</p>
+
+<p>7. The princes and chiefs, the saints, sages and Bráhmans, thronged in
+that hermitage, in the manner of the celestials meeting at the empyrean
+of Brahmá.</p>
+
+<p>8. Now the abode of Vasishtha was full of people, and the crowds of the
+cars, horses and elephants waiting at the outside, made it equal to a
+royal palace in its grandeur.</p>
+
+<p>9. After a while the sage rose from his deep meditation, and gave
+suitable receptions to the assembled throng that bowed down before him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_704">[704]</span>
+10. Then Vasishtha accompanied with Viswámitra, and followed by a long
+train of <i>munis</i> and other men, came out of the hermitage, and ascended
+and sat in a carriage, in the manner of the lotus-born Brahmá sitting
+on his lotus seat.</p>
+
+<p>11. He arrived at the palace of Dasaratha, which was surrounded by
+a large army on all sides, and alighted there from his car, as when
+Brahmá descends from his highest heaven to the city of Indra, beset by
+the whole host of the celestials.</p>
+
+<p>12. He entered the grand court hall of the king, and was saluted by the
+courtiers lowly bending down before him; as when the stately gander
+enters a bed of lotuses, amidst a body of aquatic birds (all staring at
+him).</p>
+
+<p>13. The king also got up, and descended from his high throne; and then
+advanced three paces on barefoot to receive the venerable sage.</p>
+
+<p>14. Then there entered a large concourse of chiefs and princes, with
+bodies of saints and sages and Bráhmans and hori, potri priests.</p>
+
+<p>15. The minister Sumantra and others came next with the learned pandits
+Saumya and others; and then Ráma and his brothers followed them with
+the sons of royal ministers.</p>
+
+<p>16. Next came the ministerial officers, the ministerial priests
+(hotripotris), and the principle citizens, with bodies of the Málava
+wrestlers and servants of all orders, and townsmen of different
+professions.</p>
+
+<p>17. All these took their respective seats, and sat in the proper order
+of their ranks, and kept looking intently on the sage Vasishtha, with
+their uplifted heads and eyes.</p>
+
+<p>18. The murmur of the assembly was hushed, and the recitation of the
+panegyrists was at a stop; the mutual greetings and conferences were at
+an end, and there ensued a still silence in the assembly.</p>
+
+<p>19. The winds wafted the sweet fragrance from the cups of full blown
+lotuses; and scattered the dulcet dust of the filaments in the spacious
+hall.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_705">[705]</span>
+20. The clusters of flowers hung about the hall, diffused their odours
+all around; and the whole court house seemed, as it were sprinkled over
+with perfumes of all sorts.</p>
+
+<p>21. The queens and princesses sat at the windows, and upon their
+couches in the inner apartment, which was strewn over with flowers, and
+beheld the assemblage in the outer hall.</p>
+
+<p>22. They saw everything by the light of the sun, which shed upon their
+open eyes through the net-work on the windows; and also by the radiance
+of the gems, which sparkled on their delicate persons. The attendant
+women remained silent, and without waving their fans and chouries (for
+fear of the sounding bracelets on their arms).</p>
+
+<p>23. The earth was sown with orient pearls by the dawning sun-beams, and
+the ground was strewn over with flowers glistening at the sun-light.
+The lightsome locusts did not light upon them, thinking them to be
+sparks of fire, but kept hovering in the midway sky as a body of dark
+and moving cloud.</p>
+
+<p>24. The respectable people sat in mute wonder, to hear the holy
+lectures of Vasishtha; because the agreeable advice, which is derived
+from the society of the good, is beyond all estimation.</p>
+
+<p>25. The Siddhas, Vidyádharas, saints, Bráhmans and respectable men,
+gathered from all sides of the sky and forests, and from all cities and
+towns round about Vasishtha, and saluted him in silence, because deep
+veneration is naturally mute and wanting in words.</p>
+
+<p>26. The sky was strewn over with the golden dust, borne by the
+fluttering bees from the cups of farinaceous lotuses; wherein they were
+enclosed at night; and the soft airs blew sonant with the tinkling
+sounds of ringing bells, hanging in strings on the door ways of houses.
+(The Gloss says: it is usual in Nepal and at Deccan, to suspend strings
+of small bells over the gate ways).</p>
+
+<p>27. The morning breeze was now blowing with the fragrance of various
+flowers, and mixing with the perfume of the sandal paste; and making
+the bees fly and flutter on all sides, with their sweet humming music.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_706">[706]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER IV.<br>
+<span class="small">INQUIRIES OF RÁMA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Dasaratha’s Praise of Vasishtha’s speech, and
+Ráma’s Queries by behest of the sage.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>álmíki</span> continued:—Then king Dasaratha made this speech to the chief
+of sages, and spoke in a voice sounding as a deep cloud, and in words
+equally graceful as they were worthy of confidence.</p>
+
+<p>2. Venerable sir, said he, your speech of yesterday bespeaks of your
+intellectual light, and your getting over all afflictions by your
+extremely emaciating austerities.</p>
+
+<p>3. Your words of yesterday, have delighted us by their perspicacity and
+gracefulness, as by a shower of enlivening ambrosia.</p>
+
+<p>4. The pure words of the wise, are as cooling and edifying of the
+inward soul; as the clear and nectarious moon-beams, serve both to cool
+and dispel the gloom of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>5. The good sayings of the great, afford the highest joy resulting from
+their imparting a knowledge of the Supreme, and by their dispelling the
+gloom of ignorance all at once.</p>
+
+<p>6. The knowledge of the inestimable gem of our soul, is the best light
+that we can have in this world; and the learned man is as a tree beset
+by the creepers of reason and good sense.</p>
+
+<p>7. The sayings of the wise serve to purge away our improper desires and
+doings, as the moon-beams dispel the thick gloom of night.</p>
+
+<p>8. Your sayings, O sage, serve to lessen our desires and avarice which
+enchain us to this world, as the autumnal winds diminish the black
+clouds in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>9. Your lectures have made us perceive the pure soul in its clear
+light, as the eye-salve of antimony (collyrium antigoni <span class="pagenum" id="Page_707">[707]</span>
+nigrum); makes
+the born-blind man to see the pure gold with his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>10. The mist of worldly desires, which has overspread the atmosphere of
+our minds, is now beginning to disperse by the autumnal breeze of your
+sayings.</p>
+
+<p>11. Your sayings of sound wisdom, O great sage! have poured a flood of
+pure delight into our souls, as the breezy waves of nectarious water,
+or the breath of mandára flowers infuse into the heart.</p>
+
+<p>12. O my Ráma! those days are truly lightsome, that you spend in
+your attendance on the wise; otherwise the rest of the days of one’s
+life time, are indeed darksome and dismal.</p>
+
+<p>13. O my lotus-eyed Ráma! propose now what more you have to know
+about the imperishable soul, as the sage is favourably disposed to
+communicate everything to you.</p>
+
+<p>14. After the king had ended his speech, the venerable and high-minded
+sage Vasishtha, who was seated before Ráma, addressed him saying:—</p>
+
+<p>15. Vasishtha said:—O Ráma—the moon of your race, do you remember all
+that I have told you ere this, and have you reflected on the sense of
+my sayings from first to the last.</p>
+
+<p>16. Do you recollect, O victor of your enemies? the subject of
+creation, and its division into the triple nature of goodness &c.; and
+their subdivision into various kinds?</p>
+
+<p>17. Do you remember what I said regarding the One in all, and not as
+the all, and the One Reality ever appearing as unreality; and do you
+retain in your mind the nature and form of the Supreme Spirit, that I
+have expounded to you?</p>
+
+<p>18. Do you, O righteous Ráma, that art deserving of every praise, bear
+in your mind, how this world came to appear from the Lord God of all?</p>
+
+<p>19. Do you fully retain in your memory the nature of illusion, and
+how it is destroyed by the efforts of the understanding; and how the
+Infinite and Eternal appears as finite and temporal as space and time?
+(These though infinite appear limited to us).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_708">[708]</span>
+20. Do you, O blessed Ráma! keep in your mind, that man is no other
+than his mind, as I have explained to you by its proper definition and
+arguments?</p>
+
+<p>21. Have you, Ráma! considered well the meanings of my words, and did
+you reflect at night the reasonings of yesterday in your mind? (As it
+behoves us to reflect at night on the lessons of the day).</p>
+
+<p>22. It is by repeated reflection in the mind, and having by heart what
+you have learnt, that you derive the benefit of your learning, and not
+by your laying aside of the same in negligence.</p>
+
+<p>23. You are then only the proper receptacle of a rational discourse and
+a holy sermon, when you retain them like brilliant pearls in the chest
+of your capacious and reasoning breast.</p>
+
+<p>24. Válmíki said:—Ráma being thus addressed by the sage—the valiant
+progeny of the lotus-seated Brahmá, found his time to answer him in the
+following manner. (Vasishtha’s valour is described in his services to
+king Sudása).</p>
+
+<p>25. Ráma replied:—You Sir, who are acquainted with all sástras and
+creeds have expounded to me, the sacred truths, and I have, O noble
+Sir, fully comprehended their purport.</p>
+
+<p>26. I have deposited every thing verbatim that you said in the casket
+of my heart, and have well considered the meaning of your words during
+the stillness of my sleepless nights.</p>
+
+<p>27. Your words like sun-beams dispel the darkness of the world, and
+your radiant words of yesterday, delighted me like the rays of the
+rising sun.</p>
+
+<p>28. O great sir, I have carefully preserved the substance of all your
+past lectures in my mind, as one preserves the most valuable and
+brilliant gems in a casket.</p>
+
+<p>29. What accomplished man is there, that will not bear on his head the
+blessings of admonitions, which are so very pure and holy, and so very
+charming and delightful at the same time?</p>
+
+<p>30. We have shaken off the dark veil of the ignorance of this world,
+and have become as enlightened by your favor, as the days in autumn
+after dispersion of rainy clouds.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_709">[709]</span>
+31. Your instructions are sweet and graceful in the first place (by the
+elegance of their style); they are edifying in the midst (by their good
+doctrines); and they are sacred by the holiness they confer at the end.</p>
+
+<p>32. Your flowery speech is ever delightsome to us, by the quality of
+its blooming and unfading beauty, and by virtue of its conferring our
+lasting good to us.</p>
+
+<p>33. O sir, that are learned in all sástras, that art the channel of the
+holy waters of divine knowledge, that art firm in thy protracted vows
+of purity, do thou expurgate us of the dross of our manifold sins by
+your purifying lectures.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_710">[710]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER V.<br>
+<span class="small">LECTURE ON TRANQUILLITY OF THE SOUL AND MIND.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The existence of the world in ignorant minds, and
+tranquility of the spirit.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—Now listen with attention the subject of quietism
+for your own good, wherein you will find the best solutions (of many
+questions adduced before).</p>
+
+<p>2. Know Ráma, this world to be a continuous illusion, and to be upheld
+by men of <i>rájasa</i> and <i>támasa</i> natures, consisting of the properties
+of action and passions or ignorance, that support this illusory fabric,
+as the pillars bear up a building.</p>
+
+<p>3. Men born with the <i>sátwika</i> nature of goodness like yourself, easily
+lay aside this inveterate illusion, as a snake casts off its time-worn
+skin (slough).</p>
+
+<p>4. But wise men of good dispositions (or sátwika natures), and those of
+the mixed natures of goodness and action (rájasa-sátwika), always think
+about the structure of the world, and its prior and posterior states
+(without being deluded by it).</p>
+
+<p>5. The understandings of the sinless and which have been enlightened by
+the light of the sástras, or improved in the society of men or by good
+conduct, become as far sighted as the glaring light of a torch.</p>
+
+<p>6. It is by one’s own ratiocination, that he should try to know the
+soul in himself; and he is no way intelligent, who knows not the
+knowable soul in himself.</p>
+
+<p>7. The intelligent polite, wise and noble men, are said to have the
+nature of rájasa-sátwika (or the mixed nature of goodness and action)
+in them; and the best instance of such a nature is found, O Ráma! in
+thy admirable disposition.</p>
+
+<p>8. Let the intelligent look into the phenomena of the work themselves,
+and by observing what is true and untrue in it, attach themselves to
+the truth only.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_711">[711]</span>
+
+<p>9. That which was not before, nor will be in being at the end, is no
+reality at all but what continues in being both at first and last, is
+the true existence and naught besides.</p>
+
+<p>10. He whose mind is attached to aught, which is unreal both at first
+and at last, is either an infatuated fool or a brute animal, that can
+never be brought to reason.</p>
+
+<p>11. It is the mind that makes the world and stretches it as in its
+imagination; but upon a comprehensive view (or closer investigation) of
+it, the mind is in its nothingness.</p>
+
+<p>12. Ráma said:—I am fully persuaded to believe, sir, that the mind is
+the active agent in this world, and is subject to decay and death (like
+the other organs of sensation).</p>
+
+<p>13. But tell me sir, what are the surest means of guarding the mind
+from illusion, because you only are the sun to remove the darkness of
+Raghu’s race.</p>
+
+<p>14. Vasishtha replied:—The best way to guard the mind from delusion,
+is first of all the knowledge of the sástras, and next the exercise of
+dispassionateness, and then the society of the good, which lead the
+mind towards its purity.</p>
+
+<p>15. The mind which is fraught with humility and holiness, should have
+recourse to preceptors who are learned in philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>16. The instruction of such preceptors, makes a man to practice his
+rituals at first, and then it leads the mind gradually to the abstract
+devotion of the Most-Holy.</p>
+
+<p>17. When the mind comes to perceive by its own cogitation, the presence
+of the supreme spirit in itself; it sees the universe spread before it
+as the cooling moonbeams.</p>
+
+<p>18. A man is led floating as a straw on the wide ocean of the world,
+until it finds its rest in the still waters under the coast of reason.</p>
+
+<p>19. Human understanding comes to know the truth by means of its
+reasoning, when it puts down all its difficulties, as the purewater
+gets over its sandy bed.</p>
+
+<p>20. The reasonable man distinguishes the truth from untruth, as the
+goldsmith separates the gold from ashes; but the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_712">[712]</span>
+unreasonable are as
+the ignorant, incapable to distinguish the one from the other.</p>
+
+<p>21. The divine Spirit is imperishable after it is once known to the
+human soul; and there can be no access of error into it, as long as it
+is enlightened by the light of the holy spirit.</p>
+
+<p>22. The mind which is ignorant of truth, is ever liable to error, but
+when it is acquainted with truth, it becomes freed from its doubts; and
+is set above the reach of error.</p>
+
+<p>23. O ye men! that are unacquainted with the divine spirit, you bear
+your souls for misery alone; but knowing the spirit, you become
+entitled to eternal happiness and tranquility.</p>
+
+<p>24. How are ye lost to your souls by blending with your bodies, expand
+the soul from under the earthly frame, and you will be quite at rest
+with yourselves.</p>
+
+<p>25. Your immortal soul has no relation to your mortal bodies, as the
+pure gold bears no affinity to the earthen crucible in which it is
+contained.</p>
+
+<p>26. The Divine Spirit is distinct from the living soul, as the lotus
+flower is separate from the water which upholds it; as a drop of water
+is unattached to the lotus-leaf whereon it rests. My living soul is
+crying to that Spirit with my uplifted arms, but it pays no heed to my
+cries.</p>
+
+<p>27. The mind which is of a gross nature, resides in the cell of the
+body, like a tortoise dwelling in its hole; it is insensibly intent
+upon its sensual enjoyments, and is quite neglectful about the welfare
+of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>28. It is so shrouded by the impervious darkness of the world, that
+neither the light of reason, nor the flame of fire, nor the beams of
+the moon, nor the gleams of a dozen of zodiacal suns, have the power to
+penetrate into it.</p>
+
+<p>29. But the mind being awakened from its dormancy, begins to reflect on
+its own state; and then the mist of its ignorance flies off, like the
+darkness of the night at sun-rise.</p>
+
+<p>30. As the mind reclines itself constantly on the downy bed <span class="pagenum" id="Page_713">[713]</span>
+of its
+meditation, for the sake of its enlightenment; it comes to perceive
+this world to be but a vale of misery.</p>
+
+<p>31. Know Ráma! the soul to be as unsullied by its outer covering of
+the body, as the sky is unsoiled by the clouds of dust which hide its
+face; and as the petals of the lotus are untainted by the dew-drops,
+falling upon them at night. (No liquid is attached to the oily surface
+of lotus-leaves).</p>
+
+<p>32. As dirt or clay clinging to the outer side of a gold ornament,
+cannot pierce into the inside; so the gross material body is attached
+outside the soul, without touching its inside.</p>
+
+<p>33. Men commonly attribute pleasure and pain to the soul; but they are
+as separate from it, as the rain drops and the flying dust, are afar
+and apart from the sky.</p>
+
+<p>34. Neither the body nor the soul is subject to pain or pleasure, all
+which relate to the ignorance of the mind; and this ignorance being
+removed, it will be found that they appertain to neither. (The mind
+alone is subject to both through its ignorance; but the philosophic
+mind knows all partial evils sarvárti, to be universal good).</p>
+
+<p>35. Take not to your mind O Ráma! the pain or pleasure of either; but
+view them in an equal light, as you view things in the tranquility of
+your soul.</p>
+
+<p>36. All the outspreading phenomena of the world, which are beheld all
+about us, are as the waves of the boundless ocean of the Divine Spirit;
+or as the gaudy train of the peacock, displayed in the sphere of our
+own souls. (So the mind displays its thoughts in a train).</p>
+
+<p>37. The bright substance of our soul, presents to us the picture of
+creation, as a bright gem casts its glare to no purpose; but by its own
+nature. (And so the mind deals with its dreams in vain).</p>
+
+<p>38. The spirit and the material world, are not the same thing; the
+spirit is the true reality, and the duality of the world, is only a
+representation or counterpart of the Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>39. But Brahma, is the whole totality of existence, and know <span class="pagenum" id="Page_714">[714]</span>
+the
+universe as the expansion of the universal soul; therefore O Ráma! give
+up your error of the distinction of one thing from another (lit.: such
+as I am this one, and the other is another).</p>
+
+<p>40. There can be no distinction, Ráma, in the everlasting and all
+extensive plenum of Brahma; as there is no difference in the whole body
+of water of the wide extended ocean.</p>
+
+<p>41. All things being one and alike in the self-same substratum of the
+Supreme Soul, you cannot conceive of there being any other thing (a
+duality) in it, as you cannot imagine a particle of frost to abide in
+the fire.</p>
+
+<p>42. By meditating on the Supreme Soul in yourself, and by contemplation
+of the intelligent Spirit in your own intellect, you will find the
+glory of the Supreme Spirit, shining brightly in your pure spirit.</p>
+
+<p>43. Therefore ease your mind, O Ráma! and know that there is no mistake
+nor error in your believing the all as one; and that there is no new-birth
+or a new born being (in the world), but all that is or <has> come
+to existence, is ever existent in the Supreme.</p>
+
+<p>44. Ease yourself, O Ráma! by knowing that there is no duality (save
+the Unity of God); and that there is no contrariety of things (as that
+of heat and cold), except their oneness in the Divine moniety. Then
+knowing yourself as a spiritual being, and situated in the purity of
+Divine essence, you shall have no need of devotion or adoration (in
+order to appease or unite yourself with the Deity). And knowing also
+that you are not separated from God, forsake all your sorrow (to think
+of your helpless state).</p>
+
+<p>45. Be tolerant, composed and even-minded; remain tranquil, taciturn
+and meek in your mind; and be as a rich jewel, shining with your
+internal light. Thus you will be freed from the feverish vexations of
+this worldly life.</p>
+
+<p>46. Be rational and dispassionate and calm in your desire; remain sober
+minded and free from ardent expectations; and rest satisfied with what
+you get of your own lot, in order to be freed from the feverish heat of
+worldliness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_715">[715]</span>
+47. Be unimpassioned and unperturbed with earthly cares; be pure and
+sinless, and neither be penurious nor prodigal, if you will be freed
+from the fever heat of this world.</p>
+
+<p>48. Be free from all anxiety, O Ráma! by your obtaining of that good
+which the world cannot give, and which satisfies all our earthly wants.
+Have this supermundane bliss, O Ráma, and be as full as the ocean, and
+free from the feverish cares of this world.</p>
+
+<p>49. Be loosened from the net of thy loose desires, and wipe off the
+unguent of delusive affections from thy eyes: let thy soul rest
+satisfied with thyself, and be freed from the feverish anxieties of the
+world.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+ <div class="stanza">
+ <div class="verse indent4">बिकल्पजाल निर्म्मुक्त मायाञ्जनार्ब्बर्जितः ।</div>
+ <div class="verse indent4">आत्मनात्मनितृप्तात्मविज्वरोभबराघव ॥ ४६ ॥</div>
+ </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>50. With your spiritual body reaching beyond the unbounded space, and
+rising above the height of the highest mountain, be freed from the
+feverish and petty cares of life.</p>
+
+<p>51. By enjoyment of what you get (as your lot), and by asking of naught
+of any body anywhere; by your charity rather than your want or asking
+of it, you must be free from the fever of life.</p>
+
+<p>52. Enjoy the fulness of your soul in yourself like the sea, and
+contain the fulness of your joy in your own soul like the full moon. Be
+self-sufficient with the fulness of your knowledge and inward bliss.</p>
+
+<p>53. Knowing this world as unreal as a pseudoscopic sight, no wise
+man is misled to rely in its untruthful scenes. So you Ráma, that
+are knowing and <a id="visionary"></a>visionary, and are sane and sound headed, and of
+enlightened understanding, must be always charming with your perfect
+ease from sorrow and care.</p>
+
+<p>54. Now Ráma! reign over this unrivalled sovereignty, by the direction
+of your sovran Sire, and manage well everything under your own
+inspection. This kingdom is fraught with every blessing, and the rulers
+are all loyal to their king. Therefore you must neither leave out to do
+what is your duty, nor be elated with your happy lot of royalty.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_716">[716]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VI.<br>
+<span class="small">LECTURE ON THE DISCHARGE OF DUTY.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Effect of Acts, Transmigration of souls and their
+Liberation in Life time.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—In my opinion, a man is liberated who does his
+works from a sense of his duty, and without any desire of his own or
+sense of his own agency in it. (Here subjection to allotted duty, is
+said to be his freedom; but that to one’s own desire or free choice, is
+called to be his bondage and slavery).</p>
+
+<p>2. Who so having obtained a human form, is engaged in acts out of his
+own choice and with a sense of his own agency, he is subjected to his
+ascension and descension to heaven and hell by turns (according to the
+merit or demerit of his acts, while there is no such thing in the doing
+of his duty).</p>
+
+<p>3. Some persons who are inclined to unduteous (or illegal) acts, by
+neglecting the performance of their destined (or legal) duties, are
+doomed to descend to deeper hells, and to fall into greater fears and
+torments from their former states.</p>
+
+<p>4. Some men who are fast bound to the chain of their desires, and
+have to feel the consequences of their acts, are made to descend to
+the state of vegetables from their brutal life, or to rise from it to
+animal life again.</p>
+
+<p>5. Some who are blessed with the knowledge of the Spirit, from their
+investigation of abstruse philosophy, rise to the state of moniety
+(Kaivalya); by breaking through the fetters of desire. (<i>Kaivalya</i>
+is the supreme bliss of God in his solity, to which the divine sage
+aspires to be united. Or it is the complete unity with oneself
+irrespective of all connections).</p>
+
+<p>6. There are some men, who after ascending gradually in the scale of
+their creation in former births, have obtained their liberation in the
+present life of <i>rájas-sátwika</i> or active goodness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_717">[717]</span>
+7. Such men being born again on earth, assume their bright qualities
+like the crescent moon, and are united with all prosperity, like the
+Kurchi plant which is covered with blossoms in its flowering time of
+the rainy season. (The good effects of former acts, follow a man in his
+next birth).</p>
+
+<p>8. The merit of prior acts follows one in his next state, and the
+learning of past life meets a man in his next birth, as a pearl is born
+in a reed. (A particular reed is known to bear pearly seeds within
+them, well known by the name of <i>Vansalochana</i>).</p>
+
+<p>9. The qualities of respectability and amiableness, of affability and
+friendliness, and of compassion and intelligence, attend upon these
+people like their attendants at home. (<i>i.e.</i> He becomes master of
+them).</p>
+
+<p>10. Happy is the man who is steady in the discharge of his duties, and
+is neither overjoyed nor depressed at the fruition or failure of their
+results. (Duties must be done, whether they repay or not).</p>
+
+<p>11. The defects of the dutiful and their pain and pleasure, in
+the performance of duties, are all lost under the sense of their
+duteousness; as the darkness of night, is dispelled by the light of the
+day, and the clouds of the rainy season, are dispersed in autumn.</p>
+
+<p>12. The man of a submissive and sweet disposition, is liked by every
+body; as the sweet music of reeds in the forest, attracts the ears of
+wild antelopes. (The deer and snakes, are said to be captivated by
+music of pipe).</p>
+
+<p>13. The qualities of the past life, accompany a man in his next birth;
+as the swallows of the rainy weather, attend on a dark cloud in the
+air. (This bird is called a hansa or hernshaw by Shakespeare; as, when
+it is autumn, I can distinguish a swallow from a hernshaw).</p>
+
+<p>14. Being thus qualified by his prior virtues, the goodman has
+recourse to an instructor for the development of his understanding, who
+thereupon puts him in the way to truth.</p>
+
+<p>15. The man with the qualities of reason and resignation of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_718">[718]</span> his mind,
+beholds the Lord as one, and of the same form as the imperishable soul
+within himself.</p>
+
+<p>16. It is the spiritual guide, who awakens the dull and sleeping mind
+by his right reasoning; and then instils into it the words of truth,
+with a placid countenance and mind.</p>
+
+<p>17. They are the best qualified in their subsequent births, who learn
+first to awaken their worthless and dormant minds, as they rouse the
+sleeping stags in the forest.</p>
+
+<p>18. It is first by diligent attendance on good and meritorious guides
+(or gurus), and then by cleansing the gem of their minds by the help
+of reasoning that the pure hearted men come to the light of truth, and
+perceive the divine light shining in their souls.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_719">[719]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VII.<br>
+<span class="small">ON ATTAINMENT OF DIVINE KNOWLEDGE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Attainment of knowledge by Intuition, compared to the
+falling of a fruit from heaven.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—I have told you Ráma, the usual way to knowledge
+for mankind in general; I will now tell you of another method distinct
+from the other.</p>
+
+<p>2. Now Ráma! we have two ways which are best calculated for the
+salvation of souls, born in human bodies on earth: the one is by their
+attainment of heavenly bliss, and the other by that of their final
+beatitude (apavarga).</p>
+
+<p>3. And there are two methods of gaining these objects; the one being
+the observance of the instructions of the preceptor, which gradually
+leads one to his perfection in the course of one or reiterated births.</p>
+
+<p>4. The second is the attainment of knowledge by intuition, or by self
+culture of a partly intelligent being; and this is as the obtaining of
+a fruit falling from heaven.</p>
+
+<p>5. Hear now of the attainment of intuitive knowledge, as that of
+getting a fruit fallen from the sky, from the old tale which I will now
+recite to you.</p>
+
+<p>6. Hear the happy and holy story, which removes the fetters of our good
+and evil deeds, and which the last born men (now living), must taste
+with a zest for their enlightenment, as others relish a fruit fallen
+from heaven for their entertainment.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_720">[720]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VIII.<br>
+<span class="small">SONG OF THE SIDDHAS OR HOLY ADEPTS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Wandering of Janaka in a Vernal garden, and hearing the
+Song of Siddhas.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—There lives the mighty king of the Videhas
+(Tirhutians) Janaka by name, who is blessed with all prosperity and
+unbounded understanding.</p>
+
+<p>2. He is as the ever fruitful <i>kalpa</i> tree to the host of his suitors,
+and as the vivifying sun to his lotus-like friends; he is as the genial
+spring to the florets of his relatives, and as the god Cupid to females.</p>
+
+<p>3. Like the dvija-rája or changeful moon, he gives delight to the
+dvija—or twice born Bráhmans, as that luminary gives the lilies to
+bloom; and like the luminous sun he destroys the darkness of his gloomy
+enemies. He is an ocean of the gems of goodness to all, and the support
+of his realm, like Vishnu the supporter of the world.</p>
+
+<p>4. He chanced on a vernal eve to wander about a forest, abounding in
+young creepers with bunches of crimson blossoms on them, and resonant
+with the melody of mellifluous <i>kokilas</i>, warbling in their tuneful
+choirs.</p>
+
+<p>5. He walked amidst the flowery arbours, resembling the graceful
+beauties with ornaments upon them, and sported in their bowers as the
+god Vásava disports in his garden of <i>Nandana</i>. (Eden or Paradise).</p>
+
+<p>6. Leaving his attendants behind him, he stepped to a grove standing on
+the steppe of a hill, in the midst of that romantic forest, which was
+redolent with the fragrance of flowers borne all about by the playful
+winds.</p>
+
+<p>7. He heard in one spot and within a bower of <i>támala</i> trees, a mingled
+voice as that of some invisible aerial spirits (siddhá), proceeding
+from it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_721">[721]</span>
+8. I will now recite to you, O lotus-eyed Ráma! the songs of the
+siddhas, residing in the retired solitudes of mountainous regions, and
+dwelling in the caverns of hills, and which relate principally to their
+spiritual meditations.</p>
+
+<p>9. The siddhas sang:—We adore that Being which is neither the
+subjective nor objective (not the viewer nor the view); and which in
+our beliefs is the positive felicity, that rises in our souls, and has
+no fluctuation in it.</p>
+
+<p>10. Others chanted:—We adore that Being which is beyond the triple
+states of the subject, its attribute and its object; (who is neither
+the sight, seeing and the seer). It is the light of that soul, or
+spiritual light which exists from before the light of vision, which
+is derived from the light of the sun. (Sruti: The light of the Spirit
+shone before the physical lights of the sun, moon, stars, lightning and
+fire).</p>
+
+<p>11. Others chanted:—We adore that Being, which is in the midst of all
+what is and what is not (<i>i.e.</i> between existence and non-existence);
+and that spiritual light, which enlightens all lightsome objects.</p>
+
+<p>12. Some sang:—We adore that real existence which is all, whose are all
+things, and by whom are all made, from whom have all sprung, for whom
+they exist, in whom they subsist, unto whom do all return, and into
+which they are all absorbed.</p>
+
+<p>13. Some caroled:—We adore that Spirit, which begins with the letter
+<i>a</i> and ends in <i>h</i> with the dot <i>m</i> (<i>i.e.</i> <i>aham</i> or <i>ego</i>); and
+which we continually inspire and respire in our breathings. (Aham)
+hansah.</p>
+
+<p>14. Others said:—Those who forsake the God—Isha, that is situated
+within the cavity of their hearts (hrid), and resort to others, that
+are without them, are verily in search of trifles by disregarding the
+gem <i>kaustabha</i> (philosopher’s stone); which is placed in their hands.</p>
+
+<p>15. Others again declared:—It is by forsaking all other desires, that
+one obtains this object of his wish; and this being had, the poisonous
+plants of all other desires, are entirely uprooted from the heart.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_722">[722]</span>
+16. Some of them pronounced saying:—The foolish man who knowing the
+insipidity of all worldly things, attaches his mind to earthly object,
+is an ass and no human being.</p>
+
+<p>17. Others said:—The sensual appetites, which incessantly rise as
+snakes from the cavities of the body, are to be killed by the cudgel of
+reason, as Indra broke the hills by his thunderbolts.</p>
+
+<p>18. At last they said:—Let men try to secure the pure happiness of
+quietism, which serves to give tranquility to the minds of the
+righteous. The sober-minded that are situated in their real and natural
+temperament, have their best repose in the lap of undisturbed and
+everlasting tranquility.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_723">[723]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER IX.<br>
+<span class="small">REFLECTIONS OF JANAKA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Abstraction of Janaka’s mind, from the Vanities of
+the World.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Upon hearing these sonatas of the Siddhas (holy
+spirits), Janaka was dejected in his mind, like a coward at the noise
+of a conflict.</p>
+
+<p>2. He returned homeward, and conducted himself in silence to his
+domicile, as a stream glides in its silent course under the beachening
+trees, to the bed of the distant main.</p>
+
+<p>3. He left behind all his domestics in their respective dwellings
+below, and ascended alone to the highest balcony, as the sun mounts on
+the top of a mountain.</p>
+
+<p>4. Hence he saw the flights of birds, flying at random in different
+directions; and reflected on the hurrying of men in the same manner,
+and thus bewailed in himself on their deplorable conditions.</p>
+
+<p>5. Ah me miserable! that have to move about in the pitiable state of
+the restless mob, that roll about like a rolling stone (or ball),
+pushed backward and forward by another.</p>
+
+<p>6. I have a short span of endless duration, alloted to my share of
+lifetime; and yet I am a senseless fool to rely my trust in the hope of
+its durability.</p>
+
+<p>7. Short is the duration of my royalty also, which is limited to the
+period of my lifetime only; how is it then that I am secure of its
+continuance as a thoughtless man.</p>
+
+<p>8. I have an immortal soul lasting from before, and to continue even
+after my present existence, the present life is a destructible One, and
+yet I am a fool to rely in it, like a boy believing the painted moon as
+real.</p>
+
+<p>9. Ah! what sorcerer is it that hath thus bewitched me by his magic
+wand, as to make me believe I am not spell-bound at all.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_724">[724]</span>
+10. What faith can I rely in this world which has nothing substantial
+nor pleasant, nor grand nor real in it; and yet I know not why my mind
+is deluded by it.</p>
+
+<p>11. What is far from me (<i>i.e.</i> the object of sense), appears to be
+near me by my sensation of the same; and that which is nearest to me
+(<i>i.e.</i> my inmost soul), appears to be farthest from me (by my want
+of its perception). Knowing this I must abandon the outward (sensible
+objects), in order to see the inward soul.</p>
+
+<p>12. This hurry of men in their pursuits, is as impetuous and transient
+as the torrent of a whirlpool. It precipitates them to the depth of
+their dangers, and is not worth the pain it gives to the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>13. The years, months, days and minutes, are revolving with succession
+of our pains and pleasures; but these are swallowed up, by the repeated
+trains of our misery (rather than that of happiness).</p>
+
+<p>14. I have well considered everything, and found them all perishable
+and nothing durable or lasting; there is nothing to be found here
+worthy of the reliance of the wise.</p>
+
+<p>15. Those standing at the head of great men to-day, are reduced low in
+the course of a few days; what worth is there in giddy and thoughtless
+greatness, which is deserving of our estimation.</p>
+
+<p>16. I am bound to the earth without a rope, and am soiled herein
+without any dirt (in my person); I am fallen though sitting in this
+edifice. O my soul! how art thou destroyed while thou art living.</p>
+
+<p>17. Whence has this causeless ignorance over-powered my intelligent
+soul, and whence has this shadow overspread its lustre, as a dark cloud
+overshades the disk of the sun?</p>
+
+<p>18. Of what avail are these large possessions and numerous relations to
+me, when my soul is desponding in despair, like children under the fear
+of ghosts and evil spirits.</p>
+
+<p>19. How shall I rest any reliance in my sensual enjoyments which are
+the harbingers of death and disease, and what <span class="pagenum" id="Page_725">[725]</span>
+dependence is there on my
+possessions, which are fraught only with anxieties and cares?</p>
+
+<p>20. It matters not whether these friends, the feeders on my fortune,
+may last or leave me at once; my prosperity is but a bubble and a false
+appearance before me.</p>
+
+<p>21. Men of greatest opulence and many good and great men and our best
+friends and kindest relatives, that have gone by, now live in our
+remembrance only.</p>
+
+<p>22. Where are the riches of the monarchs of the earth, and where the
+former creations of Brahmá. The past have given way to the present, and
+these are to be followed by future ones; hence there is no reliance in
+anything.</p>
+
+<p>23. Many Indras have been swallowed up like bubbles in the ocean of
+eternity; hence the like expectation of my longevity, is ridiculous to
+the wise.</p>
+
+<p>24. Millions of Brahmás have passed away, and their productions have
+disappeared under endless successions; the kings of earth have fled
+like their ashes and are reduced to dust; what is the confidence then
+in my life and stability?</p>
+
+<p>25. The world is but a dream by night, and the sensuous body is but a
+misconception of the mind. If I rely any credence on them I am really
+to be blamed.</p>
+
+<p>26. My conception of myself and perception of other things, are false
+imaginations of my mind. It is my egoism that has laid hold of me, as a
+demon seizes an idiot.</p>
+
+<p>27. Fool that I am, that seeing I do not see, how the span of my life
+is measured every moment by the imperceptible instants of time, and
+their leaving but a small portion behind.</p>
+
+<p>28. I see the juggler of time seizing on Brahmás, Vishnus and Rudras,
+and making playthings of them on his play ground of the world, and
+flinging them as balls all about.</p>
+
+<p>29. I see the days and nights are incessantly passing away, without
+presenting me an opportunity which I can behold the true imperishable
+one.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_726">[726]</span>
+30. The objects of sensual enjoyment, are larking in the minds of men,
+like cranes gabbling in the lakes, and there is no prospect of the true
+and best object in the mind of any body.</p>
+
+<p>31. We meet with one hardship after another, and buffet in the waves of
+endless miseries in this earth; and yet are we so shameless, as not to
+feel ourselves disgusted with them.</p>
+
+<p>32. We see all the desirable objects to which we attach our thoughts,
+to be frail and perishing; and yet we do not seek the imperishable one,
+and our everlasting good in the equanimity of the Soul.</p>
+
+<p>33. Whatever we see to be pleasant in the beginning (as pleasures), or
+in the middle (as youth), or in the end (as virtuous deeds), and at all
+times (as earthly goods), are all unholy and subject to decay.</p>
+
+<p>34. Whatever objects are dear to the hearts of men, they are all found
+to be subject to the changes of their rise and fall (<i>i.e.</i> their
+growth and decay).</p>
+
+<p>35. Ignorant people are everywhere enclined to evil acts, and they
+grow day by day more hardened in their wicked practices. They repent
+every day for their sins, but never reprove themselves for the better.</p>
+
+<p>36. Senseless men are never the better for anything, being devoid of
+sense in their boyhood, and heated by their passions in youth. In their
+latter days, they are oppressed with the care of their families, and in
+the end thy are overcome by sorrow and remorse.</p>
+
+<p>37. Here the entrance and exit (<i>i.e.</i> the birth and death), are both
+accompanied with pain and sorrow (for men come to and go away from the
+world with crying). Here every state of life is contaminated by its
+reverse (as health by disease, youth by age, and affluence by poverty).
+Everything is unsubstantial in this seeming substantial world, and yet
+the ignorant rely in its unreal substantiality.</p>
+
+<p>38. The real good that is derived here by means of painful austerities,
+are the arduous sacrifices of <i>rájasúyá asvamedha</i> and others, or
+the attainment of heaven; which has no reality in it, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_727">[727]</span>
+by reason of
+its short duration of the small portion of a <i>kalpa</i> compared with
+eternity. (The Hindu heaven is no lasting bliss).</p>
+
+<p>39. What is this heaven and where is it situated, whether below or
+above us or in this nether world; and where its residents are not
+overtaken by multitudes of locust-like evils? (The Sruti says: “Evil
+spirits infest the heavens and they drove the gods from it.” So we read
+of the Titan’s and Satan’s band invading heaven).</p>
+
+<p>40. We have serpents creeping in the cells of our hearts, and have our
+bodies filled with the brambles of diseases and dangers, and know not
+how to destroy them.</p>
+
+<p>41. I see good is intermixed with evil, and pain abiding with pleasure;
+there is sorrow seated on the top (excess) of joy, so I know not
+whereto I shall resort.</p>
+
+<p>42. I see the earth full of common people, who are incessantly born and
+dying in it in multitudes; but I find few honest and righteous men in
+it.</p>
+
+<p>43. These beautiful forms of women, with their eyes like lotuses, and
+the gracefulness of their blandishments, and their charming smiles, are
+made so soon to fade and die away.</p>
+
+<p>44. Of what note am I among these mighty beings (as Brahmá and Vishnu),
+who at the twinkling of their eyes, have created and destroyed the
+world; and yet have succumbed to death at last. (This last passage
+shows that the Hindu gods were mortal heroes of antiquity).</p>
+
+<p>45. You are constantly in search of what is more pleasant and lasting
+than others, but never seek after that highest prosperity, which is
+beyond all your earthly cares.</p>
+
+<p>46. What is this great prosperity in which you take so much delight,
+but mere vexation of your spirit, which proves this vanity to be your
+calamity only.</p>
+
+<p>47. Again what are these adversities which you fear so much, they may
+turn to your true prosperity, by setting you free from earthly broils
+and leading you to your future felicity.</p>
+
+<p>48. The mind is broken to pieces by its fears, like the fragments
+of the moon, floating on the waves of this ocean of the world. Its
+selfishness has tossed it to and fro, and this world being got rid of,
+it is set at perfect ease (from all vicissitudes of fortune).</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_728">[728]</span>
+
+<p>49. There is an unavoidable chance (necessity), actuating our worldly
+affairs and accidents; it is impudence therefore to welcome some as
+good, and to avoid others as evil.</p>
+
+<p>50. We are prone to things that are pleasant to the sight, but bear a
+mortal flame in them, and consume us like poor moths in the flames,
+which it is bright to see but fatal to feel.</p>
+
+<p>51. It is better to roll in the continual flame of hell-fire to which
+one is habituated, than rise and fall repeatedly in the furnace of this
+world, as from the frying pan into the fire.</p>
+
+<p>52. This world is said by the wise, to be a boundless ocean of woes
+(vale of tears); how then can any body who has fallen amidst it, expect
+any happiness herein?</p>
+
+<p>53. Those who have not fallen in the midst and been altogether drowned
+in woe, think the lesser woes as light and delight, as one condemned to
+be beheaded, is glad to escape with a light punishment.</p>
+
+<p>54. I am grown as the vilest of the vile, and resemble a block of wood
+or stone; there is no difference in me from the ignorant clown, who has
+never had the thought of his eternal concerns in his head.</p>
+
+<p>55. The great arbour of the world, with its very many branches and
+twigs and fruits, hath sprung from the mind and is rooted in it. (The
+outer world has its existence in the sensitive mind only; because
+the insensible bodies of the dead and inanimate things, have no
+consciousness of it).</p>
+
+<p>56. It is the conception (sankalpa) of the world, in my mind, that
+causes its existence and presents its appearance before me, I will
+now try to efface this conception from my mind, and forget this world
+altogether. (This doctrine of idealism was derived, by Janaka from his
+own Intuition (Svena-Jnátena)).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_729">[729]</span>
+57. I will no longer allow myself to be deluded like monkeys with the
+forms of things, which I know are not real; mere ideal, but changeful
+and evanescent. (Here also Janaka learns by intuition not to rely on
+concrete forms, but to have their general and abstract ideas).</p>
+
+<p>58. I have woven and stretched out the web of my desires, and collected
+only my woes and sorrows; I fell into and fled from the snare of my own
+making, and am now resolved to take my rest in the soul.</p>
+
+<p>59. I have much wailed and bitterly wept, to think of the depravity and
+loss of my soul, and will henceforth cease to lament, thinking that I
+am not utterly lost.</p>
+
+<p>60. I am now awakened, and am glad to find out the robber of my soul;
+it is my own mind, and this I am determined to kill, as it had so long
+deprived me of the inestimable treasure of my soul.</p>
+
+<p>61. So long was my mind at large as a loose and unstrung pearl, now
+will I pierce it with the needle of reason, and string it with the
+virtues of self-controul and subjection to wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>62. The cold icicle of my mind, will now be melted down by the sun-heat
+of reason; and will now be confined in the interminable meditation of
+its Eternal Maker (from where it cannot return. Sruti).</p>
+
+<p>63. I am now awakened to my spiritual knowledge, like these holy
+Siddhas, saints and sages; and will now pursue my spiritual inquiries,
+to the contentment of my soul.</p>
+
+<p>64. Having now found my long-lost soul, I will continue to look upon
+its pure light with joy in my lonely retirement; and will remain as
+quiet and still in contemplation of it, as a motionless cloud in autumn.</p>
+
+<p>65. And having cast away the false belief of my corporeality (<i>i.e.</i> of
+being an embodied being), and that these possessions and properties are
+mine, and having subdued my force by mighty enemy of the Mind, I will
+attain the tranquility of my soul by the help of my reason.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_730">[730]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER X.<br>
+<span class="small">SILENT AND SOLITARY REFLECTIONS OF JANAKA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Janaka though employed in Ritual service, continues
+firm in his meditation, and comes to the conclusion of his
+immortality.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> related:—While Janaka was thus musing in his mind, there
+entered the chamberlain before him, in the manner of Aruna standing
+before the chariot of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>2. The Chamberlain said:—O sire! thy realm is safe under thy protecting
+arms; now rise to attend to the daily rites, as it becomes your majesty.</p>
+
+<p>3. There the maidservants are waiting with their water pots, filled
+with water perfumed with flowers, camphor and saffron for your bathing,
+as the nymphs of the rivers, have presented themselves in person before
+you.</p>
+
+<p>4. The temples are decorated with lotuses and other flowers, with the
+bees fluttering upon them; and hung over with fine muslin, as white as
+the fibers of lotus stalks.</p>
+
+<p>6. The altars are filled with heaps of flowers, aromatic drugs and
+rice; and adorned with every decoration in the princely style.</p>
+
+<p>7. The Bráhmans are waiting there for your majesty’s presence, after
+making their sacred ablution and purifications, and offering their
+prayers for the remission of sins; and are expecting to get their
+worthy gifts from thee.</p>
+
+<p>8. The hand-maids are attending to their duties, graced with flappers
+(chámaras) in their hands; and the feasting ground is cleansed with
+sandal paste and water.</p>
+
+<p>9. Rise therefore from thy seat, and be it well with thee to perform
+the prescribed duties; because it does not become the best of men, to
+be belated in the discharge of their duties.</p>
+
+<p>10. Though thus besought by the head chamberlain, yet the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_731">[731]</span>
+king remained
+in his meditative mood, thinking on the wonderful phenomena of nature.</p>
+
+<p>11. This royalty and these duties of mine, said he, are for a very
+short time; I do not require these things that are so transitory in
+their nature.</p>
+
+<p>12. I must leave these things, that are at best but waters of the
+mirage; and remain close to myself in my lonesome seclusion, like a
+calm and solitary lake or sea.</p>
+
+<p>13. These pleasures of the world, that are displayed around us, are
+entirely useless to me; I will leave them with promptness on my part,
+and remain in my happy retirement.</p>
+
+<p>14. Abandon, O my heart! thy shrewdness in pursuing after the objects
+of thy desire; in order to avoid the snares of disease and death (which
+have been set on thy way).</p>
+
+<p>15. In whatever state or condition of life, the heart is set to hanker
+for its delight; it is sure to meet with some difficulty, distress or
+disappointment coming out of the same.</p>
+
+<p>16. Whether your heart is engaged in, or disengaged from the objects of
+sense, you will never find any one of them, either in act or thought,
+conducing to the true happiness of your soul.</p>
+
+<p>17. Forsake therefore the thoughts of the vile pleasure of your senses,
+and betake yourself to those thoughts, which are fraught with the true
+happiness of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>18. Thinking in this manner, Janaka remained in mute silence, and his
+restless mind became as still, as it made him sit down like a picture
+in painting or as a statue.</p>
+
+<p>19. The chamberlain uttered not a word any more, but stood silent in
+mute respect through fear of his master, from his knowledge of the
+dispositions of kings.</p>
+
+<p>20. Janaka in his state of silent meditation, reflected again on the
+vanity of human life, with cool calmness of his mind, and said:—</p>
+
+<p>21. Now must I be diligent to find out the best and most precious
+treasure in the world, and know what is that imperishable thing, to
+which I shall bind my soul as its surest anchor.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_732">[732]</span>
+22. What is the good of my acts or my cessation from them, since
+nothing is produced of anything, which is not perishable in its nature.
+(Thence the product of acts is perishing, and its want is a lasting
+good).</p>
+
+<p>23. It matters not whether the body is active or inactive, since all
+its actions end in utter inaction at last as all force is reduced
+to rest. It is the pure intellect within me that is always the same
+(<i>i.e.</i> ever active and undecaying), and which loses nothing from the
+loss of the body or by want of bodily actions. (The body is a dead mass
+without the active principle of the mind).</p>
+
+<p>24. I do not wish to have what I have not, nor dare leave what I have
+already got; I am content with myself; so let me have what is mine and
+what I have. (The Yogis like Stoics, were fatalists and content with
+their lot).</p>
+
+<p>25. I get no real good by my acts here, nor lose anything by refraining
+from them. What I get by my acts or want of action, is all <i>Nil and
+Null</i> of Vanity or Vanities, and nothing to my purpose or liking.</p>
+
+<p>26. Whether I am doing or not doing, and whether my acts are proper or
+improper; I have nothing to desire here, nor anything desirable that I
+have to expect from them. (Hence no exertion will bring on the desired
+object, unless it is given by our lot).</p>
+
+<p>27. I have got what was due to my past actions, and this body is the
+result of my former acts. It may be in its motion and action, or it may
+be still and fade away, which is the same thing to me.</p>
+
+<p>28. The mind being set at ease by want of its action or passion, the
+actions of the body and its members, are alike in their effects to
+those of not doing them. (Involuntary actions done without the will are
+of no account).</p>
+
+<p>29. The acts of men are reckoned as no acts of theirs, which happen to
+take place as the results of their destiny or previous actions. (The
+action or passion relates to the mind only, but <span class="pagenum" id="Page_733">[733]</span>
+the doing of destiny
+being involuntary, such action of men is accounted as no action of
+theirs).</p>
+
+<p>30. The impression which the inward soul bears of its past actions
+and passions, the same gives its colour to the nature and character
+of the actions of men afterwards. Now that my soul has obtained its
+imperishable state of spirituality, I am freed from the mutabilities of
+the transmigrations of my body and mind.
+Commentary:—Janaka arrives after all his previous reasonings and
+deductions, to the conclusion of the certainty of his being an
+intellectual and spiritual being, endowed with an immortal soul, and
+entitled to everlasting life, after the destruction of the frail body
+and the changeful mind with it.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_734">[734]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XI<br>
+<span class="small">SUBJECTION OF THE MIND.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Janaka’s Discharge of his Daily Rites, and Admonition
+to his Mind.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> related:—Having thought so, Janaka rose up for performance of
+his daily rites as usual, and without the sense of his agency in them.
+He did his duty in the same manner as the sun rises every day to give
+the morn, without his consciousness of it.</p>
+
+<p>2. He discharged his duties as they presented themselves to him,
+without any concern or expectation of their rewards. He did them
+awaking as if it were in his sleep. Gloss:—He did his acts by rote,
+but wot not what he did in his insensibility of them; and such acts of
+insensibility are free from culpability or retribution.</p>
+
+<p>3. Having discharged his duties of the day and honoured the gods and
+the priests, he passed the night absorbed in his meditations.</p>
+
+<p>4. His mind being set at ease, and his roving thoughts repressed from
+their objects, he thus communed with his mind at the dead of night, and
+said:—</p>
+
+<p>5. O my mind that art roving all about with the revolving world, know
+that such restlessness of thine, is not agreeable to peace of the soul;
+therefore rest thou in quiet from thy wanderings abroad.</p>
+
+<p>6. It is thy business to imagine many things at thy pleasure, and as
+thou thinkest thou hast a world of thoughts present before thee every
+moment. (For all things are but creations of the imaginative mind).</p>
+
+<p>7. Thou shootest forth in innumerable woes by the desire of endless
+enjoyments, as a tree shoots out into a hundred branches, by its being
+watered at the roots.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_735">[735]</span>
+8. Now as our births and lives and worldly affairs, are all productions
+of our wistful thoughts, I pray thee therefore, O my mind! to rest in
+quiet by abandonment of thy earthly desires.</p>
+
+<p>9. O my friendly mind! weigh well this transient world in thy thoughts,
+and depend upon it, shouldst thou find aught of substantiality in it.</p>
+
+<p>10. Forsake thy fond reliance on these visible phenomena; leave these
+things, and rove about at thy free will without caring for any thing.</p>
+
+<p>11. Whether this unreal scene, may appear to or disappear from thy
+sight, thou shouldst not suffer thyself to be affected by it in either
+case.</p>
+
+<p>12. Thou canst have no concern with the visible objects (phenomenal
+world); for what concern can one have with any earthly thing which is
+inexistent of itself as an unsubstantial shadow?</p>
+
+<p>13. The world is an unreality like thyself, hence there can be no true
+relation between two unrealities. It is but a logomachy to maintain the
+relation of two negatives to one another.</p>
+
+<p>14. Granting, thou art a reality and the world is unreal, still there
+can be no agreement between you, as there is none between the living
+and the dead, and between the positive and negative ideas.</p>
+
+<p>15. Should the mind and the world be both of them realities and
+co-existent for ever, then there can be no reason for the joy or sorrow
+of the one at the gain or loss of the other.</p>
+
+<p>16. Now therefore avoid the great malady of worldliness, and enjoy the
+silent joy in thyself, like one sitting in the undisturbed depth of the
+Ocean, with the rolling tide and waves above his head.</p>
+
+<p>17. Do not consume like a puppet in pyrotechnics with the fiery remorse
+of worldliness, nor be burnt down to the darkness of despair in this
+gloomy scene of the world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_736">[736]</span>18. O wicked mind! there is nothing here so good and great, whereby
+thou mayest attain thy high perfection, except by the forsaking of
+all frivolities and dependance on thy entire resignation to the
+unchangeable One.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_737">[737]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XII.<br>
+<span class="small">ON THE GREATNESS OF INTELLIGENCE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The Living Liberation of Janaka, and the pre-eminence of
+reason and intelligence.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Janaka having expostulated in his manner with his
+mind, attended to the affairs of the state without shrinking from them
+by his mental abstraction.</p>
+
+<p>2. He was however not gladdened by the gladsome tasks and tidings, but
+was indifferent to them as in his slumber of fixed mindedness in his
+maker.</p>
+
+<p>3. Hence forward, he was not intently employed in his duties, nor
+forsook them altogether; but attended unconcernedly to the business
+which presented itself to him.</p>
+
+<p>4. His constant habit of reasoning, enabled him to understand the
+eternal verity; and preserved his intellect from blunders, as the sky
+is untouched by the flying dust.</p>
+
+<p>5. By his cultivation of reasoning, his mind was enlightened and
+fraught with all knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>6. Unaccustomed to duality, his mind had learnt to know the sole unity
+only; and his intelligent soul shone within him, as the full bright sun
+in the sky. (He felt a flood of light in himself, as the believer finds
+in his inmost soul. Gloss).</p>
+
+<p>7. He became acquainted with the Soul, that is inherent in all bodies,
+and beheld all things abiding in the omnipotence of the Intellect, and
+identic with the infinite.</p>
+
+<p>8. He was never too joyous nor exceedingly sorrowful, but preserved
+his equanimity amidst the conflicts of his soul and sensible objects
+(between spirituality and materiality).</p>
+
+<p>9. The venerable Janaka, became liberated in his living state since
+that time; and is since renowned as a veteran theosophist among mankind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_738">[738]</span>
+10. He continues thence forward to reign over the land of the Videha
+people, without being subject to the feelings of joy or sorrow for a
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>11. Knowing the causes of good and evil, he is neither elated nor
+dejected at any favourable or unfavourable circumstances of his life,
+nor does he feel glad or sad at the good or bad accident relating the
+state.</p>
+
+<p>12. He did his duties without setting his mind to them, which was
+wholly employed in his intellectual speculations.</p>
+
+<p>13. Remaining thus in his hypnotic state of sound sleep (abstraction),
+his thoughts are quite abstracted from all objects about him.</p>
+
+<p>14. He is unmindful of the past, and heedless about the future; and
+enjoys the present moment only, with a gladsome heart and cheerful mind.</p>
+
+<p>15. He obtained the obtainable what is worthy to be obtained, by his
+own ratiocination (or self-reflection), and not O lotus-eyed Ráma! by
+any other desire (<i>i.e.</i> by abandoning all his worldly desires).</p>
+
+<p>16. Therefore we should reason (or reflect) in our minds, so long as we
+succeed to arrive at the conclusion of the subject.</p>
+
+<p>17. The presence of the Holy Light, is not to be had either by the
+lectures of a preceptor, or the teaching of the sástras; it is not the
+result of meritorious acts, nor of the company of the holy men; but the
+result of your own intellection.</p>
+
+<p>18. A good understanding assisted by the power of its accompanying
+percipience (prajaná), leads to the knowledge of that highest state,
+which the acts of your piety cannot do.</p>
+
+<p>19. He who has set before his sight the keen light of the lamp of
+his percipience, is enabled to see both the past and future in his
+presence; and no shadow of ignorance intercepts his vision.</p>
+
+<p>20. It is by means of his percipience, that one is enabled to cross
+over the sea of dangers; as a passenger goes across a river in a boat
+or raft.</p>
+
+<p>21. The man that is devoid of his prescience, is overtaken <span class="pagenum" id="Page_739">[739]</span>
+even by
+small mishaps; as a light straw is blown away by the slightest breeze.</p>
+
+<p>22. One who is endued with foresight, passes over the eventful ocean
+of the world, without the assistance of friends and guidance of the
+sástras.</p>
+
+<p>23. The man with foreknowledge, sees the result of his actions
+beforehand; but one without his prevision, is at a loss to judge of the
+imminent events.</p>
+
+<p>24. Good company and learning, strengthen the understanding; as the
+watering of a plant, tends towards its growth and fructification.</p>
+
+<p>25. The infant understanding like a tender shoot, takes a deep root in
+time; and having grown up like a tree, bears the sweet fruit in its
+season; like the cooling moonbeams at night.</p>
+
+<p>26. Whatever exertions are made by men for the acquisition of
+external properties, the same should be more properly devoted for the
+improvement of their understandings at first. (<i>i.e.</i> Intellectual
+improvement should precede that of outward circumstances).</p>
+
+<p>27. Dullness of the understanding, which is the source of all
+evils, and the storehouse of misery, and the root of the arbour of
+worldliness, must be destroyed first of all.</p>
+
+<p>28. Great minded men get in their understandings, whatever good they
+may expect to find in this earth, in heaven above and in the nether
+world. (The mind is the seat of all treasures).</p>
+
+<p>29. It is by means of one’s good understanding only, that he can get
+over the ocean of the world; and not by his charities, pilgrimages or
+religious austerities.</p>
+
+<p>30. The divine blessing attending on mortal men on earth, is the sweet
+fruit of the tree of knowledge. (Here is a contrast with the mortal
+taste of the forbidden fruit of knowledge).</p>
+
+<p>31. Wisdom nips with its sharp nails, the heads of the elephantine
+(gigantic) bonds of giddiness, with as much ease as the lion kills the
+deer, or as if it were destroying a strong lion by a weak jackal. (Weak
+wisdom having the power of destroying the wild worldliness).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_740">[740]</span>
+32. An ordinary man is often seen to become the ruler of men, by means
+of his greater knowledge than others; and the wise and discreet are
+entitled to glory in both worlds.</p>
+
+<p>33. Reason overcomes all its adversaries, dealing in diverse forms of
+sophistry; as a disciplined warrior, overpowers on a host of untrained
+savage people.</p>
+
+<p>34. Reasoning is as the philosopher’s stone, which converts the base
+metals to gold; and is hidden in the casket of rational souls as the
+best treasure. It yields the desired fruits of men like the kalpa plant
+of Paradise at a thought.</p>
+
+<p>35. The right reasoner gets across the wide ocean of the world, by
+means of his reasoning, while the unreasonable rabble are born away by
+its waves; as the skillful boat-man cuts across the current, while the
+unskilled waterman is tossed about by the waves.</p>
+
+<p>36. A well directed understanding leads to the success of an
+undertaking, but the misguided intellect goes to the rack and ruin; the
+one sails to the shore before the wind; but the other is tossed in his
+wrecked vessel over the wide gulph of the world.</p>
+
+<p>37. The keen sighted and unbiassed wise man, is never over-come by the
+evils arising from his desires: as the arrows of the adversary, do not
+pierce the body of a soldier in armour.</p>
+
+<p>38. The sapience of a man, gives him an insight into every thing in the
+world and, the all knowing man, is neither subjected to dangers nor
+reverses of his fortune.</p>
+
+<p>39. The dark and wide-stretching cloud of blind egoism, which
+overshadows the sun-light of the Supreme Spirit within us, is driven
+away by the breath of intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>40. The improvement of the understanding, is the first requisite
+towards the knowledge of the Supreme soul; as the cultivation of the
+ground, is of primary importance to the farmer, desirous of reaping a
+rich harvest.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_741">[741]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XIII.<br>
+<span class="small">GOVERNMENT OF THE MIND.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Reasons and Rules of Restraining the Mind from the
+instance of Janaka’s <i>insouciance</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Now Ráma! Reflect on the Supreme spirit, in thy
+own spirit like Janaka; and know the object of the meditation of the
+wise, without any difficulty or failing.</p>
+
+<p>2. The wise men of the latter genus <i>rájasa-sátvika</i> or active
+goodness, obtain their desired objects by themselves (of their own
+institution), like Janaka and other holy sages.</p>
+
+<p>3. As long as you continue to restrain your organs of sense from their
+objects, so long will the divine soul grace your own inward soul with
+its presence.</p>
+
+<p>4. The Lord God and Supreme soul, being thus gracious to thee; thou
+shalt see a halo of light cast over all things, and dispersing all thy
+woes from thy sight.</p>
+
+<p>5. The sight of the Supreme spirit, will remove the plentiful seeds of
+bias from thy mind; and it will drive away the woeful sights of misery,
+pouring upon thy view in copious showers.</p>
+
+<p>6. Continue like Janaka in the wilful discharge of thy duties, and
+prosper by placing thy intellectual sight, on the divine light shining
+in thy inward spirit.</p>
+
+<p>7. It was by his inward cogitations, that Janaka found the
+transitoriness of the world; and by placing his faith in the
+unchangeable Spirit, he found its grace in time.</p>
+
+<p>8. Hence neither the pious acts of men, nor their riches nor friends,
+are of any use to them for their salvation from the miseries of life,
+unless it be by their own endeavor for the enlightenment of their soul.</p>
+
+<p>9. They who rely their faith in the gods, and depend upon them for
+fulfilment of their desires and future rewards, are <span class="pagenum" id="Page_742">[742]</span>
+perverted in their
+understandings, and cannot be heirs of immortality.</p>
+
+<p>10. It is by reliance in one’s reasoning and resignation, and by his
+spiritual vision of the Supreme spirit, that he is saved from his
+misery in this ocean of the world.</p>
+
+<p>11. The attainment of this blessed knowledge of intuition, which
+removeth our ignorance, is as what they call thy getting of fruit
+fallen from heaven (<i>i.e.</i> a heavenly and accidental fruit).</p>
+
+<p>12. The intelligence which looks into itself as Janaka’s, finds the
+soul developing of itself in it, as the lotus-bud opens of itself in
+the morning.</p>
+
+<p>13. The firm conviction of the material world, melts into nothing under
+the light of percipience; as the thick and tangible ice, dissolves into
+fluidity under the heat of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>14. The consciousness that this is I (<i>i.e.</i> one’s self-consciousness),
+is as the shade of night, and is dispelled at the rise of the sun of
+intellect, when the Omnipresent light appears vividly to sight.</p>
+
+<p>15. No sooner one loses his self-consciousness that ‘this is himself,’
+than the All-pervading Soul opens fully to his view.</p>
+
+<p>16. As Janaka has abandoned the consciousness of his personality,
+together with his desires also; so do you, O intelligent Ráma, forsake
+them by your acute understanding and of the mind discernment.</p>
+
+<p>17. After the cloud of egoism is dispersed, and the sphere is cleared
+all around; the divine light appears to shine in it, as brightly as
+another sun.</p>
+
+<p>18. It is the greatest ignorance to think of one’s egoism (or
+self-personality); this thought being relaxed by the sense of our
+nothingness, gives room to the manifestation of holy light in the soul.</p>
+
+<p>19. Neither think of the entity nor non-entity of thyself or others;
+but preserve the tranquility of thy mind from both the thoughts of
+positive and negative existences; in order to get rid of thy sense of
+distinction between the producer and the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_743">[743]</span>
+produced (<i>i.e.</i> of the cause
+and effect, the both of which are identic in Vedánta or spiritual
+philosophy).</p>
+
+<p>20. Again your fostering a fondness for something as good, and a hatred
+to others as bad; is but a disease of your mind for your uneasiness
+only. (Since all things are good in their own kinds, and nothing bad in
+its nature, and in the sight of God, who pronounced all things good).</p>
+
+<p>21. Be not fond of what you think to be beautiful, nor disgusted at
+what appears hateful to you, get rid of these antagonist feelings, and
+be even-minded by fixing it on One, before whom all things are alike
+and equally good: (all partial evil is universal good. Pope.)</p>
+
+<p>22. They that view the desirable and the detestable in the same light,
+are neither fond of the one nor averse to the other.</p>
+
+<p>23. Until the fancy of the desirableness of one thing and dislike of
+the other, is effaced from the mind, it is as hard to have the good
+grace of equanimity, as it is difficult for the moonlight to pierce
+through the cloudy sky.</p>
+
+<p>24. The mind which considers one thing as some thing à propos, and
+another as nothing to the purpose (the one as desirable and the other
+worthless); is deprived of the blessing of indifference, as the brier
+<i>sákota</i> is despised, not standing with all its fruits and flowers.</p>
+
+<p>25. Where there is a craving for the desirable, and an aversion to
+what is unseemly, and when there is a cry for gain and an outcry at
+one’s loss; it is impossible for even mindedness, dispassionateness and
+tranquility of the mind, to abide then and there in that state.</p>
+
+<p>26. There being only the essence of one pure—Brahma diffused throughout
+the universe, how very improper is it to take the one as many, and
+among them something as good or bad; (when the Maker of all has made
+all things good).</p>
+
+<p>27. Our desires and dislike, are the two apes abiding on the tree of
+our hearts; and while they continue to shake and swing it with their
+jogging and jolting, there can be no rest in it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_744">[744]</span>
+28. Freedom from fear and desire, from exertions and action, together
+with sapience and equanimity, are the inseparable accompaniments of
+ease and rest.</p>
+
+<p>29. The qualities of forbearance and fellow feeling, accompanied with
+contentment and good understanding, and joined with a mild disposition
+and gentle speech, are the indispensable companions of the wise man,
+who has got rid of his desires and the feelings of his liking or
+dislike.</p>
+
+<p>30. The mind running to meanness, is to be repressed by restraining
+the passions and appetites; as the current of water running below, is
+stopped by its lock gate.</p>
+
+<p>31. Shun the sight of external things, which are the roots of error and
+fallacy; and consider always their internal properties both when you
+are awake and asleep, and also when you are walking about or sitting
+down.</p>
+
+<p>32. Avaricious men are caught like greedy fishes, in the hidden net
+of their insatiable desires, and which is woven with the threads of
+worldly cares, and is under the waters of worldly affairs.</p>
+
+<p>33. Now Ráma! cut the meshes of this net, with the knife of thy good
+understanding; and disperse it in the water, as a tempest rends the
+thick cloud and scatters it about the air.</p>
+
+<p>34. Try O gentle Ráma! to uproot the root of worldliness, which sprouts
+forth in the weeds of vice, with the hatchet of your perseverance and
+the eliminating shovel of your penetration.</p>
+
+<p>35. Employ your mind to hew down the cravings <of> your mind, as they
+use the axe to cut down a tree, and you will then rest in quiet as you
+arrive at the state of holiness.</p>
+
+<p>36. Having destroyed the former state of your mind by its present
+state, try to forget them both by your heedless mind in future, and
+manage yourself unmindful of the world. (There is a play of the word
+mind in the original).</p>
+
+<p>37. Your utter oblivion of the world, will prevent the revival of your
+mind; and stop the reappearance of ignorance which is concomitant with
+the mind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_745">[745]</span>
+38. Whether you are waking or sleeping or in any other state of your
+life; you must remember the nihility of the world, and resign your
+reliance in it.</p>
+
+<p>39. Leave off your selfishness (mamatá or <i>mei tatem</i>), O Ráma! and
+rely in the disinterestedness of your soul; lay hold on what ever
+offers of itself to you and without seeking for it all about.</p>
+
+<p>40. As the Lord God doth every thing, and is yet aloof from all; so
+must thou do all thy acts outwardly, and without thyself mixing in any.</p>
+
+<p>41. Knowing the knowable, one finds himself as the increate soul and
+Great Lord of all; but being apart from that soul, he views only the
+material world spread before him.</p>
+
+<p>42. He who has the sight of the inner spirit, is freed from the
+thoughts of the external world, and is not subjected to the joy or
+grief or sorrow and other evils of his life.</p>
+
+<p>43. He is called a Yogi who is free from passions and enmity, and looks
+on gold and rubbish in the same light; he is joined with his Joy in his
+Yoga, and disjoined from all worldly desires.</p>
+
+<p>44. He enjoys the fruit of his own acts, and minds not what he wastes
+or gives away; he has the evenness of his mind in every condition, and
+is unaltered by pain or pleasure. (The Sanskrit <i>sukh-dukkha</i> means
+also prosperity and adversity, and good and evil of every kind).</p>
+
+<p>45. He who receives what he gets, and is employed with whatever offers
+of itself to him, without considering the good or evil that he is to
+gain by it, is not plunged into any difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>46. He who is certain of the truth of the spiritual essence of the
+world, pants not for its physical enjoyments, but he is even-minded at
+all times.</p>
+
+<p>47. The dull mind follows the active intellect in accomplishing its
+objects, as the carnivorous cat or fox follows the lion in quest of
+meat.</p>
+
+<p>48. As the servile band of the lion feeds on the flesh acquired by his
+prowess, so the mind dwells upon the visible and sensible object, which
+it perceives by power of the intellect.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_746">[746]</span>
+
+<p>49. Thus the unsubstantial mind, lives upon the outer world by the help
+of the intellect; but as it comes to remember its origination from the
+intellect, it recoils back to its original state.</p>
+
+<p>50. The mind which is moved and lighted, by the heat and light of the
+lamp of the intellect; becomes extinct without its physical force, and
+grows as motionless as a dead body.</p>
+
+<p>51. The nature of the intellect is known to exclude the idea of motion
+or pulsation from it; and the power which has vibration in it, is
+called intellection or the mind in the sástras.</p>
+
+<p>52. The breathing (or vibration) of the mind, like the hissing of
+a snake, is called its imagination (kalpana); but by knowing the
+intellect as the Ego, it comes to the true knowledge of the inward soul.</p>
+
+<p>53. The intellect which is free from thoughts (<i>chetyas</i>), is the
+ever lasting Brahma; but being joined with thought, it is styled the
+imaginative principle or Mind.</p>
+
+<p>54. This power of imagination having assumed a definite form, is termed
+the mind; which with its volition and options, is situated in the heart
+of living beings.</p>
+
+<p>55. With its two distinct powers of imagination and volition, it is
+employed in the acts of discriminating and choosing the agreeable
+from what is disagreeable to it. (<i>i.e.</i> The imagination and volitive
+faculties of the mind, supply it with the power of discrimination and
+option, between what is fit or unfit for or suitable to it).</p>
+
+<p>56. The intellect being seated in the heart with its thoughts and
+volitions, forgets its spiritual nature, and remains as a dull material
+substance (<i>i.e.</i> the passivity of the heart as opposed to the activity
+of the mind).</p>
+
+<p>57. The intellect being thus confined in the hearts of all animals
+in this world, continues in utter oblivion of its nature; until it
+is awakened of itself, either by its intuition or instruction of
+preceptors &c.</p>
+
+<p>58. So it is to be wakened by means of instruction, derived from the
+sástras and preceptors; as also by the practice of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_747">[747]</span>
+dispassionateness,
+and subjection of the organs of sense and action.</p>
+
+<p>59. When the minds of living beings, are roused by learning and
+self-control; they tend towards the knowledge of the Great Brahma, or
+else they rove at random about the wide world.</p>
+
+<p>60. We must therefore awaken our minds, which are rolling in the pit of
+worldliness, through the inebriety of the wine of error, and which are
+dormant to divine knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>61. As long as the mind is unawakened, it is insensible of every thing
+(in its true light); and though it perceives the visibles, yet this
+perception of them is as false as the sight of a city in our fancy.</p>
+
+<p>62. But when the mind is awakened by divine knowledge, to the sight of
+the supreme Being; it presents every thing in itself, as the inward
+fragrance of flowers pervades the outer-petals also. (<i>i.e.</i> The inward
+sight of God, comprehends the view of every thing in it).</p>
+
+<p>63. Though the intellect has the quality of knowing every thing,
+contained in all the three worlds; yet it has but a little knowledge
+of them from the paucity of its desire of knowing them. (<i>i.e.</i> Though
+the capacity of the intellect is unlimited, yet its knowledge is
+proportionate to its desire of gaining it).</p>
+
+<p>64. The mind without the intellect is a dull block of stone; but it is
+opened by divine light, like the lotus-bud expanding under the light of
+the sun.</p>
+
+<p>65. The imaginative mind is as devoid of understanding, as a statue
+made of marble, is unable to move about by itself.</p>
+
+<p>66. How can the regiments drawn in painting, wage a war in a mutual
+conflict, and how can the moon-beams, make the medicinal plants emit
+their light? (<i>i.e.</i> As it is life that makes the armies fight, so it
+is the intellect that actuates the mind to its operations. And as the
+plants shine by night by the sun-beams, which are deposited in them
+during day, so shines the mind by means of its intellectual light).</p>
+
+<p>67. Who has seen dead bodies besmeared with blood to run <span class="pagenum" id="Page_748">[748]</span>
+about on the
+ground, or witnessed the fragments of stones in the woods to sing in
+musical strains?</p>
+
+<p>68. Where does the stone idol of the sun, dispel the darkness of the
+night; and where does the imaginary forest of the sky spread its shade
+on the ground?</p>
+
+<p>69. Of what good are the efforts of men, who are as ignorant as blocks
+of stones, and are led by their error in many ways; except it be to
+endanger themselves by the mirage of their minds? (The exertions of the
+ignorant are as vain as the labour of a Sisyphus).</p>
+
+<p>70. It is the imagination that displays the non-existent as existent in
+the soul, as it is the sun-beams, which exhibit the limpid main in the
+mazy sands.</p>
+
+<p>71. It is the moving principle in the body, which the sophists
+designate as the mind; but know it as a mere force of the winds, like
+the vital breath of living beings.</p>
+
+<p>72. Those whose self-consciousness is not disturbed, by the currents
+of their passions and desires; have their spiritual souls like an
+unperturbed stream (of psychic fluid).</p>
+
+<p>73. But when this pure consciousness is befouled by the false fancies
+of this and that, and that this is I and that is mine; then the soul
+and the vital principle, are both taken together to form a living being.</p>
+
+<p>74. The mind, the living soul and understanding, are all but fictitious
+names of an unreality, according to the conceptions of false thinkers,
+and not of them that know the true spirit.</p>
+
+<p>75. There is no mind nor understanding, no thinking principle, nor the
+body in reality; there is the only reality of the One universal spirit,
+which is ever existent everywhere. (So says the Sruti:—All else are but
+transitory creations of imagination, and so pass into nothing).</p>
+
+<p>76. It is the soul, which is all this world, it is time and all its
+fluctuations, it is more transparent than the atmosphere, and it is
+clear as it is nothing at all.</p>
+
+<p>77. It is not always apparent, owing to its transparency; <span class="pagenum" id="Page_749">[749]</span>
+yet it is
+ever existent, owing to our consciousness of it. The spirit is beyond
+all things, and is perceived by our inward perception of it.</p>
+
+<p>78. The mind vanishes into nothing, before our consciousness of the
+Supreme Soul; just as darkness is dispelled from that place, where the
+sunshine is present.</p>
+
+<p>79. When the transparent and self-conscious soul, raises other figures
+of its own will; then the presence of the soul is forgotten, and hid
+under the grosser creations of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>80. The Volitive faculty of the Supreme Spirit, is denominated the
+mind; but it is unmindedness and want of volition on our part, which
+produces our liberation. (<i>i.e.</i> Our submission to the Divine Will,
+sets us free from all liability, as it is said in the Common prayer:
+“Let thy will (and not mine) be done”).</p>
+
+<p>81. Such is the origin of the mind which is the root of creation; it
+is the faculty of the volition of the principle of our consciousness,
+otherwise called the soul. (The mind is the volitive faculty of the
+Spirit, see 80).</p>
+
+<p>82. The intellectual essence being defiled by its desires, after
+falling from its state of indifference; becomes the principle of
+production or producing the desired objects. (This is called the mind
+or the creative power, and is represented as the first male or the
+agent of procreation).</p>
+
+<p>83. The mind becomes extinct, by loss of the vital power; as the shadow
+of a thing disappears, by removal of the substance. (This passage
+establishes the extinction of the mind, with all its passions, feelings
+and thoughts upon the death of a man).</p>
+
+<p>84. The living body perceives in its heart, the notion of a distant
+place which exists in the mind, and this proves the identity of the
+vital breath and the thinking mind. (Again the communication of the
+passions and feelings between the heart and mind, proves them to be the
+same thing). (Hence the word <i>antah-karana</i> or inward sense, is applied
+both to the heart as well as mind).</p>
+
+<p>85. It is therefore by repressing the mind, that the vital breath is
+also repressed, to produce longevity and healthiness. (It is <span class="pagenum" id="Page_750">[750]</span>
+done
+by the following methods, viz; by dispassionateness, suppression of
+breathing, by yoga meditation, and by cessation from bodily labour in
+the pursuit of worldly objects).</p>
+
+<p>86. The stone has the capability of mobility, and the fuel of
+inflammability; but the vital breath and mind, have not their powers
+of vibration or thinking (without the force of the intellect and the
+spirit).</p>
+
+<p>87. The breath of life is inert by itself, and its pulsation is the
+effect and composed of the surrounding air; so the action of the mind,
+is owing to the force of the intellect; whose pellucidity pervades all
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>88. It is the union of the intellectual and vibrating powers, which
+is thought to constitute the mind. Its production is as false, as the
+falsity of its knowledge. (All mental phenomena are erroneous).</p>
+
+<p>89. The mental power is called error and illusion also, and these
+in ignorance of the Supreme Brahma, produce the knowledge of this
+poisonous world (which springs from illusion of the mind).</p>
+
+<p>90. The powers of the intellect and vibration, combined with those of
+imagination and volition which constitute the mind, are productive of
+all worldly evils, unless they are weakened and kept under restraint.</p>
+
+<p>91. When the intellect thinks on or has the perception by the pulsation
+caused by the air. The wind of breath gives pulsation to the intellect,
+and causes its power of intellection; and this intellectual power gives
+rise to all the thoughts and desires of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>92. The percussive intellect which extends over the undivided sphere
+of the universe, is verily the thinking power, the mind is a false
+imagination like the ghost of infants.</p>
+
+<p>93. The intellect is the power of intellection, which cannot be
+intercepted by any thing else, like the mind any where; as there is no
+power to rise in contest against the almighty Indra. (The Intellect or
+<i>chit</i> being the Divine mind).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_751">[751]</span>94. Thus there being no relation between intellection and the mind, it
+is wrong to attribute the mind with the power of thinking, which is not
+related with it.</p>
+
+<p>95. How can this union of the intellect with its vibration only,
+be styled the mind with its multifarious functions. The commander
+alone cannot be called an army without its component parts of horse,
+elephants and others.</p>
+
+<p>96. Hence there is no such thing as a good or bad mind in any of the
+three worlds (when there is no mind at all). The bias of its existence
+will be utterly removed by full knowledge of spirituality (tatwajnana).
+(That there is but one Spirit only).</p>
+
+<p>97. It is in vain and to no purpose, that they imagine the being of the
+mind. It is proved to be an unreality and having no substantiality of
+its own.</p>
+
+<p>98. Therefore, O magnanimous Ráma! never give rise to false
+imaginations of any kind, and particularly that of the mind which never
+exists any where.</p>
+
+<p>99. False phantasies rise as the mirage, from want of a full knowledge
+of things; they spring in the heart which is as barren as a desert, for
+want of the rain of full knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>100. The mind is a dead thing owing to its want of a form or activity,
+and yet it is a wonder as it is idolized in the circles of common
+people.</p>
+
+<p>101. It is a wonder that the mind, having no soul nor essence, nor a
+body nor size or support of its own, should spread its net over all
+ignorant minds.</p>
+
+<p>102. One who falls a victim to his unarmed and impotent mind, likens a
+man who says, he is hurt in his body by the falling of a lotus-flower
+upon it.</p>
+
+<p>103. The man that is undone by his inert, dumb and blinded mind (that
+neither sees nor seizes nor talks to him); is as one who complains of
+his being burnt by the cool full-moon-beams.</p>
+
+<p>104. People are verily killed by an antagonist, who is present before
+them; but it is a wonder that the ignorant are foiled by the inexistent
+mind of their own making.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_752">[752]</span>105. What is the power of that thing, which is a creation of mere
+fancy, and an unreal presentation of ignorance; and which being sought
+after, is no where to be found.</p>
+
+<p>106. It is a great wonder, that men should be overcome by their
+impotent minds, dealing in their delusions only.</p>
+
+<p>107. It is ignorance that is ever exposed to dangers, and the ignorant
+are always the victims of error. Know the unreal world to be the
+creation of ignorance and of the ignorant only.</p>
+
+<p>108. Oh! the misery of miseries, that the ignorant make of this
+creation of their ignorance to themselves, and that they fabricate
+a living soul for their sufferings only. (A separate living soul
+<i>jívátmá</i>, is denied in Vedánta).</p>
+
+<p>109. I weet this frail world to be a creation of the false imagination
+of the ignorant, and this earth to be as fragile as to be broken and
+borne away by the waves of the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>110. It is like the dark collyrium, which is broken down by the
+surrounding waters or seas, serving as its grinding mill; and yet
+men are maddened with it, as those struck by moon-beams. (Moonstruck
+lunatics).</p>
+
+<p>111. The visible world disappears at the sight of reason, as a man
+flies from the sight of his foe; and the train of imaginary creations
+fly before it, like hosts of demons vanquished by the gods.</p>
+
+<p>112. Thus is this world, which is a false creation of fancy, and exists
+nowhere except in the idle brains of the ignorant, lost into nothing at
+the sight of reason.</p>
+
+<p>113. He who is not able to govern his mind, and efface the thoughts of
+this false world, arising in the minds of the ignorant only; is not
+worthy of being advised in the abstruse doctrines of spirituality.</p>
+
+<p>114. Those who are confirmed in their belief of the visibles, and are
+self-sufficient in their knowledge of these; are unable to grasp the
+subtile science of abstract philosophy, and are therefore unfit to
+receive spiritual instruction.</p>
+
+<p>115. These men are insensible of the soft tunes of the lute
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_753">[753]</span>who are
+accustomed to the loud beatings of drum, and they are startled at
+seeing the face of a sleeping friend (<i>i.e.</i> their hidden soul).</p>
+
+<p>116. They who fly with fear from the loud songs (preachings) of false
+preachers, cannot have the patience to listen to the silent lesson of
+their inward monitor; and they who are deluded by their own minds, can
+hardly be reclaimed by any other.</p>
+
+<p>117. Those who are tempted to taste the gall of worldly pleasures for
+sweet, are so subdued by its effects on their understandings, that they
+lose the power of discerning the truth altogether; and it is therefore
+useless to remonstrate with them.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_754">[754]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XIV.<br>
+<span class="small">ASCERTAINMENT OF THE THINKING PRINCIPLE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. People unworthy of persuasion, their transmigrations,
+and purification of the mind.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said: These multitudes of men, that are carried away by the
+waves of the torrents of the sea of worldly pursuits; are deaf and dumb
+to the admonitions of their spiritual instructors.</p>
+
+<p>2. They are not fit to derive the benefit of the spiritual knowledge,
+which I have propounded in this yogasástra by my rational discourses.</p>
+
+<p>3. They who are born blind and can see nothing, are not to be presented
+with the picture of a garden, portrayed with blooming blossoms and
+beautiful flowers by the intelligent artist.</p>
+
+<p>4. There is no such fool that would present fragrant odours to one,
+whose nostrils are snorting under some nasal disease (pinasa. Polypus),
+nor so great a dolt, that would consult an ignorant man on spiritual
+matters.</p>
+
+<p>5. What lack-wit is there, that would refer a question on law or
+religious subjects, to one of ungoverned passions and organs of sense,
+or whose eyeballs are rolling with the intoxication of wine.</p>
+
+<p>6. Who asks of the dead the way he should go, or one in the grave about
+the concourse in the city; and what witless man is there that resorts
+to an idiot to clear his doubts.</p>
+
+<p>7. Of what good is it to advise a witling, whose serpentine mind is
+coiling and creeping in the cave of his heart; and though it lies there
+in silence and sightless, is yet ungovernably wild?</p>
+
+<p>8. Know there is no such a thing as a well governed mind, for though
+you may fling it at a distance from you, yet it is never lost or
+annihilated. (The unsubdued mind recurs to us in repeated births).</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_755">[755]</span>
+
+<p>9. The simpleton who does not bear his sway over his false and delusive
+mind, is tormented to death by its venomous smart, as if stung by a
+deadly reptile.</p>
+
+<p>10. The learned know the vital powers, and the operations of the organs
+of action, to depend on the action and force of the soul; say then, O
+Ráma, what is that thing which they call the mind. (The three functions
+of motion, thought and organic action, being conducted by force of the
+vital breath, it is in vain to suppose the existence of the mind).</p>
+
+<p>11. The vital breath gives the force for bodily actions, and the soul
+produces the power of knowledge; the organs act by their own force, and
+the supreme spirit is the main source of all.</p>
+
+<p>12. All forces are but parts of the omnipotence of the supreme Spirit;
+their different appellations are but inventions of men.</p>
+
+<p>13. What is it that they call the living soul, and which has
+blindfolded the world; and what they term as the mind, is really an
+unreality and without any power of its own.</p>
+
+<p>14. Ráma! I have seen the continued misery arising from their false
+conception of the unreal mind; and my pity for them has caused my
+incessant sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>15. But why should I sorrow for the ignorant rabble, who bring their
+woe by their own error? The common herd is born to their misery like
+beasts and brutes.</p>
+
+<p>16. The ignorant rabble are born in their dull material bodies, for
+their destruction only. They are born to die away incessantly, like the
+waves of the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>17. What pity shall I take for them, that are seen every day to perish
+under the jaws of death, like numbers of animals immolated in the
+shambles.</p>
+
+<p>18. For whom shall I sorrow, when I see billions and trillions of gnats
+and moths, are destroyed day by day, by gusts of wind (which is their
+element and support).</p>
+
+<p>19. Whom shall I sorrow for, when I observe on every side the millions
+of deer and beasts of chase, that are killed every day in the hills and
+forests, by their hunters and sportsmen.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_756">[756]</span>
+20. Whom shall I feel for, when I find innumerable shoals of small
+fishes, that are devoured every day in the waters, by the bigger ones!</p>
+
+<p>21. I see an infinite number of animalcules, to be eaten up by flies
+and fleas; which in their turn, are devoured by the voracious spiders
+and scorpions.</p>
+
+<p>22. The frog feeds on flies, and is on its turn devoured by snakes. The
+birds of prey swallow the snake, and the weasel preys upon them.</p>
+
+<p>23. The weasel is killed by the cat, which is killed again by the dog;
+the bear destroys the dog, and is at last destroyed by the tiger.
+(জীবস্যজীবনাহার:—One animal is food to another.)</p>
+
+<p>24. The lion overcomes the tiger, and is overcome on its turn by the
+sarabha (a fabulous beast with eight feet). The sarabha is overthrown
+by its fall on rocky steeps, in its attempt to jump over the gathering
+clouds.</p>
+
+<p>25. The clouds are worsted by tempests, and these again are obstructed
+by the rising rocks and mountains. The mountains are split by thunder
+claps, and the thunderbolts of heaven are broken by the thundering
+Sakra (Jove).</p>
+
+<p>26. This Sakra or Indra is vanquished by Upendra or Vishnu (his younger
+brother), and Vishnu is made to undergo his incarnations in the shapes
+of men and beasts. He is subjected to the vicissitudes of pain and
+pleasure, and to the conditions of disease, decay and death. (Change is
+the order of nature.)</p>
+
+<p>27. Big-bodied beasts are fed upon by the leeches and fleas that stick
+to their bodies to suck their blood; and men fraught with knowledge and
+armed with weapons, are infested by their bloodsucking bugs and gnats.</p>
+
+<p>28. Thus the whole host of living bodies, are continually exposed to
+feed upon and to be fed by one another, with remorseless voracity.</p>
+
+<p>29. There is an incessant growth of leaches, fleas and ants, other
+small insects and worms on the one hand; and a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_757">[757]</span>
+continued dissolution of
+both the big and puny bodies in every place on earth.</p>
+
+<p>30. The womb of the waters, bears the breed of fishes, whales,
+hippopotami and other aquatic animals; and the bowels of the earth,
+produce the multitudes of worms and reptiles to infinity.</p>
+
+<p>31. The air teems with the brood of birds of various kinds, and the
+woods abound with wild beasts, and lions and tigers, the fleet deer and
+other brutes.</p>
+
+<p>32. There are inborn worms growing in the intestines, and upon the skin
+of animal bodies; and parasitical insects and animalcules, feeding upon
+the bark and leaves of trees.</p>
+
+<p>33. Insects are seen to be born in the crusts of stones, as frogs,
+vajrakítas and others; and many kinds of worms and insects, are found
+to grow in and subsist upon the faeces and excrements of animals.</p>
+
+<p>34. In this manner an endless number of living beings, are being born
+and perishing for ever and ever; and it is of no avail to them, whether
+kind hearted men are joyous or sorrowful at their births and deaths.</p>
+
+<p>35. The wise can have no cause for their joy or grief, in this
+continued course of incessant births and deaths of the living world.</p>
+
+<p>36. Such is the nature of all the different series of animal beings,
+that they incessantly grow to fall off like the leaves of trees. (These
+are known as the ephemerids and the heirs and poor pensioners of a day).</p>
+
+<p>37. The kind-hearted man, who wishes to remove the sorrows of the
+ignorant by his advice, attempts an impossibility, as that of shrouding
+the allpervasive sunshine, by means of his umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>38. It is useless to give advice to the ignorant, who are no better
+than beasts in their understandings; as it is fruitless to talk to a
+rock or block of wood or stone in the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>39. The dull-headed ignorant, who are no better than beasts, are
+dragged by their wilful minds, like the cattle by their halters.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_758">[758]</span>
+40. It would make even the stones to melt into tears, to see the
+ignorant plunged in the slough of their perverted minds, and employed
+in acts and rites for their own ruin. (The ruin of their souls caused
+by ritualistic observances.)</p>
+
+<p>41. Men of ungoverned minds, are always exposed to dangers and
+difficulties; but the expurgated minds of the wise, are free from the
+evils and mishaps of life.</p>
+
+<p>42. Now Ráma, consider well the miseries of ungoverned minds; and
+betake yourself to the knowledge of the knowable One. (<i>i.e.</i> The One
+alone that is worthy of being known).</p>
+
+<p>43. Never entertain in your imagination the vain bugbear of a mind,
+which has no real existence of its own; and beware of this false
+belief, which may betray you like the ideal ghost of children.</p>
+
+<p>44. As long as you are forgetful of the soul, you must remain in utter
+ignorance; and so long will you continue to be tortured by the dragon,
+residing in the recess of your heart.</p>
+
+<p>45. Now you have known the whole truth, as I have expounded to you;
+that it is your imagination only, that presents you with the idea of
+your mind, of which you must get rid for ever.</p>
+
+<p>46. If you rely in the visibles, you are subject to the delusion of
+your mind; but no sooner, you shun your reliance in them, than you are
+liberated from your illusion of it.</p>
+
+<p>47. The visible world is a combination, of the three qualities of
+<i>satva</i>, <i>rajas</i> and <i>tamas</i>; and it is exposed before you, by your
+<i>máyá</i> or illusion only, as a snare is spread for entanglement of
+beasts.</p>
+
+<p>48. Think of the inexistence both of the subjective-self and the
+objective world; and remain as firm as a fixed rock on earth, and
+behold the Lord only, in the form of infinite space in thy heart. (This
+is Vasishtha’s Vacuism).</p>
+
+<p>49. Shun, Ráma, the false thoughts of thy self-existence, and that of
+the visible world also; and forsake thy belief in the duality, in order
+to settle thyself in the infinite unity.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_759">[759]</span>
+50. Continue to meditate on the soul, as it is situated between the
+subjective viewer, and the objective view of this world; and as it is
+existent in thy vision, which lies between the two. (<i>i.e.</i> Between
+yourself and the visible object, which is empty space).</p>
+
+<p>51. Forsake the ideas of the subject and object of your taste (<i>i.e.</i>
+of the taster and tastable); and thinking on their intermediate state
+of gustation or tasting, be one with the soul.</p>
+
+<p>52. Ráma, place yourself in the position of your thought or power of
+thinking, which lieth betwixt the thinker and thinkables; support
+your soul on the supportless soul of all, and remain steady in your
+meditation.</p>
+
+<p>53. Forsake the cares of the world, and be exempt from the thoughts
+of existence and non-existence; meditate on the universal soul and be
+settled with thy soul in that soul.</p>
+
+<p>54. When you have learnt to think on the thinkable one, by
+relinquishing the thought of your own existence; you shall then arrive
+to that state of the unconsciousness, which is free from misery (or the
+state of supreme bliss).</p>
+
+<p>55. Know your thoughts to be your fetters, and your self-consciousness
+as your binding chain; therefore O Ráma! loosen the lion of your soul,
+from the prison house of your mind.</p>
+
+<p>56. By departing from the state of the Supreme Soul, and falling to the
+thoughts of the mind, you will be crowded by your imaginations, and see
+only the objects of your thought all about you.</p>
+
+<p>57. The Knowledge, that intellection or thinking power is distinct from
+the soul, introduces the existence of the unhappy mind, which must be
+got rid of for the sake of true happiness. (by knowing them as the one
+and same thing).</p>
+
+<p>58. When you become conscious of the Supreme soul in you, and as
+permeated throughout all nature, you will then find the thinker and his
+thinking, the thinkables and their thoughts, vanish into nothing.</p>
+
+<p>59. The thought that “I have a soul and a living soul also,” brings on
+us all the miseries to which we are exposed to all <span class="pagenum" id="Page_760">[760]</span>
+eternity. (<i>i.e.</i>
+consciousness of a personal entity, causes the woes which personality
+is ever liable to).</p>
+
+<p>60. The consciousness that “I am the one soul, and not a living
+being or distinct existences;” (because all things distinct from the
+universal soul are nothing at all); is called the tranquility of the
+spirit and its true felicity.</p>
+
+<p>61. When you are certain, O Ráma! that the world is the universal soul
+itself, you will find the false distinctions of your mind and living
+soul, to be nothing in reality.</p>
+
+<p>62. When you come to perceive that all this is your very self, your
+mind will then melt away into the soul, as the darkness dissolved in
+the sunlight, and the shadow disappears in the air.</p>
+
+<p>63. As long as you cherish the snake of your mind within yourself, you
+are in danger of catching its poison; but this being removed by your
+yoga meditation, you escape the danger at once.</p>
+
+<p>64. Be bold, O Ráma! to destroy the mighty demon of the deep rooted
+error of your mind, by the power of incantation (<i>mantras</i>) of your
+perfect knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>65. Upon disappearance of the demon of the mind from the dwelling of
+your body, as when a Yaksha disappears in the air, you will be free
+from every disease, danger, care and fear.</p>
+
+<p>66. Dispassionateness, and disinterestedness, joined with the knowledge
+of unity, melt down the substance of the mind, and confer the best and
+highest state of felicity and rest in the Supreme spirit; and bring on
+that state of tranquility which is the main aim of every body. May all
+these blessings attend upon you.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_761">[761]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER. XV.<br>
+<span class="small">ON AVARICE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Description of avarice as the Root of all Evils.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—The soul by following the unholy essence of the
+mind, which is the source of the world, is led to fall into the snare,
+which is laid by it for all living beings.</p>
+
+<p>2. The soul then loses the brightness of its spiritual form, and takes
+the gross shape of the senses: it waits upon the guidance of the mind,
+and indulges in its impure imaginations.</p>
+
+<p>3. It falls into avarice, which like a poisonous plant makes it
+senseless, and spreads a fearful anesthesia over it.</p>
+
+<p>4. Avarice like a dark night, hides the soul under the gloom of
+oblivion, and produces endless pangs to the soul.</p>
+
+<p>5. The god Siva withstood the flame of the kalpa conflagration, but no
+body can withstand the fierce fire of avarice.</p>
+
+<p>6. It bears a form as formidable as that of a long, sharp and sable
+dagger; which is cold in appearance, but very injurious in her effects.</p>
+
+<p>7. Avarice is an evergreen plant, bearing bunches of plenteous fruits
+on high; which when they are obtained and tasted, prove to be bitter
+and galling.</p>
+
+<p>8. Avarice is a voracious wolf, prowling in the recess of the heart;
+and feeding unseen on the flesh and blood and bones of its sheltering
+body.</p>
+
+<p>9. Avarice is as a rainy stream, full of foul and muddy water now
+overflowing and breaking down its banks, and then leaving empty its
+dirty bed.</p>
+
+<p>10. The man stricken with avarice, remains niggardly and broken hearted
+at all times; his spirits are damped, and his sordid soul is debased
+before mankind. He is now dejected, and now he weeps and lays himself
+down in despair.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_762">[762]</span>
+11. He who has not this black adder of greediness, burrowing in the
+recess of his heart, has the free play of his vital breath, which is
+otherwise poisoned by the breath of the viper rankling in his breast.</p>
+
+<p>12. The heart which is not darkened by the gloomy night of greediness,
+feels the rays of humanity sparkling in it, like the glancing of the
+bright moon-beams.</p>
+
+<p>13. The heart that is not eaten up by the corroding cares of avarice,
+is as an uncankered tree, blooming with its blossoms of piety.</p>
+
+<p>14. The current of avarice, is ever running amidst the wilderness
+of human desires, with ceaseless torrents and billows, and hideous
+whirlpools and vortices around.</p>
+
+<p>15. The thread of avarice, like the long line of a flying kite or
+tossing top, whirls and furls and pulls mankind, as its toys and
+playthings.</p>
+
+<p>16. The rude, rough and hard-hearted avarice, breaks and cuts down the
+tender roots of virtues, with the remorseless axe of its hardihood.</p>
+
+<p>17. Foolishmen led by avarice, fall into the hell pit, like the
+ignorant deer into the blackhole; by being enticed by the blades of
+grass, scattered upon its covering top.</p>
+
+<p>18. Men are not so much blinded by their aged and decayed eyesight, as
+they are blinded by the invisible avarice seated in their hearts.</p>
+
+<p>19. The heart which is nestled by the ominous owl of avarice, is as
+bemeaned as the god Vishnu, who became a dwarf in begging a bit of
+ground from Bali.</p>
+
+<p>20. There is a divine power, which hath implanted this insatiable
+avarice in the heart of man; which whirls him about, as if tied by a
+rope, like the sun revolving round its centre in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>21. Fly from this avarice, which is as heinous as the venomous snake.
+It is the source of all evils, and even of death in this mortal world.</p>
+
+<p>22. Avarice blows on men as the wind, and it is avarice that <span class="pagenum" id="Page_763">[763]</span>
+makes them
+sit still as stones; avarice makes some as sedate as the earth, and
+avarice ransacks the three worlds in its rapid course.</p>
+
+<p>23. All this concourse of men, is impelled to and fro by avarice, as if
+they are pulled by ropes; it is easy to break the band of ropes, but
+not the bond of avarice. (There is a play of words here, as that of
+band, bond and bondage).</p>
+
+<p>24. Then Ráma, get rid of avarice by forsaking your desires; because
+it is ascertained by the wise, that the mind dies away by want of its
+desires (to dwell upon).</p>
+
+<p>25. Never observe the distinctions of my, thy and his in all thy
+wishes, but wish for the good of all alike; and never foster any bad
+desire (which is foul in its nature).</p>
+
+<p>26. The thought of self in what is not the self, is the parent of all
+our woe; when you cease to think the notself as the self you are then
+reckoned among the wise.</p>
+
+<p>27. Cut off your egoism, O gentle Ráma! and dwell in thy unearthly self
+by forgetting yourself, and by dispelling your fear from all created
+being. (Here is an alliteration of the letter bh ভ in the
+last line, as ভু, ভব, ভয়).
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_764">[764]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XVI.<br>
+<span class="small">HEALING OF AVARICE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The way to forsake the desires, and become liberated in
+this life and the next.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> said:—It is too deep for me sir, to understand what you say to me,
+for the abandonment of my egoism and avarice.</p>
+
+<p>2. For how is it possible, sir, to forsake my egoism, without forsaking
+this body and every thing that bears relation to it?</p>
+
+<p>3. It is egoism which is the chief support of the body, as a post or
+prop is the support of a thatched house.</p>
+
+<p>4. The body will surely perish without its egoism, and will be cut
+short of its durability, as a tree is felled by application of the saw
+to its root.</p>
+
+<p>5. Now tell me, O most eloquent sir, how I may live by forsaking my
+egoism (which is myself); give me your answer, according to your right
+judgment.</p>
+
+<p>6. Vasishtha replied:—O lotus-eyed and respectful Ráma! abandonment
+of desires, is said to be of two kinds by the wise, who are well
+acquainted with the subject; the one is called the <i>jneya</i> or knowable
+and the other is what they style the thinkable (or dhyeya).</p>
+
+<p>7. The knowledge that I am the life of my body and its powers, and
+these are the supports of my life, and that I am something.</p>
+
+<p>8. But this internal conviction being weighed well by the light of
+reason, will prove that neither am I related with the external body,
+nor does it bear any relation with my internal soul.</p>
+
+<p>9. Therefore the performance of one’s duties, with calmness and
+coolness of his understanding, and without any desire of fruition, is
+called the abandonment of desire in thought.</p>
+
+<p>10. But the understanding which views things in an equal <span class="pagenum" id="Page_765">[765]</span>
+light, and by
+forsaking its desires, relinquishes the body without taking any concern
+for it, and is called the knowing abandonment of desires. (<i>i.e.</i> Of
+which the Yogi has full knowledge).</p>
+
+<p>11. He who foregoes with ease the desires arising from his egoism, is
+styled the thinking abjurer of his desires, and is liberated in his
+life time.</p>
+
+<p>12. He who is calm and even-minded, by his abandonment of vain and
+imaginary desires; is a knowing deserter of his desires, and is
+liberated also in this world.</p>
+
+<p>13. Those who abandon the desires in their thought, and remain with
+listless indifference to everything, are like those who are liberated
+in their life time.</p>
+
+<p>14. They are also called the liberated, who have had their composure
+(<i>insouciance</i>) after abandonment of their desires, and who rest in the
+Supreme Spirit, with their souls disentangled from their bodies. (This
+is called the disembodied liberation বিদেহ মুক্তি).</p>
+
+<p>15. Both these sorts of renunciation are alike entitled to liberation,
+both of them are extricated from pain; and both lead the liberated
+souls to the state of Brahma.</p>
+
+<p>16. The mind whether engaged in acts or disengaged from them, rests
+in the pure spirit of God, by forsaking its desires. (There is this
+difference only between them, that the one has an active body, while
+the other is without its activity).</p>
+
+<p>17. The former kind of yogi is liberated in his embodied state, and
+freed from pain throughout his life time; but the latter that has
+obtained his liberation in his bodiless state after his demise, remains
+quite unconscious of his desires. (The liberated soul is freed from
+desire after death. Their desires being dead with themselves, they have
+nothing to desire).</p>
+
+<p>18. He who feels no joy nor sorrow at the good or evil, which befalls
+to him in his life time, as it is the course of nature, is called the
+living liberated man.</p>
+
+<p>19. He who neither desires nor dreads the casualties of good <span class="pagenum" id="Page_766">[766]</span>
+or evil,
+which are incidental to human life; but remains quiet regardless of
+them as in his dead sleep, is known as the truly liberated man.</p>
+
+<p>20. He whose mind is freed from the thoughts, of what is desirable or
+undesirable to him, and from his differentiation of mine, thine and his
+(<i>i.e.</i> of himself from others), is called the truly liberated.</p>
+
+<p>21. He whose mind is not subject to the access of joy and grief, of
+hope and fear, of anger, boast and niggardliness, is said to have his
+liberation.</p>
+
+<p>22. He whose feelings are all obtundent within himself as in his sleep,
+and whose mind enjoys its felicity like the beams of the fullmoon, is
+said to be the liberated man in this world.</p>
+
+<p>23. Válmíki says:—After the sage had said so far, the day departed
+to its evening service with the setting sun. The assembled audience
+retired to their evening ablutions, and repaired again to the assembly
+with the rising sun on the next day.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_767">[767]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XVII.<br>
+<span class="small">ON THE EXTIRPATION OF AVARICE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Liberation of Embodied or Living Beings.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—It is difficult O Ráma! to describe in words the
+inexplicable nature of the liberation of disembodied souls; hear me
+therefore relate to you further about the liberation of living beings.</p>
+
+<p>2. The desire of doing one’s duties without expectation of their
+reward, is also called the living liberation, and the doers of their
+respective duties, are said to be the living liberated.</p>
+
+<p>3. The dependance of beings on their desires, and their strong
+attachment to external objects, are called to be their bondage and
+fetters in this world, by the doctors in divinity.</p>
+
+<p>4. But the desire of conducting one’s self according to the course
+of events, and without any expectation of fruition, constitutes also
+the liberation of the living; and is concomitant with the body only
+(without vitiating the inner soul).</p>
+
+<p>5. The desire of enjoying the external objects, is verily the bondage
+of the soul; but its indifference to worldly enjoyments, is what
+constitutes one’s freedom in his living state.</p>
+
+<p>6. Want of greediness and anxiety prior to and on account of some gain,
+and absence of mirth and change in one’s disposition afterwards (<i>i.e.</i>
+after the gain); is the true freedom of men.</p>
+
+<p>7. Know, O high-minded Ráma! that desire to be the greatest bondage
+of men, which is in eager expectation of the possession of anything.
+(Lit.: that such things may be mine).</p>
+
+<p>8. He who is devoid of desire of everything, whether existent or
+inexistent in the world; is the truly great man, with the greatest
+magnanimity of his soul.</p>
+
+<p>9. Therefore, Ráma! forsake the thoughts both of thy bondage and
+liberation, and also of thy happiness and misery; and by getting rid of
+thy desire of the real and unreal, remain as calm as the undisturbed
+ocean.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_768">[768]</span>
+10. Think thyself, O most intelligent Ráma! to be devoid of death and
+decay, and do not stain thy mind with the fears of thy disease or death
+(because thy soul is free from them).</p>
+
+<p>11. These substances are nothing, nor are you any of these things that
+you see; there is something beyond these, and know that you are that
+very thing (which is the soul or a spiritual being).</p>
+
+<p>12. The phenomenon of the world is an unreality, and every thing here
+is unreal, that appears real in thy sight; knowing then thyself to be
+beyond all these, what earthly thing is there that thou canst crave for?</p>
+
+<p>13. All reasoning men, O Ráma! consider themselves in some one of these
+four different lights in their minds, which I shall now explain to you
+in brief.</p>
+
+<p>14. He who considers his whole body (from his head to foot), as the
+progeny of his parents (<i>i.e.</i> devoid of his spiritual part), is surely
+born to the bondage of the world. (This is the first kind).</p>
+
+<p>15. But they who are certain of their immaterial soul, which is finer
+than the point of a hair, are another class of men; who are called the
+wise and are born for their liberation. (This is the second).</p>
+
+<p>16. There is a third class of men, who consider themselves as same with
+the universal soul of the world; such men O support of Raghu’s race,
+are also entitled to their liberation. (These belong to the third kind.)</p>
+
+<p>17. There is again a fourth class, who consider themselves and the
+whole world to be as inane as the empty air (or vacuum); these are
+surely the partakers of liberation.</p>
+
+<p>18. Of these four kinds of beliefs, the first is the leader to bondage;
+while the three others growing from purity of thought, lead to the path
+of liberation.</p>
+
+<p>19. Among these, the first is subject to the bondage of avarice;
+but the other three proceeding from pure desire, are crowned with
+liberation.</p>
+
+<p>20. Those of the third kind, who consider themselves same <span class="pagenum" id="Page_769">[769]</span>
+with the
+universal soul, are in my opinion never subject to sorrow or pain.</p>
+
+<p>21. The magnitude of the Supreme spirit, extends over and below and
+about all existence; hence the belief of “all in One, or One in all”
+never holds a man in bondage.</p>
+
+<p>22. The fourth kind—vacuists (or <i>súnyavádís</i>), who believe in the
+vacuum, and maintain the principles of nature or illusion, are in
+ignorance of divine knowledge, which represents God as Siva, Isha,
+male, and eternal soul.</p>
+
+<p>23. He is all and everlasting, without a second or another like him;
+and he is pervaded by his omniscience, and not by the ignorance called
+<i>máyá</i> or illusion.</p>
+
+<p>24. The spirit of God fills the universe, as the water of the ocean
+fills the deep (pátála); and stretches from the highest heaven
+(empyrean), to the lowest abyss of the infernal regions.</p>
+
+<p>25. Hence it is his reality only which is ever existent, and no unreal
+world exists at any time. It is the liquid water which fills the sea,
+and not the swelling wave which rises in it.</p>
+
+<p>26. As the bracelets and armlets are no other than gold, so the
+varieties of trees and herbs, are not distinct from the Universal
+Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>27. It is the one and same omnipotence of the Supreme spirit, that
+displays the different forms in its works of the creation.</p>
+
+<p>28. Never be joyous nor sorry for anything belonging to thee or
+another, nor feel thyself delighted or dejected at any gain or loss,
+that thou mayest happen to incur. (For know everything to be the Lord’s
+and nothing as thine own. Or: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken
+away”. Job).</p>
+
+<p>29. Be of an even disposition, and rely on thy essence as one with the
+Supreme soul. Attend to thy multifarious duties, and thus be observant
+of unity in thy spiritual concerns, and dualities in thy temporal
+affairs.</p>
+
+<p>30. Take care of falling into the hidden holes of this world, in your
+pursuit after the varieties of objects; and be not like an elephant
+falling into a hidden pit in the forest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_770">[770]</span>
+31. O Ráma of great soul! There cannot be a duality, as it is thought
+in the mind; nor O Ráma of enlightened soul; can there be any unity
+or duality of the soul. The true essence is ever existent with out its
+unity or duality, and is styled the all and nothing particular, and
+as itself—Svarúpa or suiform. (The soul is not unity, because one is
+the prime number of all others by addition with itself; nor is it a
+duality, having no second or another like it. It is the indefinite all
+or whole: and no definite that this or so says the Sruti: तस्मात्तत् सर्ब्बमभवत् नेह नानास्ति किञ्चन ।)</p>
+
+<p>32. There is no ego or thy subjective-self, nor the objective worlds
+that thou seest. All this is the manifestation of the eternal and
+imperishable omniscience, and know this world as neither an entity nor
+non-entity by itself.</p>
+
+<p>33. Know the Supreme being to be without beginning and end, the
+enlightener of all lights, the undecaying, unborn and incomprehensible
+one. He is without part, and any change in him. He is beyond
+imagination and all the imaginary objects all about us.</p>
+
+<p>34. Know for certain in thy mind, that the Lord is always present in
+the full light of thy intellect. He is the root of thy consciousness,
+and is of the nature of thy inward soul. He is conceivable in the
+intellect, and is the Brahma—the all and everlasting, and the
+all pervading, the subjective I, and the objective thou and this world.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_771">[771]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XVIII.<br>
+<span class="small">LIVING LIBERATION OR TRUE FELICITY OF MAN IN THIS LIFE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The True Enfranchisement of the Soul, in the Living
+state of man in this world.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—I will now relate to you, O Ráma! the nature of
+those great men, who conduct themselves in this world, with their
+desires under their subjection, and whose minds are not blemished by
+evil inclinations.</p>
+
+<p>2. The sage whose mind is freed in his life-time, conducts himself
+unconcerned in this world; he smiles secure at its occurrences, and is
+regardless of the first, last and middle stages of his life (namely:
+the pains of his birth and death, and the whole course of his life).</p>
+
+<p>3. He is attentive to his present business, and unmindful of every
+other object about him; he is devoid of cares and desires, and his
+thought is of his internal cogitations only.</p>
+
+<p>4. He is free from anxiety in all places, who tolerates whatever he
+happens to meet with; he sees the light of reason in his soul, and
+walks in the romantic groves of his musings.</p>
+
+<p>5. He rests in that transcendental bliss, with prospects as bright as
+the cooling beams of the full-moon, who is neither elated nor depressed
+in any state of his life, nor droops down under any circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>6. Whose generosity and manliness do not forsake him, even when he is
+beset by his bitterest enemies; and who is observant of his duties to
+his superiors, such a man is not crest-fallen in this world.</p>
+
+<p>7. Who neither rejoices nor laments at his lot, nor envies nor hankers
+after the fortune of another; but pursues his own business in quiet
+silence, is the man that is never down-cast in this world.</p>
+
+<p>8. Who, when asked, says what he is doing, but unasked <span class="pagenum" id="Page_772">[772]</span>
+remains as a
+dead block; and is freed from desire and disgust; he is never depressed
+in his heart and mind. (The Urdu poet expresses this sort of unconcern,
+more beautifully, when he says:—Should one ask you of aught, look to
+his face and reply him not. <i>Koi kuch’h puchhe to munh dekh kar chup
+rahjana</i> &c. And who so understands the hearts of men, is never sick at
+his heart).</p>
+
+<p>9. He speaks agreeably to every one, and utters gently what he is
+required to say; he is never put out of countenance, who understands
+the intentions of others. (Speaking agreeably or his questioners means
+what pleases every body, be it good or bad for him as it is said in
+Chánakya’s excerpta: सत्यं ब्रुयात् प्रियम्ब्रुयात्, न ब्रुयात् सत्यमप्रियं. Because says Bháraví: ‘It is rare to have a useful
+saying, which is delectable also at the same time’. हितं मनोहारिचदुर्लमवचस).</p>
+
+<p>10. He sees the right and wrong dealings of men, and the acts of the
+depraved desires of their minds; but knowing all human affairs as
+clearly as in a mirror in his hand, he holds his peace with every one.</p>
+
+<p>11. Standing on his firm footing (of nonchalance), and knowing the
+frailty of worldly things, he smiles at the vicissitudes of nature
+with the cold frigidity (sang froid) of his heart (like the laughing
+philosopher).</p>
+
+<p>12. Such is the nature, Ráma, of the great souls, who have subdued
+their minds, and know the course of nature, as I have described to you.</p>
+
+<p>13. I am unable to describe to you, the fond beliefs of the minds of
+the ignorant populace, who are plunged in the mud of their sensual
+enjoyments (like earthly worms). (Who are of ungoverned minds).</p>
+
+<p>14. Women, devoid of understanding, and graced with their personal
+charms, are the idols of these people; who are fond of their golden
+forms, without knowing them to be the flames of hell fire.</p>
+
+<p>15. Wealth, the fond object of the foolish people, is fraught with
+every ill and evil desire; its pleasure is poison and productive of
+misery, and its prosperity is replete with dangers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_773">[773]</span>
+16. Its use in the doing of meritorious deeds, and various acts of
+piety, is also fraught with a great many evils, which I have not the
+power to recount. (The works of merit being productive of pride and
+passions, and those of piety being the source of transmigration).</p>
+
+<p>17. Therefore Ráma! keep your sight on the full view (clairvoyance) of
+your spirit, by retracting it from the external visibles and internal
+thoughts; and conduct yourself in this world as one liberated in his
+life-time.</p>
+
+<p>18. Being free from all your inward passions and feelings of affection,
+and having given up all your desires and expectations; continue in the
+performance of your outward duties in this world.</p>
+
+<p>19. Follow all your duties in life with a noble pliability of your
+disposition; but preserve the philosophic renunciation of everything in
+your mind, and conduct yourself accordingly in this world.</p>
+
+<p>20. Think well on the fleeting states of all earthly things, and fix
+your mind in the lasting nature of your soul; and thus conduct yourself
+in this transitory stage, with the thoughts of eternity in your mind.</p>
+
+<p>21. Conduct yourself, Ráma, with your inward indifference and want
+of all desire: but show your outward desire for whatever is good and
+great. Be cold blooded within yourself but full of ardour in your
+external demeanour.</p>
+
+<p>22. Conduct yourself among men, O Ráma! with a feigned activity in your
+outward appearance, but with real inaction in your mind; show yourself
+as the doer of your deeds, but know in your mind to be no actor at all.</p>
+
+<p>23. Conduct yourself such, O Ráma! with your full knowledge of this
+world, as if you are acquainted with the natures of all beings
+herein; and go wherever you please with your intimate acquaintance of
+everything there.</p>
+
+<p>24. Demean yourself with mankind, with a feigned appearance of joy and
+grief, and of condolence and congratulation with <span class="pagenum" id="Page_774">[774]</span>
+others, and an assumed
+shape of activity and action among mankind.</p>
+
+<p>25. Manage yourself, O Ráma! with full possession of your mind, and
+untinged by pride and vanity, as if it were as clear as the spotless
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>26. Go on through your life unshackled by the bonds of desire, and join
+in all the outward acts of life, with an unaltered evenness of your
+mind under every circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>27. Do not give room to the thoughts of your bondage or liberation in
+this world, nor of the embodiment or release of your soul here; but
+think the revolving worlds to be a magic scene, and preserve perfect
+tranquility of your mind.</p>
+
+<p>28. Know all this as an illusion, and it is ignorance only, that
+presents the false appearance of the world to sight; and yet we take
+them for true, as you view the water in the burning beams of the sun in
+a desert.</p>
+
+<p>29. The unobstructed, uniform and all pervading soul, can have no
+restriction or bondage; and what is unrestricted in itself, cannot have
+its release also.</p>
+
+<p>30. It is want of true knowledge, that presents the false view of the
+world before us; but the knowledge of truth disperses the view; as the
+knowledge of the rope, dispels the fallacy of the snake in it.</p>
+
+<p>31. You have known the true essence of your being by your right
+discernment (that it is He—the Sat); you are thereby freed from the
+sense of your personality, and are set free as the subtile air.</p>
+
+<p>32. You have known the truth, and must give up your knowledge of
+untruth, together with the thoughts of your friends and relatives, all
+which are unreal in their natures.</p>
+
+<p>33. Such being the case, you must consider yourself (your soul), as
+something other than those: and that you have received the same, from
+the Supreme source of all.</p>
+
+<p>34. This soul bears no relation to your friends or possession, to your
+good or evil actions, or to anything whatever in this world;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_775">[775]</span>
+35. When you are convinced that this very soul constitutes your
+essence; you have nothing to fear from the erroneous conception of the
+world, which is no more than a misconception.</p>
+
+<p>36. You can have no concern, with the weal or woe of a friend or foe,
+who is not born so to you; for every one being born for himself, you
+have no cause of joy or grief for any body (whether he is friendly or
+not to you).</p>
+
+<p>37. If thou knowest that thou hadst been before (creation), and shalt
+be so for everafterwards (to eternity); you are truly wise.</p>
+
+<p>38. Shouldst thou feel so much for the friends, by whom thou art beset
+in this life; why dost thou then not mourn for them, that are dead and
+gone in thy present and past lives?</p>
+
+<p>39. If thou wert something otherwise than what thou art at present, and
+shalt have to be something different from what now thou art, why then
+shouldst thou sorrow for what has not its self-identity? (<i>i.e.</i> the
+body which is changed in all its transmigrations).</p>
+
+<p>40. If thou art to be born no more, after thy past and present births
+(<i>i.e.</i> if there be no further transmigration of thy soul), then thou
+hast no cause for sorrow, being extinct thyself in the Supreme Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>41. Therefore there is no cause of sorrow, in aught that occurs
+according to the course of nature; but rather be joyous in pursuing the
+duties of thy present life (for want of thy knowledge of thy past and
+future states).</p>
+
+<p>42. But do not indulge the excess of thy joy or grief, but preserve thy
+equanimity everywhere; by knowing the Supreme Spirit to pervade in all
+places.</p>
+
+<p>43. Know thyself to be the form of the infinite spirit, and stretching
+wide like the extended vacuum; and that thou art the pure eternal
+light, and the focus of full effulgence.</p>
+
+<p>44. Know thy eternal and invisible soul, to be distinct from all
+worldly substances; and to be a particle of that universal soul, which
+dwells in and stretches through the hearts of all bodies; and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_776">[776]</span>
+is like
+the unseen thread, running through the holes and connecting the links
+of a necklace (or like the string in the beads of a rosary). (This
+connecting soul is denominated the Sútrátmá, which fills, bounds,
+connects and equals all).</p>
+
+<p>45. That the continuation of the world, is caused by the reproduction
+of what has been before, is what you learn from the unlearned; and not
+so from the learned (who know the world to be nothing). Know this and
+not that, and be happy in this life.</p>
+
+<p>46. The course of the world and this life, is ever tending to decay
+and disease. It is ignorance that represents them to be progressing to
+perfection. But you who are intelligent, knowest their real natures (of
+frailty and unreality).</p>
+
+<p>47. What else can be the nature of error but falsehood, and what may
+the state of sleep be, but dream and drowsiness? (So is this world a
+mistaken existence, and this life a mere dream of unreal appearance,
+which so vividly shines before you).</p>
+
+<p>48. Whom do you call your good friend, and whom do you say your great
+enemy? They all belong to the Sole One, and proceed alike from the
+Divine will.</p>
+
+<p>49. Everything is frail and fickle, and has its rise and fall from and
+into the Supreme Spirit; it likens the wave of the sea, rising and
+falling from and into the same water.</p>
+
+<p>50. The worlds are rolling upward and going down again, like the axis
+and spokes of a wheel. (The rotations of the planets in their circuits
+above and below the sun).</p>
+
+<p>51. The celestials sometimes fall into hell, and the infernals are
+sometimes raised to heaven; animals of one kind are regenerated in
+another form, and the people of one continent and island are reborn in
+another (as men are led from one country and climate to another, and
+settle there).</p>
+
+<p>52. The opulent are reduced to indigence, and the indigent are raised
+to affluence; and all beings are seen to be rising and falling in a
+hundred ways.</p>
+
+<p>53. Who has seen the wheel of fortune, to move on slowly in one
+straight forward course for ever, and not tumbling in its <span class="pagenum" id="Page_777">[777]</span>
+ups and
+downs, nor turning to this side and that in its winding and uneven
+route. Fixedness of fortune is a fiction, as that of finding the frost
+in fire.</p>
+
+<p>54. Those that are called great fortunes, and their components and
+appendages as also many good friends and relations; are all seen to fly
+away in a few days of this transient life.</p>
+
+<p>55. The thought of something as one’s own and another’s, and of this
+and that as mine, thine, his or others’, are as false as the appearance
+of double suns and moons in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>56. That this is a friend and this other a foe, and that this is myself
+and that one is another, are all but false conceptions of your mind,
+and must be wiped off from it (since the whole is but the one Ego).</p>
+
+<p>57. Make it thy pleasure however to mix with the blinded populace,
+and those that are lost to reason; and deal with them in thy usual
+unaltered way. (Mix with the thoughtless mob, but think with the
+thoughtful wise. So says Sadi: I learnt morals from the immoral,
+<i>adabaz bedabanamokhtam</i>).</p>
+
+<p>58. Conduct thyself in such a manner in thy journey through this world,
+that thou mayst not sink under the burden of thy cares of it.</p>
+
+<p>59. When thou comest to thy reason, to lay down thy earthly cares and
+desires; then shalt thou have that composure of thy mind, which will
+exonerate thee from all thy duties and dealings in life.</p>
+
+<p>60. It is the part of lowminded men, to reckon one as a friend
+and another as no friend; but noble minded men do not observe such
+distinctions between man and man. (Lit. Their minds are not clouded by
+the mist of distinction).</p>
+
+<p>61. There is nothing wherein I am not (or where there is not the Ego);
+and nothing which is not mine (<i>i.e.</i> beyond the Ego: the learned who
+have considered it well, make no difference of persons in their minds).</p>
+
+<p>62. The intellects of the wise, are as clear as the spacious firmament,
+and there is no rising nor setting of their intellectual light, which
+views everything as serenely as in the serenity <span class="pagenum" id="Page_778">[778]</span>
+of the atmosphere and
+as plainly as the plain surface of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>63. Know Ráma! all created beings, are friendly and useful to you, and
+there is no body nor any in the world, wherewith you are not related in
+some way on your part. (No body is a unit himself, but forms a part of
+the universal whole).</p>
+
+<p>64. It is erroneous to look <on> any one as a friend or foe, among the
+various orders of created beings in the universe; which in reality may
+be serviceable to you, however unfriendly they may appear at first.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_779">[779]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XIX.<br>
+<span class="small">ON HOLY KNOWLEDGE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Story of Punya and Pávana, and the instruction of
+the former to the latter.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—I will now set before you an example on the
+subject (of the distinction of friend and foe), in the instance of two
+brothers, who were born of a sage on the banks of Ganges, going in
+three directions of <i>tripatha</i> or <i>trisrot</i> as <i>trivia</i>.</p>
+
+<p>2. Hear then this holy and wonderful tale of antiquity, which now
+occurs to my mind on the subject of friends and enemies, which I have
+been relating to you.</p>
+
+<p>3. There is in this continent of Jambudvípa (Asia), a mountainous
+region beset by groves and forests, with the high mount of Mahendra
+rising above the rest.</p>
+
+<p>4. It touched the sky with its lofty peaks, and the arbour of its kalpa
+trees; spread its shadow over the hermits and kinnaras that resorted
+under its bower.</p>
+
+<p>5. It resounded with the carol of the sages, who chaunted the Sámaveda
+hymns on it, in their passage from its caverns and peaks to the region
+of Indra (the god of the vault of heaven).</p>
+
+<p>6. The fleecy clouds which incessantly drizzled with rain water from
+its thousand peaks; and washed the plants and flowers below, appeared
+as tufts of hair hanging down from heaven to earth.</p>
+
+<p>7. The mountain re-echoed to the loud roars of the impetuous octopede
+Sarabhas, with the thunder claps of kalpa clouds from the hollow mouths
+of its dark and deep clouds. (So Himálaya is said to warble to the
+tunes of Kinnaras from its cavern mounts).<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>8. The thundering noise of its cascades falling into its caverns from
+precipice to precipice, has put to blush the loud roar of the Surges of
+the sea.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_780">[780]</span>
+
+<p>9. There on tableland upon the craggy top of the mountain, flowed the
+sacred stream of the heavenly Ganges, for the ablution and beverage of
+the hermits.</p>
+
+<p>10. There on the banks of the trivious river—tripatha—Gangá, was
+a gemming mountain, sparkling as bright gold, and decorated with
+blossoming trees.</p>
+
+<p>11. There lived a sage by name of Dirghatapas, who was a
+personification of devotion, and a man of enlightened understanding; he
+had a noble mind, and was inured in austerities of devotion.</p>
+
+<p>12. This sage was blessed with two boys as beautiful as the full moon,
+and named Punya and Pávana (the meritorious and holy), who were as
+intelligent as the sons of Brihaspati, known by the names of the two
+Kachas.</p>
+
+<p>13. He lived there on the bank of the river, and amidst a grove of
+fruit trees, with his wife and the two sons born of them.</p>
+
+<p>14. In course of time the two boys arrived to their age of discretion,
+and the elder of them named Punya or meritorious, was superior to the
+other in all his merits.</p>
+
+<p>15. The younger boy named Pávana or the holy, was half awakened in his
+intellect, like the half blown lotus at the dawn of the day; and his
+want of intelligence kept him from the knowledge of truth, and in the
+uncertainty of his faith.</p>
+
+<p>16. Then in the course of the all destroying time, the sage came to
+complete a century of years, and his tall body and long life, were
+reduced in their strength by his age and infirmity.</p>
+
+<p>17. Being thus reduced by decrepitude in his vitality, he bade adieu
+to his desires in this world, which was so frail and full of a hundred
+fearful accidents to human life (namely, the pains attending upon
+birth, old age and death, and the fears of future transmigration and
+falling into hell fire).</p>
+
+<p>18. The old devotee Dirghatapas, quitted at last his mortal <span class="pagenum" id="Page_781">[781]</span>
+frame in
+the grotto of the mount; as a bird quits its old nest for ever, or as a
+water-bearer lays down the log of his burthen from his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>19. His spirit then fled like the fragrance of a flower to that vacuous
+space, which is ever tranquil, free from attributes and thought, and is
+of the nature of the pure intellect.</p>
+
+<p>20. The wife of the sage finding his body lying lifeless on the ground,
+fell down upon it, and remained motionless like a lotus flower nipt
+from its stalk.</p>
+
+<p>21. Having been long accustomed to the practice of yoga, according to
+the instruction of her husband; she quitted her undecayed body, as a
+bee flits from an unfaded flower to the empty air.</p>
+
+<p>22. Her soul followed her husband’s, unseen by men, as the light of the
+stars disappears in the air at the dawn of the day.</p>
+
+<p>23. Seeing the demise of both parents, the elder son Punya was busily
+employed in performing their funeral services; but the younger Pávana
+was deeply absorbed in grief at their loss.</p>
+
+<p>24. Being overwhelmed by sorrow in his mind, he wandered about in the
+woods; and not having the firmness of his elder brother, he continued
+to wail in his mourning.</p>
+
+<p>25. The magnanimous Punya performed the funeral ceremonies of his
+parents, and then went in search of his brother mourning in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>26. Punya said:—Why my boy, is thy soul overcast by the cloud of
+thy grief; and why dost thou shed the tears from thy lotus-eyes, as
+profusely as the showers of the rain, only to render thee blind.</p>
+
+<p>27. Know my intelligent boy, that both thy father and mother, have gone
+to their ultimate blissful state in the Supreme Spirit, called the
+state of salvation or liberation.</p>
+
+<p>28. That is the last resort of all living beings, and that is the
+blessed state of all self subdued souls; why then mourn for them, that
+have returned to and are reunited with their own proper nature.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_782">[782]</span>
+
+<p>29. Thou dost in vain indulge thyself in thy false and fruitless grief,
+and mournest for what is not to be mourned for at all: (rather rejoice
+at it owing to their ultimate liberation).</p>
+
+<p>30. Neither is she thy mother nor he thy father; nor art thou the only
+son of them, that have had numerous offspring in their repeated births.</p>
+
+<p>31. Thou hadst also thousands of fathers and mothers in thy by-gone
+births, in as much as there are the streams of running waters in every
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>32. Thou art not the only son of them, that had innumerable sons before
+thee; for the generations of men, have passed away like the currents of
+a running stream.</p>
+
+<p>33. Our parents also had numberless offspring in their past lives, and
+the branches of human generation are as numerous, as the innumerable
+fruits and flowers on trees.</p>
+
+<p>34. The numbers of our friends and relatives in our repeated lives in
+this world, have been as great, as the innumerable fruits and flowers
+of a large tree, in all its passed seasons.</p>
+
+<p>35. If we are to lament over the loss of our parents and children, that
+are dead and gone; then why not lament also for those, that we have
+lost and left behind in all our past lives?</p>
+
+<p>36. It is all but a delusion, O my fortunate boy, that is presented
+before us in this illusive world; while in truth, O my sensible child,
+we have nobody, whom we may call to be our real friends or positive
+enemies in this world.</p>
+
+<p>37. There is no loss of any body or thing in their true sense in the
+world; but they appear to exist and disappear, like the appearance of
+water in the dry desert.</p>
+
+<p>38. The royal dignity that thou seest here, adorned with the stately
+umbrella and flapping fans; is but a dream lasting for a few days.</p>
+
+<p>39. Consider these phenomena in their true light, and thou wilt find my
+boy, that none of these nor ourselves nor any one of us, are to last
+for ever: shun therefore thy error of the passing world from thy mind
+for ever.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_783">[783]</span>
+40. That these are dead and gone, and these are existent before us, are
+but errors of our minds, and creatures of our false notions and fond
+desires, and without any reality in them.</p>
+
+<p>41. Our notions and desires, paint and present these various changes
+before our sight; as the solar rays represent the water in the mirage.
+So our fancies working in the field of our ignorance, produce the
+erroneous conceptions, which roll on like currents in the eventful
+ocean of the world, with the waves of favorable and unfavorable
+events to us.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_784">[784]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XX.<br>
+<span class="small">REMONSTRATION OF PÁVANA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Punya’s relation of his various transmigrations and
+their woes to Pávana.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">P</span>unya</span> said:—Who is our father and who our mother, and who are our
+friends and relatives, except our notion of them as such; and these
+again are as the dust raised by the gusts of our airy fancy?</p>
+
+<p>2. The conceptions of friends and foes, of our sons and relations are
+the products of our affection and hatred to them; and these being the
+effects of our ignorance, are soon made to disappear into airy nothing,
+upon enlightenment of the understanding.</p>
+
+<p>3. The thought of one as a friend, makes him a friend, and thinking one
+as an enemy makes him an enemy; the knowledge of a thing as honey and
+of another as poison, is owing to our opinion of it.</p>
+
+<p>4. There being but one universal soul equally pervading the whole,
+there can be no reason of the conception of one as a friend and of
+another as an enemy.</p>
+
+<p>5. Think my boy in thy mind what thou art, and what is that thing which
+makes thy identity, when thy body is but a composition of bones, ribs,
+flesh and blood, and not thyself.</p>
+
+<p>6. Being viewed in its true light, there is nothing as myself or
+thyself; it is a fallacy of our understanding, that makes me think
+myself as Punya and thee as Pávana.</p>
+
+<p>7. Who is thy father and who thy son, who thy mother and who thy
+friend? One Supreme-self pervades all infinity, whom callest thou the
+self, and whom the not self (<i>i.e.</i> thine and not thine).</p>
+
+<p>8. If thou art a spiritual substance (linga saríra), and hast <span class="pagenum" id="Page_785">[785]</span>
+undergone
+many births, then thou hadst many friends and properties in thy past
+lives, why dost not think of them also?</p>
+
+<p>9. Thou hadst many friends in the flowery plains, where thou hadst thy
+pasture in thy former form of a stag; why thinkest not of those
+deer, who were once thy dear companions?</p>
+
+<p>10. Why dost thou not lament for thy lost companions of swans, in the
+pleasant pool of lotuses, where thou didst dive and swim about in the
+form of a gander?</p>
+
+<p>11. Why not lament for thy fellow arbors in the woodlands, where thou
+once stoodest as a stately tree among them?</p>
+
+<p>12. Thou hadst thy comrades of lions on the rugged craigs of mountains,
+why dost not lament for them also?</p>
+
+<p>13. Thou hadst many of thy mates among the fishes, in the limpid lakes
+decked with lotuses; why not lament for thy separation from them?</p>
+
+<p>14. Thou hadst been in the country of Dasárna (confluence of the ten
+rivers), as a monkey in the grey and green woods: a prince hadst thou
+been in land of frost; and a raven in the woods of Pundra.</p>
+
+<p>15. Thou hadst been an elephant in the land of Haihayas, and an ass in
+that of Trigarta; thou hadst become a dog in the country of Salya, and
+a bird in the wood of sarala or sál trees.</p>
+
+<p>16. Thou hadst been a pípal tree on the Vindhyan mountains, and a
+wood insect in a large oak (bata) tree; thou hadst been a cock on the
+Mandara mountain, and then born as a Bráhman in one of its caverns (the
+abode of Rishis).</p>
+
+<p>17. Thou wast a Bráhman in Kosala, and a partridge in Bengal; a horse
+hadst thou been in the snowy land, and a beast in the sacred ground of
+Brahmá at Pushkara (Pokhra).</p>
+
+<p>18. Thou hadst been an insect in the trunk of a palm tree, a gnat in a
+big tree, and a crane in the woods of Vindhya, that art now my younger
+brother.</p>
+
+<p>19. Thou hadst been an ant for six months, and lain within <span class="pagenum" id="Page_786">[786]</span>
+the thin
+bark of a <i>bhugpetera</i> tree in a glen of the Himálayan hills, that art
+now born as my younger brother.</p>
+
+<p>20. Thou hadst been a millepede in a dunghill at a distant village;
+where thou didst dwell for a year and half, that art now become my
+younger brother.</p>
+
+<p>21. Thou wast once the youngling of a Pulinda (a hill tribe woman), and
+didst dwell on her dugs like the honey sucking bee on the pericarp of a
+lotus. The same art thou now my younger brother.</p>
+
+<p>22. In this manner my boy, wast thou born in many other shapes, and
+hadst to wander all about the Jambudvípa, for myriads of years: And now
+art thou my younger brother.</p>
+
+<p>23. Thus I see the post states of thy existence, caused by the
+antecedent desires of thy soul; I see all this by my nice discernment,
+and my clear and all-viewing sight.</p>
+
+<p>24. I also remember the several births that I had to undergo in my
+state of (spiritual) ignorance, and then as I see clearly before my
+enlightened sight.</p>
+
+<p>25. I also was a parrot in the land of Trigarta, and a frog at the
+beach of a river; I became a small bird in a forest, and was then born
+in these woods.</p>
+
+<p>26. Having been a Pulinda huntsman in Vindhya, and then as a tree in
+Bengal, and afterwards a camel in the Vindhya range, I am at last born
+in this forest.</p>
+
+<p>27. I who had been a chátaka bird in the Himálayas, and a prince in
+the Paundra province; and then as a mighty tiger in the forests of the
+sahya hill, am now become your elder brother.</p>
+
+<p>28. He that had been a vulture for ten years, and a shark for five
+months and a lion for a full century; is now thy elder brother in this
+place.</p>
+
+<p>29. I was a chakora wood in the village of Andhara, and a ruler in the
+snowy regions; and then as the proud son of a priest named Sailáchárya
+in a hilly tract.</p>
+
+<p>30. I remember the various customs and pursuits of different <span class="pagenum" id="Page_787">[787]</span>
+peoples on
+earth, that I had to observe and follow in my repeated transmigrations
+among them.</p>
+
+<p>31. In these several migrations, I had many fathers and mothers, and
+many more of my brothers and sisters, as also friends and relatives to
+hundreds and thousands.</p>
+
+<p>32. For whom shall I lament and whom forget among this number; shall I
+wail for them only that I lose in this life? But these also are to be
+buried in oblivion like the rest, and such is the course of the world.</p>
+
+<p>33. Numberless fathers have gone by, and unnumbered mothers also have
+passed and died away; so innumerable generations of men have perished
+and disappeared, like the falling off of withered leaves.</p>
+
+<p>34. There are no bounds, my boy, of our pleasures and pains in this
+sublunary world; lay them all aside, and let us remain unmindful of all
+existence (whether past, present or future)!</p>
+
+<p>35. Forsake thy thoughts of false appearances, and relinquish thy firm
+conviction of thy own egoism, and look to that ultimate course which
+has led the learned to their final beatitude.</p>
+
+<p>36. What is this commotion of the people for, but a struggling for
+rising or falling (to heaven or hell); strive therefore for neither,
+but live regardless of both like indifferent philosopher (and permit
+thyself to heaven).</p>
+
+<p>37. Live free from thy cares of existence and inexistence, and then
+thou shalt be freed from thy fears of decay and death. Remember
+unruffled thyself alone, and be not moved by any from thy self
+possession by the accidents to life like the ignorant.</p>
+
+<p>38. Know thou hast no birth nor death, nor weal or woe of any kind, nor
+a father or mother, nor friend nor foe anywhere. Thou art only thy pure
+spirit, and nothing of an unspiritual nature.</p>
+
+<p>39. The world is a stage presenting many acts and scenes; and they only
+play their parts well, who are excited neither by its passions and
+feelings.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_788">[788]</span>
+40. Those that are indifferent in their views, have their quietude
+amidst all the occurrences of life; and those that have known the True
+One, remain only to witness the course of nature.</p>
+
+<p>41. The knowers of God do their acts, without thinking themselves their
+actors; just as the lamps of night witness the objects around, without
+their consciousness of the same.</p>
+
+<p>42. The wise witness the objects as they are reflected in the mirror of
+their minds, just as the looking glass and gems receive the images of
+things.</p>
+
+<p>43. Now my boy, rub out all thy wishes and the vestiges of thy
+remembrance from thy mind, and view the image of the serene spirit of
+God in thy inmost soul. Learn to live like the great sages with the
+sight of thy spiritual light, and by effacing all false impressions
+from thy mind.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_789">[789]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXI.<br>
+<span class="small">REPRESSION OF DESIRES BY MEANS OF YOGA-MEDITATION.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Desires are the shackles of the soul, and release from
+them leading to its liberation.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Pávana being admonished by Punya in the said
+manner, became as enlightened in his intellect, as the landscape at the
+dawn of day.</p>
+
+<p>2. They continued henceforward to abide in that forest, with the
+perfection of their spiritual knowledge, and they wandered about in the
+woods to their hearts content.</p>
+
+<p>3. After a long time they had both their extinction, and rested in
+their disembodied state of <i>nirvána</i>; as the oilless lamp wastes away
+of itself.</p>
+
+<p>4. Thus is the end of the great boast of men, of having large trains
+and numberless friends in their embodied states of lifetime, of which
+alas! they carry nothing with them to their afterlife, nor leave
+anything behind, which they can properly call as theirs.</p>
+
+<p>5. The best means of our release from the multifarious objects of our
+desire, is the utter suppression of our appetites, rather than the
+fostering of them.</p>
+
+<p>6. It is the hankering after objects, that augment our appetite, as our
+thinking on something increases our thoughts about it. Just so as the
+fire is emblazoned by supply of the fuel, and extinguished by its want.</p>
+
+<p>7. Now rise O Ráma! and remain aloft as in thy aerial car, by getting
+loose of your worldly desires; and looking pitifully on the miseries of
+grovelling mortals from above.</p>
+
+<p>8. This is the divine state known as the position of Brahma, which
+looks from above with unconcerned serenity upon all. By gaining this
+state, the ignorant also are freed from misery.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_790">[790]</span>
+
+<p>9. One walking with reason as his companion, and having his good
+understanding for his consort, is not liable to fall into the dangerous
+trap-doors, which lie hid in his way through life.</p>
+
+<p>10. Being bereft of all properties, and destitute of friends, one has
+no other help to lift him up in his adversity, beside his own patience
+and reliance in God.</p>
+
+<p>11. Let men elevate their minds with learning and dispassionateness,
+and with the virtues of self-dignity and valour, in order to rise over
+the difficulties of the world.</p>
+
+<p>12. There is no greater good to be derived by any other means, than by
+the greatness of mind. It gives a security which no wealth nor earthly
+treasure can confer on men.</p>
+
+<p>13. It is only men of weak and crazy minds, that are often made to
+swing to and fro, and to rise and sink up and below, in the tempestuous
+ocean of the world.</p>
+
+<p>14. The mind that is fraught with knowledge, and is full with the light
+of truth in it, finds the world filled with ambrosial water, and moves
+over it as easily, as a man walking on his dry shoes, or on a ground
+spread over with leather.</p>
+
+<p>15. It is the want of desire, that fills the mind more than the
+fulfilment of its desires; dry up the channel of desire, as the
+autumnal heat parches a pool.</p>
+
+<p>16. Else it empties the heart (by sucking up the heart blood), and lays
+open its gaps to be filled by air. The hearts of the avaricious are
+as dry as the bed of the dead sea, which was sucked up (drained), by
+Agasti (son of the sage Agastya).</p>
+
+<p>17. The spacious garden of human heart, doth so long flourish with the
+fruits of humanity and greatness, as the restless ape of avarice does
+not infest its fair trees. (The mental powers are the trees, and the
+virtues are the fruits and flowers thereof).</p>
+
+<p>18. The mind that is devoid of avarice, views the triple world with the
+twinkling of an eye. The comprehensive mind views all space and time as
+a minim, in comparison to its conception of the infinite Brahma with
+itself.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_791">[791]</span>
+
+<p>19. There is that coolness (sangfroid) in the mind of the unavaricious
+man, as is not to be found in the watery luminary of the moon; nor in
+the icy caverns of the snow-capt Himálayas. And neither the coldness
+of the plantain juice nor sandal paste, is comparable with the
+cool-headedness of inappetency.</p>
+
+<p>20. The undesirous mind shines more brightly, than the disk of the full
+moon, and the bright countenance of the goddess of prosperity (Lakshmí).</p>
+
+<p>21. The urchin of appetence darkens the mind in the same manner, as a
+cloud covers the disk of the moon, and as ink-black obliterates a fair
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>22. The arbour of desire stretches its branches, far and wide on every
+side, and darkens the space of the mind with their gloomy shadow.</p>
+
+<p>23. The branching tree of desire being cut down by its root, the plant
+of patience which was stinted under it, shoots forth in a hundred
+branches.</p>
+
+<p>24. When the unfading arbour of patience, takes the place of the
+uprooted desires; it produces the tree of paradise, yielding the fruits
+of immortality. (Patience reigns over the untransmuted ill).</p>
+
+<p>25. O well-intentioned Ráma! if you do not allow the sprouts of your
+mental desires, to germinate in your bosom, you have then nothing to
+fear in this world.</p>
+
+<p>26. When you become sober-minded after moderating your heart’s desires,
+you will then have the plant of liberation growing in its full
+luxuriance in your heart.</p>
+
+<p>27. When the rapacious owl of your desire, nestles in your mind, it
+is sure you will be invaded by every evil, which the foreboding bird
+brings on its abode.</p>
+
+<p>28. Thinking is the power of the mind, and the thoughts dwell upon the
+objects of desire; abandon therefore thy thoughts and their objects,
+and be happy with thy thoughtlessness of everything.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_792">[792]</span>
+
+<p>29. Anything that depends on any faculty, is lost also upon inaction
+of that faculty; therefore it is by suppression of your thinking (or
+thoughts), that you can put down your desires, and thereby have rest
+and peace of your mind.</p>
+
+<p>30. Be free minded, O Ráma! by tearing off all its worldly ties,
+and become a great soul by suppressing your mean desires of earthly
+frailties: for who is there that is not set free, by being loosened
+from the fetters of desire, that bind his mind to this earth.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_793">[793]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXII.<br>
+<span class="small">NARRATIVE OF VIROCHANA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Account of King Bali and his Kingdom, and the Infernal
+Regions; His Resignation of the World, and Rambles over the
+Sumeru mountains.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—O Ráma! that art the bright moon of Raghu’s race,
+you should also follow the example of Bali, in acquiring wisdom by
+self-discernment. (Bali the Daitya king and founder of Maha Bali Pura,
+called Mavalipura in Deccan, and in Southey’s poem on its Ruins).</p>
+
+<p>2. Ráma said:—Venerable Sir, that art acquainted with all natures,
+it is by thy favour that I have gained in my heart all that is worth
+gaining; and that is our final rest in the purest state of infinite
+bliss.</p>
+
+<p>3. O sir, it is by your favor, that my mind is freed from the great
+delusion of my multifarious desires; as the sky is cleared of the massy
+clouds of the rainy weather in autumn.</p>
+
+<p>4. My soul is at rest and as cold as a stone; it is filled with the
+ambrosial draught of Divine knowledge and its holy light; I find myself
+to rest in perfect bliss, and as illumined as the queen of the stars,
+rising in her full light in the evening.</p>
+
+<p>5. O thou dispeller of my doubts, and resemblest the clear autumnal
+sky, that clears the clouds of the rainy season! I am never full and
+satiate with all thy holy teachings to me.</p>
+
+<p>6. Relate to me Sir! for the advancement of my knowledge, how Bali came
+to know the transcendental truth. Explain it fully unto me, as holy
+saints reserve nothing from their suppliant pupils.</p>
+
+<p>7. Vasishtha replied:—Attend Ráma! to the interesting narrative of
+Bali, and your attentive hearing of it, will give you the knowledge of
+the endless and everlasting truth and immutable verities.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_794">[794]</span>
+8. There is in the womb of this earth, and in some particular part of
+it, a place called the infernal region, which is situated below this
+earth. (The <i>Infra</i> or Pátála means the antipodes and is full of water).</p>
+
+<p>9. It is peopled by the milk white Naiades or marine goddesses, born
+in the milky ocean-sweet water, and of the race of demons, who filled
+every gap and chasm of it with their progeny. (The subterranean cells,
+were peopled by the earth-born Titans).</p>
+
+<p>10. In some places it was peopled by huge serpents, with a hundred
+and thousand heads; which hissed loudly with their parted and forky
+tongues, and their long projected fangs.</p>
+
+<p>11. In other places there were the mountainous bodies of demons,
+walking in their lofty strides, and seeming to fling above the balls of
+the worlds as their bonbons, in order to devour them.</p>
+
+<p>12. In another place there were big elephants, upholding the earth on
+their elevated probosces, and supporting the islands upon their strong
+and projected tusks. (These elephants were of the antediluvian world,
+whose fossiled remains are found under the ground).</p>
+
+<p>13. There were ghosts and devils in other places, making hideous
+shrieks and noise; and there were groups of hellish bodies, and putrid
+carcasses of ghostly shapes.</p>
+
+<p>14. The depth of the nether world concealed in its darksome womb, rich
+mines of gems and metals, lying under the surface of the earth, and
+reaching to the seventh layer of <i>pátála</i> or infernal regions.</p>
+
+<p>15. Another part of this place, was sanctified by the dust of the
+lotus-like feet of the divine Kapila (Siva or Pluto); who was adored
+by the gods and demigods, by prostration of their exalted heads at his
+holy feet.</p>
+
+<p>16. Another part of it was presided by the god Siva, in his form of
+a golden phallus (linga); which was worshipped by the ladies of the
+demons, with abundant offerings and merry revelries. (Siva or Pluto—the
+infernal god was fond of Bacchanals and revels).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_795">[795]</span>
+17. Bali the son of Virochana, reigned in this place as the king of
+demons, who supported the burden of his kingdom, on the pillars of
+their mighty arms.</p>
+
+<p>18. He forced the gods, Vidyádharas, serpents, and the king of the
+gods, to serve at his feet like his vassal train, and they were glad to
+serve him as their lord.</p>
+
+<p>19. He was protected by Hari, who contains the gemming worlds in the
+treasure of his bowels (brahmánda—bhándodara), and is the preserver of
+all embodied beings, and the support of the sovereigns of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>20. His name struck terror in the heart of Airávata, and made his
+cheeks fade with fear; as the sound of a peacock petrifies the entrails
+of serpents (because the peacock is a serpivorous bird).<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>21. The intense heat of his valour, dried up the waters of the septuple
+oceans of the earth; and turned them to seven dry beds, as under the
+fire of the universal Conflagration.</p>
+
+<p>22. But the smoke of his sacrificial fire, was an amulet to the people
+for supply of water; and it caused the rains to fall as profusely from
+above as the seas fallen below from the waters above. (This alludes to
+the dynamite which was ignorantly believed to be a talisman).</p>
+
+<p>23. His frowning look, made the high heads of mountains stoop low to
+the ground; and caused the lofty skies to lower with water, like the
+high branches of trees when overloaded with fruits. (It means, that the
+mountains and skies were obedient to his bidding).</p>
+
+<p>24. This mighty monarch reigned over the demons for myriads of years,
+after he had made an easy conquest of all the treasures and luxuries of
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>25. Thus he lived for many ages, which glided on like the course of a
+river rolling about like the waters of whirlpool; and witnessed the
+incessant flux and reflux of the generations of gods, demons and men,
+of the three worlds.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_796">[796]</span>
+26. The king of the demons felt at last, a distaste to all the
+enjoyments of life, which he had tasted to surfeit; and he felt also an
+uneasiness amidst the variety of his pleasures.</p>
+
+<p>27. He retired to the farthest polar mount of Meru, and there sitting
+at the balcony of one of its gemming pinnacles, he reflected on the
+state of this world and the vanity of mortal life.</p>
+
+<p>28. How long yet, thought he in himself, shall I have to rule over this
+world with my indefatigable labour; and how much more must I remain to
+roam about the triple world, in my successive transmigrations?</p>
+
+<p>29. Of what use is it to me to have this unrivaled sovereignty, which
+is a wonder in the three worlds; and of what good is it to me, to enjoy
+this plenteous luxury, which is so charming to the senses?</p>
+
+<p>30. Of what permanent delight are all these pleasures to me, which are
+pleasant only for the present short time, and are sure to lose all
+their taste with my zest in them in the next moment?</p>
+
+<p>31. There is the same rotation of days and nights in unvarying
+succession, and the repetition of the same acts day after day. It is
+rather shameful and no way pleasant to any one, to continue in the same
+unvaried course of life for a great length of time.</p>
+
+<p>32. The same embraces of our beloved ones, and partaking of the same
+food day by day, are amusements fit for playful boys only, but are
+disgraceful and disgusting to great minds.</p>
+
+<p>33. What man of taste is there, that will not be disgusted to taste the
+same sweets over and over again, which he has tasted all along, and
+which have become vapid and tasteless to-day; and what sensible man can
+continue in the same course, without the feelings of shame and remorse?</p>
+
+<p>34. The revolving days and nights bring the same revolution of duties,
+and I ween this repetition of the same acts—<i>kritasya karanam</i>,
+is as ridiculous to the wise, as the mastication of his grinded
+meat—<i>charbita charbana</i>. (Kritasya karanam násti, mritasya maranam
+yathá. There is no doing of an act, which has been done? Nor the dying
+of a man, that’s already dead).</p>
+
+<p>35. The actions of men are as those of the waves, which rise <span class="pagenum" id="Page_797">[797]</span>
+to fall
+and then rise again to subside in the waters. (This rising and falling
+over and anon again, is to no purpose whatever).</p>
+
+<p>36. The repetition of the same act, is the employment of mad men; and
+the wise man is laughed at, who reiterates the same chime, as the
+conjugation of a verb by boys, in all its moods, tenses and inflexions.</p>
+
+<p>37. What action is that which being once completed, does not recur to
+us any more, but crowns its actor with his full success all at once?
+(It is cessation from repetition of the same action, <i>i.e.</i> inaction).</p>
+
+<p>38. Or if this bustle of the world, were for a short duration only, yet
+what is the good that we can derive from our engaging in this commotion?</p>
+
+<p>39. The course of actions is as interminable, as the ceaseless
+repetends of boyish sports; it is hollow harping on the same string,
+which the more it is played upon, the more it reverberates to its
+hollow sound. (The acts of men make a renown and vain blustering sound
+only, and no real good to the actor).</p>
+
+<p>40. I see no such gain from any of our actions, which being once
+gained, may prevent our further exertions. (Action leads to action, but
+non-action is a leader to quiescence or <i>naiskarma</i>).</p>
+
+<p>41. What can our actions bring forth, beside the objects of sensible
+gratification? They cannot bring about anything that is imperishable.
+Saying so, Bali fell in a trance of his profound meditation.</p>
+
+<p>42. Coming then to himself; he said:—“Ah! I now come to remember, what
+I had heard from my father”: so saying he stretched his eye-brows, and
+gave vent to what he thought in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>43. “I had formerly asked my father Virochana, who was versed in
+spiritual knowledge, and acquainted with the manners of the people of
+former and later ages”.</p>
+
+<p>44. Saying: what is that ultimate state of being, where all our pains
+and pleasures cease to exist; and after the attainment of which, we
+have no more to wander about the world, or pass through repeated
+transmigrations.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_798">[798]</span>
+45. What is that final state towards which all our endeavours are
+directed, and where our minds are freed from their error; and where we
+obtain our full rest, after all our wanderings and transmigrations?</p>
+
+<p>46. What is that best of gains, which gives full satisfaction to the
+cravings of the soul; and what is that glorious object, whose sight
+transcends all other objects of vision?</p>
+
+<p>47. All those various luxuries and superfluities of the world, are no
+way conducive to our real happiness; in as much as they mislead the
+mind to error, and corrupt the souls of even the wisest of men.</p>
+
+<p>48. “Therefore, O father, show me that state of imperishable felicity,
+whereby I may attain to my everlasting repose and tranquility”.</p>
+
+<p>49. My father having heard these words of mine, as he was then
+sitting under the shade of the kalpa tree of paradise, whose flowers
+were fairer far than the bright beams of the nocturnal luminary, and
+overspread the ground all around; spoke to me in his sweet mellifluous
+accents the following speech, for the purpose of removing my error.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_799">[799]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXIII.<br>
+<span class="small">SPEECH OF VIROCHANA ON SUBJECTION OF THE MIND.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The soul and mind personified as a monarch and his
+minister.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>irochana</span> said:—There is an extensive country, my son, somewhere in
+this universe, with a spacious concavity therein, whose ample space is
+able to hold thousands of worlds and many more spheres in it.</p>
+
+<p>2. It is devoid of the wide oceans and seas and high mountains, as
+there are in this earth; and there are not such forests, rivers and
+lakes, nor holy places of pilgrimage, as you see here below.</p>
+
+<p>3. There is neither land nor sky, nor the heavenly orbs as on high; nor
+are there these suns and moons, nor the regents of the spheres, nor
+their inhabitants of gods and demons.</p>
+
+<p>4. There are no races of Yakshas and Rakshas, nor those tribes of
+plants and trees, woods or grass; nor the moving and immovable beings,
+as you see upon the earth.</p>
+
+<p>5. There is no water, no land, no fire nor air; nor are there the sides
+of the compass, nor the regions you call above and below. There is no
+light nor shadow, nor the peoples, nor the gods Hari, Indra and Siva,
+nor any of the inferior deities or demigods there.</p>
+
+<p>6. There is a great sovereign of that place, who is full of ineffable
+light. He is the creator and pervader of all, and is all in all, but
+quite quiescent in all places and things.</p>
+
+<p>7. He had elected a minister, who was clever in administration and
+brought about what was impossible to be done, and prevented all mishaps
+from coming to pass.</p>
+
+<p>8. He neither ate nor drank, nor did nor knew anything, beside minding
+and doing his master’s behests. In all other respects he was as
+inactive as a block of stone.</p>
+
+<p>9. He conducted every business for his master, who remained <span class="pagenum" id="Page_800">[800]</span>
+quite
+retired from all his business, with enjoyment of his rest and ease in
+his seclusion, leaving all his concerns to be managed by his minister.</p>
+
+<p>10. Bali said:—Tell me sir, what place is that which is devoid of all
+population, and free from all disease and difficulty; who knows that
+place, and how can it be reached at by any body.</p>
+
+<p>11. Who is that sovereign of sovran power, and who that minister of so
+great might; and who being quite apart from the world, are inseparably
+connected with it, and are invincible by our almighty demoniac power.
+(This monarch and master is the soul and his minister is the mind).</p>
+
+<p>12. Relate to me, O thou dread of the gods! this marvelous story of the
+great might of that minister, in order to remove the cloud of doubt
+from my mind, and also why he is unconquerable by us.</p>
+
+<p>13. Virochana replied:—Know my son, this mighty minister to be
+irresistible by the gigantic force of the Asura giants, even though
+they were aided by millions of demons fighting on their side.</p>
+
+<p>14. He is invincible, my son, by the god of a thousand eyes (Indra),
+and also by the gods of riches and death (Kubera and Yama), who conquer
+all, and neither the immortals nor giants, can ever overpower him by
+their might.</p>
+
+<p>15. All weapons are defeated in their attempt to hurt him, and the
+swords and mallets, spears and bolts, disks and cudgels, that are
+hurled against him, are broken to pieces as upon their striking against
+a solid rock.</p>
+
+<p>16. He is unapproachable by missiles, and invulnerable by arms and
+weapons, and unseizable by the dexterity of warriors; and it is by his
+resistless might, that he has brought the gods and demigods under his
+subjection.</p>
+
+<p>17. It was he (the proud mind) that defeated our forefathers, the
+mighty Hiranyas (Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakasipu), before they were
+destroyed by the great Vishnu; who felled the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_801">[801]</span>
+big Asuras, as a storm
+breaks down the sturdy and rocklike oaks.<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>18. The gods Náráyana and others (who had been the instructors of men),
+were all foiled by him and confined in their cells of the wombs of
+their mothers (by an imprecation of the sage Bhrigu, who denounced them
+to become incarnate in human forms).</p>
+
+<p>19. It is by his favour that Káma (Cupid), the god with his flower bow
+and five arrows, has been enabled to subdue and overcome the three
+worlds, and boasts of being their sole emperor. (Káma called also
+Manoja, is the child of mana or mind, and Kandarpa for his boast of his
+triumph).</p>
+
+<p>20. The gods and demigods, the intelligent and the foolish, the
+deformed and the irascible, are all actuated by his influence. (Love is
+the leader to action according to Plato).</p>
+
+<p>21. The repeated wars between the gods and Asuras, are the sports of
+this minister (who deliberates in secret the destinies of all beings.
+The restless mind is continually at warfare).</p>
+
+<p>22. This minister is only manageable by its lord—the silent soul, or
+else it is as dull as an immovable rock or restless as the wind.</p>
+
+<p>23. It is in the long run of its advancement in spiritual knowledge,
+that the soul feels a desire in itself to subdue its minister; who is
+otherwise ungovernable of its nature by lenient measures. (Govern your
+mind or it will govern you. The mind is best taught by whip).</p>
+
+<p>24. You are then said to be valiant, if you can conquer this greatest
+of the giants in the three worlds, who has been worrying all people out
+for their breath. (The mind longs for occupation).</p>
+
+<p>25. After the rising of the intellect, the world appears as a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_802">[802]</span>
+flower garden, and like the lake of blooming lotuses at sunrise; and
+its setting covers the world in darkness as at sunset (<i>i.e.</i> in
+unconsciousness).</p>
+
+<p>26. It is only by the aid of this intellect of yours, and by removal
+of your ignorance, that you can subdue this minister, and be famed for
+your wisdom. (Good government of the mind, is more renowned than that
+of a realm).</p>
+
+<p>27. By subduing this minister, you become the subduer of the world,
+though you are no victor of it; and by your unsubjection of this, you
+can have no subjection over the world, though may be the master of it.</p>
+
+<p>28. Therefore be diligent to overcome this minister, by your best
+and most ardent exertions, on account of effecting your perfect
+consummation, and securing your everlasting happiness.</p>
+
+<p>29. It is easy for him to overcome the triple world, and keep all its
+beings of gods and demons, and the bodies of Nágas and men, together
+with the races of Yakshas and Rakshas, and the tribes of serpents and
+Kinnaras, who has been able to subdue this minister by his superior
+might. (Govern yourself, and you govern all besides).
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_803">[803]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXIV.<br>
+<span class="small">ON THE HEALING AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE MIND.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Quelling of the misleading mind, and waiting upon the
+sovereign soul, with the perfection of Platonic Quietism.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">B</span>ali</span> said:—Tell me sir, plainly who is this minister of so great might,
+and by what expedients can so mighty a being be vanquished and brought
+under subjection.</p>
+
+<p>2. Virochana replied:—Though that minister, is invincible and stands
+above all in his great might; yet I will tell you the expedients,
+whereby he may be overcome by you or any one else.</p>
+
+<p>3. Son! It is by employment of proper means that he may be easily
+brought under subjection, and by neglect of which he will have the
+upper hand of you like the snake poison, if it is not repelled in time
+by means of efficacious mantras and incantations.</p>
+
+<p>4. The ministerial mind being brought up like a boy in the right way
+he should go; leads the man to the presence of the sovran soul, as the
+<i>rája yoga</i> or royal service advances the servant before his king.</p>
+
+<p>5. The appearance of the master makes the minister disappear from
+sight; as the disappearance of the minister, brings one to the full
+view of his king.</p>
+
+<p>6. As long as one does not approach to the presence of his king, he
+cannot fail to serve the minister; and so long as he is employed in
+service of the minister, he cannot come to the sight of his king.</p>
+
+<p>7. The king being kept out of sight, the minister is seen to exercise
+his might; but the minister being kept out of view, the king alone
+appears in full view.</p>
+
+<p>8. Therefore must we begin with the practice of both these exercises
+at once; namely, approaching by degrees to the sight of the king, and
+slighting gradually the authority of the minister.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_804">[804]</span>
+
+<p>9. It must be by the exercise of your continued manly exertions and
+diligent application, that you employ yourself in both these practices,
+in order to arrive to the state of your well being.</p>
+
+<p>10. When you are successful in your practice, you are sure to reach to
+that blissful country; and though you are a prince of the demons, you
+can have nothing to obstract your entrance into it.</p>
+
+<p>11. That is a place for the abode of the blessed, whose desires are at
+rest and whose doubts are dissipated, and whose hearts are filled with
+perpetual joy and calmness.</p>
+
+<p>12. Now hear me, explain to you, my son, what that place is which I
+called a country. It is the seat of liberation (moksha), and where
+there is an end of all our pains.</p>
+
+<p>13. The king of that place is the soul of divine essence, which
+transcends all other substances; and it is the mind which is appointed
+by that soul as its wise minister.</p>
+
+<p>14. The mind which contains the ideal world in its bosom, exhibits its
+sensible form to the senses afterwards; as the clod of clay containing
+the mould of the pot, shows itself as the model of a pot to view; and
+the smoke having the pattern of the cloud in its essence, represents
+its shadowy forms in the sky. (The pattern of everything is engraven in
+the mind).</p>
+
+<p>15. Hence the mind being conquered, everything is subdued and brought
+under subjection; but the mind is invincible without adoption of proper
+means for its subjugation.</p>
+
+<p>16. Bali interrogated:—What are these means, sir, which we are to adopt
+for quelling the mind; tell it plainly to me, that I may resort to the
+same, for this conquering invincible barrier of bliss.</p>
+
+<p>17. Virochana answered: The means for subduing the mind, are the want
+of reliance and confidence on all external and sensible things, and
+absence of all desire for temporal possessions.</p>
+
+<p>18. This is the best expedient for removal of the great
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_805">[805]</span>delusion of
+this world, and subduing the big elephant of the mind at once.</p>
+
+
+<p>19. This expedient is both very easy and practicable on one hand, as it
+is arduous and impracticable on the other. It is the constant habit of
+thinking so that makes it facile, but the want of such habitude renders
+it difficult.</p>
+
+<p>20. It is the gradual habit of renouncing our fondness for temporal
+objects, that shows itself in time in our resignation of the world; as
+continuous watering at the roots of plants, makes them grow to large
+trees afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>21. It is as hard to master anything even by the most cunning, without
+its proper cultivation for some time; as it is impossible to reap the
+harvest from an unsown and uncultivated field.</p>
+
+<p>22. So long are all embodied souls destined to rove about the
+wilderness of the world, as there is the want of resignation in their
+heart of all the sensible objects in nature.</p>
+
+<p>23. It is impossible without the habit of apathy, to have a distaste
+for sensible objects, as it is no way possible for an ablebodied man,
+to travel abroad by sitting motionless at home.</p>
+
+<p>24. The firm determination of abandoning the stays of life, and a
+habitual aversion to pleasures and enjoyments, make a man to advance to
+purity, as a plant grows in open air to its full height.</p>
+
+<p>25. There is no good to be derived on earth, without the exertion of
+one’s manliness, and man must give up his pleasure and the vexation of
+his spirit, in order to reap the fruit of his actions.</p>
+
+<p>26. People speak of a power as destiny here, which has neither any
+shape nor form of itself. It means whatever comes to pass, and is also
+called our lot or fatality.</p>
+
+<p>27. The word destiny is used also by mankind, to mean an accident over
+which they have no control, and to which they submit with passive
+obedience.</p>
+
+<p>28. They use the word destiny for repression of our joy and grief (at
+what is unavoidable); but destiny however fixed as fate, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_806">[806]</span>
+is overcome
+and set aside by means of manly exertions (in many instances).</p>
+
+<p>29. As the delusion of the mirage, is dispelled by the light of its
+true nature; so it is the exertion of manliness, which upsets destiny
+by effecting whatever it wishes to bring about.</p>
+
+<p>30. If we should seek to know the cause for the good or bad results of
+our actions, we must learn that they turn as well as the mind wishes to
+mould them to being.</p>
+
+<p>31. Whatever the mind desires and decrees, the same become the
+destiny; there is nothing destined (or distinctly to be known), as what
+we may call to be destined or undestined.</p>
+
+<p>32. It is the mind that does all this, and is the employer of destiny;
+it destines the destined acts of destiny.</p>
+
+<p>33. Life or the living soul is spread out in the hollow sphere of the
+world, like air in vacuum. The psychic fluid circulates through all
+space.</p>
+
+<p>(The psychic fluid extending throughout the universe, according to the
+theory of Stahl).</p>
+
+<p>34. Destiny is no reality, but a term invented to express the property
+of fixity, as the word rock is used to denote stability. Hence there is
+no fixed fate or destiny, as long as the mind retains its free will and
+activity.</p>
+
+<p>35. After the mind is set at rest, there remains the principle of
+the living soul (Jíva—zoo). This is called the <i>purusha</i> or embodied
+spirit, which is the source of the energies of the body and mind.</p>
+
+<p>36. Whatever the living soul intends to do by means of its spiritual
+force, the same comes to take place and no other. (There being not even
+the influence of the mind to retard its action. So my son, there is no
+other power in the world except that of spirit or spiritual force).</p>
+
+<p>37. Reliance on this spiritual power will uproot your dependance on
+bodily nutriments; and there is no hope of spiritual happiness, until
+there is a distaste towards temporal enjoyments.</p>
+
+<p>38. It is hard to attain to the dignity of the all conquering
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_807">[807]</span>
+self-sufficiency, as long as one has the dastardly spirit of his
+earthly cravings.</p>
+
+<p>39. As long as one is swinging in the cradle of worldly affairs, it is
+hard for him to find his rest in the bower of peaceful tranquility.</p>
+
+<p>40. It is hard for you to get rid of your serpentine (crooked) desires,
+without your continued practice of indifference to and unconcernedness
+with worldly affairs.</p>
+
+<p>41. Bali rejoined:—Tell me, O lord of demons! in what manner,
+indifference to worldly enjoyments, takes a deep root in the human
+heart; and produces the fruit of longevity of the embodied spirit
+on earth. (By longevity is meant the spiritual life of man, and his
+resting in the divine Spirit, by being freed from the accidents of
+mortal life).</p>
+
+<p>42. Virochana replied:—It is the sight of the inward spirit, which is
+productive of indifference to worldly things; as the growth of vines is
+productive of the grapes in autumn.</p>
+
+<p>43. It is the sight of the inward Spirit, which produces our internal
+unconcernedness with the world; as it is the glance of the rising sun,
+which infuses its lustre in the cup of the lotus.</p>
+
+<p>44. Therefore sharpen your intellect, by the whetstone of right
+reasoning; and see the Supreme Spirit, by withdrawing your mind from
+worldly enjoyments.</p>
+
+<p>45. There are two modes of intellectual enjoyment, of which one
+consists of book learning, and the other is derived from attendance on
+the lectures of the preceptor, by those that are imperfect in their
+knowledge. (<i>i.e.</i> The one is theoretical for adepts and the other is
+practical for novices).</p>
+
+<p>46. Those who are a little advanced in learning, have the double
+advantage of their mental enjoyment, namely: their reflection of book
+learning and consultation with wise preceptors on practical points.
+(Hence the practice of Yoga requires a Yogi guide also).</p>
+
+<p>47. Those who are accomplished in learning, have also two parts of
+their duties to perform; namely, the profession of the sástras teaching
+them to others, and the practice of indifference <span class="pagenum" id="Page_808">[808]</span>
+for themselves. (But
+the last and lowest kind, only have to wait on the guru and reflect on
+what they hear from him).</p>
+
+<p>48. The soul being purified, the man is fitted for Spiritual learning;
+as it is the clean linen only which is fit to receive every good
+tincture upon it.<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>49. The mind is to be trained by degrees, like a boy in the path of
+learning; namely by means of persuasion and good lectures, and then by
+teaching of the sástras, and lastly by discussion of their doctrines.</p>
+
+<p>50. After its perfection in learning and dispersion of all difficulties
+and doubts, the mind shines as a piece of pure crystal, and emits its
+lustre like the cooling moonbeams.</p>
+
+<p>51. It then sees by its consummate knowledge and clear understanding,
+in both the form of its God the Spirit, and the body which is the seat
+of its enjoyments on earth.</p>
+
+<p>52. It constantly sees the spirit before it, by means of its
+understanding and reason; which help it also to relinquish its desire
+for worldly objects and enjoyments.</p>
+
+<p>53. The sight of the Spirit produces the want of desires, and the
+absence of these shows the light of the spirit to its sight; therefore
+they are related to each other like the wick and oil of the lamp, in
+producing the light, and dispelling the darkness of the night.</p>
+
+<p>54. After the loss of relish in worldly enjoyments, and the sight of
+the Supreme Spirit, the soul finds its perpetual rest in the essence of
+the Supreme Brahma.</p>
+
+<p>55. The living souls that place their happiness in worldly objects,
+can never have the taste of true felicity, unless they rely themselves
+wholly in the Supreme Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>56. It may be possible to derive some delight from acts of charity,
+sacrifices and holy pilgrimage; but none of these can give the
+everlasting rest of the Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>57. No one feels a distaste for pleasure, unless he examines <span class="pagenum" id="Page_809">[809]</span>
+its nature
+and effects in himself; and nothing can teach the way of seeing the
+soul, unless the soul reflects on itself.</p>
+
+<p>58. Those things are of no good whatever, my boy, that may be had
+without one’s own exertion in gaining it; nor is there any true
+happiness, without the resignation of earthly enjoyments.</p>
+
+<p>59. The Supreme felicity of rest in the state of Brahma, is to be bad
+nowhere in this wide world, either in this mundane sphere, or anywhere
+else beyond these spheres.</p>
+
+<p>60. Therefore expect always how your soul may find its rest in the
+divine Spirit, by relying on the exertion of your manliness, and
+leaving aside your dependance on the eventualities of destiny.</p>
+
+<p>61. The wise man detests all worldly enjoyments as if they are the
+strong bolts or barriers at the door of bliss; and it is the settled
+aversion to earthly pleasures, that brings a man to his right reason.</p>
+
+<p>62. As the increasing gloominess of rainy clouds, is followed by the
+serenity of autumnal skies, so clear reasoning comes after detestation
+of enjoyments, which fly at the advance of reason.</p>
+
+<p>63. As the seas and the clouds of heaven, help one another by lending
+their waters in turn; so apathy to pleasures and right reasoning, tend
+to produce each other by turns.</p>
+
+<p>64. So disbelief in destiny, and engagement in manly exertion, are
+sequences of one another, as reciprocities of service are consequences
+of mutual friendship.</p>
+
+<p>65. It must be by the gnashing of your teeth (<i>i.e.</i> by your firm
+resolve), that you should create a distaste even of those things, which
+you have acquired by legal means and conformably to the custom of your
+country.</p>
+
+<p>66. You must first acquire your wealth by means of your manly
+exertions, and then get good and clever men in your company by means of
+your wealth (<i>i.e.</i> patronise the learned therewith, and improve your
+mind by their instructions).</p>
+
+<p>67. Association with the wise produces an aversion to the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_810">[810]</span>
+sensual
+enjoyments of life, by exciting the reasoning power, which gains for
+its reward an increase of knowledge and learning.</p>
+
+<p>68. These lead gradually to the acquirement of that state of
+consummation, which is concomitant with the utter renunciation of
+worldly objects.</p>
+
+<p>69. It is then by means of your reasoning that you attain to that
+Supreme State of perfection, in which you obtain your perfect rest and
+the holiness of your soul.</p>
+
+<p>70. You will then fall no more in the mud of your misconceptions; but
+as a pure essence, you will have no dependance on anything, but become
+as the venerable Siva yourself.</p>
+
+<p>71. Thus the steps of attaining consummation, are first of all the
+acquisition of wealth, according to the custom of the caste and
+country; and then its employment in the service of wise and learned
+men. Next follows your abandonment of the world, which is succeeded
+by your attainment of Spiritual knowledge, by the cultivation of your
+reasoning powers.<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_811">[811]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXV.<br>
+<span class="small">REFLECTIONS OF BALI.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Rise of intellectual light in Bali’s mind, and his
+Reference to Sukra for Advice.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">B</span>ali</span> said:—In this manner did my sapient father advise me before on
+this subject, which I fortunately remember at the present moment for
+the enlightenment of my understanding.</p>
+
+<p>2. It is now that I feel my aversion to the enjoyments of life, and
+come to perceive by my good luck the bliss of tranquility, to liken
+the clear and cooling ambrosial drink of heavenly bliss.</p>
+
+<p>3. I am tired of all my possessions, and am weary of my continued
+accumulation of wealth, for the satisfaction of my endless desires. The
+live-long care of the family also has grown tiresome to me.</p>
+
+<p>4. But how charming is this peace and tranquility of my soul, which is
+quite even and all cool within itself. Here are all our pleasures and
+pains brought to meet upon the same level of equality and indifference.</p>
+
+<p>5. I am quite unconcerned with any thing and am highly delighted with
+my indifference to all things; I am gladdened within myself as by the
+beams of the full-moon, and feel the orb of the full moon rising within
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>6. O! the trouble of acquiring riches, which is attended by the loud
+bustle of the world and agitation in the mind, and the heart burn and
+fatigue of the body; and is accompanied with incessant anxiety and
+affliction of the heart.</p>
+
+<p>7. The limbs and flesh of the body, are smashed by labour; and all
+bodily exercises that pleased me once, now appear to be the long and
+lost labours of my former ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>8. I have seen the sights of whatever was worth seeing, and enjoyed the
+enjoyments which knew no bounds; I have <span class="pagenum" id="Page_812">[812]</span>
+overcome all beings; but what
+is the good (that I have derived from all this)?</p>
+
+<p>9. There is only a reiteration of the very same things, that I had
+there, here and elsewhere; and I found nowhere now any thing new, that
+I had not seen or known before.</p>
+
+<p>10. I am now sitting here in full possession of myself, by resigning
+every thing and its thought from my mind; and thereby I find that
+nothing whatever nor even its thought forms any component-part of
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>11. The best things in the heaven above, earth and in this infernal
+region, are reckoned to be their damsels, gems and jewels; but all
+these are destroyed and wasted sooner or later by the cruel hand of
+time.</p>
+
+<p>12. I have acted foolishly all this time, by waging a continuous
+struggle with the gods, for the sake of the trifle of worldly
+possessions. (The wars of the earth-born demons and the foreign deities
+are well known in the early history of the world).</p>
+
+<p>13. What is this phantom of the world, but a creation of the brain;
+what then is the harm of forsaking it forever in which great souls take
+no delight whatever?</p>
+
+<p>14. Alas! that I have spent such a large portion of my life-time, in
+pursuing after trifles in the ignorant giddiness of my mind.</p>
+
+<p>15. My fickle and fluctuating desires, have led me to do many acts
+of foolishness, in this world of odds and trifles, which now fill me
+with remorse and regret. (Remembrance of the past, is fraught with
+regret).</p>
+
+<p>16. But it is in vain to be overwhelmed with the sad thoughts of the
+past, while I should use my manly exertions to improve the present.
+(The present time is in our hand, but who the past can recall, or the
+future command).</p>
+
+<p>17. It is by reflecting on the eternal cause of the endless infinity
+of souls in the soul, that one can attain his perfect felicity; as
+the gods got the ambrosia from the Milky ocean. (True bliss is to be
+derived from the blissful Deity).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_813">[813]</span>
+18. I most consult my preceptor Sukra, concerning the Ego and the
+soul and spiritual vision, of the soul of souls in order to expel my
+ignorance in these matters.</p>
+
+<p>19. I must refer these questions to the most venerable Sukra, who is
+always complacent to his favorites; and then it is possible that by
+his advice I shall be settled in the highest perfection of seeing the
+supreme spirit, in my spirit, because the words of the wise, are ever
+fraught with full meaning and are fruitful of the desired object.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_814">[814]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXVI.<br>
+<span class="small">ADMONITION OF SUKRA TO BALI.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Sukra’s appearance at the call of Bali; and his advice
+to him on the attainment of divine knowledge.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—So saying the mighty Bali closed his eyes, and thought
+upon the lotus-eyed Sukra, abiding in his heavenly abode. (Sukra the
+planet Venus represented as the preceptor of demons, as Vrihaspati the
+planet Jupiter is said to be the Spiritual guide of the deities).</p>
+
+<p>2. Sukra, who sat intently meditating on the all pervading spirit of
+God, came to know in his mind, that he was remembered by his disciple
+Bali in his city.</p>
+
+<p>3. Then Sukra the son of Bhrigu, whose soul was united with the
+all pervading infinite and omniscient spirit, descended with his
+heavenly body at the gemming window of Bali (decorated with glass
+doors).</p>
+
+<p>4. Bali knew the body of his guide by its lustre, as the lotus-flower
+perceives the rising sun by his dawning beams.</p>
+
+<p>5. He then honoured his <i>guru</i> or guide, by adoring his feet on a seat
+decked with gems, and with offering of <i>mandára</i> flowers upon him.</p>
+
+<p>6. As Sukra took his rest on the gemming seat from the labour of his
+journey, he was strewn over with offerings of gems on his body, and
+heaps of mandára flowers upon his head; after which Bali addressed him
+thus:—</p>
+
+<p>7. Venerable sir, this illustrious presence of thy grace before me,
+emboldens me to address to thee, as the morning sun-beams send all
+mankind to their daily work.</p>
+
+<p>8. I have come to feel an aversion, Sir, to all kinds of worldly
+enjoyments, which are productive of the delusion of our souls; and want
+to know the truth relating to it, in order to dispel my ignorance of
+myself.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_815">[815]</span>
+
+<p>9. Tell me, sir, in short, what are these enjoyments good for, and
+how far they extend; and what am I, thou or these people in reality.
+(Extent of enjoyments—bhoga, means their limitation and duration).</p>
+
+<p>10. Sukra answered:—I can not tell you in length about it, as I have
+soon to repair to my place in the sky. Hear me O monarch of demons tell
+this much briefly to you at present.</p>
+
+<p>11. There is verily but the intellect in reality, and all this
+existence beside is verily the intellect and full of intellect: The
+mind is the intellect, and I, thou and these people are collectively
+the very intellect. (Gloss. These sayings are based on the srutis,
+namely: All these are but different aspects of the one intellect.
+Again: All things depend on the <i>chit</i>. Also:—This <i>chit</i> am I, thou
+and this Brahma and Indra and all others. There is no other looker or
+the subjective; or the hearer or objective beside the <i>chit</i>: and so
+forth).</p>
+
+<p>12. If you are wise, know you derive every thing from this Chit—the
+universal Intellect; or else all gifts of fortune are as useless to you
+as the offering of butter on ashes (which cannot consume it, or make a
+burnt offering of it to the gods).</p>
+
+<p>13. Taking the intellect as something thinkable or object of
+thought, is the snare of the mind; but the belief of its freeness
+or incomprehensibility, is what confers liberation to the soul. The
+incomprehensible intellect is verily the universal soul, which is the
+sum of all doctrines. (All faiths and doctrines tend to the belief of
+one unknowable God).</p>
+
+<p>14. Knowing this for certain, look on everything as such; and behold
+the spirit in thy spirit, in order to arrive to the state of the
+Infinite spirit. (Or else the adoration of a finite object, must lead
+to a finite state).</p>
+
+<p>15. I have instantly to repair to the sky, where the seven munis
+are assembled (the seven planets or the seven stars of the
+Pleiades—saptarshi?), where I have to continue in the performance of my
+divine service.</p>
+
+<p>16. I tell you, O king! that you must not of yourself get rid of your
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_816">[816]</span>
+duties, as long as you are in this body of yours, <a id="even_though"></a>even though your mind
+may be freed from everything. (The embodied being must continue in the
+discharge of his bodily duty).</p>
+
+<p>17. So saying, Sukra flew as a bee besmeared with the farinaceous
+gold-dust of the lotus, to the aureate vault of heaven; and passed
+through the watery path of the waving clouds, to where the revolving
+planets were ready to receive him.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_817">[817]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXVII.<br>
+<span class="small">HEBETUDE OF BALI.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Bali attains to his state of Ecstacy, by his observance
+of Sukra’s precepts.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—After Sukra, the son of Bhrigu and senior in the
+assembly of gods and demigods, had made his departure, Bali the best
+among the intelligent, reflected thus in himself.</p>
+
+<p>2. Truly has the seer said, that the Intellect composes the three
+worlds, and that I am this Intellect, and the Intellect fills all the
+quarters, and shows itself in all our actions.</p>
+
+<p>3. It is the Intellect which pervades the inside and outside of every
+thing, and there is nothing anywhere which is without the Intellect.</p>
+
+<p>4. It is the Intellect that perceives the sunbeams and moonlight, or
+else there would be no distinction between them and darkness, had not
+there been this intellectual perception.</p>
+
+<p>5. If there were no such intellectual perception as this earth is land,
+then there would be no distinction of earth and water, nor the word
+earth apply to land.</p>
+
+<p>6. If the Intellect would not understand the vast space as the quarters
+of the sky, and the mountains as vast protuberances on earth; then who
+would call the sides and the mountains by those names?</p>
+
+<p>7. If the world were not known as the world and the vacuum as vacuity,
+then who would distinguish them by the names that are in common use?</p>
+
+<p>8. If this big body was not perceived by the intellect, how proper
+could the bodies of embodied beings be called by their names?</p>
+
+<p>9. The Intellect resides in every organ of sense, it dwells in the
+body, mind and all its desires; the intellect is in the internal
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_818">[818]</span>
+and external parts of the body, and the intellect is all that is in
+existent and non-existent. (Because the intellect has the notions of
+all these things, which would not come to exist, if they were not in
+the intellect).</p>
+
+<p>10. The Intellect forms my wholeself, by its feeling and knowing of
+everything that I feel and know; or else I can neither perceive or
+conceive nor do anything with my body alone, and without guidance of
+the intellect.</p>
+
+<p>11. What avails this body of mine, which is inert and insensible as a
+block of wood or stone; it is the intellect that makes my self, and it
+is the intelligent spirit which is the universal Soul.</p>
+
+<p>12. I am the intellect which resides in the sun and in the sky, and I
+am the intellect which dwells in the bodies of all beings; I am the
+same intellect which guides the gods and demigods, and dwells alike in
+the movables and immovable bodies.</p>
+
+<p>13. The intellect being the sole existence, it is in vain to suppose
+aught besides; and their being naught otherwise, there can be no
+difference of a friend or foe to us.</p>
+
+<p>14. What is it if I Bali, strike off the head of a person from his
+body, I can not injure the soul which is everywhere and fills all space.</p>
+
+<p>15. The feelings of love and enmity are properties of the intellect
+(Soul), and are not separated from it by its separation from the body.
+Hence the passions and feelings are inseparable from the Intellect or
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>16. There is nothing to be thought of beside the Intellect, and
+nothing to be obtained anywhere, except from the spacious womb of the
+Intellect, which comprehends all the three worlds.</p>
+
+<p>17. But the passions and feelings, the mind and its powers, are mere
+attributes and not properties of the Intellect; which being altogether
+a simple and pure essence, is free from every attribute.</p>
+
+<p>18. The Intellect—<i>chit</i> is the Ego, the omnipresent,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_819">[819]</span>
+all pervasive and
+ever felicitous soul; it is beyond all other attributes, and without a
+duality or parts.</p>
+
+<p>19. The term Intellect—<i>chit</i> which is applied to the nameless power of
+intellection—<i>chiti</i>, is but a verbal symbol signifying the omniscient
+Intelligence, which is manifest in all places. (<i>i.e.</i> The Divine
+Intellect is both omniscient as well as omnipresent, while human
+understanding is narrow and circumscribed).</p>
+
+<p>20. The Ego is the Supreme Lord, that is ever awake and sees all things
+without manifesting any appearance of himself. He is purely transparent
+and beyond all visible appearances.</p>
+
+<p>21. All its attributes are lame, partial and imperfect. Even time which
+has its phases and parts, is not a proper attribute for it. It is but a
+glimpse of its light that rises before us, but the eternal and infinite
+light, is beyond our comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>22. I must think of it only in the form of light in my own self, and
+know it apart from all other thinkables and thoughts, and quite aloof
+from all shades and colours.</p>
+
+<p>23. I salute his self-same form of Intelligence, and the power of
+Intellection, unaccompanied by the intelligible, and employed in its
+proper sphere.</p>
+
+<p>24. I salute that light of his in me, which represents every thing to
+me; which is beyond all thought, and is of the form of Intellect, going
+everywhere and filling all space.</p>
+
+<p>25. It is the quiet consciousness of all beings, the real Intellect
+(sach-chit), the Ego and the Great; the Ego which is as infinite as
+space, and yet minuter than an atom, and spreading in all alike.</p>
+
+<p>26. I am not subject to the states of pleasure and pain, I am conscious
+of my self and of no other existence besides myself; and I am
+Intelligence without the intelligibles spread out before me.</p>
+
+<p>27. No worldly entity nor non-entity (<i>i.e.</i> neither the gain of any
+object nor its want), can work any change in me; for the possession of
+worldly objects would destroy me at once (by their separating my soul
+from God).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_820">[820]</span>
+28. In my opinion there is nothing that is distinct from me, when we
+know all things as the produce of the same source.</p>
+
+<p>29. What one gets or loses is no gain or loss to any (<i>i.e.</i> to the
+gainer or loser), because the same Ego always abides in all, and is the
+Maker of all and pervading everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>30. Whether I am any of the thinkable objects or not, it matters me
+little to know; since the Intellect is always a single thing, though
+its intelligibles (<i>i.e.</i> its productions or thoughts), are endless.</p>
+
+<p>31. I am so long in sorrow, as my soul is not united with the Holy
+spirit. So saying, the most discerning Bali fell to a deep meditation.</p>
+
+<p>32. He reflected on the half mantra of Om (<i>i.e.</i> the dot only); an
+emblem of the Infinite God; and sat quietly with all his desires and
+fancies lying dormant in him.</p>
+
+<p>33. He sat undaunted, by suppressing his thoughts and his thinking
+powers within him; and remained with his subdued desires, after
+having lost the consciousness of his meditation, and of his being the
+meditator and also of meditated object. (<i>i.e.</i> Without knowing himself
+as the subject or object of his thoughts and acts).</p>
+
+<p>34. While Bali was entranced in this manner at the window which was
+decked with gems, he became illumined in his mind as a lighted lamp
+flaming unshaken by the wind. And he remained long in his steady
+posture as a statue carved of a stone.</p>
+
+<p>35. He sat with his mind as clear as the autumnal sky after having
+cast off all his desires and mental anxieties, and being filled within
+himself with his spiritual light.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_821">[821]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXVIII.<br>
+<span class="small">DESCRIPTION OF BALI’S ANAESTHESIA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Anxiety of the demons at the supineness of Bali, and
+the Appearance of Sukra with them before him.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—The servile demons of Bali (being impatient at
+this numbness of their king), ascended hastily to his high crystal
+palace, and stood at the door of his chamber.</p>
+
+<p>2. There were his ministers Dimbha and others among them, and his
+generals Kumuda and others also. There were likewise the princes Sukra
+and others in the number, and his champions Vritta and the rest.</p>
+
+<p>3. There were Hayagríva and the other captains of his armies, with his
+friends Akraja and others. His associates Laduka and some more joined
+the train, with his servants Valluka and many more.</p>
+
+<p>4. There were also the gods Kubera, Yama and Indra that paid him their
+tribute; and the Yakshas, Vidyádhars and Nágas that rendered him their
+services. (Were the Vidyádhars the Vedias or gipsies of modern India?).</p>
+
+<p>5. There were the heavenly nymphs Rambhá and Tilottamá in the number,
+with the fanning and flapping damsels of his court; and the deputies of
+different provinces and of hilly and maritime districts, were also in
+attendance.</p>
+
+<p>6. These accompanied by the Siddhas inhabiting different parts of the
+three worlds, all waited at that place to tender their services to Bali.</p>
+
+<p>7. They beheld Bali with reverence, with his head hanging down with the
+crown upon it, and his arms hanging loosely with the pendant bracelets
+on them.</p>
+
+<p>8. Seeing him thus, the great Asuras made their obeisance to him in due
+form, and were stupified with sorrow and fear, and struck with wonder
+and joy by turns at this sad plight of his.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_822">[822]</span>
+
+<p>9. The ministers kept pondering about what was the case with him,
+and the demons besought their all knowing preceptor Sukra, for his
+explaining the case to them.</p>
+
+<p>10. Quick as thought they beheld the shining figure of Sukra, standing
+confest to their sight, as if they saw the phantom of their
+imagination appearing palpable to view.</p>
+
+<p>11. Sukra being honoured by the demons, took his seat on a sofa; and
+saw in his silent meditation, the state of the mind of the king of
+demons.</p>
+
+<p>12. He remained for a while to behold with delight, how the mind of
+Bali was freed from errors, by the exercise of its reasoning powers.</p>
+
+<p>13. The illustrious preceptor, the lustre of whose person put to shame
+the brightness of the milky ocean, then said smiling to the listening
+throng of the demons:</p>
+
+<p>14. Know ye demons, this Bali to have become an adept in his spiritual
+knowledge, and to have fixed his seat in holy light, by the working of
+his intellect (<i>i.e.</i> by his intuition only).</p>
+
+<p>15. Let him alone, ye good demons, remain in this position, resting
+in himself and beholding the imperishable one within himself in his
+reverie.</p>
+
+<p>16. Lo! here the weary pilgrim to have got his rest, and his mind is
+freed from the errors of this false world. Disturb him not with your
+speech, who is now as cold as ice.</p>
+
+<p>17. He has now received that light of knowledge amidst the gloom of
+ignorance, as the waking man beholds the full blaze of the sun, after
+dispersion of the darkness of his sleep at dawn.</p>
+
+<p>18. He will in time wake from his trance, and rise like the germ of a
+seed, sprouting from the seed vessel in its proper season.</p>
+
+<p>19. Go ye leaders of the demons from here, and perform your respective
+duties assigned to you by your master; for it will take a thousand
+years, for Bali to wake from his trance (as a moment’s sleep makes a
+myriad of years in a dream).</p>
+
+<p>20. After Sukra the Guru and guide of the demons, had <span class="pagenum" id="Page_823">[823]</span>
+spoken in this
+manner, they were filled with alternate joy and grief in their hearts,
+and cast aside their anxiety about him, as a tree casts its withered
+leaves away.</p>
+
+<p>21. The Asuras then left their king Bali to rest in his palace in the
+aforesaid manner, and returned to their respective offices, as they had
+been employed heretofore.</p>
+
+<p>22. It now became night, and all men retired to their earthly abodes,
+the serpents entered into their holes, the stars appeared in the skies,
+and the gods reposed in their celestial domes. The regents of all sides
+and mountainous tracts, went to their own quarters, and the beasts of
+the forest and birds of the air, fled and flew to their own coverts and
+nests.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_824">[824]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXIX.<br>
+<span class="small">BALI’S RESUSCITATION TO SENSIBILITY.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Self-confinement of the Living-liberated Bali in the
+Infernal Regions.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> related:—After the thousand years of the celestials, had
+rolled on in Bali’s unconsciousness; he was roused to his sensibility,
+at the beating of heavenly drums by the gods above (the loud peal of
+clouds).</p>
+
+<p>2. Bali being awake, his city (Mavalipura) was renovated with fresh
+beauty, as the lotus-bed is revivified by the rising sun in the eastern
+horizon (Vairincha or Brahma-loka, placed at the sunrising points).</p>
+
+<p>3. Bali not finding the demons before him after he was awaked, fell
+to the reflecting of the reveries during his state of entrancement
+(Samádhi).</p>
+
+<p>4. O how charming! said he, was that cooling rapture of spiritual
+delight, in which my soul had been enrapt for a short time.</p>
+
+<p>5. O how I long to resume that state of felicity! because these outward
+enjoyments which I have relished to my fill, have ceased to please me
+any more.</p>
+
+<p>6. I do not find the waves of those delights even in the orb of the
+moon, as I felt in the raptures which undulated in my soul, during the
+entranced state of my insensibility.</p>
+
+<p>7. Bali was again attempting to resume his state of inexcitability,
+when he was interrupted by the attendant demons, as the moon is
+intercepted by the surrounding clouds.</p>
+
+<p>8. He cast a glancing look upon them, and was going to close his eyes
+in meditation; after making his prostration on the ground; but was
+instantly obtruded upon by their gigantic statures standing all around
+him.</p>
+
+<p>9. He then reflected in himself and said: The intellect <span class="pagenum" id="Page_825">[825]</span>
+being devoid of
+its option, there is nothing for me to desire; but the mind being fond
+of pleasures vainly pursues after them: (which it cannot fully gain,
+enjoy or long retain).</p>
+
+<p>10. Why should I desire my emancipation, when I am not confined by
+or attached to anything here: it is but a childish freak to seek for
+liberation, when I am not bound or bound to anything below. (The soul
+is perfectly free of itself, but it is the mind that enchains it to
+earth).</p>
+
+<p>11. I have no desire of enfranchisement nor fear for incarceration,
+since the disappearance of my ignorance; what need have I then of
+meditation, and of what good is meditation to me?</p>
+
+<p>12. Meditation and want of meditation are both mistakes of the mind
+(there being no efficacy or inefficacy of either). We must depend on
+our manliness, and hail all that comes to pass on us without rejoicing
+or shrinking (since all good and evil proceed from God).</p>
+
+<p>13. I require neither thoughtfulness nor thoughtlessness, nor
+enjoyments nor their privation, but must remain unmoved and firm as one
+sane and sound.</p>
+
+<p>14. I have no longing for the spiritual, nor craving for temporal
+things; I have neither to remain in the meditative mood, nor in the
+state of giddy worldliness.</p>
+
+<p>15. I am not dead (because my soul is immortal); nor can I be living
+(because the soul is not connected with life). I am not a reality (as
+the body), nor an unreality (composed of spiritual essence only); nor I
+am a material or aerial body (being neither this body nor Vital air).
+Neither am I of this world or any other, but self-same ego—the Great.</p>
+
+<p>16. When I am in this world, I will remain here in quiet; I am not
+here, I abide calmly in the solace of my soul.</p>
+
+<p>17. What shall I do with my meditation, and what with all my royalty;
+let any thing come to pass as it may; I am nothing for this or that,
+nor is anything mine.</p>
+
+<p>18. Though I have nothing to do (because I am not a free agent; nor
+master of my actions); yet I must do the duties <span class="pagenum" id="Page_826">[826]</span>
+appertaining to my
+station in society. (Doing the duties of one’s station in life, is
+reckoned by some as the only obligation of man here below. So says the
+poet: “Act well thy part, there all the honor lies.”).</p>
+
+<p>19. After ascertaining so in his mind, Bali the wisest of the wise,
+looked upon the demons with complacence, as the sun looketh upon the
+lotuses.</p>
+
+<p>20. With the nods and glancings of his eyes, he received their homages;
+as the passing winds bear the odours of the flowers along with them
+(meaning to say: His cursory glances bore their regards, as the fleet
+winds bear the fragrance of flowers the rose).</p>
+
+<p>21. Then Bali ceasing to think on the object of his meditation;
+accosted them concerning their respective offices under him.</p>
+
+<p>22. He honoured the devas and his gurus with due respect, and saluted
+his friends and officers with his best regards.</p>
+
+<p>23. He honoured with his largesse, all his servants and suitors; and he
+pleased the attendant maidens with various persons.</p>
+
+<p>24. So he continued to prosper in every department of his government,
+until he made up his mind to perform a great sacrifice (yajna) at one
+time.</p>
+
+<p>25. He satisfied all beings with his great gifts, and gratified the
+great gods and sages with due honour and veneration. He then commenced
+the ceremony of the sacrifice under the guidance of Sukra and the chief
+<i>gurus</i> and priests.</p>
+
+<p>26. Then Vishnu the lord of Lakshmí, came to know that Bali had no
+desire of earthly fruition; and appeared at his sacrifice to crown him
+with the success of his undertaking, and confer upon him his desired
+blessing.</p>
+
+<p>27. He cunningly persuaded him, to make a gift of the world to Indra
+his elder brother, who was insatiably fond of all kinds of enjoyment.
+(Indra was elder to Vishnu, who was thence called Upendra or the junior
+Indra).</p>
+
+<p>28. Having deceived Bali by his artifices of dispossessing him of the
+three worlds, he shut him in the nether world, as <span class="pagenum" id="Page_827">[827]</span>
+they confine a monkey
+in a cave under the ground. (This was by Vishnu’s incarnation in the
+form of a dwarf or puny man, who <was> considered to be the most cunning
+among men; <i>multum in parvo</i>; or a man in miniature).</p>
+
+<p>29. Thus Bali continues to remain in his confinement to this day, with
+his mind fixed in meditation, for the purpose of his attainment of
+Indraship again in a future state of life.</p>
+
+<p>30. The living liberated Bali, being thus restrained in the infernal
+cave, looks upon his former prosperity and present adversity in the
+same light.</p>
+
+<p>31. There is no rising or setting of his intelligence, in the states
+of his pleasure or pain; but it remained one and the same in its full
+brightness, like the disk of the sun in a painting.</p>
+
+<p>32. He saw the repeated flux and reflux of worldly enjoyments, and
+thence settled his mind in an utter indifference about them.</p>
+
+<p>33. He overcame multitudes of the vicissitudes of life for myriads of
+years, in all his transmigrations, in the three worlds, and found at
+last, his rest in his utter disregard of all mortal things.</p>
+
+<p>34. He felt thousands of comforts and disquiets, and hundreds of
+pleasures and privations of life, and after his long experience of
+these, he found his repose in his perfect quiescence.</p>
+
+<p>35. Bali having forsaken his desire of enjoyments, enjoyed the
+fulness of his mind in the privation of his wants; and rejoiced in
+self-sufficiency of his soul, in the loneliness of his subterranean
+cave.</p>
+
+<p>36. After a course of many years, Bali regained his sovereignty of the
+world, and governed it for a long time to his heart’s content.</p>
+
+<p>37. But he was neither elated by his elevation to the dignity of
+Indra—the lord of gods; nor was he depressed at this prostration from
+prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>38. He was one and the same person in every state of his life, and
+enjoyed the equanimity of his soul, resembling the serenity of the
+etherial sphere.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_828">[828]</span>
+
+<p>39. I have related to you the whole story of Bali’s attainment of true
+wisdom, and advise you now, O Ráma! to imitate his example for your
+elevation, to the same state of perfection.</p>
+
+<p>40. Learn as Bali did by his own discernment, to think yourself as
+the immortal and everlasting soul; and try to reach to the state of
+your oneness or solity with the Supreme Unity, by your manliness (of
+self-controul and self-resignation).</p>
+
+<p>41. Bali the lord of the demons, exercised full authority over the
+three worlds, for more than a millennium; but at last he came to feel
+an utter distaste, to all the enjoyments of life.</p>
+
+<p>42. Therefore, O Victorious Ráma, forego the enjoyments of life, which
+are sure to be attended with a distaste and nausea at the end, and
+betake yourself to that state or true felicity, which never grows
+insipid at any time.</p>
+
+<p>43. These visible sights, O Ráma! are as multifarious as they are
+temptations to the soul; they appear as even and charming as a distant
+mountain appears to view; but it proves to be rough and rugged as you
+approach to it. (The pleasant paths of life, cannot entice the wise;
+they are smooth without, but rugged within).</p>
+
+<p>44. Restrain your mind in the cavity of your heart, from its flight in
+pursuit of the perishable objects of enjoyment, either in this life, or
+in the next, which are so alluring to all men of common sense.</p>
+
+<p>45. Know yourself, as the self-same intellect, which shines as the sun
+throughout the universe; and illumines every object in nature, without
+any distinction of or partiality to one or the other.</p>
+
+<p>46. Know yourself O mighty Ráma! to be the infinite spirit, and the
+transcendent soul of all bodies; which has manifested itself in
+manifold forms, that are as the bodies of the internal intellect.</p>
+
+<p>47. Know your soul as a thread, passing through, and interwoven with
+every thing in existence; and like a string connecting all the links
+of creation, as so many gems of a necklace or the beads of a rosary.
+(This hypostasis of the supreme spirit, is <span class="pagenum" id="Page_829">[829]</span>
+known as the <i>sútrátmá</i> or
+the all-connecting soul of the universe; as the poet expresses it.
+Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, as full as perfect in
+a hair as heart. Pope).</p>
+
+<p>48. Know yourself as the unborn and embodied soul of <i>Virát</i>, which is
+never born nor ever dies; and never fall into the mistake of thinking
+the pure intellect, to be subject to birth or death. (The embodied soul
+of <i>Virát</i>, is the universal soul as what the poet says: “Whose body
+nature is, and god the soul).”</p>
+
+<p>49. Know your desires to be the causes of your birth, life, death and
+diseases; therefore shun your cupidity of enjoyments, and enjoy all
+things in the manner of the all witnessing intellect. (<i>i.e.</i> Indulge
+yourself in your intellectual and not corporeal enjoyments).</p>
+
+<p>50. If you remain in the everlasting light of the sun of your
+intellect, you will come to find the phenomenal world to be but a
+phantom of your dream.</p>
+
+<p>51. Never regret nor sorrow for any thing, nor think of your pleasures
+and pains, which do not affect your soul; you are the pure intellect
+and the all pervading soul, which manifests itself in every thing.</p>
+
+<p>52. Know the desirables (or worldly enjoyments) to be your evils, and
+the undesirable (self-mortification) to be for your good. Therefore
+shun the former by your continued practice of the latter.</p>
+
+<p>53. By forsaking your views of the desirables and undesirables, you
+will contract a habit of hebetude; which when it takes a deep root in
+your heart, you have no more to be reborn in the world.</p>
+
+<p>54. Retract your mind from every thing, to which it runs like a boy
+after vain baubles; and settle it in yourself for your own good.</p>
+
+<p>55. Thus by restraining the mind by your best exertions, as also by
+your habit of self-control, you will subdue the rampant elephant of
+your mind, and reach to your highest bliss afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>56. Do not become as one of those ignorant fools, who believe <span class="pagenum" id="Page_830">[830]</span>
+their
+bodies as their real good; and who are infatuated by sophistry and
+infidelity, and deluded by impostors to the gratification of their
+sensual appetites.</p>
+
+<p>57. What man is more ignorant in this world and more subject to its
+evils, than one who derived his Spiritual knowledge from one who is a
+smatterer in theology, and relies on the dogmas of pretenders and false
+doctors in divinity.</p>
+
+<p>58. Do you dispel the cloud of false reasoning from the atmosphere of
+your mind, by the hurricane of our right reasoning, which drives all
+darkness before it.</p>
+
+<p>59. You can not be said to have your right reasoning, so long as you do
+not come to the light and sight of the soul, both by your own exertion
+and grace of the Supreme Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>60. Neither the Veda nor Vedánta, nor the science of logic or any other
+sástras, can give you any light of the soul, unless it appears of
+itself within you.</p>
+
+<p>61. It is by means of your self culture, aided by my instruction and
+divine grace, that you have gained your perfect knowledge, and appear
+to rest yourself in the Supreme Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>62. There are three causes of your coming to spiritual light. Firstly
+your want of the knowledge of a duality, and then the effulgence of
+your intellectual luminary (thy soul) by the grace of God and lastly
+the wide extent of your knowledge derived from my instructions.</p>
+
+<p>63. You are now freed from your mental maladies, and have become sane
+and sound by abandonment of your desires, by removal of your doubts and
+errors, and by forsaking the mist of your fondness for external objects.</p>
+
+<p>64. O Ráma! as you get rid of the faults (errors) of your
+understanding, so you advance by degrees in gaining your knowledge, in
+cherishing your resignation, in destroying your defects, in imbibing
+the bliss of ecstacy, in wandering with exultation, and in elevating
+your soul to the sixth sphere. But all this is not enough unless you
+attend to Brahmahood itself. (These are called the <i>Sapta bhúmiká</i> or
+seven stages of the practice of Yoga).
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_831">[831]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXX.<br>
+<span class="small">FALL OF HIRANYAKASIPU AND RISE OF PRAHLÁDA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Slaughter of Demons by Hari.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Attend Ráma, to the instructive narrative of
+Prahláda—the lord of demons; who became an adept by his own intuition.</p>
+
+<p>2. There was a mighty demon in the infernal regions, Hiranyakasipu by
+name; who was as valiant as Naráyana himself, and had expelled the gods
+and demigods from their abodes.</p>
+
+<p>3. He mastered all the treasures of the world, and wrested its
+possession from the hands of Hari; as the swan encroaches upon the
+right of the bee, on the large folia of the lotus.</p>
+
+<p>4. He vanquished the Gods and Asuras, and reigned over the whole earth,
+as the elephant masters the lotus-bed, by expulsion of the drove of
+swans from it.</p>
+
+<p>5. Thus the lord of the Asuras, having usurped the monarchy of the
+three worlds, begot many sons in course of time, as the spring brings
+forth the shoots of trees.</p>
+
+<p>6. These boys grew up to manhood in time, with the display of their
+manly prowess; and like so many brilliant suns, stretched their
+thousand rays on all sides of the earth and skies.</p>
+
+<p>7. Among them Prahláda the eldest prince became the regent, as the
+Kaustubha diamond has the pre-eminence among all other precious gems.
+(The Kaustubha gem was set in the breast-plate of Vishnu).</p>
+
+<p>8. The father Hiranyakasipu delighted exceedingly in his fortunate son
+Prahláda, as the year rejoices in its flowering time of the spring
+(<i>i.e.</i> the father delights in his promising lad, as the year in its
+vernal season).</p>
+
+<p>9. Supported by his son on one hand, and possessed of his force
+and treasures on the other; he became puffed up with his pride, as
+the swollen elephant emitting his froth from his <span class="pagenum" id="Page_832">[832]</span>
+triangular mouth.
+(Composed of the two sides of the tusks, and the lower part).</p>
+
+<p>10. Shining with his lustre and elated by his pride, he dried and
+drew up the moisture of the earth, by his unbearable taxation; as the
+all-destroying suns of universal dissolution, parch up the world by
+their rays. (Here is a play of the word <i>Kara</i>, in its triple sense of
+the hand, tax and solar rays).</p>
+
+<p>11. His conduct annoyed the gods and the sun and moon, as the behaviour
+of a haughty boy, becomes unbearable to his fellow comrades.</p>
+
+<p>12. They all applied to Brahmá, for destruction of the arch demon;
+because the repeated misdemeanours of the wicked, are unbearable to the
+good and great.</p>
+
+<p>13. It was then that the leonine Hari-Narasingha, clattered his nails
+resembling the tusks of an elephant; and thundered aloud like the
+rumbling noise of the <i>Dig-hastes</i> (the regent elephants of all the
+quarters of heaven), that filled the concave world as on its last
+doomsday.</p>
+
+<p>14. The tusk-like nails and teeth of Vishnu, glittered like flashing
+lightnings in the sky; and the radiance of his earrings filled the
+hollow sphere of heaven, with curling flames of living fire. (The word
+dwija or twice born is applied to the nails and teeth, as to the moon
+and a twiceborn Bráhman).</p>
+
+<p>15. The sides and caverns of mountains presented a fearful aspect;
+and the huge trees were shaken by a tremendous tempest; that rent the
+skies and tore the vault of heaven. (This is the only place where the
+word <i>dodruma</i> occurs for the Greek <i>dendron</i> in Sanskrit, shortened to
+<i>dru</i> a tree, the root of Druid a woodman).</p>
+
+<p>16. He emitted gusts of wind from his mouth and entrails, which drove
+the mountains before them; and his eyeballs flashed with the living
+fire of his rage, which was about to consume the world.</p>
+
+<p>17. His shining mane shook with the glare of sun-beams, and the pores
+of the hairs on his body, emitted the sparks of fire like the craters
+of a volcano.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_833">[833]</span>
+18. The mountains on all sides, shook with a tremendous shaking, and
+the whole body of Hari, shot forth a variety of arms in every direction.</p>
+
+<p>19. Hari in his leoantheopic form of half a man and half a lion, killed
+the gigantic demon by goring him with his tusks, as when an elephant
+bores the body of a horse with a grating sound.</p>
+
+<p>20. The population of the Pandemonium, was burnt down by the gushing
+fire of his eye balls; which flamed as the all-devouring conflagration
+of the last doomsday.</p>
+
+<p>21. The breath of his nostrils like a hurricane; drove everything
+before it; and the clapping of his arms (bahwasphota), beat as loud
+surges on the hollow shores.</p>
+
+<p>22. The demons fled from before him as moths from the burning fire, and
+they became extinct as extinguished lamps, at the blazing light of the
+day.</p>
+
+<p>23. After the burning of the Pandemonium, and expulsion of the demons,
+the infernal regions presented a void waste, as at the last devastation
+of the world.</p>
+
+<p>24. After the Lord had extirpated the demoniac race, at the end of the
+Titanic age, he disappeared from view with the grateful greetings of
+the synod of gods.</p>
+
+<p>25. The surviving sons of the demon, who had fled from the burning
+of their city, were afterwards led back to it by Prahláda; as the
+migrating fowls are made to return to the dry bed of a lake by a shower
+of rains.</p>
+
+<p>26. There they mourned over the dead bodies of the demons, and lamented
+at the loss of their possessions, and performed at last the funeral
+ceremonies of their departed friends and relatives.</p>
+
+<p>27. After burning the dead bodies of their friends, they invited the
+relics of the demons; that had found their safety by flight, to return
+to their deserted habitations again.</p>
+
+<p>28. The Asuras and their leaders, now continued to mourn
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_834">[834]</span>
+with their
+disconsolate minds and disfigured bodies, like lotuses beaten down by
+the frost. They remained without any effort or attempt as the figures
+in a painting; and without any hope of resuscitation, like a withered
+tree or an arbour stricken by lightning.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_835">[835]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXI.<br>
+<span class="small">PRAHLÁDA’S FAITH IN VISHNU.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Prahláda’s Lamentations at the slaughter of the demons,
+and his conversion to Vishnuism.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Prahláda remained disconsolate in his subterranean
+region, brooding over the melancholy thoughts of the destruction of the
+Dánavas and their habitations.</p>
+
+<p>2. Ah! what is to become of us, said he, when this Hari is bent to
+destroy the best amongst us, like a monkey nipping the growing shoots
+and sprouts of trees.</p>
+
+<p>3. I do not see the Daityas anywhere in earth or in the infernal
+regions, that are left in the enjoyment of their properties; but are
+stunted in their growth like the lotuses growing on mountain tops.</p>
+
+<p>4. They rise only to fall like the loud beating of a drum, and their
+rising is simultaneous with their falling as of the waves in the sea.
+(<i>i.e.</i> no sooner they rise, than they are destined to fall).</p>
+
+<p>5. Woe unto us! that are so miserable in both our inward and outward
+circumstances; and happy are our enemies of light (Devas), that have
+their ascendency over us. O the terrors of darkness!</p>
+
+<p>6. But our friends of the dark infernal regions, are all darkened in
+their souls with dismay: also their fortune is as transitory as the
+expansion of the lotus-leaf by day, and its contraction at night.</p>
+
+<p>7. We see the gods, who were mean servants at the feet of our father,
+to have usurped his kingdom; in the manner of the timid deer, usurping
+the sovereignty of the lion in the forest. (So said the sons of Tipu
+Sultan, when they saw the English polluting his library with their
+hands).</p>
+
+<p>8. We find our friends on the other hand, to be all disfigured and
+effortless; and sitting melancholy and dejected in their hopelessness,
+like lotuses with their withered leaves and petals.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_836">[836]</span>
+
+<p>9. We see the houses of our gigantic demons, filled with clouds
+of dusts and frost, wafted by gusts of wind by day and night; and
+resembling the fumes of fire which burnt them down.</p>
+
+<p>10. The inner apartments are laid open without their doors and
+enclosures, and are overgrown with the sprouts of barley, shooting out
+as blades of sapphires from underneath the ground.</p>
+
+<p>11. Ah! what is impossible to irresistible fate, that has so reduced
+the mighty demons; who are while used to pluck the flowers from
+the mountain tops of Meru like big elephants, and are now come to the
+sad plight of the wandering Devas of yore.</p>
+
+<p>12. Our ladies are lurking like the timorous deer, at the rustling of
+the breeze amidst the leaves of trees, for fear of the darts of the
+enemy whistling and hurling in the open air.</p>
+
+<p>13. O! the gemming blossoms of the <i>guluncha</i> arborets, with which our
+ladies used to decorate their ears, are now shorn and torn and left
+forlorn (desolate) by the hands of Hari, like the lorn and lonesome
+heaths of the desert.</p>
+
+<p>14. They have robbed us of the all-producing kalpa-trees, and planted
+them in their <i>mandana</i> pleasure gardens now teeming with their
+shooting gems and verdant leaflets in the etherial sphere.</p>
+
+<p>15. The eyes of haughty demons, that formerly looked with pity on the
+faces of their captured gods; are now indignantly looked upon by the
+victorious gods, who have made captives of them.</p>
+
+<p>16. It is known, that the water (liquid ichor) which is poured from
+the mouths of the spouting elephants of heaven on the tops of the
+mountains, falls down in the form of cascades, and gives rise to
+rivers on earth. (It means the water spouts resembling the trunks of
+elephants, which lifted the sea water to the sky, and let them fall on
+mountain tops to run as rivers below).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_837">[837]</span>
+17. But the froth exuding from the faces of our elephantic giants, is
+dried up to dust at the sights of the Devas, as a channel is sucked up
+in the dry and dreary desert of sand.</p>
+
+<p>18. Ah! where have those Daityas fled, whose bodies were as big as
+the peaks of mount Meru once, and were fanned by the fragrant breeze,
+breathing with the odorous dust of Mandára flowers. (Mandára is the
+name of a flower of the garden of Paradise).</p>
+
+<p>19. The beauteous ladies of the gods and Gandharvas, that were once
+detained as captives in the inner apartments of demons, are now
+snatched from us, and placed on Meru (the seat of the gods), as if they
+are transplanted there to grow as heavenly plants.</p>
+
+<p>20. O how painful is it to think! that the fading graces of our
+captured girls, are now mocked by the heavenly nymphs, in their
+disdainful dance over their defeat and disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>21. O it is painful to think! that the attending damsels, that fanned
+my father with their <i>chouri</i> flappers, are now waiting upon the
+thousand-eyed Indra in their servile toil.</p>
+
+<p>22. O! the greatest of our grief is, this sad and calamitous fall of
+ours at the hands of a single Hari, who has reduced us to this state of
+helpless impotency.</p>
+
+<p>23. The gods now reposing under the thick and cooling shades of trees,
+are as cool as the rocks of the icy mountain (Himálaya); and do not
+burn with rage nor repine in grief like ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>24. The gods protected by the power of Sauri (Hari), are raised to the
+pinnacle of prosperity, have been mocking and restraining us in these
+caves, as the apes on trees do the dogs below. (The enmity of dogs and
+apes is proverbial, as obstructing one another from alighting on or
+rising above the ground).</p>
+
+<p>25. The faces of our fairies though decked with ornaments, are now
+bedewed with drops of their tears; like the leaves of lotuses with the
+cold dews of night.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_838">[838]</span>
+<p>26. The old stage of this aged world, which was worsted and going to be
+pulled down by our might, is now supported upon the azure arms of Hari,
+like the vault of heaven standing upon the blue arches of the cerulean
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>27. That Hari has become the support of the celestial host, when it was
+about to be hurled into the depth of perdition; in the same manner as
+the great <i>tortoise</i> supported the mount Mandara, as it was sinking in
+the Milky ocean in the act of churning it. (Samudra manthana). This was
+the act of the post-diluvians reclaiming from the sea all that had been
+swept into it at the great deluge.</p>
+
+<p>28. This our great father, and these mighty demons under him, have been
+laid down to dust like the lofty hills, that were levelled with the
+ground by the blasts of heaven at the end of the Kalpa.</p>
+
+<p>29. It is that leader of the celestial forces, the peerless destroyer
+of Madhu (Satan), that is able to destroy all and every thing by the
+fire in his hands (the flaming lightnings preceding the thunder bolts
+of Indra). (The twin gods, the thundering (vajrapani) Indra and the
+flaming (analapani) Upendra, bear great affinity to Jupiter tonitruous
+or the thundering Jove, and his younger brother the trident-bearer
+Neptune).</p>
+
+<p>30. His elder brother Indra baffles the battle axes in the hands of the
+mighty demons, by the force of the thunder-bolts held by his mightier
+arms, as the big male monkeys kill their male offspring. (These
+passages prove the early invention of fire arms by the Aryans, to have
+been the cause of their victory over Daityas or the demigods).</p>
+
+<p>31. Though the missive weapons (lightnings), which are let fly by
+the lotus-eyed Vishnu be invincible; yet there is no weapon or
+instrument which can foil the force of the thunder: (lit. break the
+strong thunderbolt). (Vishnu the leader of Vishas or the first foreign
+settlers of the land, overpowered the earth-born Daityas by his fire
+and fire arms, and dispossessed them of their soil, and reduced them to
+slavery. The descendants of the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_839">[839]</span>
+Vishas are the Vaishyas, who settled in
+India long before the Aryans).</p>
+
+<p>32. This Hari is inured in warfare, in the previous battles fought
+between him and our forefathers; in which they uprooted and flung great
+rocks at him, and waged many dreadful campaigns.</p>
+
+<p>33. It cannot be expected that he will be afraid of us, who stood
+victorious in those continuous and most dreadful and destructive
+warfares of yore.</p>
+
+<p>34. I have thought of one expedient only to oppose the rage of Hari,
+beside which I find no other way for our safety (lit. remedy).</p>
+
+<p>35. Let us therefore with all possible speed, have recourse to him,
+with full contriteness of our souls and understanding; because that god
+is the true refuge of the pious and the only resort of every body.</p>
+
+<p>36. There is no one greater than him in all the three worlds; for
+I come to know, that it is Hari only, who is the sole cause of the
+creation, sustentation and destruction or reproduction of the world.</p>
+
+<p>37. From this moment therefore, I will think only of that unborn
+(increate) Náráyana for ever more; and I must rely on that Náráyana,
+who is present in all places, and is full in myself and filling all
+space.</p>
+
+<p>38. Obeisance to Náráyana forms my faith and profession, for my success
+in all undertakings; and may this faith of mine ever abide in my heart,
+as the wind has its place in the midst of empty air.</p>
+
+<p>39. Hari is to be known as filling all sides of space and vacuum,
+and every part of this earth and all these worlds; my ego is the
+immeasurable Spirit of Hari, and my inborn soul is full of Vishnu.</p>
+
+<p>40. He that is not full with Vishnu in himself, does not benefit by his
+adoration of Vishnu; but he who worships Vishnu by thinking himself as
+such, finds himself assimilated to his god,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_840">[840]</span>
+and becomes one with him.
+(Or rather he loses himself in his God and perceives nought besides).</p>
+
+<p>41. He who knows Hari to be the same with Prahláda, and not different
+from him, finds Hari to fill his inward soul with his spirit. (So says
+the Sruti:—Prahláda was the incarnate Hari himself).</p>
+
+<p>42. The eagle of Hari (son of Vinatá) flies through the infinite space
+of the sky as the presence of Hari fills all infinity, and his golden
+body-light, is the seat of my Hari also. (Here the bird of heaven means
+the sun, which is said to be the seat of Hari).</p>
+
+<p>43. The claws of this bird,—Kara (or rays) serve for the weapons
+of Vishnu; and the flash of his nails, is the flash of the Vishnu’s
+weapons. (Here Garuda bird of heaven, serves for a personification of
+the sun, and his claws and nails represent the rays of solar light).</p>
+
+<p>44. These are the four arms of Vishnu and their armlets, which are
+represented by the four gemming pinnacles of mount Mandara which were
+grappled by the hands of Hari, at his churning of the milky ocean with
+it.</p>
+
+<p>45. This moonlike figure with the chouri flapper in her hand and
+rising from the depth of the milky ocean, is the goddess of prosperity
+(Laksmi) and associating consort of Vishnu.</p>
+
+<p>46. She is the brilliant glory of Hari, which was easily acquired by
+him, and is ever attendant on his person with undiminished lustre, and
+illuminates the three worlds as a radiant medicinal tree—<i>mahaushadhi</i>.</p>
+
+<p>47. There is the other companion of Vishnu called Máyá or illusion,
+which is ever busy in the creation of worlds upon worlds, and in
+stretching a magical enchantment all about them.</p>
+
+<p>48. Here is the goddess Victory (Jayá), an easy earned attendant on
+Vishnu, and shines as a shoot of the kalpa tree, extending to the three
+worlds as an all-pervading plant.</p>
+
+<p>49. These two warming and cooling luminaries of the sun <span class="pagenum" id="Page_841">[841]</span>
+and moon, which
+serve to manifest all the worlds to view, are the two eyes situated on
+the forehead of my Vishnu.</p>
+
+<p>50. This azure sky is the cerulean hue of the body of my Vishnu,
+which is as dark as a mass of watery cloud; and darkens the sphere of
+heaven with its sky blue radiance. The meaning of the word Vishnu was
+afterward changed to the residing divinity in all things from the root
+vish.</p>
+
+<p>51. Here is the whitish conch in the hand of my Hari, which is sonant
+with its fivefold notes (panchajanya), and is as bright as the
+vacuum—the receptacle of sound, and as white as the milky ocean of
+heavens (the milky path).</p>
+
+<p>52. Here I see the lotus in the hand of Vishnu, representing the lotus
+of his navel the seat of Brahmá, who rose from and sat upon it, as a
+bee to form his hive of the world.</p>
+
+<p>53. I see the cudgel of my Vishnu’s hand (the godá) studded with gems
+about it, in the lofty peak of the mountain of Sumeru, beset by its
+gemming stones, and hurling down the demons from its precipice.</p>
+
+<p>54. I see here the discus (chakra) of my Hari, in the rising luminary
+of the sun, which fills all sides of the infinite Space, with the
+radiant beams emanating from it.</p>
+
+<p>55. I see there in the flaming fire, the flashing sword—nandaka of
+Vishnu, which like an axe hath cut down the gigantic bodies of Daityas
+like trees, while it gave great joy to the gods.</p>
+
+<p>56. I see also the great bow of Vishnu (Sáranga), in the variegated
+rainbow of Indra; and also the quiver of his arrows in the Pushkara and
+Avarta clouds, pouring down their rains like piercing arrows from above.</p>
+
+<p>57. The big belly (Jathara) of Vishnu, is seen in the vast vacuity of
+the firmament, which contains all the worlds and all the past, present,
+and future creations in its spacious womb.</p>
+
+<p>58. I see the earth as the footstool of Virát, and the high sky as the
+canopy on his head; his body is the stupendous fabric of the universe,
+and his sides are the sides of the compass.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_842">[842]</span>
+
+<p>59. I see the great Vishnu visibly manifest to my view, as shining
+under the cerulean vault of heaven, mounted on his eagle of mountain,
+and holding his conchshell, discus, cudgel and the lotus in his hands
+(in the manner described above).</p>
+
+<p>60. I see the wicked and evil minded demons, flying from me in the
+manner of the fleeting straws, which are blown and borne away after by
+the breath of the winds. (Lit.:—as the heaps of straw or hay <i>tarna</i>).</p>
+
+<p>61. This sable deity with his hue of the blue sapphire and mantle
+yellow, holding the club and mounted on the eagle and accompanied
+by Lakshmí; is no other than the selfsame Imperishable One. (Vishnu
+latterly called (Krishna) is the queller of demons, like Christ in the
+battle of the gods and Titan, and is believed to be the only begotten
+Son of God).</p>
+
+<p>62. What adverse Spirit can dare approach this all-devouring flame,
+without being burnt to death, like a flight of moths falling on a vivid
+fire?</p>
+
+<p>63. None of these hosts of gods or demigods that I see before me, is
+able to withstand the irresistible course of the destination of Vishnu.
+And all attempts to oppose it, will be as vain as for our weak-sighted
+eyes to shut out the light of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>64. I know the gods Brahmá, Indra, Siva and Agni (Ignis—the god of
+fire), praise in endless verses and many tongues, the Vishnu as
+their Lord.</p>
+
+<p>65. This Lord is ever resplendent with his dignity, and is invincible
+in his might; He is the Lord beyond all doubt, dispute and duality, and
+is joined with transcendent majesty.</p>
+
+<p>66. I bow down to that person, which stands as a firm rock amidst the
+forest of the world, and is a defence from all fears and dangers. It
+is a stupendous body having all the worlds situated in its womb, and
+forming the essence and substance of every distinct object of vision.
+(Here Vishnu is shown in his microcosmic form of Virát (Virat murti)).
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_843">[843]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXII.<br>
+<span class="small">THE SPIRITUAL AND FORMAL WORSHIP OF VISHNU.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Prahláda’s Worship of Vishnu both in spirit and his
+Image. Witnessed by the gods, as the Beginning of Hero and Idol
+Worship.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—After Prahláda had meditated on Vishnu in the
+aforesaid manner, he made an image of him as Náráyana himself, and
+thought upon worshipping that enemy of the Asura race. (Here Vishnu—the
+chief of Vishas and destroyer of Asuras, is represented as the spirit
+of Náráyana, and worshipped in that form).</p>
+
+<p>2. And that this figure might not be otherwise than the form of Vishnu
+himself, he invoked the Spirit of Vishnu to be settled in this his
+out-ward figure also. (This was done by incantation of Pranpratishthá,
+or the charm of enlivening an idol in thought).</p>
+
+<p>3. It was seated on the back of the heavenly bird Garuda, arrayed with
+the quadruple attributes (of will, intelligence, action and mercy), and
+armed with the fourfold arms holding the conchshell, discus, club and a
+lotus. (This passage shows the fictitious representation of the person
+of Vishnu, with his fourfold arms of these, the two original arms with
+the cudgel and discus were in active use, while the two fictitious and
+immovable ones, with the conchshell and lotus, were clapped on for mere
+show).</p>
+
+<p>4. His two eye-balls flashed, like the orbs of the sun and moon in their
+outstretched sockets; his palms were as red as lotuses, and his bow
+<i>saranga</i> and the sword <i>nandaka</i> hang on his two shoulders and sides.</p>
+
+<p>5. I will worship this image, said he, with all my adherents and
+dependants, with an abundance of grateful offerings agreeable <span class="pagenum" id="Page_844">[844]</span>
+to my
+taste. Gloss. Things delectable to one’s taste, are most acceptable to
+the gods.<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p>6. I will worship this great god always, with all kinds of offering of
+precious gems and jewels, and all sorts of articles for bodily use and
+enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>7. Having thus made up his mind, Prahláda collected an abundance of
+various things, and made offerings of them in his mind, in his worship
+of Mádhava—the lord of Lakshmí. (Má and Ráma are titles of Lakshmí).</p>
+
+<p>8. He offered rich gems and jewels in plates of many kinds, and
+presented sandal pastes in several pots; he burnt incense and lighted
+lamps in rows, and placed many valuables and ornaments in sacred
+vessels.</p>
+
+<p>9. He presented wreaths of Mandára flowers, and chains of lotuses made
+of gold, together with garlands of leaves and flowers of kalpa plants,
+and bouquets and nosegays studded with gems and pearls.</p>
+
+<p>10. He hung hangings of leaves and leaflets of heavenly arbors, and
+chaplets and trimmings of various kinds of flowers, as <i>vakas</i> and
+<i>kundas</i>, <i>kinkiratas</i> and white, blue and red lotuses.</p>
+
+<p>11. There were wreaths of <i>kahlara</i>, <i>Kunda</i>, <i>Kása</i> and <i>Kinsuka</i>
+flowers; and clusters of <i>Asoka</i>, <i>Madana</i>, <i>Bela</i> and <i>kánikára</i>
+blossoms likewise.</p>
+
+<p>12. There were florets of the <i>Kadamba</i>, <i>Vakala</i>, <i>nimba</i>,
+<i>Sindhuvára</i> and <i>Yúthikas</i> also; and likewise heaps of <i>páribhadra</i>,
+<i>gugguli</i> and <i>Venduka</i> flowers.</p>
+
+<p>13. There were strings of <i>priyangu</i>, <i>pátala</i>, <i>páta</i> and <i>pátala</i>
+flowers; and also the blossoms of <i>ámra</i>, <i>ámrataka</i> and <i>gavyas</i>; and
+the bulbs of <i>haritaki</i> and <i>vibhitaki</i> myrabolans.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_845">[845]</span>
+14. The flowers of <i>Sála</i> and <i>tamála</i> trees, were strung together
+with their leaves; and the tender buds of <i>Sahakáras</i>, were fastened
+together with their farinaceous pistils.</p>
+
+<p>15. There were the <i>ketakas</i> and centipetalous flowers, and the shoots
+of <i>ela</i> cardamums; together with everything beautiful to sight and the
+tender of one’s soul likewise.</p>
+
+<p>16. Thus did Prahláda worship his lord Hari in the inner apartment
+of his house, with offerings of all the richest things in the world,
+joined with true faith and earnestness of his mind and spirit.<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>17. Thus did the monarch of Dánavas, worship his lord Hari externally
+in his holy temple, furnished with all kind of valuable things on
+earth. (The external worship followed that of his internal worship in
+faith and spirit. These two are distinctly called the <i>mánasa</i> and
+<i>bájhya pujas</i> and observed one after the other by every orthodox
+Hindu, except the Brahmos and ascetics who reject the latter formality).</p>
+
+<p>18. The Dánava sovereign became the more and more gratified in his
+spirit, in proportion as he adored his god with more and more of his
+valuable outer offerings.</p>
+
+<p>19. Henceforward did Prahláda continue, to worship his lord god day
+after day, with earnestness of his soul, and the same sort of rich
+offerings every day.</p>
+
+<p>20. It came to pass that the Daityas one and all turned Vaishnavas;
+after the example of their king; and worshipped Hari in their city and
+temples without intermission.</p>
+
+<p>21. This intelligence reached to heaven and to the abode of the gods,
+that the Daityas having renounced their enmity to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_846">[846]</span>
+Vishnu, have turned
+his faithful believers and worshippers <i>in toto</i>.<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+
+<p>22. The Devas were all astonished to learn, that the Daityas had
+accepted the Vaishnava faith; and even Indra marvelled with the body of
+Rudras about him, how the Daityas came to be so at once.</p>
+
+<p>23. The astonished Devas then left their celestial abode, and repaired
+to the warlike Vishnu, reposing on his serpent couch in the milky ocean.</p>
+
+<p>24. They related to him the whole account of the Daityas, and they
+asked him as he sat down, the cause of their conversion, wherewith they
+were so much astonished.</p>
+
+<p>25. The gods said:—How is it Lord! that the demons who had always been
+averse to thee, have now come to embrace thy faith, which appears to us
+as an act of magic or their hypocrisy.</p>
+
+<p>26. How different is their present transformation to the Vaishnava
+faith, which is acquired only after many transmigrations of the soul,
+from their former spirit of insurrection, in which they broke down the
+rocks and mountains.</p>
+
+<p>27. The rumour that a clown has become a learned man, is as gladsome
+as it is doubtful also, as the news of the budding of blossoms out of
+season.</p>
+
+<p>28. Nothing is graceful without its proper place, as a rich jewel loses
+its value, when it is set with worthless pebbles. (The show of goodness
+of the vile, is a matter of suspicion).</p>
+
+<p>29. All animals have their dispositions conforming with <span class="pagenum" id="Page_847">[847]</span>
+their own
+natures; how then can the pure faith of Vishnu, agree with the doggish
+natures of the Daityas?</p>
+
+<p>30. It does not grieve us so much to be pierced with thorns and needles
+in our bodies, as to see things of opposite natures, to be set in
+conjunction with one another.</p>
+
+<p>31. Whatever is naturally adapted to its time and place, the same seems
+to suit it then and there; hence the lotus has its grace in water and
+not upon the land.</p>
+
+<p>32. Where are the vile Daityas, prone to their misdeeds at all times;
+and how far is the Vaishnava faith from them that can never appreciate
+its merit?</p>
+
+<p>33. O lord! as we are never glad to learn a lotus-bed to be left to
+parch in the desert soil; so we can never rejoice at the thought, that
+the race of demons will place their faith in Vishnu—the lord of gods.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_848">[848]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXIII.<br>
+<span class="small">PRAHLÁDA’S SUPPLICATION TO HARI.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Hari’s Visit to Prahláda, and his Adoration of him.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—The lord of Lakshmí, seeing the gods so clamorous in
+their accusation of the demons, gave his words to them in sounds as
+sonorous as those of the rainy clouds, in response to the loud noise of
+screaming and thirst-stricken peacocks.</p>
+
+<p>2. The Lord Hari said:—Don’t you marvel ye gods! at Prahláda’s faith
+in me; as it is by virtue of the virtuous acts of his past lives, that
+pious prince is entitled to his final liberation in this his present
+life.</p>
+
+<p>3. He shall not have to be born again in the womb of a woman, nor
+to be reproduced in any form on earth; but must remain aloof from
+regeneration, like a fried pea which does not germinate any more.</p>
+
+<p>4. A virtuous man turning impious, becomes of course the source of
+evil; but an unworthy man becoming meritorious, is doubtless a step
+towards his better being and blessedness.</p>
+
+<p>5. You good gods that are quite happy in your blessed seats in heaven,
+must not let the good deserts of Prahláda be any cause of your
+uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>6. Vasishtha resumed:—The Lord having thus spoken to the gods, became
+invisible to them, like a feather floating on the surface of waves.</p>
+
+<p>7. The assemblage of the immortals then repaired to their heavenly
+abodes after taking their leave of the god; as the particles of sea
+water are borne to the sky by the zephyrs, or by the agitation of the
+Mandara mountain.</p>
+
+<p>8. The gods were henceforth pacified towards Prahláda; because the mind
+is never suspicious of one who has the credit of his superiors.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8319">[849]</span>
+
+<p>9. Prahláda also continued in the daily adoration of his god, with the
+contriteness of his heart, and in the formulas of his spiritual, oral
+and bodily services.</p>
+
+<p>10. It was in the course of his divine service in this manner, that
+he attained the felicity proceeding from his right discrimination,
+self-resignation and other virtues with which he was crowned.</p>
+
+<p>11. He took no delight in any object of enjoyment, nor felt any
+pleasure in the society of his consorts, all which he shunned as a stag
+shuns a withered tree, and the company of human beings.</p>
+
+<p>12. He did not walk in the ways of the ungodly, nor spent his time
+in aught but religious discourses. His mind did not dwell on visible
+objects, as the lotus never grows on dry land.</p>
+
+<p>13. His mind did not delight in pleasures, which were all linked with
+pain; but longed for its liberation, which is as entire of itself and
+unconnected with anything, as a single grain of unperforated pearl.</p>
+
+<p>14. But his mind being abstracted from his enjoyments, and not yet
+settled in its trance of ultimate rest; had been only waving between
+the two states, like a cradle swinging in both ways.</p>
+
+<p>15. The god Vishnu, who knew all things by his all-knowing
+intelligence; beheld the unsettled state of Prahláda’s mind, from his
+seat in the milky ocean.</p>
+
+<p>16. Pleased at Prahláda’s firm belief, he proceeded by the sub-terranean
+route to the place of his worship, and stood confest before him at
+the holy altar.</p>
+
+<p>17. Seeing his god manifest to his view, the lord of the demons
+worshipped him with two-fold veneration, and made many respectful
+offerings to his lotus-eyed deity more than his usual practice.</p>
+
+<p>18. He then gladly glorified his god with many swelling orisons, for
+his deigning to appear before him in his house of worship.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_850">[850]</span>
+
+<p>19. Prahláda said:—I adore thee, O my lord Hari! that art unborn and
+undecaying; that art the blessed receptacle of three worlds; that
+dispellest all darkness by the light of thy body; and art the refuge of
+the helpless and friendless.</p>
+
+<p>20. I adore my Hari in his complexion of blue-lotus leaves, and of the
+colour of the autumnal sky; I worship him whose body is of the hue of
+the dark <i>bhramara</i> bee; and who holds in his arms the lotus, discus,
+club and the conch-shell.</p>
+
+<p>21. I worship the god that dwells in the lotus-like hearts of his
+votaries, with his appearance of a swarm of sable bees; and holding a
+conch-shell as white as the bud of a lotus or lily, with the earrings
+ringing in his ears with the music of humming bees.</p>
+
+<p>22. I resort to Hari’s sky-blue shade, shining with the starry light of
+his long stretching nails; his face shining as the full-moon with his
+smiling beams, and his breast waving as the surface of Ganges, with the
+sparkling gems hanging upon it.</p>
+
+<p>23. I rely on that godling that slept on the leaf of the fig tree (when
+his spirit floated on the surface of the waters); and that contains the
+universe in himself in his stupendous form of Virát; that is neither
+born nor grown, but is always the whole by himself; and is possest of
+endless attributes of his own nature.</p>
+
+<p>24. I take my refuge in Hari, whose bosom is daubed with the red dust
+of the new-blown lotus, and whose left side is adorned by the blushing
+beauty of Lakshmí; whose body is mantled by a coloured red coverlet;
+and besmeared with red sandal paste like liquid gold.</p>
+
+<p>25. I take my asylum under that Hari who is the destructive frost to
+the lotus-bed of demons; and the rising sun to the opening buds of the
+lotus-bed of the deities; who is the source of the lotus-born Brahmá,
+and receptacle of the lotiform seat (cranium) of our understanding.</p>
+
+<p>26. My hope is in Hari—the blooming lotus of the bed of the triple
+world, and the only light amidst the darkness of the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_851">[851]</span>
+universe; who is
+the principle of the intellect—chit, amidst the gross material world
+and who is the only remedy of all the evils and troubles of this
+transient life.</p>
+
+<p>27. Vasishtha continued:—Hari the destroyer of demons, who is graced
+on his side by the goddess of prosperity; being lauded with many such
+graceful speeches of the demoniac lord, answered him as lovingly in his
+blue lotuslike form, as when the deep clouds respond to the peacocks’
+screams.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_852">[852]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXIV.<br>
+<span class="small">PRAHLÁDA’S SELF KNOWLEDGE OF SPIRITUALISM.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Prahláda’s meditations and attainment of spiritual
+knowledge by the blessing of Vishnu.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">T</span>he</span> Lord said:—O thou rich jewel on the crown of the Daitya race!
+Receive thy desired boon of me for alleviation of thy worldly
+afflictions.</p>
+
+<p>2. Prahláda replied:—What better blessing can I ask of thee, my Lord!
+than to instruct me in what thou thinkest thy best gift, above all
+other treasures of the world, and which is able to requite all our
+wants in this miserable life.</p>
+
+<p>3. The Lord answered:—Mayst thou have a sinless boy! and may thy
+right discrimination of things, lead thee to thy rest in God, and the
+attainment of thy Supreme felicity, after dispersion of thy earthly
+cares, and the errors of this world.</p>
+
+<p>4. Vasishtha rejoined:—Being thus bid by his god, the lord of demons
+fell into a profound meditation, with his nostrils snoring loudly like
+the gurgling waters of the deep.</p>
+
+<p>5. As the lord Vishnu departed from his sight, the chief of the demons
+made his oblations after him; consisting of handfuls of flowers and
+rich gems and jewels of various kinds.</p>
+
+<p>6. Then seated in his posture of <i>padmásana</i>, with his legs folded over
+one another, upon his elevated and elegant seat; and then chaunted his
+holy hymn and reflected within himself.</p>
+
+<p>7. My deliverer from this sinful world, has bade me to have my
+discrimination, therefore must I betake myself to discriminate between
+what is true and falsehood.</p>
+
+<p>8. I must know that I am in this darksome world, and must seek the
+light of my soul as also what is that principle (Ego), that makes me
+speak, walk and take the pains to earn myself.</p>
+
+<p>9. I perceive it is nothing of this external world, like any of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_853">[853]</span>
+its
+verdant trees or hills; the external bodies are all of a gross nature,
+but my <i>ego</i> is quite a simple and pure essence.</p>
+
+<p>10. I am not this insensible body, which is both dull and dumb, and is
+made to move for a moment by means of the vital airs. It is an unreal
+appearance of a transitory existence.</p>
+
+<p>11. I am not the insensible sound, which is a vacuous substance and
+produced in vacuity. It is perceptible by the ear-hole, and is as
+evanescent and inane as empty air.</p>
+
+<p>12. I am neither the insensible organ of touch, or the momentary
+feeling of taction; but find myself to be an inward principle with the
+faculty of intellection, and the capacity of knowing the nature of the
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>13. I am not even my taste, which is confined to the relishing of
+certain objects, and to the organ of the tongue; which is a trifling
+and ever restless thing, sticking to and moving in the cavity of the
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>14. I am not my sight, that is employed in seeing the visibles only;
+it is weak and decaying and never lasting in its power, nor capable of
+viewing the invisible Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>15. I am not the power of my smelling, which appertains to my nasal
+organ only, and is conversant with odorous substances for a short
+moment only. (Fragrance is a fleeting thing).</p>
+
+<p>16. I am pure intelligence, and none of the sensations of my five
+external organs of sense; I am neither my mental faculty, which is
+ever frail and fruit; nor is there any thing belonging to me or
+participating of my true essence. I am the soul and an indivisible
+whole.</p>
+
+<p>17. I am the ego or my intellect, without the objects of intellection
+(<i>i.e.</i> the thinking principle freed from its thoughts). My <i>ego</i>
+pervades internally and externally over all things, and manifests them
+to the view. I am the whole without its parts, pure without foulness
+and everlasting.</p>
+
+<p>18. It is my intellection that manifests to me this pot and that
+painting, and brings all other objects to my knowledge by its pure
+light; as the sun and a lamp show everything to the sight.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_854">[854]</span>
+
+<p>19. Ah! I come to remember the whole truth at present, that I am
+the immutable and all pervading Spirit, shining in the form of the
+intellect (Gloss. The internal and intellectual Soul, is the Spirit of
+God).</p>
+
+<p>20. This essence evolves itself into the various faculties of sense; as
+the inward fire unfolds itself into the forms of its flash and flame,
+and its sparks and visible light.</p>
+
+<p>21. It is this principle which unfolds itself, into the forms of the
+different organs of sense also; as the all-diffusive heat of the hot
+season, shows itself in the shape of mirage in sandy deserts.</p>
+
+<p>22. It is this element likewise which constitutes the substance of
+all objects; as it is the light of the lamp which is the cause of the
+various colours of things; as the whiteness or other of a piece of
+cloth or any other thing. (The intrinsic perceptivity of the soul,
+causes the extrinsic senses and their separate organs).</p>
+
+<p>23. It is the source of the perception of all living and waking beings,
+and of everything else in existence; and as a mirror is the reflector
+of all outward appearances, so is the Soul the reflective organ of all
+its internal and external phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>24. It is by means of this immutable intellectual light alone, that we
+perceive the heat of the sun, the coldness of the moon, solidity of the
+rock and the fluidity of water.</p>
+
+<p>25. This one is the prime cause of every object of our continuous
+perceptions in this world; this is the first cause of all things,
+without having any prior cause of its own. (The soul produces the body,
+and not the body brings forth the soul).</p>
+
+<p>26. It is this that produces our notions of the continuity of objects
+that are spread all around us, and take the name of objects from their
+objectivity of the soul; as a thing is called not from the heat which
+makes it such.</p>
+
+<p>27. It is this formless cause, that is the prime cause of all plastic
+and secondary causes (such as Brahmá the creative agent and others).
+It is from this that the world has its production, as coldness is the
+produce of cold and the like.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_855">[855]</span>
+28. The gods Brahmá, Vishnu, Rudra and Indra, who are causes of the
+existence of the world, all owe their origin to this prime cause, who
+has no cause of himself.</p>
+
+<p>29. I hail that Supreme soul which is imprest in me, and is apart from
+every object of thought of the intellect, and which is self-manifest in
+all things and at all times.</p>
+
+<p>30. All beings besides, stand in the relation of modes and modalities
+to this Supreme Being; and they immerge as properties in that
+intellectual Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>31. Whatever this internal and intelligent Soul wills to do, the same
+is done every where; and nothing besides that self same soul exists in
+reality any where.</p>
+
+<p>32. Whatever is intended to be done by this intellectual power,
+the same receives a form of its own; and whatever is thought to be
+undone by the intellect, the same is dissolved into nought from its
+substantiality.</p>
+
+<p>33. These numberless series of worldly objects (as this pot, these
+paintings and the like), are as shades cast on the immense mirror of
+vacuum (or as air-drawn pictures represented on the canvas of empty
+Space).</p>
+
+<p>34. All these objects increase and decrease in their figures under the
+light of the soul, like the shadows of things enlarging and diminishing
+themselves in the sun shine.</p>
+
+<p>35. This internal Soul is invisible to all beings, except to those
+whose minds are melted down in piety. It is seen by the righteous in
+the form of the clear firmament.</p>
+
+<p>36. This great cause like a large tree, gives rise to all these visible
+phenomena like its germ and sprouts; and the movements of living
+beings, are as the flitterings of bees about this tree.</p>
+
+<p>37. It is this that gives rise to the whole creation both in its
+ideal and real and mobile or quiescent forms; as a huge rock gives
+growth to a large forest with its various kinds of big trees and dwarf
+shrubberies. (To him no high, no low, no great, no small, He fills, he
+bounds, connects, and equals all. Pope).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_856">[856]</span>
+38. It is not apart from anything, existing in the womb of this triple
+world; but is residing alike in the highest gods, as in the lowest
+grass below; and manifests them all full to our view.</p>
+
+<p>39. This is one with the ego, and the all-pervading soul; and is
+situated as the moving spirit, and unmoving dullness of the whole.</p>
+
+<p>40. The universal soul is beyond the distinction, of my, thy or his
+individual spirit; and is above the limits of time, and place, of
+number and manner, of form or figure or shape or size.</p>
+
+<p>41. It is one intelligent soul, which by its own intelligence, is the
+eye and witness of all visible things; and is represented as having a
+thousand eyes and hands and as many feet. (Wherewith he sees and grasps
+everything, and stands and moves in every place).</p>
+
+<p>42. This is that ego of my-self, that wanders about the firmament, in
+the body of the shining sun; and wanders in other forms also, as those
+of air in the current winds. (The first person I is used for supreme
+Ego).</p>
+
+<p>43. The sky is the azure body of my Vishnu with its accompaniments of
+the conchshell, discus, club and the lotus, in the clouds, all which
+are tokens of prosperity in this world by their blissful rains. (Vishnu
+is the lord of Lakshmí or prosperity, which is another name for a
+plenteous harvest. Her other name Srí the same with Ceres—the goddess
+of corn and mother of Prosperine in Grecian mythology).<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>44. I find myself as identic with this god, while I am sitting in my
+posture of padmásana and in this state of <i>Samádhi</i>—hypnotism, and when
+I have attained my perfection in quietism. (which is the form of Vishnu
+in the serene sky).</p>
+
+<p>45. I am the same with Siva—the god with his three eyes, and with his
+eye-balls rolling like bees, on the lotus face of Gaurí; and it is I
+that in the form of the god, Brahmá, contain the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_857">[857]</span>
+whole creation in me,
+as a tortoise contracts its limbs in itself. (The soul in rapture,
+seems to contain the macrocosm in itself).</p>
+
+<p>46. I rule over the world in the form of Indra, and as a monk I command
+the monastery which has come down to me. <i>i.e.</i> I am an Indra, when I
+reign over my domain; and a poor monk, when I dwell in my humble cell.</p>
+
+<p>47. I (the Ego) am both the male and female, and I am both the boy and
+girl; I am old as regards my soul, and I am young with regard to my
+body, which is born and ever renewed.</p>
+
+<p>48. The ego is the grass and all kinds of vegetables on earth; as also
+the moisture wherewith it grows them, like its thoughts in the ground
+of the intellect; in the same manner as herbs are grown in holes and
+wells by their moisture. <i>i.e.</i> The ego or soul is the pith and marrow
+of all substance.</p>
+
+<p>49. It is for pleasure that this ego has stretched out the world; like
+a clever boy who makes his dolls of clay in play. (God forms the world
+for his own amusement).</p>
+
+<p>50. This ego is myself that gives existence to all being, and it is I
+in whom they live and move about; and being at last forsaken by me, the
+whole existence dwindles into nothing. (The ego is the individual as
+well the universal soul).</p>
+
+<p>51. Whatever image is impressed in the clear mirror or mould of my
+intellect, the same and no other is in real existence, because there is
+nothing that exists beside or apart from myself.</p>
+
+<p>52. I am the fragrance of flowers, and the hue of their leaves; I am
+the figure of all forms, and the perception of perceptibles.</p>
+
+<p>53. Whatever movable or immovable thing is visible in this world; I am
+the inmost heart of it, without having any of its desires in my heart.</p>
+
+<p>54. As the prime element of moisture, is diffused in nature <span class="pagenum" id="Page_858">[858]</span>
+in the form
+of water; so is my spirit overspread in vegetables and all things at
+large in the form of vacuum. (Which is in the inside and outside of
+every thing).</p>
+
+<p>55. I enter in the form of consciousness, into the interior of
+everything; and extend in the manner of various sensation at my own
+will.</p>
+
+<p>56. As butter is contained in milk and moisture is inherent in water;
+so is the power of the intellect spread in all beings, and so the ego
+is situated in the interior of all things.</p>
+
+<p>57. The world exists in the intellect, at all times of the present,
+past and future ages; and the objects of intelligence, are all inert
+and devoid of motion; like the mineral and vegetable productions of
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>58. I am the all-grasping and all-powerful form of Virát, which fills
+the infinite space, and is free from any diminution or decrease of its
+shape and size. I am this all-pervading and all-productive power, known
+as Virát múrti or macrocosm (in distinction from the <i>súkshma-deha</i> or
+microcosm).</p>
+
+<p>59. I have gained my boundless empire over all worlds, without my
+seeking or asking for it; and without subduing it like Indra of old
+or crushing the gods with my arms. (Man is the lord of the world of
+his own nature, or as the poet says:—“I am the Monarch of all I survey, and my
+right there is none to dispute”).</p>
+
+<p>60. O the extensive spirit of God! I bow down to that spirit in my
+spirit; and find myself lost in it, as in the vast ocean of the
+universal deluge.</p>
+
+<p>61. I find no limit of this spirit; as long as I am seated in the
+enjoyment of my spiritual bliss; but appear to move about as a minute
+mollusk, in the fathomless expanse of the milky ocean.</p>
+
+<p>62. This temple of Brahmánda or mundane world, is too small and
+straitened for the huge body of my soul; and it is impossible for me
+to be contained in it, as it is for an elephant to enter into the hole
+of a needle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_859">[859]</span>
+63. My body stretches beyond the region of Brahmá, and my attributes
+extend beyond the categories of the schools, and there is no definite
+limitation given of them to this day.</p>
+
+<p>64. The attribute of a name and body to the unsupported soul is a
+falsehood, and so is it to compress the unlimited soul within the
+narrow bounds of the body.</p>
+
+<p>65. To say this is I, and this another, is altogether wrong; and what
+is this body or my want of it, or the state of living or death to me?
+(Since the soul is an immortal and etherial substance and my true-self
+and essence).</p>
+
+<p>66. How foolish and short-witted were my forefathers, who having
+forsaken this spiritual domain, have wandered as mortal beings in this
+frail and miserable world.</p>
+
+<p>67. How great is this grand sight of the immensity of Brahma; and how
+mean are these creeping mortals, with their high aims and ambition,
+and all their splendours of royalty. (The glory of God, transcends the
+glory of glorious sun).</p>
+
+<p>68. This pure intellectual sight of mine, which is fraught with endless
+joy, accompanied by ineffable tranquility, surpasses all other sights
+in the whole world. (The rapture of heavenly peace and bliss, has no
+bounds).</p>
+
+<p>69. I bow down to the Ego, which is situated in all beings; which is
+the intelligent and intellectual soul, and quite apart from whatever is
+the object of intellection or thought (<i>i.e.</i> the unthinkable spirit).</p>
+
+<p>70. I who am the unborn and increate soul, reign triumphant over this
+perishing world; by my attainment to the state of the great universal
+spirit, which is the chief object of gain—the <i>summum bonum</i> of mortal
+beings, and which I live to enjoy. (This sublimation of the human
+soul to the state of the supreme spirit, and enjoyment of spiritual
+beatification or heavenly rapture, is the main aim and end of Yoga
+meditation).</p>
+
+<p>71. I take no delight in my unpleasant earthly dominion, which is full
+of painful greatness; nor like to lose my everlasting realm of good
+understanding, which is free from trouble and full of perpetual delight.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_860">[860]</span>
+72. Cursed be the wicked demons that are so sadly ignorant of their
+souls; and resort for the safety of their bodies, to their strongholds
+of woods and hills and ditches, like the insects of those places.</p>
+
+<p>73. Ignorance of the soul leads to the serving of the dull ignorant
+body, with articles of food and raiment; and it was thus that our
+ignorant elders pampered their bodies for no lasting good.</p>
+
+<p>74. What good did my father Hiranyakasipu reap, from his prosperity
+of a few years in this world; and what did he acquire worthy of his
+descent; in the line of the great sage Kasyapa?</p>
+
+<p>75. He who has not tasted the blissfulness of his soul, has enjoyed no
+true blessing, during his long reign of a hundred years in this world.</p>
+
+<p>76. He who has gained the ambrosial delight of his spiritual bliss, and
+nothing of the temporary blessings of life; has gained something which
+is ever full in itself, and of which there is no end to the end of the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>77. It is the fool and not the wise, who forsakes this infinite joy for
+the temporary delights of this world; and resembles the foolish camel
+which foregoes his fodder of soft leaves, for browzing the prickly
+thorns of the desert.</p>
+
+<p>78. What man of sense would turn his eyes from so romantic a sight,
+and like to roam in a city burnt down to the ground: and what wise man
+is there that would forsake the sweet juice of sugarcane, in order to
+taste the bitterness of Nimba?</p>
+
+<p>79. I reckon all my forefathers as very great fools, for their leaving
+this happy prospect, in order to wander in the dangerous paths of their
+earthly dominion.</p>
+
+<p>80. Ah! how delightful is the view of flowering gardens, and how
+unpleasant is the sight of the burning deserts of sand; how very quiet
+are these intellectual reveries, and how very boisterous are the
+cravings of our hearts!</p>
+
+<p>81. There is no happiness to be had in this earth, that <span class="pagenum" id="Page_861">[861]</span>
+would make us
+wish for our sovereignty in it; all happiness consists in the peace of
+the mind, which it concerns us always to seek.</p>
+
+<p>82. It is the calm, quiet and unaltered state of the mind, that gives
+us true happiness in all conditions of life; and the true realm of
+things in all places and at all times, and under every circumstance in
+life.</p>
+
+<p>83. It is the virtue of sunlight to enlighten all objects, and that
+of moonlight to fill us with its ambrosial draughts; but the light
+of Brahma transcends them both, by filling the three worlds with its
+spiritual glory; which is brighter than sun-beams, and cooler than
+moon-light.</p>
+
+<p>84. The power of Siva stretches over the fulness of knowledge, and that
+of Vishnu over victory and prosperity (Jayas-Lakshmí). Fleetness is the
+character of the mental powers, and force is the property of the wind.</p>
+
+<p>85. Inflammation is the property of fire, and moisture is that of
+water; taciturnity is the quality of devotees for success of devotion,
+and loquacity is the qualification of learning.</p>
+
+<p>86. It is the nature of the aerials to move about in the air, and of
+rocks to remain fixed on the ground; the nature of water is to set deep
+and run downwards; and that of mountains to stand and rise upwards.</p>
+
+<p>87. Equanimity is the nature of Saugatas or Buddhists, and carousing is
+the <i>penchant</i> of wine-bibbers; the spring delights in its flowering,
+and the rainy season exults in the roaring of its clouds.</p>
+
+<p>88. The Yakshas are full of their delusiveness, and the celestials are
+familiar with cold and frost, and those of the torrid zone are inured
+in its heat. (This passage clearly shows the heaven of the Hindus, to
+have been in the northern regions of cold and frost).</p>
+
+<p>89. Thus are many other beings suited to their respective climes
+and seasons, and are habituated to the very many modes of life and
+varieties of habits; to which they have been accustomed in the past and
+present times.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_862">[862]</span>
+90. It is the one Uniform and Unchanging Intellect, that ordains these
+multiform and changing modifications of powers and things, according to
+its changeable will and velocity.</p>
+
+<p>91. The same unchanging Intellect presents these hundreds of changing
+scenes to us, as the same and invariable light of the sun, shows a
+thousand varying forms and colour to the sight.</p>
+
+<p>92. The same Intellect sees at a glance, these great multitudes of
+objects, that fill the infinite space on all sides, in all the three
+times of the present, past and future.</p>
+
+<p>93. The selfsame pure Intellect knows at once, the various states of
+all things presented in this vast phenomenal world, in all the three
+times that are existent, gone by and are to come hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>94. This pure Intellect reflects at one and the same time, all things
+existent in the present, past and future times; and is full with the
+forms of all things existing in the infinite space of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>95. Knowing the events of the three times, and seeing the endless
+phenomena of all worlds present before it, the divine intellect
+continues full and perfect in itself and at all times.</p>
+
+<p>96. The understanding ever continues the same and unaltered,
+notwithstanding the great variety of its perceptions of innumerables
+of sense and thought: such as the different tastes of sweet and sour
+in honey and <i>nimba</i> fruit at the same time. (<i>i.e.</i> The varieties of
+mental perception and conception, make no change in the mind), as the
+reflexion of various figures makes no change in the reflecting glass.</p>
+
+<p>97. The intellect being in its state of arguteness, by abandonment of
+mental desires, and knowing the natures of all things by reducing their
+dualities into unity:—</p>
+
+<p>98. It views them alike with an equal eye and at the same time;
+notwithstanding the varieties of objects and their great difference
+from one another. (<i>i.e.</i> All the varieties blend into unity).</p>
+
+<p>99. By viewing all existence as non-existence, you get rid of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_863">[863]</span>
+your
+existing pains and troubles, and by seeing all existence in the light
+of nihility, you avoid the suffering of existing evils.</p>
+
+<p>100. The intellect being withdrawn from its view of the events of the
+three tenses (<i>i.e.</i> the occurrences of the past, present and future
+times), and being freed from the fetters of its fleeting thoughts,
+there remains only a calm tranquility.</p>
+
+<p>101. The soul being inexpressible in words, proves to be a negative
+idea only; and there ensues a state of one’s perpetual unconsciousness
+of his soul or self-existence. (This is the state of anæsthesia, which
+is forgetting oneself to a stock and stone).</p>
+
+<p>102. In this state of the soul it is equal to Brahma, which is either
+nothing at all or the All of itself; and its absorption in perfect
+tranquilness is called its liberation (moksha) or emancipation from all
+feelings (bodhas).</p>
+
+<p>103. The intellect being vitiated by its volition, does not see the
+soul in a clear light, as the hoodwinked eye has naught but a dim and
+hazy sight of the world.</p>
+
+<p>104. The intellect which is vitiated by the dirt of its desire and
+dislike, is impeded in its heavenly flight, like a bird caught in a
+snare. (Nor love nor hate of aught, is the best state of thought).</p>
+
+<p>105. They who have fallen into the snare of delusion by their ignorant
+choice of this or that, are as blind birds falling into the net in
+search of their prey.</p>
+
+<p>106. Entangled in the meshes of desire, and confined in the pit of
+worldliness, our fathers were debarred from this unbarred sight of
+spiritual light and endless delight.</p>
+
+<p>107. In vain did our forefathers flourish for a few days on the surface
+of this earth; only to be swept away like the fluttering flies and
+gnats, by a gust of wind into the ditch.</p>
+
+<p>108. If these foolish pursuers after the painful pleasures of the
+world, had known the path of truth they would never fall into the dark
+pit of unsubstantial pursuits.</p>
+
+<p>109. Foolish folks being subjected to repeated pains and pleasures by
+their various choice of things; follow at last the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_864">[864]</span>
+fate of ephemeral
+worms, that are born to move and die in their native ditches and bogs
+(<i>i.e.</i> as they are born of earth and dust so do they return to dust
+and earth again).</p>
+
+<p>110. He is said to be really alive who lives true to nature, and the
+mirage of whose desires and aversion, is suppressed like the fumes of
+his fancy, by the rising cloud of his knowledge of truth.</p>
+
+<p>111. The hot and foul fumes of fancy, fly afar from the pure light of
+reason, as the hazy mist of night, is dispersed by the bright beams of
+moon-light.</p>
+
+<p>112. I hail that soul which dwells as the inseparable intellect in
+me; and I come at last to know my God, that resides as a rich gem
+enlightening all the worlds in myself.</p>
+
+<p>113. I have long thought upon and sought after thee, and I have at last
+found thee rising in myself; I have chosen thee from all others; and
+whatever thou art, I hail thee, my Lord! as thou appearest in me.</p>
+
+<p>114. I hail thee in me, O lord of gods, in thy form of infinity within
+myself, and in the shape of bliss within my enraptured soul; I hail
+thee, O Supreme Spirit! that art superior to and supermost of all.</p>
+
+<p>115. I bow down to that cloudless light, shining as the disk of the
+full-moon in me; and to that self-same form, which is free from all
+predicates and attributes. It is the self risen light in myself, and
+that felicitous selfsame soul, which I find in myself <i>alter ego</i>.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_865">[865]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXV.<br>
+<span class="small">MEDITATION ON BRAHMA IN ONE’S SELF.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Pantheistic Adoration of the universal soul.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">P</span>rahláda</span> continued:—Om is the proper form of the One, and devoid of all
+defalcation; that Om is this all, that is contained in this world. (The
+Sruti says:—Om is Brahma, and Om is this all, it is the first and last
+&c.).</p>
+
+<p>2. It is the intelligence, and devoid of flesh, fat, blood and bones;
+it abides in all things, and is the enlightener of the sun and all
+other luminous bodies.</p>
+
+<p>3. It warms the fire and moistens the water (<i>i.e.</i> gives heat and
+moisture to the fire and water). It gives sensation to the senses,
+and enjoys all things in the manner of a prince. (Warms in the sun,
+refreshes in the breeze, &c. Pope).</p>
+
+<p>4. It rests without sitting, it goes without walking; it is active in
+its inactivity, it acts all without coming in tact with any thing.</p>
+
+<p>5. It is the past and gone, and also the present and even now; it is
+both the next moment, and remote future also; it is all that is fit and
+proper, and whatever is unfit and improper likewise. (Changed through
+all, and yet in all the same. All Discord, harmony not understood,
+tends to universal good. Pope).</p>
+
+<p>6. Undaunted, it produces all productions, and spreads the worlds over
+one another; it continues to turn about the worlds, from the Sphere of
+Brahma to the lower grounds of grass. (So Pope:—Spreads through all
+extent, spreads undivided, operates unspent).</p>
+
+<p>7. Though unmoving and immutable, yet it is as fleeting and changeable
+as the flying winds; it is inert as the solid rock, and more
+transparent than the subtile ether. “These as they change, are but the
+varied God.” Thomson.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_866">[866]</span>
+8. It moves the minds of men, as the winds shake the leaves of trees;
+and it directs the organs of sense, as a charioteer manages his horses.</p>
+
+<p>9. The Intellect sits as the lord of this bodily mansion, which is
+carried about as a chariot by the equestrians of the senses; and
+sitting at its own ease as sole monarch, it enjoys the fruitions of the
+bodily actions.</p>
+
+<p>10. It is to be diligently sought after, and meditated upon and lauded
+at all times; because it is by means of this only, that one may have
+his salvation from the pains of his age and death, and the evils of
+ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>11. It is easily to be found, and as easy to be familiarised as a
+friend; it dwells as the humble bee, in the recess of the lotus-like
+heart of every body.</p>
+
+<p>12. Uncalled and uninvoked, it appears of itself from within the body;
+and at a slight call it appears manifest to view. (So the Sruti:—The
+soul becomes palpable to view).</p>
+
+<p>13. Constant service of and attendance on this all-opulent Lord, never
+make him proud or haughty, as they do any other rich master to his
+humble attendants.</p>
+
+<p>14. This Lord is as closely situated in every body, as fragrance and
+fluidity, are inherent in flowers and sesamum seeds; and as flavour is
+inseparably connected with liquid substances.</p>
+
+<p>15. It is by reason of our unreasonableness, that we are ignorant of
+the Intellect, that is situated in ourselves; while our reasoning power
+serves to manifest it, as a most intimate friend to our sight.</p>
+
+<p>16. As we come to know this Supreme Lord, that is situated in us by our
+reasoning; we come to feel an ineffable delight in us, as at the sight
+of a beloved and loving friend.</p>
+
+<p>17. As this dearest friend appears to view, with his benign influence
+of shedding full bliss about us; we come to the sight of such glorious
+prospects, as to forget at once all our earthly enjoyments before them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_867">[867]</span>
+18. All his fetters are broken loose and fall off from him, and all
+his enemies are put to an end; whose mind is not perforated by his
+cravings, like houses dug by the injurious mice.</p>
+
+<p>19. This one in all (<i>to pan</i>) being seen in us, the whole world is
+seen in Him; and He being heard, every thing is heard in Him: He being
+felt, all things are felt in Him; and He being present, the whole world
+is present before us.</p>
+
+<p>20. He wakes over the sleeping world, and destroys the darkness of the
+ignorant; He removes the dangers of the distressed, and bestows His
+blessings upon the holy. (So the sruti: <i>suptesujágarti</i>. God never
+sleeps. Jones. The ever wakeful eyes of Jove. To wake over the sleeping
+worlds. Iliad).</p>
+
+<p>21. He moves about as the living soul of all, and rejoices as the
+animal soul in all objects of enjoyment; it is He that glows in all
+visible objects in their various hues. (Shines in the sun, and twinkles
+in the stars; blazes in the fire, and blushes in flowers. Pope).</p>
+
+<p>22. He sees himself in himself, and is quietly situated in all things;
+as pungency resides in peppers, and sweetness in sugar &c.</p>
+
+<p>23. He is situated as intelligence and sensations, in the inward and
+outward parts of living beings; and forms the essence and existence of
+all objects, in general, in the whole universe.</p>
+
+<p>24. He forms the vacuity of the sky, and the velocity of the winds; He
+is the light of igneous bodies, and the moisture of aqueous substances.</p>
+
+<p>25. He is the firmness of the earth, and the warmth of the fire; He is
+the coldness of the moon, and the entity of every thing in the world.</p>
+
+<p>26. He is blackness in inky substances, and coldness in the particles
+of snow; and as fragrance resides in flowers, so is he resident in all
+bodies.</p>
+
+<p>27. It is his essence which fills all space, as the essence of time
+fills all duration; and it is his omnipotence that is the fountain of
+all forces, as it is his omnipresence that is the support of every
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_868">[868]</span>
+thing in every place. (This is the pervasion, of omnipresence wrongly
+called as pantheism).<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>28. As the Lord unfolds everything to light, by the external organ of
+sight and the internal organ of thinking; so the Great God enlightens
+the gods (sun, moon, Indra and others) by his own light. (The Natural
+Theism which represented the visible heavens and heavenly bodies as
+gods, maintained also the doctrine of the One Invisible God, as shining
+and supporting them all by his presence. Gloss).</p>
+
+<p>29. I am that I am, without the attributes (of form or figure or any
+property) in me; and I am as the clear air, unsullied by the particles
+of flying dust; and as the leaves of lotuses, untouched by their
+supporting and surrounding waters.</p>
+
+<p>30. As a rolling stone gathers no moss, so there is nothing that
+touches or bears any relation to my airy mind; and the pain and
+pleasure which betake the body, cannot affect my form of the inner soul.</p>
+
+<p>31. The soul like a gourd fruit, is not injured by the shower of rain
+falling on the outer body resembling its hard crust; and the intellect
+like the flame of a lamp, is not to be held fast (or fastened) by a
+rope.</p>
+
+<p>32. So this ego of mine which transcends every thing, is not to be tied
+down by any thing to the earth; nor does it bear any relation with the
+objects of sense or my mental desires, or anything existent or not in
+existence in this world.</p>
+
+<p>33. Who has the power to grasp the empty vacuum; or confine the mind?
+You may cut the body to a thousand pieces, but you cannot divide the
+invisible and the indivisible vacuous Spirit rising in me.</p>
+
+<p>34. As the pot being broken or bored, or removed from its place, there
+is no loss sustained by its containing or contained air; so the body
+being destroyed, there is no damage done to the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_869">[869]</span>
+unconnected soul; and
+the mind is as false a name, as that of a demon or Pisácha.</p>
+
+<p>35. The destruction of the gross body, does not injure the immaterial
+soul; and what is the mind, but the perceptive power of my desires and
+gross pleasures and pains. (The organ of the mind is destroyed with the
+body).</p>
+
+<p>36. I had such a percipient mind before, but now I have found my rest
+in quiescence. I find it is another thing beside myself, because it
+perceives and partakes of the enjoyments of life, and is exposed to the
+dangers that betake the body.</p>
+
+<p>37. There is another one in me (<i>i.e.</i> the soul or intellect), which
+beholds the actions of the other (<i>i.e.</i> of the mind) as a theatric
+act; and witnesses the exposure of the body to peril, as its last sad
+and catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>38. It is the wicked spirit, that is caught in ignorance; but the pure
+spirit has nothing to suffer: and I feel in myself neither the wish of
+my continuing in worldly enjoyments, nor a desire of forsaking them
+altogether. (I enjoy my life while it lasts).<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>39. Let what may come to pass on me, and whatever may happen to pass
+away from me; I have neither the expectation of pleasures for me, nor
+an aversion to the suffering of pain. (in my gain or loss of any thing,
+in my resignation of myself to God).</p>
+
+<p>40. Let pleasure or pain betake or forsake me as it may, without my
+being concerned with or taking heed of either; because I know the
+fluctuating desires, to be incessantly rising and setting in the sphere
+of my mind.</p>
+
+<p>41. Let these desires depart from me, for I have nothing to do with
+them, nor have they any concern with me. Alas! how have I been all this
+time, misled to these by ignorance, which is my greatest enemy.</p>
+
+<p>42. It is by favour of Vishnu, and by virtue of my pure Vaishnava
+faith, rising in me of itself, that my ignorance is now
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_870">[870]</span>
+wholly
+dispelled from me, and the knowledge of the True One is revealed unto
+me.</p>
+
+<p>43. My knowledge of truth has now driven away my egoism (or knowledge
+of myself) from my mind; as they drive a spirit from its hiding-place
+in the hollow of a tree.</p>
+
+<p>44. I am now purified by admonition (mantra) of divine knowledge to me,
+and the arbour of my body is now set free from egoism, which sat as a
+demon (Yaksha) in it.</p>
+
+<p>45. It is now become as a sacred arbour, blooming with heavenly
+flowers; and freed from the evils of ignorance, penury, and vain
+wishes, which infested it erewhile.</p>
+
+<p>46. Loaded with the treasure of sacred knowledge, I find myself sitting
+here as one supremely-rich; and knowing all that is to be known, I see
+the sights that are invisible to others.</p>
+
+<p>47. I have now got that in which nothing can be wanting, and wherein
+there is no want besides; it is by my good fortune that I am freed from
+all evils, and the venomous serpents of worldly cares.</p>
+
+<p>48. My chill and frigid ignorance is melted down, by the light of
+knowledge; and the hot mirage of my desires, is now quenched and cooled
+by my quietude: I see the clear sky on all sides without any mist or
+dust and I rest under the cooling umbrage of the tranquility of my
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>49. It is by my glorification of God, and my thanksgivings to Vishnu,
+my holy rites and also by my divine knowledge and quietism; that I have
+obtained by grace of my God, a spacious room and elevated position in
+spirituality.</p>
+
+<p>50. I have got that god in my spirit, and have seen and known him also
+in his spiritual form. He is beyond my own ego, and I remember him
+always in this manner.</p>
+
+<p>51. I remember Vishnu as the great Spirit, and eternal Brahma in his
+nature; while my egoism or selfishness is confined as a snake, in the
+holes of my organic frame, which is wholly the land of death. (The
+animal soul is born to die with the mortal body).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_871">[871]</span>
+52. It is entangled in the bushes of its pricking desires, resembling
+the prickly <i>karanja</i> ferns; and amidst the tumults of raging passions,
+and a thousand other broils of this world.</p>
+
+<p>53. It is placed amidst the conflagration of calamities, and is
+encircled by the flames of smart pain at all times; it is subjected
+to continual ups and downs of fortune, and repeated risings and
+fallings in its journey in this world.</p>
+
+<p>54. It has its repeated births and deaths, owing to its interminable
+desires; and thus I am always deceived by this great enemy—my own
+egoism.</p>
+
+<p>55. The animal soul is powerless at night, as if it were caught in the
+clutches of a demon in the forest; so I feel it now to be deprived
+of its power and action, while I am in this state of my meditation.
+(The animal spirit is dormant in its states of physical and spiritual
+trance).</p>
+
+<p>56. It is by grace of Vishnu, that the light of my understanding is
+roused; and as I see my God by means of this light, I lose the sight of
+my demoniac egoism (<i>i.e.</i> I become unconscious of my existence at the
+sight of my Lord).</p>
+
+<p>57. The sight of the demoniac egoism dwelling in the cavity of my mind,
+disappears from my view in the like manner; as the shadow of darkness
+flies from the light of a lamp, and as the shade of night is dispersed
+by day light.</p>
+
+<p>58. As you know not where the flame of the lighted lamp is fled, after
+it is extinguished; so we know not where our lordly egoism is hid, at
+the sight of our God before us.</p>
+
+<p>59. My rich egoism flies at the approach of reason, as a heavy loaded
+robber, flies before the advance of day light; and our false egoism
+vanishes as a demon, at the rising of the true Ego of God.</p>
+
+<p>60. My egoism being gone, I am set at ease like a tree, freed from a
+poisonous snake rankling in its hollow cavity. I am at rest and in my
+insensibleness in this world, when I am awakened to my spiritual light.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_872">[872]</span>
+61. I have escaped from the hand of my captor, and gained my permanent
+ascendency over others; I have got my internal coldness <i>sang froid</i>,
+and have allayed the mirage of my thirst after vain glory.</p>
+
+<p>62. I have bathed in the cold bath of rain water, and am pacified as
+a rock after the cooling of its conflagration; I am cleansed of my
+egoism, by my knowledge of the true meaning of the term.</p>
+
+<p>63. What is ignorance and what are our pains and affliction? what are
+our evil desires, and what are our diseases and dangers? All these with
+the ideas of heaven and liberation, together with the hope of heaven
+and the fear of hell, are but false conceptions proceeding from our
+egoism or selfishness (or the cravings and loathings of our hearts).</p>
+
+<p>64. As a picture is drawn on a canvas and not in empty air, so our
+thoughts depend on our selfish principle and upon its want. And as it
+is the clear linen, that receives the yellow colour of saffron; so it
+is the pure soul that receives the image of God. It is egoism which
+vitiates the soul with the bilious passions of the heart, as a dirty
+cloth vitiates a goodly paint, with its inborn taint.</p>
+
+<p>65. Purity of the inward soul, is like the clearness of the autumnal
+sky; it is devoid of the cloudiness of egoism, and the drizzling drops
+of desires. (<i>i.e.</i> A pure soul is as clear as the unclouded sky).</p>
+
+<p>66. I bow down to thee, O my soul inmost! that art a stream of bliss
+to me, with pure limpid waters amidst, and without the dirt of egoism
+about thee.</p>
+
+<p>67. I hail thee, O thou my soul! that art an ocean of joy to me,
+uninfested by the sharks of sensual appetites, and undisturbed by the
+submarine fire of the latent mind.</p>
+
+<p>68. I prostrate myself before thee, O thou quick soul of mine! that art
+a mountain of delight to me, without the hovering clouds of egoistic
+passions, and the wild fires of gross appetites and desires.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_873">[873]</span>
+
+<p>69. I bow to thee, O thou soul in me! that art the heavenly lake of
+Manas to me, with the blooming lotuses of delight, and without the
+billows of cares and anxieties.</p>
+
+<p>70. I greet thee my internal spirit! that floatest in the shape of a
+swan (hansa) in the lake of the mind (manas) of every individual, and
+residest in the cavity of the lotiform cranium (Brahmárandhra), with
+thy outstretched wings of consciousness and standing.</p>
+
+<p>71. All hail to thee, O thou full and perfect spirit! that art the
+undivided and immortal soul, and appearest in thy several parts of the
+mind and senses; like the full-moon containing all its digits in its
+entire self.</p>
+
+<p>72. Obeisance to the sun of my intellect! which is always in its
+ascendency and dispels the darkness of my heart; which pervades
+everywhere, and is yet invisible or dimly seen by us.</p>
+
+<p>73. I bow to my intellectual light, which is an oilless lamp of benign
+effulgence, and burns in full blaze within me and without its wick. It
+is the enlightener of nature, and quite still in its nature.</p>
+
+<p>74. Whenever my mind is heated by cupid’s fire, I cool it by the
+coolness of my cold and callous intellect coolness; as they temper the
+red-hot iron with a cold and hard hammer.</p>
+
+<p>75. I am gaining my victory over all things, by killing my egoism by
+the Great Ego; and by making my senses and mind to destroy themselves.</p>
+
+<p>76. I bow to thee, O thou all subduing faith, that dost crush
+our ignorant doubt by thy wisdom; dispellest the unrealities by
+thy knowledge of the reality, and removest our cravings by thy
+contentedness.</p>
+
+<p>77. I subsist solely as the transparent spirit, by killing my mind by
+the great Mind, and removing my egoism by the sole Ego, and by driving
+the unrealities by the true Reality.</p>
+
+<p>78. I rely my body (<i>i.e.</i> I depend for my bodily existence), on the
+moving principle of my soul only; without the consciousness
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_874">[874]</span>
+of my
+self existence, my egoism, my mind and all its efforts and actions.</p>
+
+<p>79. I have obtained at last of its own accord, and by the infinite
+grace of the Lord of all, the highest blessing of cold heartedness and
+<i>insouciance</i> in myself.</p>
+
+<p>80. I am now freed from the heat of my feverish passions, by subsidence
+of the demon of my ignorance; from disappearance of the goblin of my
+egoism.</p>
+
+<p>81. I know not where the falcon of my false egoism has fled, from the
+cage of my body, by breaking its string of desires to which it was fast
+bound in its feet.</p>
+
+<p>82. I do not know whither the eagle of my egotism is flown, from its
+nest in the arbor of my body, after blowing away its thick ignorance
+as dust.</p>
+
+<p>83. Ah! where is my egoism fled, with its body besmeared with the dust
+and dirt of worldliness, and battered by the rocks of its insatiable
+desires? It is bitten by the deadly dragons of fears and dangers, and
+pierced in its hearts by repeated disappointments and despair.</p>
+
+<p>84. O! I wonder to think what I had been all this time, when I was
+bound fast by my egoism in the strong chain of my personality.</p>
+
+<p>85. I think myself a new born being to-day, and to have become
+highminded also, by being removed from the thick cloud of egoism, which
+had shrouded me all this time.</p>
+
+<p>86. I have seen and known, and obtained this treasure of my soul, as
+it is presented to my understanding, by the verbal testimonies of the
+sástras, and by the light of inspiration in my hour of meditation
+(samádhi).</p>
+
+<p>87. My mind is set at rest as extinguished fire, by its being released
+from the cares of the world; as also from all other thoughts and
+desires and the error of egoism. I am now set free from my affections
+and passions, and all delights of the world, as also my craving after
+them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_875">[875]</span>
+88. I have passed over the impassable ocean of dangers and
+difficulties, and the intolerable evils of transmigration; by the
+disappearance of my internal darkness, and sight of the One Great God
+in my intellect.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_876">[876]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXVI.<br>
+<span class="small">HYMN TO THE SOUL.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Prahláda getting the light of his internal soul,
+delights himself as one in the company of his sweet-heart.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">P</span>rahláda</span> continued:—I thank thee, O lord and great spirit! that art
+beyond all things, and art found in myself by my good fortune.</p>
+
+<p>2. I have no other friend, O my Lord, in the three worlds except thee;
+that dost vouchsafe to embrace and look upon me, when I pray unto thee.</p>
+
+<p>3. It is thou that preservest and destroyest all, and givest all things
+to every body; and it is thou, that makest us move and work, and praise
+thy holy name. Now art thou found and seen by me, and now thou goest
+away from me.</p>
+
+<p>4. Thou fillest all being in the world with thy essence; thou art
+present in all places, but where art thou now fled and gone from me?</p>
+
+<p>5. Great is the distance between us, even as the distance of the places
+of our birth, it is my good fortune of friend! that has brought thee
+near me today, and presented thee to my sight (so fleeting is spiritual
+vision).</p>
+
+<p>6. I hail thee, thou felicitous one! that art my maker and preserver
+also; I thank thee that art the stalk of this fruit of this world, and
+that art the eternal and pure soul of all.</p>
+
+<p>7. I thank the holder of the lotus and discus, and thee also that
+bearest the crescent half moon on thy forehead—great Siva. I thank the
+lord of gods—Indra, and Brahmá also, that is born of the lotus.</p>
+
+<p>8. It is a verbal usage that makes a distinction betwixt thee and
+ourselves (<i>i.e.</i> between the Divine and animal souls); but this is
+a false impression as that of the difference between waves and their
+elemental water.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_877">[877]</span>
+
+<p>9. Thou showest thyself in the shapes of the endless varieties of
+beings, and existence and extinction are the two states of thyself from
+all eternity.</p>
+
+<p>10. I thank thee that art the creator and beholder of all, and the
+manifester of innumerable forms. I thank thee that art the whole nature
+thyself.</p>
+
+<p>11. I have undergone many tribulations in the long course of past
+lives, and it was by thy will that I became bereft of my strength, and
+was burnt away at last.</p>
+
+<p>12. I have beheld the luminous worlds, and observed many visible and
+invisible things; but thou art not to be found in them. So I have
+gained nothing (from my observations).</p>
+
+<p>13. All things composed of earth, stone and wood, are formations of
+water (the form of Vishnu), there is nothing here, that is permanent,
+O god, beside thyself. Thou being obtained there is nothing else to
+desire.</p>
+
+<p>14. I thank thee lord! that art obtained, seen and known by me this
+day; and that shalt be so preserved by me, as never to be obliterated
+(from my mind).</p>
+
+<p>15. Thy bright form which is interwoven by the rays of light, is
+visible to us by inversion of the sight of the pupils of our eyes, into
+the inmost recesses of our heart.</p>
+
+<p>16. As the feeling of heat and cold is perceived by touch, and as the
+fragrance of the flower is felt in the oil with which it is mixed; so I
+feel thy presence by thy coming in contact with my heart.</p>
+
+<p>17. As the sound of music enters into the heart through the ears, and
+makes the heart strings to thrill, and the hairs of the body to stand
+at an end; so is thy presence perceived in our hearts also.</p>
+
+<p>18. As the objects of taste are felt by the tip of the tongue, which
+conveys their relish to the mind; so is thy presence felt by my heart,
+when thou touchest it with thy love.</p>
+
+<p>19. How can one slight to look and lay hold on his inner soul which
+shoots through every sense of his body; when he <span class="pagenum" id="Page_878">[878]</span>
+takes up a sweet
+scenting flower, perceptible by the sense of smelling only, and finally
+decorating his outer person with it.</p>
+
+<p>20. How can the supreme spirit, which is well known to us by means of
+the teachings of the Vedas, Vedánta, Sidhántas and the Puránas, as
+also by the Logic of schools and the hymns of the Vedas, be any way
+forgotten by us?</p>
+
+<p>21. These things which are pleasant to the bodily senses, do not
+gladden my heart, when it is filled by thy translucent presence.</p>
+
+<p>22. It is by thy effulgent light, that the sun shines so bright; as it
+is by thy benign lustre also, that the moon dispenses her cooling beams.</p>
+
+<p>23. Thou hast made these bulky rocks, and upheld the heavenly bodies;
+thou hast supported the stable earth, and lifted the spacious firmament.</p>
+
+<p>24. Fortunately thou hast become myself, and I have become one with
+thyself, I am identic with thee and thou with me, and there is no
+difference between us.</p>
+
+<p>25. I thank the great spirit, that is expressed by turns by the words
+myself and thyself; and mine and thine.</p>
+
+<p>26. I thank the infinite God, that dwells in my unegoistic mind; and I
+thank the formless Lord, that dwells in my tranquil soul.</p>
+
+<p>27. Thou dwellest, O Lord! in my formless, tranquil, transparent and
+conscious soul, as thou residest in thy own spirit, which is unbounded
+by the limitations of time and space.</p>
+
+<p>28. It is by thee that the mind has its action, and the senses have
+their sensations; the body has all its powers, and the vital and
+respirative breaths have their inflations and afflations.</p>
+
+<p>29. The organs of the body are led by the rope of desire to their
+several actions, and being united with flesh, blood and bones, are
+driven like the wheels of a car by the charioteer of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>30. I am the consciousness of my body, and am neither the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_879">[879]</span>
+body itself
+nor my egoism of it; let it therefore rise or fall, it is of no
+advantage or disadvantage to me.</p>
+
+<p>31. I was born in the same time with my ego (as a personal, corporeal
+and sensible being); and it was long afterwards that I had the
+knowledge of my soul; I had my insensibility last of all, in the manner
+of the world approaching to its dissolution at the end.</p>
+
+<p>32. Long have I travelled in the long-some journey of the world; I am
+weary with fatigue and now rest in quiet, like the cooling fire of the
+last conflagration. (<i>i.e.</i> Of the doomsday).</p>
+
+<p>33. I thank the Lord who is all (<i>to pan</i>), and yet without all and
+everything; and thee my soul! that art myself likewise. I thank thee
+above those sástras and preceptors, that teach the ego and tu (<i>i.e.</i>
+the subjective and objective).</p>
+
+<p>34. I hail the all witnessing power of that providential spirit,
+that has made these ample and endless provisions for others, without
+touching or enjoying them itself.</p>
+
+<p>35. Thou art the spirit that dwellest in all bodies in the form of the
+fragrance of flowers, and in the manner of breath in bellows; and as
+the oil resides in the sesamum seeds.</p>
+
+<p>36. How wonderful is this magic scene of thine, that thou appearest in
+everything, and preservest and destroyest it at last, without having
+any personality of thy own.</p>
+
+<p>37. Thou makest my soul rejoice at one time as a lighted lamp, by
+manifesting all things before it; and thou makest it joyous also, when
+it is extinguished as a lamp, after its enjoyment of the visibles.</p>
+
+<p>38. This universal frame is situated in an atom of thyself, as the big
+banian tree is contained in the embryo of a grain of its fig.</p>
+
+<p>39. Thou art seen, O lord, in a thousand forms that glide under our
+sight; in the same manner as the various forms of elephants and horses,
+cars and other things are seen in the passing clouds on the sky.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_880">[880]</span>
+40. Thou art both the existence and absence of all things, that are
+either present or lost to our view; yet thou art quite apart from all
+worldly existences, and art aloof from all entities and non-entities in
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>41. Forsake, O my soul! the pride and anger of thy mind, and all the
+foulness and wiliness of thy heart; because the highminded never fall
+into the faults and errors of the common people.</p>
+
+<p>42. Think over and over on the actions of thy past life, and the long
+series of thy wicked acts; and then with a sigh blush to think upon
+what thou hadst been before, and cease to do such acts anymore.</p>
+
+<p>43. The bustle of thy life is past, and thy bad days have gone away;
+when thou wast wrapt in the net of thy tangled thoughts on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>44. Now thou art a monarch in the city of thy body, and hast the desire
+of thy mind presented before thee; thou art set beyond the reach of
+pleasure and pain, and art as free as the air which nobody can grasp.</p>
+
+<p>45. As thou hast now subdued the untractable horses of thy bodily
+organs, and the indomitable elephant of thy mind; and as thou hast
+crushed thy enemy of worldly enjoyment, so dost thou now reign as the
+sole sovereign, over the empire of thy body and mind.</p>
+
+<p>46. Thou art now become as the glorious sun, to shine within and
+without us day by day; and dost traverse the unlimited fields of air,
+by thy continued rising and setting at every place in our meditation of
+thee.</p>
+
+<p>47. Thou Lord! art ever asleep, and risest also by thy own power; and
+then thou lookest on the luxuriant world, as a lover looks on his
+beloved.</p>
+
+<p>48. These luxuries like honey, are brought from great distances by the
+bees of the bodily organs; and the spirit tastes the sweets, by looking
+upon them through the windows of its eyes. (The spirit enjoys the
+sweets of offerings, by means of its internal senses).</p>
+
+<p>49. The seat of the intellectual world in the cranium is <span class="pagenum" id="Page_881">[881]</span>
+always
+dark, and a path is made in it by the breathings of inspiration and
+respiration (pránápána), which lead the soul to the sight of Brahmá
+(<i>lit.</i>: to the city of Brahmá. This is done by the practice of
+<i>pránáyáma</i>).</p>
+
+<p>50. Thou Lord! art the odor of this flower-like body of thine, and
+thou art the nectarious juice of thy moonlike frame, the moisture of
+this bodily tree, and thou art the coolness of its cold humours: phlegm
+and cough.</p>
+
+<p>51. Thou art the juice, milk and butter, that support the body, and
+thou being gone (O soul!), the body is dried up and become as full to
+feed the fire.</p>
+
+<p>52. Thou art the flavour of fruits, and the light of all luminous
+bodies; it is thou that perceivest and knowest all things, and givest
+light to the visual organ of sight.</p>
+
+<p>53. Thou art the vibration of the wind, and the force of our
+elephantine minds; and so art thou the acuteness of the flame of our
+intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>54. It is thou that givest us the gift of speech, and dost stop our
+breath, and makest it break forth again on occasions. (Speech—Vách—vox
+in the feminine gender, is made Váchá by affix á according to Bhaguri).</p>
+
+<p>55. All these various series of worldly productions, bear the same
+relation to thee, as the varieties of jewelleries (such as the
+bracelets and wristlets); are related to the gold (of which they are
+made).</p>
+
+<p>56. Thou art called by the words I, thou, he &c., and it is thyself
+that callest thyself such as it pleaseth thee. (The impersonal God is
+represented in different persons).</p>
+
+<p>57. Thou art seen in the appearances of all the productions of nature,
+as we see the forms of men, horses and elephants in the clouds, when
+they glide softly on the wings of the gentle winds. (But as all these
+forms are unreal, so God has no form in reality).</p>
+
+<p>58. Thou dost invariably show thyself in all thy creatures on earth,
+the blazing fire presents the figures of horses and elephants in its
+lambent flames. (Neither has God nor fire any form at all).</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_882">[882]</span>
+
+<p>59. Thou art the unbroken thread, by which the orbs of worlds are
+strung together as a rosary of pearls; and thou art the field that
+growest the harvest of creation, by the moisture of thy intellect. (The
+divine spirit stretches through all, and contains the pith of creation).</p>
+
+<p>60. Things that were inexistent and unproduced before creation, have
+come to light from their hidden state of reality by thy agency, as the
+flavour of meat-food, becomes evident by the process of cooking.<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>61. The beauties of existences are imperceptible without the soul; as
+the graces of a beauty are not apparent to one devoid of his eyesight.</p>
+
+<p>62. All substances are nothing whatever without thy inherence in them;
+as the reflection of the face in the mirror (or a picture in painting),
+is to no purpose without the real face or figure of the person.</p>
+
+<p>63. Without thee the body is a lifeless mass, like a block of wood or
+stone; and it is imperceptible without the soul, as the shadow of a
+tree in absence of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>64. The succession of pain and pleasure, ceases to be felt by one who
+feels thee within himself; as the shades of darkness, the twinkling of
+stars, and the coldness of frost, cease to exist in the bright sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>65. It is by a glance of thy eye, that the feelings of pain and
+pleasure rise in the mind; as it is by the beams of the rising sun,
+that the sky is tinged with its variegated hues.</p>
+
+<p>66. Living beings perish in a moment, at the privation of thy presence;
+as the burning lamp is extinguished to darkness, at the extinction of
+its light. (Light and life are synonymous terms, as death and darkness
+are homonyms).</p>
+
+<p>67. As the gloom of darkness is conspicuous at the want of light; but
+coming in contact with light, it vanishes from view.<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_883">[883]</span>
+68. So the appearances of pain and pleasure, present themselves before
+the mind, during thy absence from it; but they vanish into nothing at
+the advance of thy light into it.</p>
+
+<p>69. The temporary feelings of pleasure and pain, can find no room in
+the fulness of heavenly felicity (in the entranced mind); just as a
+minute moment of time, is of no account in the abyss of eternity.</p>
+
+<p>70. The thoughts of pleasure and pain, are as the short-lived fancies
+of the fairy land or castles in air; they appear by turns at thy
+pleasure, but they disappear altogether no sooner thy form is seen in
+the mind.</p>
+
+<p>71. It is by thy light in our visual organs, that things appear to
+sight at the moment of our waking, as they are reproduced into being;
+and it is by thy light also poured into our minds, that they are seen
+in our dream, as if they are all asleep in death.</p>
+
+<p>72. What good can we derive from these false and transient appearances
+in nature? No one can string together the seeming lotuses that are
+formed by the foaming froth of the waves.</p>
+
+<p>73. No substantial good can accrue to us from transitory mortal things;
+as no body can string together the transient flashes of lightning into
+a necklace. (This is in refutation of the usefulness of temporary
+objects maintained by the Saugatas).</p>
+
+<p>74. Should the rationalist take the false ideas of pain and pleasure
+for sober realities; what distinction then can there be between them
+and the irrational realists (Buddhists).</p>
+
+<p>75. Should you, like the Nominalist, take everything which bears a
+name for a real entity; I will tell you no more than that, you are too
+fond to give to imaginary things a fictitious name at your own will.
+(Gloss:—according to the ideas and desires of one’s own mind, or giving
+a name to airy nothing).</p>
+
+<p>76. But the soul is indivisible and without its desire and egoism,
+and whether it is a real substance or not we know nothing of, yet its
+agency is acknowledged on all hands in our bodily actions.</p>
+
+<p>77. All joy be thine! that art boundless in thy spiritual <span class="pagenum" id="Page_884">[884]</span>
+body, and
+ever disposed to tranquility; that art beyond the knowledge of the
+Vedas, and art yet the theme of all the sástras.</p>
+
+<p>78. All joy to thee! that art both born and unborn with the body,
+and art decaying undecayed in thy nature; that art the unsubstantial
+substance of all qualities, and art known and unknown to every body.</p>
+
+<p>79. I exult now and am calm again, I move and am still afterwards; I am
+victorious and live to win my liberation by thy grace; therefore I hail
+thee that art myself.</p>
+
+<p>80. When thou art situated in me, my soul is freed from all troubles
+and feelings and passions; and is placed in perfect rest. There is no
+more any fear of danger or difficulty or of life and death, nor any
+craving for prosperity, when I am absorbed in everlasting bliss with
+thee.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_885">[885]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXVII.<br>
+<span class="small">DISORDER AND DISQUIET OF THE ASURA REALM.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. As Prahláda was absorbed in Meditation, his dominions
+were infested by robbers for want of a Ruler, and the reign of
+terror.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Vasishtha said:—Prahláda the defeater of inimical hosts, was sitting in
+the said manner in divine meditation, and was absorbed in his entranced
+rapture, and undisturbed <i>anaesthesia</i> or insensibility for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>2. The soul reposing in its original state of unalterable <i>ecstatis</i>,
+made his body as immovable as a rock in painting or a figure carved on
+a stone (<i>in bas relief</i>).</p>
+
+<p>3. In this manner a long time passed upon his hybernation, when he was
+sitting in his house in a posture as unshaken as the firm Meru is fixed
+upon the earth.</p>
+
+<p>4. He was tried to be roused in vain, by the great Asuras of his
+palace; because his deadened mind remained deaf to their calls like a
+solid rock, and was as impassive as a perched grain to the showers of
+rain.</p>
+
+<p>5. Thus he remained intent upon his God, with his fixed and firm gaze
+for thousands of years; and continued as unmoved, as the carved sun
+upon a stone (or sundial).</p>
+
+<p>6. Having thus attained to the state of supreme bliss, the sight of
+infelicity disappeared from his view, as it is unknown to the supremely
+felicitous being. (So the Sruti: In Him there is all joy and no woe can
+appear before Him).</p>
+
+<p>7. During this time the whole circuit of his realm, was overspread by
+anarchy and oppression; as it reigns over the poor fishes.<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<p>8. For after Hiranyakasipu was killed and his son had betaken himself
+to asceticism, there was no body left to rule over the realms of the
+Asura race.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_886">[886]</span>
+
+<p>9. And as Prahláda was not to be roused from his slumber, by the
+solicitations of the Daitya chiefs, or the cries of his oppressed
+people:—</p>
+
+<p>10. They—the enemies of the gods, were as sorry not to have their
+graceful lord among them; as the bees are aggrieved for want of the
+blooming lotus at night (when it is hid under its leafy branches).</p>
+
+<p>11. They found him as absorbed in his meditation, as when the world is
+drowned in deep sleep, after departure of the sun below the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>12. The sorrowful Daityas departed from his presence, and went away
+wherever they liked; they roved about at random, as they do in an
+ungoverned state.</p>
+
+<p>13. The infernal regions became in time the seat of anarchy and
+oppression; and the good and honest dealings bade adieu to it all at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>14. The houses of the weak were robbed by the strong, and the
+restraints of laws were set at naught; the people oppressed one another
+and robbed the women of their robes.</p>
+
+<p>15. There were crying and wailing of the people on all sides, and the
+houses were pulled down in the city; the houses and gardens were robbed
+and spoiled, and outlawry and rapacity spread all over the land.</p>
+
+<p>16. The Asuras were in deep sorrow, and their families were starving
+without food or fruits; there were disturbance and riot rising every
+where, and the face of the sky was darkened on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>17. They were derided by the younglings of the gods, and invaded by
+vile robbers and envious animals; the houses were robbed of their
+properties, and were laid waste and void.</p>
+
+<p>18. The Asura realm became a scene of horror, by lawless fighting for
+the wives and properties of others; and the wailings of those that were
+robbed of their wealth and wives, it made the scene seem as the reign
+of the dark Kali age, when the atrocious marauders are let loose to
+spread devastation all over the earth.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_887">[887]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXVIII.<br>
+<span class="small">SCRUTINY INTO THE NATURE OF GOD.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Hari’s care for preservation of the order of the world,
+and his advice to Prahláda.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Now Hari who slept on his couch of the snake, in
+his watery mansion of the Milky ocean, and whose delight it was to
+preserve the order of all the groups of worlds;—</p>
+
+<p>2. Looked into the course of world in his own mind, after he rose from
+his sleep at the end of the rainy season for achieving the objects of
+the gods. (Vishnu rises after the rains on the eleventh day of moon
+उत्थानैकादशी ।).</p>
+
+<p>3. He surveyed at a glance of his thought the state of the triple
+world, composed of the heaven, the earth and the regions below; and
+then directed his attention to the affairs of the infernal regions of
+the demons.</p>
+
+<p>4. He beheld Prahláda sitting there in his intense hypnotic meditation,
+and then looked into the increasing prosperity of Indra’s palace.</p>
+
+<p>5. Sitting as he was on his serpentine couch in the Milky Ocean, with
+his arms holding the conch-shell, the discus, and the club and lotus in
+his four hands;—</p>
+
+<p>6. He thought in his brilliant mind and in his posture of <i>padmásana</i>,
+about the states of the three worlds, as the fluttering bee inspects
+into the state of the lotus.</p>
+
+<p>7. He saw Prahláda immerged in his hypnotism, and the infernal regions
+left without a leader; and beheld the world was about to be devoid of
+the Daitya race.</p>
+
+<p>8. This want of the demons, thought he, was likely to cool the military
+ardour of the Devas; as the want of clouds serves to dry up the waters
+on earth.</p>
+
+<p>9. Liberation which is obtained by privation of dualism and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_888">[888]</span>
+egoism,
+brings a man to that state of asceticism; as the want of moisture tends
+to dry up and deaden the promising plant.</p>
+
+<p>10. The Gods being at rest and contented in themselves, there will be
+no need of sacrifices and offerings to please and appease them; and
+this will eventually lead to the extinction of the gods (for want of
+their being fed with the butter and fat of the sacrifices).</p>
+
+<p>11. The religious and sacrificial rites, being at an end among mankind,
+will bring on (owing to their impiety), the destruction of human race,
+which will cause the desolation of the earth (by wild beasts).</p>
+
+<p>13. What is the good of my providence, if were I to allow this
+plenteous earth to go to ruin by my neglect? (It would amount to
+Vishnu’s violation of duty to preserve the world).</p>
+
+<p>14. What can I have to do in this empty void of the world, after the
+extinction of these created beings into nothing, than to charge my
+active nature to a state of cold inactivity, and lose myself into the
+<i>anaesthesia</i> of final liberation or insensibility.</p>
+
+<p>15. I see no good in the untimely dissolution of the order of the
+world, and would therefore have the Daityas live to its end.</p>
+
+<p>16. It is owing to the struggles of the demons, that the deities
+are worshipped with sacrifices and other religious rites for their
+preservation of the earth; therefore they are necessary for the
+continuation of these practices in it.</p>
+
+<p>17. I shall have therefore to visit the nether world, and restore it to
+its right order; and appoint the lord of the demons to the observance
+of his proper duties; in the manner of the season of spring returning
+to fructify the trees.</p>
+
+<p>18. If I raise any other Daitya to the chieftainship of the demons, and
+leave Prahláda in the act of his meditation; it is sure that he will
+disturb the Devas, instead of bearing obedience to them. Because no
+demon can get rid of his demoniac nature like Prahláda.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_889">[889]</span>
+
+<p>19. Prahláda is to live to old age in his sacred person, and to reside
+therein to the end of the kalpa age, with this very body of his
+(without undergoing the casualties of death and transmigration).</p>
+
+<p>20. So it is determined by Destiny, the divine and overruling goddess;
+that Prahláda will continue to reign to the end of the <i>kalpa</i>, in this
+very body of his.</p>
+
+<p>21. I must therefore go, and awaken the Daitya chief from his trance,
+as the roaring cloud rouses the sleepy peacocks, on the tops of hills
+and banks of rivers.</p>
+
+<p>22. Let that self ridden (<i>swayam-mukta</i>) and somnolent (<i>samádhistha</i>)
+prince, reign unconcerned (<i>amanaskára</i>) over the Daitya race; as the
+unconscious pearl reflects the colours of its adjacent objects.</p>
+
+<p>23. By this means both the gods and demigods, will be preserved on the
+face of the earth; and their mutual contention for superiority, will
+furnish occasion for the display of my prowess.</p>
+
+<p>24. Though the creation and destruction of the world, be indifferent to
+me; yet its continuation in the primordial order, is of much concern to
+others, if not to my insusceptible self.</p>
+
+<p>25. Whatever is alike in its existence and inexistence, is the
+same also in both its gain and loss (to the indifferent soul). Any
+effort for having any thing is mere foolishness; since addition and
+subtraction presuppose one another. (Gain is the supplying of want, and
+want is the privation of gain).</p>
+
+<p>26. I shall therefore hasten to the infernal region, and awaken
+the Daitya prince to the sense of his duty; and then will I resume
+my calmness, and not play about on the stage of the world like the
+ignorant. (The sapient God is silent; but foolish souls are turbulent).</p>
+
+<p>27. I will proceed to the city of the Asuras amidst their tumultuous
+violence, and rouse the Daitya prince as the sunshine raises the
+drooping lotus; and I shall bring the people to order and union, as the
+rainy season collects the fleeting clouds on the summits of mountains.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_890">[890]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXXIX.<br>
+<span class="small">ADMONITIONS OF HARI TO PRAHLÁDA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Hari enters into the Daitya city, blows his
+conch-shell, and directs Prahláda to reign and rule over his
+realm.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Thinking thus within himself, Hari started from
+his abode in the Milky Ocean with his companions, and moved like the
+immovable Mandara mountain with all its accompaniments.</p>
+
+<p>2. He entered the city of Prahláda resembling the metropolis of Indra,
+by a subterranean passage lying under the waters of the deep. (This
+passage, says the gloss, leads to the <i>sweta dwípa</i> or white island
+of Albion—Britain; but literally it means the underground passage of
+waters).</p>
+
+<p>3. He found here the prince of the Asuras, sitting under a golden dome
+in his hypnotic trance, like Brahmá sitting in his meditative mood in
+a cavern of the Sumeru mountain. (This shows Brahmá the progenitor of
+mankind or of the Aryan Brahmanic race, to have been a mountaineer of
+the Altai or N. polar ranges, called Sumeru <i>contra</i> Kumeru—the S.
+pole).</p>
+
+<p>4. There the Daityas being tinged in their bodies, by the bright rays
+of Vishnu’s person, fled far away from him, like a flock of owls from
+the bright beams of the rising sun. (The Daityas are night rovers or
+<i>nisa charas</i>, and cannot maintain their ground at sun rise).</p>
+
+<p>5. Hari then being accompanied by two or three Daitya chiefs entered
+the apartment of Prahláda, as the bright moon enters the pavilion of
+the sky at eve, in company with two or three stars beside her. (Moon in
+Sanskrit is the male consort of the stars, and called <i>Tará-pati</i>).</p>
+
+<p>6. There seated on his eagle and fanned with the flapper of Lakshmí,
+and armed with his weapons, and beset by the saints hymning his praise:—</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_891">[891]</span>
+7. He said, O great soul! rise from thy trance; and then blew his
+<i>pánchajanya</i> shell, which resounded to the vault of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>8. The loud peal of the Conch, blown by the breath of Vishnu, roared at
+once like the clouds of the sky, and the waves of the great deluge with
+redoubled force.</p>
+
+<p>9. Terrified at the sound, the Daityas fell flat and fainting on the
+ground; as when the flocks of swans and geese, are stunned at the
+thundering noise of clouds.</p>
+
+<p>10. But the party of Vaishnavas, rejoiced at the sound without the
+least fear; and they flushed with joy like the <i>Kurchi</i> flowers,
+blooming at the sound of the clouds. (Kurchi buds are said to blossom
+in the rains).</p>
+
+<p>11. The lord of the Dánavas, was slowly roused from his sleep; in the
+manner of the kadamba flowers, opening their florets by degrees at the
+intervals of rain.</p>
+
+<p>12. It was by an act of the excretion of his breathing, that he brought
+down his vital breath, which was confined in the vertical membrane of
+the cranium; in the manner that the stream of Ganges gushes out from
+the high-hill, and mixes and flows with the whole body of waters into
+the ocean. (So it is with our inspiration and respiration, which carry
+up and down our vital breath, to and from the sensory of the brain).</p>
+
+<p>13. In a moment the vital breath circulated through the whole body of
+Prahláda; as the solar beams spread over the whole world soon after
+they emanate from the solar disk at sun rise.</p>
+
+<p>14. The vital breath, having then entered into the cells of the nine
+organs of sense; his mind became susceptible of sensations, received
+through the organs of the body like reflexions in a mirror.</p>
+
+<p>15. The intellect desiring to know the objects, and relying in the
+reflexions of the senses, takes the name of the mind; as the reflexion
+of the face in the mirror, refracts itself again to the visual organ.</p>
+
+<p>16. The mind having thus opened or developed itself, his eyelids were
+about to open of themselves; like the petals of the blue lotus, opening
+by degrees in the morning.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_892">[892]</span>
+17. The breathings then, by conveying the sensations to the body,
+through the veins and arteries, give it the power of motion; as the
+current breeze moves the lotuses.</p>
+
+<p>18. The same vital breath, strengthened the powers of his mind in a
+short time; as the billows of a river, become more powerful when it is
+full of water.</p>
+
+<p>19. At last his eyes being opened, his body shone forth with vivacity,
+by its mental and vital powers; as the lake blushes with blooming
+lotuses at the sun’s rising above the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>20. At this instant, the lord bade him awake instantly at his word; and
+he rose as the peacock is awakened, at the roar of a cloud.</p>
+
+<p>21. Finding his eyes shining with lustre, and his mind strong with its
+past remembrance; the lord of the three worlds, spoke to him in the
+manner, as he had formerly addressed the lotus-born Brahmá himself.</p>
+
+<p>22. O holy youth! remember your large (dominions), and bring to your
+mind your youthful form and figure; then think and ponder, why you
+causelessly transform yourself to this torpid state.</p>
+
+<p>23. You who have no good to desire nor any evil to shun, and look on
+want and plenty in the same light; you must know that what is destined
+by God, is all for your good.</p>
+
+<p>25. You shall have to live here, in the living liberated state of your
+mind, and in full possession of your dominions, for a kalpa period; and
+shall have to pass your time with this body of yours, and without any
+anxiety or earthly trouble whatever.</p>
+
+<p>26. The body being decayed by this time, you shall have still to abide
+with your greatness of soul to the end; till the body being broken down
+like an earthen vessel, the vital life like the contained air of the
+pot, come to mix with the common air of vacuum.</p>
+
+<p>27. Your body which is liberated in its life time, is to endure in its
+purity to the end of the kalpa, and will witness generations passing
+before it without any diminution of itself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_893">[893]</span>
+28. The end of the kalpa or dooms day, is yet too far when the twelve
+suns will shine together; the rocks will melt away, and the world will
+be burnt down to ashes. Why then do you waste away your body even now?</p>
+
+<p>29. Now the winds are not raging with fury, nor is the world grey with
+age and covered with ashes over it. The marks on the foreheads of the
+immortals are still uneffaced, why then waste your body before its time?</p>
+
+<p>30. The lightnings of the deluging clouds, do not now flash nor fall
+down like asoka flowers, why then do you vainly waste your precious
+body so prematurely?</p>
+
+<p>31. The skies do not pour out their showers of rain-water on earth, so
+as to overflood the mountain tops, nor do they burst out in fire and
+burn them down to ashes; why then do you waste away your body in vain?</p>
+
+<p>32. The old world is not yet dissolved into vapour, nor fused to fumes
+and smoke; neither are the deities all extinct, after leaving Brahmá,
+Vishnu and Siva to survive them; why then do you waste yourself in
+vain? (If they are all alive, you should learn to live also).</p>
+
+<p>33. The earth on all sides is yet so submerged under the water, as to
+present the sight of the high mountains only on it, why then waste you
+away your body in vain (before the last doom and deluge of the earth?).</p>
+
+<p>34. The sun yet does not dart his fiery rays, with such fury in the
+sky, as to split the mountains with hideous cracks; nor do the diluvian
+clouds rattle and crackle in the midway sky; (to presage the last day,
+why then in vain waste you your body, that is not foreboded to die?).</p>
+
+<p>35. I wander everywhere on my vehicle of the eagle, and take care of
+all animal beings lest they die before their time, and do not therefore
+like your negligence of yourself.</p>
+
+<p>36. Here are we and there the hills, these are other beings and that is
+yourself; this is the earth and that the sky, all these are separate
+entities and must last of themselves; why then should you neglect your
+body, and do not live like the living?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_894">[894]</span>
+37. The man whose mind is deluded by gross ignorance, and one who is
+the mark of afflictions, is verily led to hail his death. (So the
+Smriti says:—Very sick and corpulent men have their release in death).</p>
+
+<p>38. Death is welcome to him, who is too weak and too poor and grossly
+ignorant; and who is always troubled by such and similar thoughts in
+his mind. (The disturbed mind is death and hell in itself).</p>
+
+<p>39. Death is welcomed by him, whose mind is enchained in the trap of
+greedy desires and thrills between its hopes and fears; and who is
+hurried and carried about in quest of greed, and is always restless
+within himself.</p>
+
+<p>40. He whose heart is parched by the thirst of greed, and whose better
+thoughts are choked by it, as the sprouts of corn are destroyed by
+worms; is the person that welcomes his death at all times.</p>
+
+<p>41. He who lets the creeping passions of his heart, grow as big as
+palm trees, to overshadow the forest of his mind, and bear the fruits
+of continued pain and pleasure, is the man who hails his death at all
+times.</p>
+
+<p>42. He whose mind is festered by the weeds of cares, growing as rank
+as his hair on the body; and who is subject to the incessant evils of
+life, is the man that welcomes death for his relief.</p>
+
+<p>43. He whose body is burning under the fire of diseases, and whose
+limbs are slackened by age and weakness, is the man to whom death is a
+remedy, and who resorts to its aid for relief.</p>
+
+<p>44. He who is tormented by his ardent desires and raging anger, as by
+the poison of snake biting, is as a withered tree, and invites instant
+death for his release.</p>
+
+<p>45. It is the soul’s quitting the body that is called death; and this
+is unknown to the spiritualist, who is quite indifferent about the
+entity and nonentity of the body.</p>
+
+<p>46. Life is a blessing to him, whose thoughts do not rove beyond
+the confines of himself; and to the wise man also who knows and
+investigates into the true nature of things.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_895">[895]</span>
+47. Life is a blessing to him also, who is not given to his egotism,
+and whose understanding is not darkened by untruth, and who preserves
+his evenness in all conditions of life.</p>
+
+<p>48. His life is a blessing to him, who has the inward satisfaction and
+coolness of his understanding, and is free from passions and enmity;
+and looks on the world as a mere witness, and having his concern with
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>49. He is blest in his life, who has the knowledge of whatever is
+desirable or detestable to him, and lives aloof from both; with all his
+thoughts and feelings confined within himself; (literally, within his
+own heart and mind).</p>
+
+<p>50. His life is blest, who views all gross things in the light of
+nothing, and whose heart and mind are absorbed in his silent and
+conscious soul. (<i>i.e.</i> Who witnesses and watches the emotions and
+motions of his heart and mind).</p>
+
+<p>51. Blessed is his life, who having his sight represses it from viewing
+the affairs of the world, as if they are entirely unworthy of him.</p>
+
+<p>52. His life is blessed, who neither rejoices nor grieves at what is
+desirable or disadvantageous to him; but has his contentment in every
+state of his life whether favourable or not.</p>
+
+<p>53. He who is pure in his life, and keeps company with pure minded men;
+who spreads the purity of his conduct all about, and shuns the society
+of the impure; is as graceful to behold, as the hoary swan with its
+snow white wings, in the company of the fair fowls of the silvery lake.</p>
+
+<p>54. Blessed is his life, whose sight and remembrance, and the mention
+of whose name, give delight to all persons.</p>
+
+<p>55. Know the life of that man, O lord of demons, to be truly happy,
+whose lotus-like appearance is as delightsome to the bee-like eyes of
+men, as the sight of the full moon is delightful to the world.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_896">[896]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LX.<br>
+<span class="small">RESUSCITATION OF PRAHLÁDA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. On the necessity of the observance of duty, both in the
+secular as well as Religious Life.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">T</span>he</span> Lord continued:—It is the soundness of the body, which men call
+life; and it is the quitting of the present body for a future one,
+which they call death. (Activity is the life of the body).</p>
+
+<p>2. You are released from both these states, O high minded youth!
+and have nothing to do with your life or death any more. (Because
+the living liberated are freed from the cares of life, and future
+transmigrations also).</p>
+
+<p>3. It is for your acquaintance, that I relate to you the components of
+life and death; by knowledge of which you will not have to live nor
+die, like other living beings on earth (in pain and misery).</p>
+
+<p>4. Though situated in the body, yet you are as unembodied as the
+disembodied spirit; and though embosomed in vacuity, yet are you
+as free and fleet as the wind, on account of your being unattached
+to vacuum. (Unattachment of the soul to the body and vital spirit,
+constitutes its freedom).</p>
+
+<p>5. Your perception of the objects of the touch, proves you to be
+an embodied being; and your soul is said to be the cause of that
+perception; as the open air is said to be the cause of the growth of
+trees, for its putting no hindrance to their height. But neither the
+soul is cause of perception, nor the air of the growth of trees. (It is
+the mind which is the cause of the one, as moisture of the other).</p>
+
+<p>6. But the perception of outward things, is no test of their
+materiality to the monoistic immaterialist; as the sight of things in
+a dream, is no proof of their substantiality, nor of the corporeality
+of the percipient soul. (All external perceptions, are as those in a
+dream).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_897">[897]</span>
+7. All things are comprehended, in yourself, by the light of your
+intellect; and your knowledge of the only One in all, comprehends every
+thing in it. How then can you have a body either to take to yourself or
+reject it from you?</p>
+
+<p>8. Whether the season of the spring appears or not, or a hurricane
+happens to blow or subside; it is nothing to the pure soul, which is
+clear of all connection whatever. (The soul is unconnected with all
+occurrences).</p>
+
+<p>9. Whether the hills fall headlong to the ground, or the flames of
+destruction devour all things; or the rapid gales rend the skies, it is
+no matter to the soul which rests secure in itself.</p>
+
+<p>10. Whether the creation exists or not, and whether all things perish
+or grow; it is nothing to the soul which subsists of itself. (The
+increate soul is self existent and ever lasting).</p>
+
+<p>11. The Lord of this body, does not waste by waste of its frame, nor he
+is strengthened by strength of the body; neither does it move by any
+bodily movement, nor sleep when the body and its senses are absorbed in
+sleep.</p>
+
+<p>12. Whence does this false thought rise in your mind, that you belong
+to the body, and are an embodied being, and that you come to take,
+retain and quit this mortal frame at different times?</p>
+
+<p>13. Forsake the thought, that you will do so and so after doing this
+and that; for they that know the truth, have given up such desires and
+vain expectations. (Since God is the disposer of all events).</p>
+
+<p>14. All waking and living persons, have something or other to do in
+this world, and have thereby to reap the results of their actions; but
+he that does nothing, does not take the name of an active agent, nor
+has anything to expect (but lives resigned to the will of Providence).</p>
+
+<p>15. He who is no agent of an action, has nothing to do with its
+consequence; for he who does not sow the grains, does not reap the
+harvest. (For as you sow, so you reap).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_898">[898]</span>
+16. Desinence of action and its fruition, brings on a quiescence, which
+when it has become habitual and firm, receives the name of liberation
+(which is nothing to have or crave, save what God gave of his own will,
+agreeably to the prayer, “Let not mine, but thy will be done”).</p>
+
+<p>17. All intellectual beings and enlightened men, and those that lead
+pure and holy lives, have all things under their comprehension,
+wherefore there is nothing for them left to learn anew or reject what
+they have learnt. (The gods and sages are all knowing, and have nothing
+to know or unknow any more).</p>
+
+<p>18. It is for limited understandings and limited powers of the body
+and mind, to grasp or leave out some thing; but to men of unbounded
+capacities, there is nothing to be received or left out. (Fulness can
+neither be more full, nor wanting in any thing).</p>
+
+<p>19. When a man is set at ease after cessation of his relation of the
+possessor or possession of any external object, and when this sense of
+his irrelation becomes a permanent feeling in him, he is then said to
+be liberated in his life time. (Total unconnection is perfect freedom).</p>
+
+<p>20. Great men like yourself, being placed in this state of perpetual
+unconcern and rest; conduct themselves in the discharge of their
+duties, with as much ease as in their sleep. (Here is the main precept
+of the combination of internal torpitude with bodily action in the
+discharge of duties).</p>
+
+<p>21. When one’s desires are drowned in his reliance on God, he views the
+existing world—shining in his spiritual light.</p>
+
+<p>22. He takes no delight in the pleasing objects about him, nor does he
+regret at the afflictions of others; all his pleasure consisting in his
+own soul (at its total indifference).</p>
+
+<p>23. With his wakeful mind, he meets all the affairs of his concern
+with his spiritual unconcern; as the mirror receives the reflexions of
+objects, without being tainted by them.</p>
+
+<p>24. In his waking he reposes in himself, and in his sleep he reclines
+amidst the drowsy world; in his actions he turns <span class="pagenum" id="Page_899">[899]</span>
+about as frolicsome
+boys, and his desires lie dormant in his soul.</p>
+
+<p>25. O thou, great soul, thus continue to enjoy thy supreme bliss, for
+the period of a Kalpa (a day of Brahmá), by relying your mind in the
+victorious Vishnu, and with enjoying the prosperity of thy dominions by
+exercise of your virtues and good qualities. (The ultimate lesson is,
+to be observant of the duties which are paramount on every body, with
+relinquishment of all personal desire for oneself).
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_900">[900]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLI.<br>
+<span class="small">INSTALLATION OF PRAHLÁDA IN HIS REALM.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Hari’s Inauguration of Prahláda with blessings, and
+appointment of him to the Government.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—After Hari the receptacle of the three worlds, and
+observer of everything that passes in them; had spoken in the aforesaid
+manner in his lucid speech, shedding the coolness of moon beams:</p>
+
+<p>2. Prahláda became full blown in his body, and his eyes shone forth as
+blooming lotuses; he then spoke out with full possession of his mental
+powers.</p>
+
+<p>3. Prahláda said:—Lord! I was much tired with very many state affairs,
+and in thinking about the weal and woe of my people. I have now found a
+little rest from my labour.</p>
+
+<p>4. It is by thy grace, my lord! that I am settled in myself; and
+whether I am in my trance or waking state, I enjoy the tranquility of
+my mind at all times.</p>
+
+<p>5. I always see thee seated in my heart, with the clear sightedness of
+my mind; and it is by my good luck, that I have thee now in my presence
+and outside of it.</p>
+
+<p>6. I had been all this time, sitting without any thought in me; and was
+mixed up as air in air, in my mind’s internal vision of thee.</p>
+
+<p>7. I was not affected by grief or dulness, nor infatuated by my zeal of
+asceticism or a wish of relinquishing my body (that I remained in my
+torpid trance).</p>
+
+<p>8. The One All being present in the mind, there is no room for any
+grief in it, at the loss of anything besides; nor can any care for the
+world, or caution of the body or life, or any fear of any kind, abide
+in his presence.</p>
+
+<p>9. It is simply by pure desire of holiness, rising <span class="pagenum" id="Page_901">[901]</span>
+spontaneously of
+itself in me; that I had been situated in my saintlike and holy state.</p>
+
+<p>10. Yes my Lord, I am disgusted with this world, and long to resign its
+cares; together with all the mutations of joy and grief, which rise
+alternate in the minds of the unenlightened.</p>
+
+<p>11. I do not think that our embodied state is subject to misery, and
+that our being freed from the bonds of the body is the cause of our
+release: it is worldliness that is a venomous viper in the bosom, and
+torments the ignorant only and not the sage. (Because it is mind and
+not the body, that is addicted to pleasure, and feels the stings of
+pain).</p>
+
+<p>12. It is the ignorant and not the learned, whose minds fluctuate with
+the thoughts, that this is pleasure and the other is pain, and that I
+have this and am in want of another. (The more they have, the more they
+crave).</p>
+
+<p>13. The ignorant man thinks himself, to be a person distinct from
+another; and so all living beings devoid of the knowledge of truth,
+entertain and exult in their egoistic thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>14. The erroneous idea that, such things are acceptable to me, and
+others are not so; serves only to delude the ignorant, and not the wise
+(who acquiesce to whatever occurs to them).</p>
+
+<p>15. All things being contained by and situated in my all-pervading
+spirit, how can we accept one and reject another thing, as distinct
+from and undesirable to the selfsame One? (Shall we desire only good
+from God, and not the evil also? Job).</p>
+
+<p>16. The whole universe whether real or unreal (or composed of its
+substantiality and vacuity), is a manifestation of Omniscience; we know
+not what is desirable or detestable in it to be accepted or rejected by
+us. (But must submit to the wise ordinance of providence).</p>
+
+<p>17. It is only by discrimination of the natures of the viewer and the
+view (<i>i.e.</i> of the subjective soul, and the objective world); and by
+reflecting the Supreme Soul in one’s self, that the mind receives its
+rest and tranquility.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_902">[902]</span>
+18. I was freed during my trance, of the consciousness of my being or
+not being, and of whatever is desirable or detestable to any one; and I
+continue also, in the same state of my mind even after I am awakened.</p>
+
+<p>19. This state being familiar to me, I see every thing in the spirit
+within myself; and I act according as it pleaseth thee. (<i>i.e.</i> Not by
+mine but thy will).</p>
+
+<p>20. O lotus-eyed Hari! thou art adored in all the three worlds;
+wherefore it behoveth thee to receive my adoration also, offered in the
+proper form.</p>
+
+<p>21. Saying so, the lord of Dánavas, presented his platter of presents
+(arghya) before the god, as the lord of hills pays his offerings to the
+full-moon. (This hill is the mount of moon rising, which is hailed and
+welcomed by it).</p>
+
+<p>22. He worshipped Hari first of all, together with his weapons and his
+Vehicle Garuda; and then he adored the bands of the gods and Apsaras
+that accompanied him and the three worlds contained in him.</p>
+
+<p>23. After he had done worshipping the lord of the worlds, with the
+worlds situated within and without him; the Lord of Laxmí spoke to him
+saying:—</p>
+
+<p>24. Rise, O lord of Dánavas! and sit upon your throne, until I perform
+your inauguration this very moment.</p>
+
+<p>25. Hari then blew his <i>pánchajanya</i> shell summoning the five races,
+of the gods, siddhas, sádhyas and men and Daityas, to attend at the
+ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>26. After this the lotus-eyed god placed him on the throne which he
+deserved, and whereon he caused him to sit as cloud rests on the summit
+of a mountain.</p>
+
+<p>27. Hari then caused him to make his sacred ablution, with the waters
+of the milky and other oceans; and those of the Ganges and other holy
+rivers, which were presented before him.</p>
+
+<p>28. All bodies of Bráhmans and Rishis, and all groups of Siddhas and
+Vidyádharas; with the Loka-pálas or regents of the quarters, attended
+and assisted at the ceremony.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_903">[903]</span>
+
+<p>29. Then Hari the immeasurable Spirit, anointed the great Asura in the
+kingdom of the Daityas; and the Maruta winds lauded his praise, as they
+do the hymns of Hari in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>30. Then blessed by the gods and applauded by Asuras, Prahláda greeted
+them all in his turn; and was thus addressed at last by the slayer of
+Madhu—the demoniac Satan.</p>
+
+<p>31. The Lord said:—Do thou reign here as sole monarch, as long as the
+mount Meru stands on the earth, and the sun and moon shine in the sky;
+and be fraught with all praiseworthy virtues of thine own.</p>
+
+<p>32. Govern thy realm without any interested motive of thy own, and
+without showing any symptom of anger or fear on your part; but preserve
+your moderation and a tolerant spirit in all your affairs.</p>
+
+<p>33. May you never have any disquiet, in this realm of excellent soil
+and plenteous provisions; nor do you create any disturbance to the gods
+in heaven, or to men on earth below.</p>
+
+<p>34. Conduct yourself in your proper course at all events, which may
+occur to you at any time or place; and never allow yourself to be led
+astray, by the caprice of your mind or the freaks of fancy.</p>
+
+<p>35. Keep in mind your spiritual being, and abandon your egoism and
+selfish views altogether; and then by managing your affairs in one
+even tenor, both in your want and prosperity, you will evade all the
+vicissitudes of fortune.</p>
+
+<p>36. You have seen both the ways and dealings of this world, and
+measured also the immeasurable depth of spiritual knowledge. You know
+the state of every thing in every place, and require no advice of any
+body.</p>
+
+<p>37. As you are now perfectly devoid of your anger, passions and fears,
+there is no more any chance of further broils between the gods and
+Asuras, under your rule over them in future.</p>
+
+<p>38. No more will the tears of Asura females, wash the decorations on
+their faces; nor will the currents of rivers rise as high as lofty
+trees, with floods of tears from their weeping eyes.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_904">[904]</span>
+
+<p>39. The cessation of hostilities between the gods and demons, will
+render the earth as quiet from this day, as the unruffled ocean after
+its churning by the Mandara mountain.</p>
+
+<p>40. The wives of the gods and demigods, will no more be led away in
+captivity by one another; but will rest fearless under the marital
+roofs of their husbands in future.</p>
+
+<p>41. Let thy expectations now rise from their dormancy, of many long
+nights of dismal darkness, and be crowned with success and prosperity;
+and do thou, O progeny of Danu! enjoy thy unconquerable royal fortune,
+as in the company of thy charming consort.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_905">[905]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLII.<br>
+<span class="small">SPIRITUALITY OF PRAHLÁDA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. The merit of hearing the narrative of Vishnu, and the
+cause of Prahláda’s awaking from his trance.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—The lotus-eyed Hari, having said thus much to
+Prahláda, departed with the whole concourse of the assembled gods,
+Kinnaras and men, from the abode of the Asura.</p>
+
+<p>2. Then did Prahláda and his associates throw handfuls of flowers on
+the departing god, as he was mounted on the back of the king of birds
+(Garuda—the eagle or bird of heaven).</p>
+
+<p>3. The god crossed the heavenly Ganges and reached at the milky ocean,
+where he took his serpent couch as the black bee sits on the lotus-leaf.</p>
+
+<p>4. The God Vishnu sat on his serpent seat with as much ease, as Indra
+sits in heaven in the assembly of the gods; and as the lord of the
+demons, was made to sit in the infernal region wholly devoid of all his
+cares.</p>
+
+<p>5. I have now related to you, Ráma! the whole narrative of Prahláda’s
+coming to his sense, from the state of his insensibility; and this
+account is as charming to the holy hearer, as the cooling moon-beams
+are refreshing to the tired traveller.</p>
+
+<p>6. The man that ponders in his mind, the manner of Prahláda’s
+resuscitation to life; is regenerated in that felicitous state, from
+the sinfulness of his former condition.</p>
+
+<p>7. A cursory rehearsal of his narration, wipes off the sins of men;
+while the deep consideration of its spiritual sense, leads one to his
+eternal salvation.</p>
+
+<p>8. The ignorant are released from their ignorance, and the deep thinker
+is released from his sins; therefore do not neglect to ponder well on
+it, for the remission of all your sins.</p>
+
+<p>9. The man who considers well the manner of Prahláda’s <span class="pagenum" id="Page_906">[906]</span>
+gaining his
+proficiency, gets a remission of all the sins committed by him in his
+repeated previous states of life.</p>
+
+<p>10. Ráma said:—Tell me sir, how the sound of the <i>pánchajanya</i> conch
+shell, roused the mind of the devout Prahláda from its immersion in
+holy meditation.</p>
+
+<p>11. Vasishtha replied:—Know Ráma, that there are two states of
+liberation attending on sinless persons, the one is the emancipation
+of one in his embodied state in this life, and the other is after his
+departure from here.</p>
+
+<p>12. The embodied liberation means one’s continuance in his living
+body, but with a state of mind freed from its attachment to worldly
+things, and liberated from the desire of fruition and reward of all his
+meritorious acts.</p>
+
+<p>13. The disembodied liberation is obtained after the soul is released
+from the body, and is settled in the Supreme Spirit. It is an
+enfranchisement from the recurrence of future life and birth in this
+mortal world.</p>
+
+<p>14. The living liberated man is like a fried grain, whose regerminating
+power is parched within itself, and the desire of whose heart is
+purified from every expectation of future reward or regeneration.</p>
+
+<p>15. He remains in the pure, holy and magnanimous state of his mind,
+who resigns himself solely to the meditation of the Great soul, and
+continues as if he were asleep in his living and waking states.</p>
+
+<p>16. Being thus entranced in his inward meditation, he continues in a
+torpid state for a thousand years, and wakes again to his senses, if he
+is allowed to live long ever after that period.</p>
+
+<p>17. Prahláda remained thus with his holy thoughts suppressed within
+himself, until he was roused from his trance by the shrill sound of the
+conch-shell.</p>
+
+<p>18. Hari is the soul of all beings, and he who assimilates himself to
+that god in his thought; becomes identified with the supreme soul,
+which is the cause of all.</p>
+
+<p>19. No sooner the god thought that Prahláda should come <span class="pagenum" id="Page_907">[907]</span>
+to his sense,
+than his sensation came immediately to him at the divine will.</p>
+
+<p>20. The world has no other cause, but the divine spirit; which with
+the assistance of the causal elements, takes different forms on itself
+at the time of creation; and therefore it is the spirit of Hari that
+constitutes the world.</p>
+
+<p>21. The worship of God in spirit, presents Hari to the spiritual sight;
+and the worship of Hari in his outward form, represents the figure to
+the soul and the inner mind.</p>
+
+<p>22. Do you, O Ráma! put out the visible sights from your view, and look
+at the inmost soul within yourself; being thus accustomed to spiritual
+meditation, you will soon have the sight of your God.</p>
+
+<p>23. The world presents a scene of the gloomy rainy weather, with
+showers of woes falling on all sides; it is likely to freeze us in
+ignorance, unless we look to the sun of our reason (or, unless we abide
+under the sunshine of reason).</p>
+
+<p>24. It is by grace of God that we can avoid the delusions of the world,
+as we may escape from a goblin by means of a spell.</p>
+
+<p>25. It is at the will of the spirit, that the thick darkness of the
+mind, is dispersed and cleared off in time; the world is a net-work of
+delusion, which is scattered like a smoke by the breeze of reason.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_908">[908]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLIII.<br>
+<span class="small">REST AND REPOSE OF PRAHLÁDA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. All knowledge is derived by one’s own attention and
+personal exertion, joined with his reliance on the grace of God.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">R</span>áma</span> said:—Sir, your knowledge of all truths, and the light of your
+holy discourses, have gratified me as much, as the cooling moon-beams
+gratify the medicinal plants (whence the moon is called <i>oshadhísa</i> or
+lord of medicinal drugs).</p>
+
+<p>2. Your gentle and purifying words are as gratifying to my ears, as
+the beautiful and sweet flowers delight the external senses (by their
+colours and odours). (Sweet words are often compared with flowers by
+Persian and Urdu poets: as, <i>guleazrouzeijaved. Elahikar sakhur meriko
+up phol</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>3. Sir, if the exertions of men, as you said, be the causes of their
+success, how was it that Prahláda came to be enlightened without his
+effort or attempt? (in obtaining his divine knowledge without his
+learning or help of a preceptor).</p>
+
+<p>4. Vasishtha replied:—Yes Ráma, it was by his manly exertion, that the
+highminded Prahláda had acquired his divine knowledge; and there was no
+other cause (of his knowing and having whatever he knew and possessed).</p>
+
+<p>5. The soul of man is the same as the spirit of Náráyana, (which means
+abiding in man); and there is no difference between them, as there is
+none between the oil and the sesamum seed; and as the cloth and its
+whiteness, and the flower and its fragrance are not distinct things.
+(Because the spirit of God was breathed into the nostrils of man.
+Náráyana and Purusha both mean the spirit dwelling in man).</p>
+
+<p>6. And Vishnu is the same with his spirit or the soul of man, and the
+human soul is the same with Vishnu (which means the inherent spirit);
+Vishnu and the soul are synonymous terms as the plant and the vegetable.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_909">[909]</span>
+7. Prahláda came at first to know the soul by himself (of his own
+intuition), it was afterwards by means of his intellectual power, that
+he was led to the persuasion and made many proselytes after his own
+example.</p>
+
+<p>8. It was by his own desert, that Prahláda obtained his boon from
+Vishnu; and it was by the exercise of his own reasoning, that he came
+to the knowledge of the eternal Mind.</p>
+
+<p>9. Sometimes the soul is awakened of itself by one’s own intuition, and
+at others it is roused by the grace of the personal god Vishnu, owing
+to one’s faith in his person. (As it is said: “Thy faith will save
+thee”).</p>
+
+<p>10. And though this god may be pleased with his prolonged service and
+devout worship, yet he is unable to confer spiritual knowledge to one
+devoid of his reasoning faculty. (Or to one who has no understanding.
+Hence gross idolators can have no salvation, which is to be had by
+spiritual knowledge only. Blind faith is of no good, without the light
+of reason).</p>
+
+<p>11. Hence the primary cause of spiritual light is the intelligence of
+a man and which is gained by exertion of his mental powers only; the
+secondary causes may be the blessing and grace of a deity, but I wish
+you to prefer the former one for your salvation. (So it is knowledge
+and intrinsic merit which exalt a man, and not the mere favour of a
+patron, is ever able to raise the unworthy).</p>
+
+<p>12. Exert therefore your manliness at first, to keep the quintuple
+organs of sense under proper control; and habituate yourself with all
+diligence to cultivate your understanding, and the power of reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>13. For know whatever gain any one makes at any time, it is owing to
+his own endeavours only that he gains the same, and not by any other
+means whatever.</p>
+
+<p>14. It is only by dependence on your manly powers, that you can
+surmount the insuperable barriers of your sensual appetites; and then
+by crossing over the ocean of this world, reach to the other shore of
+supreme felicity.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_910">[910]</span>
+15. It requires no exertion or manly effort to see the figure of
+Vishnu; but the mere sight of the image is not sufficient to save you,
+or else the birds and beasts would all be saved by looking at it.</p>
+
+<p>16. If it were in the power of the spiritual guide also to save his
+foolish followers by his preachings; it would be possible also to the
+leaders of camels and kine, to save their herds in their future lives.
+(This figure is set in many temples, and in stones also).</p>
+
+<p>17. It is in the power of the mind only to acquire anything good
+for one’s self, and not the favour of Hari or that of Hara, or the
+influence of money, that is able to effect anything.</p>
+
+<p>18. It is by means of constant practice, accompanied by
+self-resignation and self-controul, that one is enabled to effect
+anything; and whatever he is unable to do by these means, is impossible
+for him to do by any other in the three worlds.</p>
+
+<p>19. Look to the spirit in the spirit, and adore the spirit in your own
+soul; behold the supreme soul in yourself, and have the universal soul
+in your own soul, and thus remain with it.</p>
+
+<p>20. Fools flying from attending to the sástras, or practising their
+self-devotion and exercise of reason, have adopted to themselves the
+Vaishnava faith as a path leading to their better being (or a means
+towards the great object of final beatitude).</p>
+
+<p>21. Practice and diligence are said to be steps to self-edification,
+and rites and ceremonies are represented as secondary courses resorted
+to for want of the former!</p>
+
+<p>22. The senses being refractory what is the good of ceremonial
+observances, and these being under control, it is useless to observe
+the ritual. (In both ways the rituals are useless to men of virtuous
+and vicious habits; the former being in no need, of them and the latter
+not benefiting by them).</p>
+
+<p>23. Without rationality and dispassionateness of his spirit, it is hard
+to have Hari (or spiritual felicity); and when there is the cool and
+calm reasoning of the mind, it is as useless to have the idol of Hari,
+as to place a lotus in the hand of the dead and liberated.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_911">[911]</span>
+24. When you have the qualities of abstraction and composure in your
+mind, think you have every thing in yourself; for these being in your
+possession, you become an adept, or else you are an ass of the forest.
+(that is good for nothing).</p>
+
+<p>25. Men are eager to find favour in the sight of the gods (and great
+men); but they do not seek the favour of their hearts and minds (which
+can give them whatever blessing is derived from any other).</p>
+
+<p>26. Vishnu the indwelling spirit of the body, is situated in the inmost
+soul of every individual; it is the ignorant fool only that forsake the
+innermost Vishnu, and seek the outer form for its leading to the other
+(which is more closely allied to us than the latter).</p>
+
+<p>27. The consciousness dwelling in the cavity of the heart, is the
+true body of the everlasting spirit; and the outward form of Vishnu,
+holding the conchshell, cudgel, lotus and the discus, is but a false
+representation of it. (A fabrication of the ignorant for the immaterial
+spirit, in a material form).</p>
+
+<p>28. He who forsakes the real form, and follows the fictitious one,
+lets off the ambrosia pass from his hand, in pursuit of some promised
+confectionary.</p>
+
+<p>29. He who is not settled amidst the charming scenery of his spiritual
+meditation, lets his frantic mind to rove at large, after every object
+that presents itself before him.</p>
+
+<p>30. He who has not the abstract knowledge of the soul in himself, is
+under the subjection of his infatuated mind; and worships the image
+bearing the conch, discus, club and lotus in its hands, as the supreme
+Lord and God.</p>
+
+<p>31. It is by practice of continued austerity, and a prolonged worship
+of this deity, that the mind of the devotee becomes purified in process
+of time, and gets rid of its turbulent passions at last.</p>
+
+<p>32. But the daily practice of self-control and abstract meditation,
+gives the mind the same purity, and like the ámra or mango fruit, it
+gets its accompanying virtues one by one. (The virtues of the mango are
+its flavour, colour &c.).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_912">[912]</span>
+33. So the soul is said to get in itself the virtues of peace,
+contentment and the rest, by means of the external adoration of
+Hari; and it is for this reason that the practice of idol worship is
+prescribed in the sástras. (As a preparatory step to holiness and
+spiritual worship).</p>
+
+<p>34. He who obtains his boon from the all-powerful god, gets it in
+reward of his merit; as a fruit of the tree of his long practice.</p>
+
+<p>35. It is mental labour (lit.: painstaking), which is the foundation
+of every improvement, and of all lasting good in life; just as the
+cultivated soil is the cause of the good condition of the harvest.</p>
+
+<p>36. Even the digging of the ground, and the pulling of the hill (by
+bodily labour), is productive of no good without application of the
+mind. (Gloss. The digging of the ground alludes to the mining of the
+earth by the sons of Sagara; and the pulling of the hill refers to the
+churning of the sea with Mandara by the gods and demons. Both these
+hardy works were for the sake of obtaining the gems hid under them
+which required knowledge (of geology)).</p>
+
+<p>37. Men may undergo a thousand transmigrations, and wander about the
+earth in various births and shapes, and yet find no rest composure of
+their minds.</p>
+
+<p>38. They may worship Brahmá, Vishnu and the Rudras for ever, and gain
+their favour also, and yet can have no salvation owing to the perturbed
+state of their minds.</p>
+
+<p>39. Leave off worshipping the visible form or image of Vishnu (or any
+other god), either internally or externally in your mind or before your
+sight; and put an end to your transmigration, by meditating on your
+consciousness alone.</p>
+
+<p>40. Behold the unsullied form of One infinite God in your conscious
+self, and by forsaking all whatever it is conscious of. Relish the
+sweet essence of the one real entity, and go over the ocean of repeated
+births in the mortal world.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_913">[913]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLIV.<br>
+<span class="small">NARRATIVE OF GÁDHI AND HIS DESTRUCTION.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Narrative of Gádhi in illustration of the Adoration
+of Vishnu.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—Ráma; it is the government of the restless mind alone,
+that is able to destroy the delusion, which causes the interminable
+transmigrations in this mortal world. There is no other means to this
+end.</p>
+
+<p>2. Hear attentively, O sinless Ráma! this story which I am going to
+relate to you, in order to show you the intricacy of understanding the
+nature of worldly delusions.</p>
+
+<p>3. There is the large district of Kosala on the surface of this land,
+which is full of forests and fruitful trees, forming as groves of Kalpa
+arbors; and abounding with minerals like the Sumeru mountain.</p>
+
+<p>4. There lived a learned Bráhman, known by the name of Gádhi; who was
+intelligent and versed in the Vedas, and remained as an image of virtue.</p>
+
+<p>5. From his youth he continued with the calmness of his mind, and
+abstracted from and indifferent to worldly affairs; and was of
+as pure and unsullied a soul as the clear sky above.</p>
+
+<p>6. Then intent on some fixed purpose of his mind, he left the company
+of his friends, and went out to a forest to perform his austere
+devotion.</p>
+
+<p>7. He found there a lake filled with full blown lotuses, and the moon
+shining in the sky with the scattered stars about her; and all shedding
+their lustre like showers of rain.</p>
+
+<p>8. He went down into the lake, and stood in the midst of the waters up
+to his neck; his body was below water, and his head floated over it as
+a lotus; and he stood upon his devotion, intent with a view to have the
+sight of Vishnu present before him.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_914">[914]</span>
+
+<p>9. He thus passed full eight months, continuing with his body immerged
+in the water of the lake; and his face was shrivelled and wan, like the
+lotuses of his lake for want of sun shine.</p>
+
+<p>10. When he was emaciated by his austerities, his god Hari appeared
+before him, in the manner of a dark cloud of the rainy weather,
+appearing over the parched earth of the hot season.</p>
+
+<p>11. The Lord said:—Rise O Bráhman! from amidst the water, and receive
+thy desired blessing of me; because the tree of thy vow, is now
+pregnant with its expected fruit.</p>
+
+<p>12. The Bráhman replied:—I bow to thee, O my lord Vishnu! thou art the
+receptacle of the three worlds, and the reservoir of innumerable starry
+worlds, which rise as lotuses in the lake of thy heart, and whereon
+thou sittest like the black bee (to behold their beauty).</p>
+
+<p>13. I want to behold my lord, the spiritual delusion which thou hast
+ordained to blind fold this world, and known as Vishnu Máyá.</p>
+
+<p>14. Vasishtha said:—To this the god replied:—you shall verily behold
+this delusion, and get rid of it afterwards, by virtue of thy devotion.
+Saying so, the god disappeared from his sight as an aerial castle.</p>
+
+<p>15. Vishnu being gone, the good Bráhman got up from his watery bed, in
+the manner of the fair and humid moon, rising from amidst the cool and
+white milky ocean.</p>
+
+<p>16. He was glad in his soul at the sight of the lord of world, and his
+heart was as full blown with joy; as the Kumuda (selenian) lotuses
+unfold at the sight of the moon.</p>
+
+<p>17. He then passed some days in that forest, overjoyed in his mind by
+the sight of Hari, and employed himself in discharge of his Bráhmanical
+duties.</p>
+
+<p>18. Once on a time as he had been bathing in the lake, overspread with
+full-blown lotuses, he thought upon the words of Vishnu, as the great
+sages reflect in their minds the sense of texts of Vedas.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_915">[9154]</span>
+
+<p>19. Then in the act of his discharging his sacerdotal functions in the
+midst of sacred water, he made his mental prayer for the expurgation of
+his sins. (This is the ceremony agha-marshna).</p>
+
+<p>20. As he was performing this act in the midst of the water, he chanced
+to forget his sacred mantras (texts), and was drowned in deep water in
+the confusion of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>21. He thought that his body had fallen down like a mountain tree, in
+the dale below by a blast of wind; and that his dead corpse was taken
+up and mourned over by his friends.</p>
+
+<p>22. He thought that his vital breath had fled away from his being, and
+the members of his body were as motionless as the shrubs of sugar cane;
+laid down on the ground by a hurricane.</p>
+
+<p>23. He thought his countenance to have faded away, and grown as pale as
+the withered leaf of a tree; and that his body now turned to a carcass,
+was lying on the ground like a lotus-bud torn from its stalk.</p>
+
+<p>24. His eye balls were as dull and dim, as the stars of the morning are
+shorn of their beams; and the ground seemed to be as dry to him as in a
+drought of rain water, and filled with flying dust on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>25. He believed his dead body was beset all about by his kind friends,
+weeping upon it with their sad and sorrowful countenances, and loudly
+lamenting and crying over it like birds upon trees.</p>
+
+<p>26. He thought his faithful wife sitting at his feet as handsome
+lotus flower, and weeping as profusely with a shower of tears from
+her lotus-like eyes, as the rushing of waters at the breaking of an
+embankment.</p>
+
+<p>27. His sorrowing mother with her loud wailing and mournful ditties,
+was buzzing like the humming bee; and holding the chin newly over grown
+with whiskers in her tender hand.</p>
+
+<p>28. His friends were sitting by his side with their dejected looks, and
+with trickling tears dropping down their faces and cheeks; and these
+washed his dead body, as the melting dews on withered leaves, bedew the
+parent tree.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_916">[916]</span>
+
+<p>29. The members of his body now ceased to befriend him, like strangers
+who decline to become friends for fear of future separation, or turning
+unfriendly ever afterwards in life.</p>
+
+<p>30. The open lips leaving the teeth bare, seemed to deride at the
+vanity of human life; as the white and bony teethed ascetics and cynics
+do on fickleness of worldly events.</p>
+
+<p>31. His mouth was as speechless, as that of a devotee in his
+meditation; and the body was as motionless, as it was made of mud and
+clay; it slept to wake no more, like a sage absorbed in his hypnotism.</p>
+
+<p>32. It remained quiet with its lifted ears, as if to listen to the
+cries and wailings of the mourning friends; in order to judge the
+degrees of their affection and grief for him.</p>
+
+<p>33. Then the relatives raised their loud lamentations, with the sobbing
+and beating of their breasts, swooning and rising, and shedding floods
+of tears from their leaky eyes.</p>
+
+<p>34. Afterwards the sorrowful relations, removed the disgusting corpse
+with their bitter cries for its funeral, seeing it no more in future in
+this passing world.</p>
+
+<p>35. Then they bore the body to the funeral ground with its rotten flesh
+and entrails, and daubed all over with mud and dust, and placed it on
+the ground, strewn over with unnumbered bones and skeletons, and dried
+and rotten carcasses.</p>
+
+<p>36. Flights of flying vultures shaded the sunbeams on high, and the
+burning piles drove the darkness below; the fearful glare of open
+mouthed jackals flashed on all sides, as they were flames of living
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>37. There the ravens were bathed in floods of blood, and the crows
+dipping their wings in it; ravenous birds were tearing the entrails,
+and the old vultures were entrapped in those strings.</p>
+
+<p>38. The friends of the dead burnt the corpse in the funeral flame and
+reduced to ashes; and the moisture of the body flew in fumes, as the
+waters of the ocean are evaporated by the marine fire.</p>
+
+<p>39. The burning wood of the funeral pile, consumed the dead <span class="pagenum" id="Page_917">[917]</span>
+body with
+loud cracking noise; and the dry fuel of the pile, flashed in ambient
+flames with curling smoke over them.</p>
+
+<p>40. The devouring fire gnawed down the bones with crackling noise, and
+filled the atmosphere with the filthy stink and stench. It gorged up
+all that was soft or hard, as the elephant devours the reeds with the
+moisture contained in their cellular vessels.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_918">[918]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLV.<br>
+<span class="small">GÁDHI REBORN AS A CHANDÁLA, AND MADE KING OVER THE KIR TRIBE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Gádhi reborn in a Chandalí, His Life and Election as
+King of Kir.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—Then Gádhi, standing as he was amidst the water with
+his sorrowful heart, saw many other occurrences in the clearness of his
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>2. He saw a village in the vicinity of Bhuta mandala (Butan) full of
+its inhabitants, and that he was reborn there in the womb of a Chandála
+woman, in which he remained with great pain.</p>
+
+<p>3. Confined in the cavity of the womb, he felt his body pressed by the
+pressure of the intestines, while his senses were sorely annoyed by
+being constrained to abide the stink of the ordure and filth in the
+intestinal parts of Chandála woman.</p>
+
+<p>4. After the foetus was matured, he was born in proper time, with its
+black complexion like a dark cloud of the rainy season, and soiled with
+filth all over its body.</p>
+
+<p>5. It grew up to childhood and then to boyhood in the Chandála’s house,
+and moved about here and there like a pebble thrown up by the current
+of the Yamuna stream.</p>
+
+<p>6. It reached its twelfth and then its sixteenth year of age, and had
+its body fully developed like a rainy cloud increasing in its size.</p>
+
+<p>7. Then accompanied by a pack of hounds, the lad roved from one forest
+to another, and continued to hunt after and kill the wild deer, in his
+occupation of a huntsman.</p>
+
+<p>8. He was then joined with a Candáli spouse, as black as the leaf of a
+tamála plant, and who with her budding breasts, and palms, resembled
+the newly sprouting stalks and leaves of trees.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_919">[919]</span>
+
+<p>9. She was black and swarthy in her whole complexion, except her two
+rows of milk white teeth, and had all her limbs as brisk and supple as
+the tender creepers of the forest.</p>
+
+<p>10. They sported together in the skirts of the forest in their youthful
+dalliance, and wandered about the flowery meadows, like a couple of
+nigrescent bees.</p>
+
+<p>11. When tired they took their seats on beds of leaves and creepers,
+which were spread over the plains, like those strewn over the skirts of
+the Vindhya hills, by the driving winds.</p>
+
+<p>12. They reposed in woodland groves, and slept in the caverns of
+mountains; they sat on heaps of leaflets, and had their abode under
+shrubberies and bowers of creeping plants.</p>
+
+<p>13. They decorated their heads with <i>kinkirata</i> flowers, and their
+necks and bosoms with blossoms of various kinds. They hung <i>ketaka</i>
+flowers in their earholes, and made necklaces of <i>amra</i> florets.</p>
+
+<p>14. They rolled on beds of flowers and roved about the foot of the
+mountain; they knew all the arbours where to resort, and were skilled
+in archery and hunting the deer.</p>
+
+<p>15. They begot many children as the offshoots of their race in the
+hilly region; and they were as rude and rough as the prickly thorns of
+the <i>khadira</i> plant.</p>
+
+<p>16. After passing their youth in family life, they came gradually to
+their decay and decline; till at last they were overtaken by decrepit
+old age, which was as dry of pleasure as the parched ground of the
+desert.</p>
+
+<p>17. Then returning to their native village in the Bhuta or <i>Bhota</i>
+district, they built for themselves a poor hut of leaves and straws,
+and there lived as recluse hermits (passing their lives in holy
+devotion).</p>
+
+<p>18. Gádhi found his body worn out with age, and grown as thin and lean
+as a dry leaf, and as a withered tamála tree growing in a mountain
+cave; which for want of moisture soon dwindles into decrepitude.</p>
+
+<p>19. He saw his Chandála family increasing in its members, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_920">[920]</span>
+and himself
+becoming cramped in his means and crabbed in his speech in his extreme
+old age.</p>
+
+<p>20. As Gádhi found himself to be the oldest man alive among the
+Chandálas, and had his comfort in the members of his family in his
+dotage:—</p>
+
+<p>21. He came to see at last all his family to be swept away by the cruel
+hand of death, as the rain water carries away the fallen leaves of the
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>22. He continued to lament over their loss, with his heart rent with
+sorrow; and his eyes were suffused in tears, like those of a stag deer
+separated from its companions.</p>
+
+<p>23. Thus passing some days in that forest with his heart overflown with
+grief, he left at last his natal land, as the aquatic fowls quit their
+native lake, when its waters and the lotus plants are dried up.</p>
+
+<p>24. He travelled through many countries with his sad and sickly heart,
+without finding a spot of rest and repose; and was driven to and fro,
+as a cloud is carried by contrary winds.</p>
+
+<p>25. On one time he entered the opulent city of the Kirs, and observed
+the birds flying over it, like so many balloons hanging in the air.</p>
+
+<p>26. There he saw rows of trees on both sides of the road, waving their
+variegated leaves and clusters of flowers like enamelled cloths and
+gems; and the path strewn over with beautiful flowers of various kinds
+up to the heels.</p>
+
+<p>27. He then came to the royal road, resembling the milky path of
+heaven; and found it filled by soldiers and citizens, and their women
+without number.</p>
+
+<p>28. He saw there the auspicious royal elephant decorated with its
+gemming and embroidered trappings; and appearing as the golden mountain
+of the gods moving on the earth.</p>
+
+<p>29. He learnt it to be rambling about in search of a new king, to
+be elected in lieu of the last king who was lately dead. The royal
+elephant was employed as a jeweller to select the best gem to be placed
+on the royal throne.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_921">[921]</span>
+30. The Chandála remained to look steadfastly on the elephant with his
+curious eye, and found it to be no other than a hill in motion.</p>
+
+<p>31. As he was looking on it with amazement, the elephant came to him
+and lifted him with his trunk; then setting him on his head with
+respect, bore him as the mount Meru bears the sun on its top.</p>
+
+<p>32. Seeing him to be sitting on the animal’s head, the people sounded
+their trumpets; the noise whereof was as loud as that of the resounding
+ocean, to the roaring of the diluvian clouds in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>33. Then the acclamation of ‘Victory to the king,’ rose from the
+assembled throng and filled the air around; and seemed as it were the
+united cry of matutinal birds over the waking (or rising) world.</p>
+
+<p>34. Next rose the loud voices of the panegyrists, which, moved in the
+air like the dashing waves of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>35. Then the matrons joined to anoint him as their king, and moved
+about him like the waves of the sea; surrounding the Mandara mountain
+after its labour of churning.</p>
+
+<p>36. The respectable ladies adorned him afterwards with many ornaments
+of various gems, as the sea laves the rock on its shore; with the many
+coloured waves under the beams of the rising sun.</p>
+
+<p>37. Youthful maidens poured cooling ointments on him, as the raining
+clouds pour down their waters, on the tops of mountains.</p>
+
+<p>38. Other women decorated his person with wreaths of fragrant flowers,
+with their tender hands; as the season of spring adorns the forest with
+variety of flowers, with her hands of the tender stalks and branches.</p>
+
+<p>39. They put a great many paints and pastes upon his person, which
+decorated it, as the rays of the sun, paint the mountain with the many
+colours of its minerals.</p>
+
+<p>40. His body being decorated with ornaments made of gems <span class="pagenum" id="Page_922">[922]</span>
+and gold,
+attracted all hearts unto him; as the mount Meru is attractive of all
+hearts, by the variegated clouds of evening shining upon it.</p>
+
+<p>41. He was adorned by beauteous maids, with shoots of creeping plants;
+which gave him the appearance of the kalpa tree, entwined by its
+creepers.</p>
+
+<p>42. Being thus anointed and decorated, he was attended to by all the
+royal family and subjects; as a shady and flowering tree, is resorted
+to by the travellers.</p>
+
+<p>43. They all assembled and installed him on the throne, as the gods
+join together, to place Indra on the throne, after he is borne on the
+back of the Airávata elephant.</p>
+
+<p>44. In this manner, was the Chandála made a king in the city of the
+Kirs; and he was as much overjoyed at his unexpected good fortune, as a
+raven is delighted to find a stout dead deer in the forest.</p>
+
+<p>45. His feet were rubbed by the lotus-like hands of the Kiri queen, and
+his body daubed with odorous powder of frankincense, which gave it the
+brightening appearance of the evening with the crimson clouds.</p>
+
+<p>46. He flaunted in the Kir city and in the midst of their women, as a
+lion struts in the company of lionesses in the flowery forest.</p>
+
+<p>47. He now forgot his former pains and sorrows; and his person was
+as much cooled, as by wearing a necklace of pearls, dropped from the
+heads of elephants killed by lions. And he was as much delighted at
+the enjoyment of the luxuries in company with these good people, as a
+sun-burnt elephant is refreshed, in a lake full of water and forage.</p>
+
+<p>48. He reigned here for sometime in his self-gotten kingdom, having
+extended his power and mandates on all sides; he ruled the state
+through the medium of the ministers, and was himself known by the name
+of Gávala throughout his dominions.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_923">[923]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLVI.<br>
+<span class="small">GÁDHI’S LOSS OF HIS VISIONARY KINGDOM.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Continuation of Gádhi’s Vision:—</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Thus was Gádhi surrounded by his courtiers, and
+attended by his ministers; the chiefs paid their homage to him, and the
+royal umbrella was raised above his head and the chouri flapped about
+him.</p>
+
+<p>2. He attained great dignity on seeing his mandates were carried out
+on every side. He was delighted to learn the state affairs, and to be
+informed that his subjects were happy and lived fearless within his
+dominion.</p>
+
+<p>3. The pæans of the panegyrists, made him forget himself and his
+former state; and the excess of his delight, made him as giddy as if by
+intoxication.</p>
+
+<p>4. He reigned for full eight years over the Kiri kingdom, and managed
+himself in an honourable manner all along that time.</p>
+
+<p>5. He was once sitting at his pleasure and without his regal attire in
+the open air; and was looking at the clear firmament, which was devoid
+of clouds and darkness, and without the light of the sun, moon and
+stars.</p>
+
+<p>6. His heart was full with the enjoyment of royal dignity, and did not
+think much of the trinkets and ornaments, which were loaded upon him.</p>
+
+<p>7. He went abroad at one time in this naked state of his body, and
+beheld the setting sun bending his course below the horizon from his
+wonted path of glory. (The setting sun refers to his present state and
+his impending fall).</p>
+
+<p>8. He saw there a band of chandálas of black complexions and big
+bodies, singing like melodious cuckoos the approach of the vernal
+season.</p>
+
+<p>9. They were striking the strings of their wired <span class="pagenum" id="Page_924">[924]</span>
+instruments—lyre, with
+the strokes of their trembling fingers; as the swarm of sweet sounding
+bees, shake the tremulous leaves of trees with their fluttering and
+buzzing.</p>
+
+<p>10. There stood an old man among them, who seemed to be the leader of
+the band; and appeared with his grey head and ruby eyes, like the mount
+Meru with his snow covered top and gemming caverns.</p>
+
+<p>11. He accosted the king saying:—How is it, O Kálanjaka! that you came
+to be here, has the king of this place taken you for his associate on
+account of your skill in music?</p>
+
+<p>12. Does he take a liking for sweet songsters, as they do for the
+musical kokilas, and does he load upon them his favours, with presents
+of household cloths and seats?</p>
+
+<p>13. I am as much glad to see you here today (in this happy condition
+of yours), as men are pleased to see the mango tree, fraught with its
+fruits and flowers in spring.</p>
+
+<p>14. I am as glad in my heart as the budding lotus at the sight of the
+rising sun, and the selenian or medicinal plants at moon rise; and as
+great men are pleased with all their best gains, so am I pleased at
+seeing thee here, because the highest limit of joys is the sight of a
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>15. As the Chandála was addressing the king in the said manner, he
+acquainted him of the manner in which the wheel of time turned to his
+favour. (Here is a misprint of avadhírana for avadhárana, which would
+alter the meaning and express, that he felt ashamed at the speech).</p>
+
+<p>16. At this instant his consorts and servants that were standing at the
+window, overheard their conversation, and were in deep sorrow to learn
+that he was a Chandála by birth.</p>
+
+<p>17. They were as sick at heart as the lotus-flowers under a shower of
+frost, and as a tract of land under a draught; and the citizens were
+as cheerless upon learning this, as upon seeing the conflagration of a
+mountain wood.</p>
+
+<p>18. He hurled his defiance at these words of the old Chandála, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_925">[925]</span>
+as the
+lion lying on the ground, shows his teeth at the sneering of a cat on
+the top of a tree.</p>
+
+<p>19. He fled in haste into the inner apartment, and among its sorrowful
+inmates, with as much palpitation of his heart, as the reluctant swan
+enters a lake of withering lotuses, in the dry season.</p>
+
+<p>20. His limbs grew stiff, and his countenance became pale with fear;
+and his knees tottered with inward rage, as the trunks of trees shake
+with the burning fire in their hollows. (The <i>sami</i> or <i>sáin</i> tree is
+an instance of it. Gloss).</p>
+
+<p>21. He beheld all persons there sitting in a melancholy mood, with
+their downcast looks and drooping heads; like the bending tops of
+plants, eaten up at the root by mice and rats.</p>
+
+<p>22. The ministers, the ladies of the harem and all people of the city,
+refrained from touching his person, as they avoid the touch of a dead
+body lying in the house.</p>
+
+<p>23. The servants ceased to minister unto him, and the ladies with all
+their love and sorrow for him, loathed his company.</p>
+
+<p>24. They looked upon his cheerless face and dark complexion with its
+departed lustre, as the funeral ground which every one loathes to look
+upon.</p>
+
+<p>25. Though the people sorrowed for his darksome body, now smoking with
+fumes of his grief; yet they durst not approach his person, which
+appeared to burn as a volcano amidst its smoke.</p>
+
+<p>26. The courtiers left him with the heavings of their hearts, nor were
+his orders obeyed any more, than those of quenching the cool ashes with
+water.</p>
+
+<p>27. The people fled from him as from a heinous Rákshasa, who is the
+cause of evil and danger only.</p>
+
+<p>28. Thus was he shunned by all, and left lonesome amidst the populous
+city; and became as an unbefriended traveller passing through a foreign
+country, without money or skill to support him.</p>
+
+<p>29. Though he called and accosted every body, yet he got no answer from
+any one; as the hollow sounding reed, is never returned with a reply by
+any of the passers by.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_926">[926]</span>
+30. They all said to one another, that the guilt of their long
+association with the Chandála, cannot be expiated by any other penance,
+than by the act of burning themselves alive on the funeral pile in the
+form of self-immolation.</p>
+
+<p>31. Being so resolved, the ministers and citizens all joined together,
+and raised for themselves piles with heaps of dry wood.</p>
+
+<p>32. These being lighted, blazed all about the ground like stars in
+the sky, and the city was filled with loud wailings of the people all
+around.</p>
+
+<p>33. The wailing wives were shedding showers of tears with their loud
+and piteous cries; and the weeping people were heaving their heavy
+groans with their choked voices, all about the burning furnaces.</p>
+
+<p>34. The plaintive cries of the dependants of the self-cremating
+ministers, rose as the swell of whistling winds amidst the forest trees.</p>
+
+<p>35. The bodies of great Bráhmans, that were burnt on the piles, sent
+forth their fatted fumes in the air; which were scattered about by the
+winds, and overcast the landscape as with a portentous mist.</p>
+
+<p>36. The winds bore aloft and spread far and wide in the open sky, the
+stench of the burning fat and flesh of men; which invited flocks of the
+flying fowls of the air to the feast, and the disk of the sun was hid
+under the wide extending shadow of the winged tribe.</p>
+
+<p>37. The flame of the burning pile, borne by the winds to the sky,
+burned as a conflagration on high; and the flying sparks of fire
+scattered in the air, appeared as falling meteors blazing in the
+horizon.</p>
+
+<p>38. Here the helpless boys were crying for their ornaments being robbed
+by atrocious robbers, owing to their want of guardians; and there
+the citizens were threatened with the loss both of their lives and
+properties by the dacoits.</p>
+
+<p>39. On one side the people were seen to lament the loss of their
+relatives (in the destructive fire); on the other were the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_927">[927]</span>
+bands of
+thieves, lurking and prying unobserved about the houses for plunder and
+booty.</p>
+
+<p>40. As adverse fate brought on this direful change on the devoted city;
+its horrified inhabitants remained in mute amazement; as on the last
+doom of nature.</p>
+
+<p>41. Gavala, the Chandála prince, whose mind was purified and whose
+manners were refined in the society of the great men of the palace;
+witnessed the sad catastrophe of the state, and mourned in himself with
+a pensive heart.</p>
+
+<p>42. It is all owing to me, said he, that all this woe has befallen
+on this state; and that time has brought on the untimely dissolution
+of the doomsday; both on this realm and the royal family and its
+ministerial officers.</p>
+
+<p>43. What is the good of this miserable life of mine? My death is a
+blessing to me than living in this wretched state. It is better for the
+mean and base to die away, than live to be reviled by others.</p>
+
+<p>44. Thus resolved, Gavala prepared a pile for himself, and made an
+offering of his body in the burning furnace, like the poor moth
+dropping on fire, without betraying a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>45. As Gavala cast his body (nick named as Gavala) amidst the flame, and
+was pulling his limbs singed by the fire; their violent motion and his
+painful emotion, roused the dreaming Gádhi from his reverie amidst the
+water.</p>
+
+<p>46. Válmíki said:—As the sage was saying these things, the day departed
+with the setting sun to its evening devotion; the congregation
+broke with mutual salutations, for the performance of their evening
+ablutions, and assembled again with the rising sun after dispersion of
+the gloom of night.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_928">[928]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLVII.<br>
+<span class="small">VERIFICATION OF GÁDHI’S VISION.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Gádhi learns from a guest the report of the Keri
+people, and goes out to inquire into the fact on the spot.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> resumed:—Gádhi was soon afterwards relieved from the
+perturbation of his mind at the delusions of the world; and he was
+set at rest from his perturbed state, like the disturbed sea after
+subsidence of its waves.</p>
+
+<p>2. His mind being freed from its painful thoughts, regained its
+repose after the troublesome dream, had passed away, and he resumed
+his calmness, as the god Brahmá had his rest, after the labour of his
+creation was over at the end of the kalpa (the time of his creative
+will or the duration of creation).</p>
+
+<p>3. He regained his senses slowly, as a man upon waking from his sleep;
+and as one gains his sobriety after the passing off of his ebriety.</p>
+
+<p>4. He then said to himself, I am the same Gádhi and in the same
+function (of my sacred ablution in the water). All this is nothing that
+I had been seeing so long, and this I see as clearly as men see things
+after dispersion of the shade of night.</p>
+
+<p>5. Remembering himself what he was (<i>i.e.</i> coming to himself), he
+lifted his feet from amidst the water (<i>i.e.</i> got out of it); as the
+lotus-bud lifts its head above the water, after the frost is over in
+spring.</p>
+
+<p>6. He said again, this is the same water, sky and earth (where I stood
+before); but what I was just seeing, is quite astonishing to me.</p>
+
+<p>7. What am I and what do I see now, and what was I and had been doing
+all this time? With these thoughts he remained a long time with his
+knitted brows and staring eyes.</p>
+
+<p>8. It was my weakness, said he, that showed me this <span class="pagenum" id="Page_929">[929]</span>
+delusion; and
+knowing it for certain, he came out of the water, as the rising sun
+appears above the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>9. Then rising on the bank, he said:—Ah! where is that mother and wife
+of mine, who attended on me at the moment of my death.</p>
+
+<p>10. Or were my parents dead in the ignorant state of my boyhood, like
+the parent plant of a young shoot, cut off by the sword of death?</p>
+
+<p>11. I am unmarried and know not the form of a wife, and am as ignorant
+of conjugal love, as a Bráhman is stranger to the pernicious taste of
+forbidden liquors.</p>
+
+<p>12. I am too far from my country and know none of my friends and
+relatives; unto whom I shall return and there to die.</p>
+
+<p>13. Therefore all these scenes that I have come to see, are no more
+than the forms of the fairy land pictured in my fancy.</p>
+
+<p>14. Be it as it may, all this is but delusion and dream, and we are
+living dead among our friends; it is all magic and delusion, and
+nothing is true or real herein.</p>
+
+<p>15. Our minds are as wild beasts, roaming furiously in the forest of
+error; which presents endless scenes of delusion to living beings at
+large.</p>
+
+<p>16. Reflecting on these delusions in his mind, Gádhi passed some days
+at his own house amidst the woods.</p>
+
+<p>17. Once on a time he happened to entertain a Bráhman at his house as
+his guest, who resorted there to take his rest from his travels.</p>
+
+<p>18. He was highly gratified with feasting upon fruits and syrup of
+flowers, and was as refreshed supplied with sap as the tree which is
+supplied by the bounteous spring, and shoots forth in its foliage and
+fruitage in time.</p>
+
+<p>19. They then performed their evening service, and turned their beads,
+and afterwards took to their beds made of tender leaves and grass.</p>
+
+<p>20. There they began to talk on divine subjects, with which <span class="pagenum" id="Page_930">[930]</span>
+they were
+conversant; and the words fell from the lips, like the sweets of the
+vernal season.</p>
+
+<p>21. Then Gádhi asked his guest in the course of their conversation,
+saying: why is it sir, that you are so thin and lean and appear to lie
+so very weary.</p>
+
+<p>22. The guest replied:—Hear me sir, relate to you the cause both of my
+leanness and weariness, and I will tell you the true facts, and not as
+a travelling teller of tales deals and lies.</p>
+
+<p>23. There is on the surface of this land, and in the woody tracts
+of the north, the great district of the Kir (Kirgis?), which is far
+renowned for its richness. (Kir the land of the Gees in Afghanistan).</p>
+
+<p>24. I lived in the city there; and was honoured by its inhabitants, and
+the gust of my soul and mind were mightily pleased with the variety of
+dainty food that I used to get there.</p>
+
+<p>25. There it was once related to me by some one in the way of gossip,
+that a chandála had once been the king of that country for the space of
+eight years.</p>
+
+<p>26. I inquired of the village people about the truth of this report,
+and they all told me with one voice, that a chandála, had really
+reigned there for full eight years.</p>
+
+<p>27. But being discovered at last as such, he immolated himself on the
+burning pile; which was followed by the self-immolation of hundreds of
+Bráhmans on the funeral pyre.</p>
+
+<p>28. Hearing this news from their mouths, I departed from that district,
+intending, O Bráhman, to do my penance, by making a pilgrimage to
+Prayága (Allahabad, on the doab or confluence of the two sacred streams
+of Gangá and Jamuna).</p>
+
+<p>29. I made my <i>chándráyana</i> fast for three days and nights, and had to
+break my fast only this day. It is for this reason, that have become so
+<a id="very_thin"></a>very thin and lean, as you find me at present.</p>
+
+<p>30. Vasishtha said:—Gádhi on hearing this, made a hundred inquiries
+of his guest about the matter, to which he answered everything in
+verification of the fact.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_931">[931]</span>
+31. Gádhi was quite surprised at this narration, and passed the night
+till sunrise in great palpitation of his heart.</p>
+
+<p>32. Waking in the morning, he made his ablution and discharged his
+matins; then took leave of his guest, and began to reflect in himself
+with his bewildered understanding.</p>
+
+<p>33. He said to himself, what I saw in my delusion, is ratified as a
+fact by my Bráhman guest. I am puzzled to think, whether this be a
+magic, or a fascination of the conjurer Sambara.</p>
+
+<p>34. What I saw about my death amidst my relatives, was undoubtedly a
+delusion of my mind; but the latter part of my vision (of becoming
+a Chandála), is verified by the Bráhman’s observance of the penance
+Chándráyana for his having entered the Chandála city.</p>
+
+<p>35. I must therefore learn fully the particulars of the Chandála, and
+proceed immediately to the Bhuta country (Bhutan?) with an undaunted
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>36. Thus determined, Gádhi rose to visit the distant district, as the
+sun rises over the horizon to visit all the sides of Sumeru (the Altain
+chain, at the bottom of which the country of the Kirgis is situated).</p>
+
+<p>37. He travelled onward, and obtained at last the sight of the country
+he had seen in his dream; as intelligent and wayfaring men, reach to
+their desired destinations in distant regions.</p>
+
+<p>38. Finding everything, however unattainable it may appear at first, to
+be attained by perseverance, Gádhi was resolved to make a test of the
+truth of his delusive dream.</p>
+
+<p>39. He had proceeded from his home, with the swiftness of a current
+rivulet in the rainy weather; and traversed through many unknown
+countries, as a cloud passes over distant realms on the back of its
+airy steed.</p>
+
+<p>40. At last he came to the country of the Bhatas (Bhoteas), a people
+following their own debased customs; and thought himself to be got
+amongst a savage people, as a camel is confounded to find itself,
+fallen in a karanja forest, in quest of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_932">[932]</span>
+thorny thistles. (The camels or
+cramelas are called kantaka<i> bhojes</i>, from their browsing the brambles).</p>
+
+<p>41. There he saw in its vicinity a city, as what he had seen in his
+delusion; and resembling in every respect the habitation of the
+Gandharva race.</p>
+
+<p>42. Proceeding onward, he saw at the further end, the locality of
+the chandálas, resembling the hell-pit of the infernal region. (The
+out-castes are always located at the filthy outskirts of towns).</p>
+
+<p>43. It was as spacious a place as what he had seen in his vision, and
+beheld his own likeness in the dream appearing in the figures of the
+chandálas, as one sees the shape of a Gandharva or ghost, in his dream
+or delirium.</p>
+
+<p>44. He saw in that place the habitation of chandálas, as what he had
+seen before in his delusion, and observed with grief and coldness of
+his mind (the deserted abodes of his fellow Chandálas).</p>
+
+<p>45. He saw his own residence flooded over by rain water grown with
+sprouts of barley and brambles; his house was left roofless, and his
+bedstead was almost indiscernible.</p>
+
+<p>46. His hut presented the picture of poverty and wretchedness, and its
+compound was a scene of ruin and desolation (as if it was laid waste by
+the hand of oppression and pillage).</p>
+
+<p>47. Gádhi stood long gazing upon the dry white bones of bulls and cows,
+buffaloes and horses, which lay strewn over the plains round about his
+hut; and which he remembered to be the remains of the beasts of his
+prey and slaughter (<i>lit.</i>:—the bones broken under the teeth and jaws
+of men and wild beasts).</p>
+
+<p>48. He saw the dry hollow skulls lying on the ground, which had served
+for his eating and drinking vessels before; and which still lay unmoved
+on the spot, and were filled with rain water (as if to supply him with
+drink).</p>
+
+<p>49. He saw strings of the dried entrails of the beasts of his victims,
+lying like parched plants on the plain, and pining with thirst for the
+rain-water.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_933">[933]</span>
+50. Gádhi who was conscious of himself (as Gádhi), the Bráhman looked
+long at his former house and its environs, resembling the dry and
+dilapidated skeleton of a human body, lying unburied on the naked land.</p>
+
+<p>51. He stood amazed at what he saw, and then withdrew himself to the
+adjacent village; as when a traveller repairs to the habitation of the
+Aryas, from his sojourning in the land of barbarians (Mlech’chas).</p>
+
+<p>52. There he asked some one saying, sir, do you remember anything
+concerning the former state of yonder village, and the lives of its
+chandála inhabitants?</p>
+
+<p>53. I have heard all good people say, that knowing men are conversant
+with the annals of all places, as they know every spot on a globe in
+their hand.</p>
+
+<p>54. If you recollect aught of the good old chandála that, lived retired
+at yonder spot, and if you remember his adventures, as every one does
+the past accidents of his own life:—</p>
+
+<p>55. If you are acquainted with the particulars thereabouts, then
+please to relate them unto me; for it is said there is great spirit in
+directing a stranger, and in dispelling the doubts of one hanging in
+suspense.</p>
+
+<p>56. The village people being one by one importuned in this manner by
+the strange Bráhman; they were as much surprised at his odd request, as
+physicians are concerned at the abnormal complaint of a patient.</p>
+
+<p>57. The villagers said:—It is an undeniable truth, O Bráhman! as you
+say, that there lived a chandála of hideous shape by name of Katanjala
+at that place.</p>
+
+<p>58. He was beset by a large family, consisting of his sons, grandsons,
+friends and servants; and had other relatives and kinsmen besides. His
+children were as many as the fruits of a mango tree.</p>
+
+<p>59. But cruel fate snatched all his family in course of time, as a
+conflagration burns down a mountain forest with all its fruits and
+flowers at once.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_934">[934]</span>
+60. He then deserted his native land and went over to the city of the
+Kirs, of which he became the king; and reigned there for the space of
+twice four years.</p>
+
+<p>61. The citizens coming to know his mean birth afterwards, drove him
+from there at last; as they remove a noxious and poisonous tree from
+the garden.</p>
+
+<p>62. Gádhi seeing the people immolating themselves on funeral piles
+entered into a burning pyre, which he had prepared for himself; and was
+thus purified with others by the sacred fire <i>pávaka</i>.</p>
+
+<p>63. But tell us, O Bráhman, why you are so curiously inquisitive about
+the chandála, and as to whether he was any friend of yours, or you had
+contracted any friendship with him.</p>
+
+<p>64. Being accosted in this manner, Gádhi made many more inquiries of
+them concerning the chandála, and passed a whole month in their several
+houses on his inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>65. He also told the village people, all that he knew of the chandála
+in his dream; and they heard him attentively relating the whole story
+from first to last.</p>
+
+<p>66. Gádhi being informed of all the particulars regarding the chandála,
+both from the hearsay of the people as well as from his personal
+observations; returned equally ashamed and astonished to his abode,
+with the disgraceful reflection of his past vileness, which was stamped
+like the black spot of the moon upon the tablet of his mind.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_935">[935]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLVIII.<br>
+<span class="small">ON THE WONDROUS POWER OF ILLUSION.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Devotion of Gádhi after his return, and Vishnu’s
+exhibition of the extraordinary power of delusion to him</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Gádhi was bewildered in his mind, at all that
+he heard and observed about the Chandála and his residence, and felt
+uneasy to learn more about them.</p>
+
+<p>2. He went back to the place, and observed the abodes that lay
+scattered upon the plain; as when the lotus-born Brahmá looks over the
+ruins, made by the great deluge at the end of a kalpa age.</p>
+
+<p>3. He said to himself, those bones lying scattered about the ruined
+huts in this forest, look like little imps (pisáchas), gathered round
+the trees standing on the burial ground.</p>
+
+<p>4. These posts and pegs of elephant’s tusks, that are fastened to and
+upon the walls of the ruined houses; look like the craigs of mount
+Meru, drowned under the waters of the kalpa deluge.</p>
+
+<p>5. Here the Chandála feasted on his meat food of monkey’s flesh, and
+dressed with the sprouts of young bamboos; and there he caroused on his
+country grog, in company with his drunken friends.</p>
+
+<p>6. Here he slept in the embrace of his murky spouse, on his bed of the
+lion’s skin; being drunk with the better liquor mixed with the ichor,
+exuding from the frontal proboscis of the elephant.</p>
+
+<p>7. There was a pack of hounds, tied to the trunk of the withered
+<i>Bharaeda</i> tree, and fed with the rotten flesh of the putrid carcasses.</p>
+
+<p>8. Here I see three earthen vessels covered with the hides of
+buffaloes, resembling fragments of dark clouds; and which had once
+contained the precious pearls falling from the sculls of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_936">[936]</span>
+slain
+elephants. (The low and poor people, use earthen pots and boiling
+kettles for boxes and chests).</p>
+
+<p>9. I see the site of the place which I had seen in my dream, and where
+the Chandála boys played on the dust, with as much glee and gaiety, as
+the cuckoos have in flitting on the tufts of mango leaves.</p>
+
+<p>10. I see the place I had seen in my vision, where the boys sang
+responsive to the tune of their bamboo pipes; and drank the milk of
+bitches, and adorned themselves with flowers from the funeral grounds.</p>
+
+<p>11. Here the families of the wedding parties, met together to celebrate
+their marriage festivity; and danced and sang as loudly, as the noise
+of the dashing waves of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>12. There I find the bamboo cages, still suspended on high; which were
+laid before, for catching the flying birds of the air; in order to be
+killed for the food (of their slayers).</p>
+
+<p>13. Vasishtha resumed:—Thus Gádhi remained for a long time on the spot,
+observing all what he remembered to have seen in his dream; and was
+lost in wonder, to think on the miraculous disclosure of these things
+in his dream. (Lit.:—heart-strings palpitated with surprise &c.).</p>
+
+<p>14. He then departed from that place, and travelled through many
+countries beyond the boundaries of Butan, for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>15. He passed over many rivers and rocks, and through many deserts and
+forests; until he reached to the snowy mountain, and the habitation of
+humankind beyond its borders.</p>
+
+<p>16. He then arrived at the city of a great monarch, the towers of
+which rose as hills upon the earth; and there stopped after his long
+journey, as when Nárada rests in his heavenly dome, after the fatigue
+of travelling through the numerous worlds.</p>
+
+<p>17. He beheld in that city all the places answering to the romantic
+thoughts in his mind, and those as he had seen and enjoyed in his
+dream, and then asked the citizens in a respectful manner.</p>
+
+<p>18. Good Sirs, said he, do you remember any thing regarding the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_937">[937]</span>
+Chandála king that reigned here for sometime, which, if you do, be
+pleased to relate unto me in its proper order.</p>
+
+<p>19. The citizens replied:—Yes, O Bráhman, there reigned here a Chandála
+king for full eight years, and he was elected to its government, by the
+auspicious elephant of the realm.</p>
+
+<p>20. Being at last discovered to be of so vile a race, he committed his
+self-immolation on the funeral pyre; and it is now a dozen of years,
+since the direful event has taken place.</p>
+
+<p>21. In this manner the inquisitive Gádhi continued in his inquiry of
+every man he met with, and was satisfied to learn the same information
+from the mouth of every body there.</p>
+
+<p>22. He then beheld the king of that city coming with his body guards
+and vehicles, and whom he recognized to be no other than the god Vishnu
+and his attendants as he had seen in his devotion, and were now going
+out of the city.</p>
+
+<p>23. He saw the sky shadowed by the cloud of dust raised by the feet of
+the passing procession; and remembered with grief the like state of his
+pomp under his past kingship.</p>
+
+<p>24. He said to himself, here are the same Kiri damsels with their rosy
+skins, resembling the petals of lotuses; and those with their bodies
+blazing as liquid gold, and their cerulean eyes trembling like blue
+lotuses.</p>
+
+<p>25. The waving of the chouri flappers, flashes with the light of bright
+moonbeams; and resembles the falling waters of a cascade, and clusters
+of kása flowers.</p>
+
+<p>26. Beautiful maidens, waving the snow white fans in their beauteous
+hands, resembled the forest plants with pearly flower on their branches.</p>
+
+<p>27. The rows of furious elephants, standing on both sides of the land,
+are like thick lines of kalpa trees, growing on ridges of the Sumeru
+mountains.</p>
+
+<p>28. These chieftains resembling the gods Yama, Kuvera and Varuna—the
+lord of waters, are like the regents of the different quarters of the
+sky, accompanying Indra—the lord of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>29. These long extending lines of goodly edifices, which are <span class="pagenum" id="Page_938">[938]</span>
+full of
+a great variety of things, and abounding in all sorts of comforts,
+resemble a grove of kalpa trees, conferring all the objects of desire.</p>
+
+<p>30. In this royal city of the Kirs, and in the manners of its assembled
+people, I see exactly the same customs and usages, as those of the
+kingdom of my past life.</p>
+
+<p>31. Truly this is but a vision in my dream, and appearing as a reality
+in my waking state; I cannot understand why this delusive magic show is
+spread out before me.</p>
+
+<p>32. O yes, I am as fast bound by my ignorance, and captivated by my
+reminiscence, as a captive bird in a net, that has lost all power over
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>33. O fie! that my silly mind is so deluded by its desires, that it is
+always wont to mistake the shadow for the substance, of people dwelling
+in their aerial castles.</p>
+
+<p>34. This extraordinary magic, I ween is shown to me by Vishnu—the
+holder of the discus, of whom I recollect to have asked the favour of
+showing Máyá or delusion to me.</p>
+
+<p>35. I will now betake myself to austere devotion in the cavern of a
+hill, in order to learn the origin and subsistence of delusion (<i>i.e.</i>
+how the deceitful delusion sprang from the truthful God, and where in it
+consists).</p>
+
+<p>36. Having long thought in this manner, Gádhi went out of the city, and
+came to the cavern of mountain; where he rested after all his travels
+and travail of thought, like a lion tired with his roaming for forage.</p>
+
+<p>37. He remained there for a whole year, living only on the water of the
+cataract collected in the hollow of his palm; and devoted himself to
+the worship of Vishnu, the holder of the Sáringi bow.</p>
+
+<p>38. Then the lotus eyed god appeared to him in his watery form, which
+was as clear and graceful to sight, as the limpid lake of autumn with
+the blue lotuses full blown upon it.</p>
+
+<p>39. With this form, the god approached to the hermit’s cell in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_939">[939]</span>
+the
+mountain, and stood over it in the likeness of a transparent watery
+cloud, resting on the humid atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>40. The lord spoke to him saying:—Gádhi thou hast fully seen the great
+spell of my magic (máyá); and known the network or delusion, which is
+spread by destiny over all the affairs of this world. (<i>i.e.</i> Man is
+destined, and to be deluded to think the false scenes of the world as
+real ones).</p>
+
+<p>41. Thou hast now well understood the nature of delusion, which thou
+didst desire in thy heart to know, what is it again that thou wantest
+to know, by these austerities of thine in this mountain cave?</p>
+
+<p>42. Vasishtha said:—Gádhi the best of Bráhmans, seeing Hari addressing
+him in this manner, honoured him duly with strewing plentiful of
+flowers at his divine feet.</p>
+
+<p>43. After Gádhi had made his offering of flowers, with due obeisance
+and turning round the deity; he addressed him with his words, sounding
+as sweet as notes of the chátaka to the blooming lotus.</p>
+
+<p>44. Gádhi said:—Lord! I have seen the dark delusion, that thou hast
+shown me in her form of gloominess; I pray thee now to show her unto me
+in her fair form, as the sun appears after the gloom of night.</p>
+
+<p>45. The mind which is vitiated by the dirt of its desires, views a
+great many errors, rising before it like false phantoms and visions in
+a dream; but how is it my lord! that the same visions continue to be
+seen in the waking state also (or as waking dreams likewise)?</p>
+
+<p>46. It was for a moment only that I thought to have seen some thing as
+false as a dream, when I stood amidst the waters but how was it, O thou
+enlightener of the mind, that it became manifest to my outward sense
+and sight?</p>
+
+<p>47. Why was not the delusion of my birth and death as a Chandála, which
+took place long ago, and lately verified by many visible vestiges,
+confined in my memory only, as well as other idle creations of the
+brain, but became palpable to my naked eyes?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_940">[940]</span>
+48. The lord replied:—Gádhi! it is the nature of delirium as of one’s
+desires, to present many false appearances to view; and to make one
+believe what he has never seen before, to be present to his external
+sight, which in reality is a vision of his mind only.</p>
+
+<p>49. There is nothing on the outside of any body as the earth, sea,
+hills and the sky; they are all contained in the mind as the fruits,
+flowers and leaves of trees, are born in the seed and grow from its
+germ.</p>
+
+<p>50. Like fruits and flowers growing out of the seed and its sprout,
+this earth and all other things are the productions of the mind alone,
+and not distinct from it in their essences (<i>i.e.</i> all sensible
+perceptions are not reflexions of the inborn ideas of the mind).</p>
+
+<p>51. Know it for certain that this earth and all other things, are
+situated in the mind and not outside of it; as the fruit, flowers and
+leaves are all contained in the inside of the seed and not without it.</p>
+
+<p>52. The sight of things present, and the thoughts of the absent past
+and unseen future, are all but acts of the mind, as the making and
+unmaking of pots, are both of them the doings of the pot maker.</p>
+
+<p>53. Whatever notions there are in the minds of men from their youth to
+age are alike to the phantoms of their dream or the deliriums of their
+ebriety or some (mental) disease.</p>
+
+<p>54. The settled desires of the mind present a thousand appearances
+before its sight, as the rooted plants on earth, abound with fruits and
+flowers of various kinds, on the surface of the ground.</p>
+
+<p>55. But the plants being rooted out of the ground, there remains no
+vestige of a fruit or flower or leaf upon earth: so the desires being
+driven out of the mind, there is no more any trace of anything left
+behind them; nor is there any probability of future transmigrations,
+when the reminiscence of the past is utterly obliterated from the soul.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_941">[941]</span>
+56. It is no wonder for the shifting stage of the mind, to present you
+the single scene of the Chandála, when it has in store, and can with
+equal ease show you an infinity of appearances at its pleasure. (The
+drama of life exhibits but a partial scene at a time).</p>
+
+<p>57. It was the impression (<i>eidolon</i>) in thy mind, that made thee think
+thyself as the Chandála, in the manner of the many phantoms, that rise
+before the mind in the delirium of a sickly person.</p>
+
+<p>58. It was the same phrenzy that made thee see the advent of thy
+Bráhman guest, and entertain him with board and bed; and all thy
+conversation with him, was no other than the phantasies of thy mind.</p>
+
+<p>59. Then the thoughts of thy departure from home, and arrival at the
+district of the Bhootas, thy sight of the Bhotias and their villages
+and habitations, were but aberrations of thy mind.</p>
+
+<p>60. Next thy sight of the ruins of the former abode of Katanjala, and
+the account that thou didst get of him from the mouths of the people,
+were all the fumes of thy fancy.</p>
+
+<p>61. Afterwards thy visit to the city of the Kirs, and the tale told
+thee of the Chandála’s reign by the people, were the excogitations of
+thy own mind.</p>
+
+<p>62. Thus all that thou didst hear and see, was the net-work of thy
+imagination, and what thou dost believe as true is as false as a
+phantom of thy brain.</p>
+
+<p>63. The mind infatuated by its hopes and desires sees everything before
+it, how far soever it may be removed from it; as one dreams of objects
+as present before him, which would take a whole year for him to reach
+at.</p>
+
+<p>64. There was neither the guest nor the city, nor were there the
+Bhotias or the Kiris that thou didst see in reality. It was all a day
+dream, that thou didst see with thy mind’s eye.</p>
+
+<p>65. The truth is, that on thy way to the country of the Bhotias at one
+time, thou didst halt in the cave of this <span class="pagenum" id="Page_942">[942]</span>
+mountain, as a stag rests
+himself in a forest, after his long wandering.</p>
+
+<p>66. There being tired with the fatigue of thy travel, thou didst fall
+into a sound sleep; and dreamt of the Bhotia city and the Chandála, in
+thy reverie without seeing anything in reality.</p>
+
+<p>67. It was there and in the same state of thy mind that thou sawest the
+city of the Kirs; and it was the delusion of thy mind that showed thee
+those things at the time of thy devotion in the water.</p>
+
+<p>68. In this manner thou dost see many other things, wherever thou goest
+at any time; as a high flier sees his vagaries on all sides about him.
+(All worldly sights, are but vagaries of imagination).</p>
+
+<p>69. Rise therefore and remain unshaken in the discharge of thy duties,
+without being misled by the vagaries of thy mind; because it is
+practice of one’s profession that leads him to success, and not the
+ideals or his mind. (<i>i.e.</i> Mind thyself what thou art, and not what
+thou dost fancy to be).</p>
+
+<p>70. Vasishtha said:—So saying the lotus-naveled Hari, who is worshipped
+by the saints and sages in all places, went to his abode in the sea,
+where he was received by the hands of the gods and holy sages, who
+led him to his residence. (Vishnu is called lotus-naveled पद्मलाभः on account
+of Brahma’s birth from it, who is thence named
+the lotus-born पद्मयोनी ।).
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_943">[943]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XLIX.<br>
+<span class="small">GÁDHI’S GAINING OF TRUE KNOWLEDGE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Gádhi gains his knowledge and Liberation from Hari in
+his Life-time.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Vishnu being gone, Gádhi began to wander again
+about the Bhota country, as a cloud continues to move about in the air.</p>
+
+<p>2. Having collected many informations about himself in the life of the
+chandála, he betook himself again to the worship of Vishnu in the cave
+of a mountain.</p>
+
+<p>3. In course of a short time, Hari appeared to him again; as it is his
+nature to be pleased with a little devotion, made with sincerity of
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>4. The god spoke to Gádhi with as much complaisance, as the watery
+cloud addresses the peacock; and asked him what he wanted again by his
+repeated devotion.</p>
+
+<p>5. Gádhi replied:—Lord! I have again wandered about the countries of
+the Bhotas and Kirs for these past six months, and found no discrepancy
+in the accounts, they gave of me lately from the former ones.</p>
+
+<p>6. Thou hast told me, Lord! all this to be mere delusion, (which prove
+to be positive facts by the testimony of every body). I know the words
+of the great, serve to dissipate and not increase the delusion (as it
+is done by thy words).</p>
+
+<p>7. The Lord said:—It often happens that many things are of simultaneous
+occurrence at the one and same time; as the <i>kákatálíya sanyoga</i> or
+the synchronous flying of the crow and the falling of the fruit upon
+him. Thus it was that the idea of the Chandála was of contemporaneous
+growth in the minds of all the Bhotas and Kirs as of thyself: as there
+are many men that are prepossessed with the same opinion with others,
+however wrong it may be.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_944">[944]</span>
+8. It was by cause of this, that they corresponded with thy thoughts,
+and related thy story as thou didst reflect it thyself: because a
+cogitation or reflection of something cannot be otherwise at the same
+time (but it must appear to every body alike).</p>
+
+<p>9. It is true that a Chandála had erected a house at the border of the
+village, which thou didst see to be now reduced to ruins; but it was an
+erroneous conception of thine, to think thyself the very man, and to
+have built the very house. (It was the mistake of thy personality for
+another, as it often overtakes the minds of many men).</p>
+
+<p>10. Sometimes the same mistake lays hold on many minds, as the
+multitude is seen to be led astray, by the simultaneous current of the
+same opinions in many ways.</p>
+
+<p>11. In this manner many men see at once the same dream, as the giddy
+heads of drunken men, fall equally into the same kind of dizziness at
+the same time, of seeing the earth and skies turning and rolling round
+them.</p>
+
+<p>12. Many boys are seen at once to join in the same sport, and a whole
+herd of stags is observed to meet together in the same verdant field.</p>
+
+<p>13. Many men are seen simultaneously to pursue the same employment, for
+the purpose of gaining the like object of their pursuit (as it is seen
+in the flight and fighting of an army for their safety or victory).</p>
+
+<p>14. It is commonly said, that time is the giver (or producer) and
+obstructer of the objects of human pursuits as of all other events; but
+time is as quiescent as the supreme spirit, and it is the desire and
+exertion of people, that are the causes of their desired effects.</p>
+
+<p>15. Time is a formless void, and is identic with the nature and form of
+the increate great Lord God himself. It is neither the giver nor taker
+of anything to or from any one at any time.</p>
+
+<p>16. Time according to its common reckoning by years, kalpas and
+yuga-ages, is classed among the categories of substance; but time far
+from being a substance, is the source of all substances.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_945">[945]</span>
+17. Men of deluded understanding are subject to the errors, arising
+from the like cause of their fallacy; and it was owing to this false
+conception, that the Bhota and Kiri people, fell into the very same
+error. (Like cause means, the same kind of bias or prejudice &c.).</p>
+
+<p>18. Therefore employ thyself to do thy duty, and try to know thy
+true-self; get rid of the error of thy personality (as so and so), and
+move about as freely as I do by myself (as a free aerial spirit).</p>
+
+<p>19. Saying this, the lord Vishnu disappeared from his sight; and Gádhi
+remained in his cave, with great perplexity of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>20. He passed some months on the same hill, and then resumed his
+devotion to Vishnu with redoubled fervency.</p>
+
+<p>21. He saw his god appearing again to his view, when he bowed down
+before him, and addressed him as follows:—</p>
+
+<p>22. Gádhi said:—O Lord! I am quite bewildered with the thought of my
+Chandálship, and my reflection on the delusions of this world.</p>
+
+<p>23. Do thou deign to extricate me from my errors, and employ me to the
+only act of adoring the Holy one.</p>
+
+<p>24. The lord said:—This world, O Bráhman! is a delusion, like the
+enchantment of the conjurer Sambara; all things here, are the wondrous
+productions of imagination, and proceed from forgetfulness of the self.</p>
+
+<p>25. It was your error that made you see many things, in your sleeping
+and waking dreams.</p>
+
+<p>26. The Kirs were led also to see the same things like thyself, and to
+mistake those falsities as true, owing to the same error laying hold of
+all of you at the same time. (As the tricks of a juggler are thought to
+be true by the observers).</p>
+
+<p>27. Now hear me tell you the truth as it was for your own good; and
+whereby your error will fade away, like a creeping plant in the
+chilling month of November.</p>
+
+<p>28. The Chandála Kátanjaka, whom thou thinkest to be thyself, was a man
+really existent in the same locality before.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_946">[946]</span>
+
+<p>29. Who being bereaved of his family there, went out from that place to
+wander about in foreign parts; when he became king of the Kiris, and
+afterwards immerged himself in the fire.</p>
+
+<p>30. This state of Kátanjaka entered into thy mind, when thou hadst been
+standing amidst the water in thy devotion; and the thoughts of the
+whole career of the Chandála, had altogether engrossed thy mind.</p>
+
+<p>31. Things which are seen or thought of once, can hardly escape from
+the memory; and it sometimes happens that the mind comes to see many
+things in its imagination, which it has never seen before its eyes.</p>
+
+<p>32. In the manner of a man’s vision of a kingdom in his dream, and like
+the delirium caused by the vitiated humours, of the body; the mind sees
+many day dreams and deliriums in its waking and healthy states also.</p>
+
+<p>33. The past conduct of Kátanja presented itself to your mind, as the
+past and future events of the world, are present before the mental
+vision of an oracle (lit.:—a seer of the three times).</p>
+
+<p>34. That this is I, and these things and those friends are mine; is
+the mistake of those that are devoid of their self-knowledge; (as
+thou didst think that Kátanja to be thyself, and his house, goods and
+relatives to be thine also).</p>
+
+<p>35. But that ‘I am all in all’ is the belief of the truly wise, which
+prevents them from falling into such mistakes; and keeps them from the
+wrong notions of individualities and particularities, from their belief
+in the generality of all persons and things.</p>
+
+<p>36. This general and œcumenical view of all things, preserves people
+from the mistaken notions of pleasure and pain; and makes the drowning
+wretch as buoyant, as the floating gourd or bottle tied to a sinking
+net.</p>
+
+<p>37. But thou art entangled in the snare of thy desire, and art lost to
+thy good sense; nor canst thou be at thy perfect <span class="pagenum" id="Page_947">[947]</span>
+ease, as long as thou
+dost suffer under the symptoms of thy sickness.</p>
+
+<p>38. It is because of thy imperfect knowledge, that thou art incapable
+to ward off the errors of thy mind; just as it is impossible for a man
+to protect himself from the rain, without his endeavours to raise a
+shed or shelter for himself.</p>
+
+<p>39. Thou art easily susceptible of every impression of thy untutored
+mind, as a small tree is easily over-reached by a tall person.</p>
+
+<p>40. The heart is the nave or axis of the wheel of delusion; if thou
+canst stop the motion of this central power, there is nothing to
+disturb thee any more. (self-regret, says the gloss, serves to stop the
+motion of the heart).</p>
+
+<p>41. Now rise and repair to the sacred bower on this mountain, and there
+perform your austerities for full ten years with a steady mind; so that
+thou mayst attain to thy perfect knowledge at the end of this period.</p>
+
+<p>42. So saying, the lotus-eyed god disappeared from that place, as a
+flimsy cloud or candle-light or the billow of Jamuna, is put out by a
+slight gust of the wind.</p>
+
+<p>43. Gádhi then gradually gained his dispassionateness, by means of his
+discrimination; as the trees fade away for want of moisture, at the end
+of autumn.</p>
+
+<p>44. Now getting rid of the vagaries of his mind, Gádhi remained to
+reflect upon and blamed himself, for his fostering the false thoughts
+of the Chandála and the like.</p>
+
+<p>45. He then with his heart melting in pity and sorrow for himself,
+repaired to the Rishya-mukha mount, for the purpose of making his
+penitence; and he sat there in the manner of a rainy cloud, stopping on
+the top of a mountain.</p>
+
+<p>46. He relinquished all his desires, and performed his austere devotion
+(as it was his duty); and at last he attained the knowledge of his
+self, after the expiration of the tenth year of his penitence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_948">[948]</span>
+47. Having obtained his knowledge of himself like the great-souled
+Brahmá, and getting rid of his fears and sorrows in this world of
+retribution; he wandered about with the joy of a living liberated
+being, and with perfect tranquility of his mind, resembling the serene
+lustre of the full-moon, revolving in the sphere of the sky.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_949">[949]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER L.<br>
+<span class="small">INTENTIONS OF RÁMA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. On subjection of the mind and greatness of knowledge;
+and stoutness of the heart as the cause of all evil.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> continued:—Know Ráma, this delusion to be as extensive in
+its form, as it is inexplicable in its nature; it is fraught with
+ignorance; it is a spiritual illusion and no sensible deception.</p>
+
+<p>2. Look on the one hand at the erroneous dream of the Bráhman for a
+couple of hours, and his transformation into the state of Chandála
+which lasted for many years.</p>
+
+<p>3. Observe how the false conception of the Bráhman, appeared as present
+to his sensible perception; and see how the false thought appeared as
+true to him, and his true knowledge of him-self vanishing at last into
+untruth.</p>
+
+<p>4. I say therefore this illusion, to be utterly inexplicable in its
+nature; and how it leads the unguarded mind, to a great many errors and
+difficulties and dangers at last.</p>
+
+<p>5. Ráma asked:—How Sir, can we put a stop to the wheel of delusion,
+which by its rapid rotation, is constantly grinding every part of our
+body? (Figuratively used for every good quality of the mind. Gloss).</p>
+
+<p>6. Vasishtha said:—Know Ráma, this revolving world is the wheel of
+delusion, and the human heart is the nave or axis of this great wheel;
+which by its continual rotation produces all this delusion within its
+circle.</p>
+
+<p>7. If you can by means of your manly exertion, put a stop to the motion
+of your heart, as it were by fixing a peg to the loop-hole of the
+wheel, you stop the rotation of the circle of delusion at once.</p>
+
+<p>8. Again the mind is the nave of the wheel of ignorance; and if you can
+stop its motion, by binding it fast by the rope of your <span class="pagenum" id="Page_950">[950]</span>
+good sense; you
+escape the danger of falling into the vortiginous rotation of errors.</p>
+
+<p>9. Ráma, you are well skilled in the art of fighting by hurling the
+discus, and cannot be ignorant of preventing its motion by stopping it
+at the central hole.</p>
+
+<p>10. Therefore, O Ráma! be diligent to stop the nave of your mind;
+and you will be enabled thereby to preserve yourself, both from the
+revolution of the world and vicissitudes of time.</p>
+
+<p>11. The soul that rejects this counsel, is exposed to interminable
+misery; while by keeping it always before the sight of the mind, it
+avoids all difficulties in this world.</p>
+
+<p>12. There is no other medicine for any body, to heal the disease of his
+worldliness, save by restraining the mind to its own pivot.</p>
+
+<p>13. Forsake therefore, O Ráma! your acts of holy pilgrimage, and
+observance of austerity and charity (which are of no avail to the peace
+of the soul); but keep the mind under your control, for attainment of
+your supreme felicity.</p>
+
+<p>14. The world is situated in the mind, as the air is confined in a pot;
+but the mind being restricted to itself, the world is lost to it; as
+the pot just broken, lets out the air to mix in endless vacuity.</p>
+
+<p>15. You who are for ever confined in the imaginary world of your mind,
+like a gnat confined in the hollow of a pot; will get your release only
+by breaking out of this confinement, like the gnat flying into the open
+air.</p>
+
+<p>16. The way to get rid of the delusions of the mind, is to fix your
+attention only to the present moment; and not to employ your thoughts
+about the past and future events. (This will keep your attention close
+to yourself).</p>
+
+<p>17. You will then arrive to the state of that holy unmindfulness called
+<i>non-chalance</i>, when you cease to pursue at once any of the objects of
+your desire or imagination.</p>
+
+<p>18. The mind is obscured so long, as it has the mist of its <span class="pagenum" id="Page_951">[951]</span>
+desires and
+fancies flying over it; as the sky is overcast as long as the watery
+clouds overspread upon it.</p>
+
+<p>19. As long as the intelligent soul is joined with the faculty of the
+mind, so long it is subject to its gross desires and thickening train
+of its fancies; as the sky is filled with bright moon-beams as long
+as the moon shines in it. (<i>i.e.</i> As there is no moon-light without
+the moon, so there is no fancy without the mind, nor is there any mind
+which is devoid of its fancies).</p>
+
+<p>20. When the intelligent soul is known without the medium of the mind
+(<i>i.e.</i> when the soul is seen face to face) then the existence of the
+world, is rooted out from the mind, like trees burnt down to their
+roots.</p>
+
+<p>21. Intelligence unappertaining to the mind, is called perspicacity
+(pratyak chetana); which is of a nature unconnected with
+intellectuality, and freed from the foulness of the fumes of fancy.
+(<i>i.e.</i> quite clear of all mental thought).</p>
+
+<p>22. That is verily the state of truth and of true felicity. It is
+the true state of spirituality, and a manner of omniscience; having
+all-sightedness of its own, and seeing all things in itself. It is
+quite unconnected with any mental operation, and is enlightened by the
+light of the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>23. Whenever there is the action of the mind, it is invariably
+accompanied with the train of desires and the sense of pleasure and
+pain; and the feelings and passions are its concomitants, as the ravens
+are accompaniments of the burning ground. (The mind is the sensorium of
+feelings).</p>
+
+<p>24. The minds of the intelligent are not, without their action, but
+they are aloof of those feelings, by their knowledge of the vanity of
+earthly things. And though these feelings are contained like plants in
+the seed vessel of their mind; yet they are not allowed to germinate in
+its sterile soil.</p>
+
+<p>25. They (the wise), have come to know the unsubstantiality and
+uncertainty of all worldly things and events, both by their knowledge
+of the natures of things; and by means of their acquaintance with the
+sástras; as also by their association with holy men, and their habitual
+observance of the practices of a pious and saintly life.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_952">[952]</span>
+26. They have forcibly withdrawn their minds from ignorance, by their
+determined exertions to gain the true knowledge of things; and have
+strenuously applied them to the study of sástras, and the good conduct
+of righteous people.</p>
+
+<p>27. But it is the purity of the soul only, that has the sight of the
+Supreme spirit; as it is the brilliancy of the gem itself, that makes
+it discernable amidst the waters of the deep, and enables it to be
+redeemed from darkness. (<i>i.e.</i> Human soul being a reflexion of the
+Supreme, lends its light to the vision of the other).</p>
+
+<p>28. As the soul naturally desires to get rid of things, which it has
+come to know to be attended with pain to it; so the soul is the sole
+cause of knowing the Supreme (by its discarding the knowledge of
+the gross objects, which interposes between it and the Divine; and
+obstructs the view of the latter).</p>
+
+<p>29. Be therefore freed from your thoughts of all other things, both in
+your waking and sleeping states, and when you talk to or think of any
+body, give or receive anything to or from another. Rely and reflect on
+your consciousness alone, and watch constantly its secret admonitions
+and intuitions.</p>
+
+<p>30. Whether when you are born or going to die, or do anything or live
+in this world, be steadily attentive to your conscious self, and you
+will perceive the clear light of the soul (and have your clairvoyance).</p>
+
+<p>31. Leave off thinking that this is I and that is another, because all
+are alike before the Lord of all; and give up wishing this for thyself
+and that for others, for all things belong to God. Rely solely on the
+one, and that is thy internal consciousness alone.</p>
+
+<p>32. Be of one mind in your present and future states of life,
+and continue to investigate into its various phases in your own
+consciousness. (<i>i.e.</i> Know yourself in all the varying circumstances
+of your life).</p>
+
+<p>33. In all the changes of your life from boyhood to youth and old age,
+and amidst all its changing scenes of prosperity and adversity, as
+also in the states of your waking, dreaming and sound sleep, remain
+faithful to your consciousness. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_953">[953]</span>
+(<i>i.e.</i> Never lose the knowledge of
+your self-identity (as the one and unchanging soul)).</p>
+
+<p>34. Melt down your mind as a metal, and purify it of its dross of the
+knowledge or impression of external things; break off the snare of your
+desires and depend on your consciousness of yourself.</p>
+
+<p>35. Get rid of the disease of your desire, of whatever is marked as
+good or bad for you; and turn your sight from all, which may appear as
+favourable or unfavourable to you; and rely on your consciousness of
+pure intelligence. (This is having perfect mastery of yourself).</p>
+
+<p>36. Leave untouched whatever is tangible to the touch, and obtainable
+to you by your agency or instrumentality; remain unchanged and
+unsupported by any thing in the world, and depend only on your own
+consciousness (as the intangible spirit).</p>
+
+<p>37. Think yourself as sleeping when you are awake, and remain as calm
+and quiet as you are insensible of any thing; think yourself as all and
+alone, and as instinct with the Supreme Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>38. Think yourself free from the changing and unchanging states of life
+(<i>i.e.</i> from the states of life and death and of waking and sleep);
+and though engaged in business, think yourself as disengaged from all
+concerns.</p>
+
+<p>39. Forsake the feelings of your egoism and nonegoism (as this is mine
+and that is others); and be undivided from the rest of the world, by
+thinking yourself as the macrocosm of the cosmos, and support yourself
+on the adamantine rock of your consciousness, by remaining unshaken at
+all events.</p>
+
+<p>40. Continue to cut off the meshes of the net of your internal desires,
+by the agency of your intellect and its helpmate of patience; and be of
+the profession of belonging to no profession; (of any particular faith
+or creed or calling).</p>
+
+<p>41. The sweet taste of trusting in the true faith of consciousness,
+converts even the poison of false faiths to ambrosia (<i>i.e.</i> belief in
+soul is the soul of all creeds).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_954">[954]</span>
+42. It is then only, that the great error of taking the false world for
+true, prevails over the mind; when it forgets to remember the pure and
+undivided self-consciousness (and takes the outward forms for true).</p>
+
+<p>43. Again the progress of the great error, of the substantiality of the
+world, is then put <to> an end; when the mind relies its trust, in the
+immaculate and undivided consciousness or intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>44. One who has passed over the great gulf of his desires, and known
+the true nature of his soul; has his consciousness shining within
+himself, with the full blaze of the luminous sun.</p>
+
+<p>45. One who knows the nature of his soul, and is settled in the
+transcendental bliss of knowing the peerless One; finds the most
+nectarious food as a poison to him. (<i>i.e.</i> The taste of spiritual
+bliss, is sweeter far than that of the daintiest food).</p>
+
+<p>46. We revere those men, who have known the nature of the soul, and
+have reached to their spiritual state; and know the rest bearing the
+name of men, as no better than asses in human shape.</p>
+
+<p>47. Behold the devotees going from hill to hill, and roving like
+bigbodied elephants, for the performance of their devotions; but they
+are far below the spiritualist, who sits as high above them as on the
+top of the mountain.</p>
+
+<p>48. The heavenward sight of consciousness, reaching beyond the limits
+of all regions to the unseen and invisible God; derives no help from
+the light of the sun and moon (which can never reach so far, as the
+highest empyrean).</p>
+
+<p>49. The lights of the luminaries fade away like candle lights, before
+the sight of consciousness; which sees the great lights of the sun and
+moon and all, within the compass of its knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>50. He who has known the truth of God, stands highest above the rest of
+men, by reason of his self-sacrifice, and the greatness of his soul,
+by means of his practice of <i>yoga</i>; and is distinguished from others
+by the brightness of his person. (The eternal light shines in the body
+also).</p>
+
+<p>51. Like Him whose effulgence shines forth unto us, in the lustre of
+the sun, moon, stars, gems and fire, the pre-eminent <span class="pagenum" id="Page_955">[955]</span>
+among men shine
+among mankind, in their knowledge of what is knowable, and worthy to
+be known. (The sapient shine with their knowledge, as luminous bodies
+before us).</p>
+
+<p>52. Those that are ignorant of truth (or the true natures of things),
+are known to be viler than the asses, and other brute creatures that
+live upon the land; and are meaner than the mean insects that dwell in
+the holes beneath the earth. (Knowledge of truth ennobles man-kind,
+above their fellow-creatures).</p>
+
+<p>53. So long is an embodied being said to be a devil of darkness, as
+he is ignorant of spiritual knowledge, but no sooner is he acquainted
+with his soul, and united with his self in his intellection, than he is
+recognized as a spiritual being.</p>
+
+<p>54. The unspiritual man is tossed about on earth as a carcass, and is
+consumed with the fuel of his cares, as a dead body is burnt away by
+the flames of its funeral fire; but the spiritualist knowing the nature
+of his soul, is only sensible of his immortality.</p>
+
+<p>55. Spiritualism flies afar from the man, whose heart is hardened in
+this world; just as the glory of sunshine, is lost under the shadow of
+the thickening clouds in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>56. Therefore the mind is to be gradually curbed and contracted in
+itself, by a dislike of all earthly enjoyments; and the knower of his
+self should try by long practice of abstinence, to desiccate his spirit
+of its moisture, to the dryness of a faded leaf.</p>
+
+<p>57. The mind is thickened and fattened by consolidating itself with
+those of others; and staining it with the affections, of wife and those
+of offspring, relations and friends.</p>
+
+<p>58. The passions and feelings also are often the causes, of the
+solidity and stolidity of the mind; and these are its egotism and
+selfishness, gaiety and impurity of thoughts, and its changing tempers
+and affections. But most of all it is the sense of meity that this is
+mine, that nourishes it to gross density. (The mind is puffed up with
+the increase of possessions).</p>
+
+<p>59. The mind is swollen on coming to prosperity, even under the deadly
+pains of old age and infirmity; as also under the poisonous pangs of
+penury and miserliness. (Stinginess is a painful pleasure).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_956">[956]</span>
+60. The mind grows lusty in its expectation of some good in prospect,
+even under the afflictions of disease and danger. It grows stout with
+enduring what is intolerable, and doing what ought not to be done.</p>
+
+<p>61. The heart too becomes stout with its affection for others, and also
+with its desire and gain of riches and jewels; it becomes lusty with
+its craving after women, and in having whatever is pleasant to it for
+the moment.</p>
+
+<p>62. The heart like a snake, is big swollen with feeding on false
+hopes as air; and by breathing the empty air of passing delights and
+pleasures. It is pampered by drinking the liquor of fleeting hope, and
+moves about in the course of its endless expectations.</p>
+
+<p>63. The heart is stanch in its enjoyment of pleasures, however
+injurious they are in their nature; and though situated inside the
+body, yet it is subject to pine in disease and uneasiness, under a
+variety of pains and changes.</p>
+
+<p>64. There grows in the heart of the body, as in the hollow of a tree,
+a multitude of thoughts like a clump of orchids; and these bearing the
+budding blossoms of hope and desire, hung down with the fruits and
+flowers of death and disease.</p>
+
+<p>65. Delay not to lop off the huge trunk of the poisonous tree of
+avarice, which has risen as high as a hill in the cavity of thy heart,
+with the sharp saw of thy reason; nor defer to put off the big branch
+of thy hope, and prune its leaves of desires, without the least delay.</p>
+
+<p>66. The elephantine heart sits with its infuriate eyes, in the solitary
+recess of the body; and is equally fond of its ease as of its carnal
+gratification: it longs to look at the lotus bed of the learned, as
+also to meet a field of sugarcanes composed of fools and dunces.</p>
+
+<p>67. Ráma! you should, like a lion, the monarch of the forest, destroy
+your elephantine heart which is seated amidst the wilderness of your
+body, by the sharp saws of your understanding; and break the protruding
+tusks of its passions, in the same manner as they break down all big
+bodies.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_957">[957]</span>
+68. Drive away the crowlike ravenous heart, from within the nest of
+your bosom. It is fond of frequenting filthy places, as the ravens
+hover over funeral grounds, and crows squat in dirty spots, and fatten
+their bodies by feeding on the flesh of all rotten carcasses. It is
+cunning in its craft and too cruel in its acts. It uses the lips like
+the bills of the crow only to hurt others, and is one eyed as the crow,
+looking only to its own selfish interest; it is black all over its body
+for its black purposes and deeds.</p>
+
+<p>69. Drive afar your ravenlike heart, sitting heavy on the tree of your
+soul, intent on its wicked purposes, and grating the ear with its
+jarring sound. It flutters on all sides at the scent of putrid bodies,
+to pollute its nest with foul putrescence of evil intents.</p>
+
+<p>70. Again there is the pernicious hideous demon—avarice, roving at
+large like a goblin, or lurking in ambush in the dark cavity of the
+heart, as in a dreary desert. It assumes a hundred forms, and appears
+in a hundred shapes (in repeated births), pursuing their wonted courses
+in darkness (without any knowledge of themselves and their right
+course).</p>
+
+<p>71. Unless and until you drive away this wicked goblin of your heart,
+from the abode of your intelligent soul (<i>i.e.</i> the body) by means of
+your discrimination and dispassionateness, and your power of <i>mantras</i>
+and <i>tantras</i>, you cannot expect to be successful (siddha) in your
+endeavours. (For perfection सिद्धि Siddhi).</p>
+
+<p>72. Moreover there is the serpentine mind, hid under the slough of the
+body; which with its poisonous thoughts, frothing at the mouth as the
+destructive venom of mankind, is continually breathing in and out as a
+pair of bellows, and inhaling and exhaling the air as a snake, for the
+destruction of all other persons.</p>
+
+<p>73. You must subdue, O Ráma, this great serpent of the mind, lying hid
+in a cell of the cellular <i>simal</i> tree of your body, by some mantra
+formula, pronounced by the Garuda of your intelligence; and thus be
+free from all fear and danger for ever.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_958">[958]</span>
+74. Repress, O Ráma! thy vulture-like heart, that bears an ominous
+figure by its insatiate greediness for dead bodies; it flies about on
+all sides and being annoyed by the hungry crows and kites, it rests in
+desolate cemeteries. (The greedy mind dwells on the ruin of others).</p>
+
+<p>75. It ransacks all quarters in quest of its meat of living and dead
+bodies, and lifts its neck to watch for its prey, when it is sitting
+silently with patience. The vulturous heart flies afar from its resting
+tree of the body, and requires to be restrained with diligence from its
+flight.</p>
+
+<p>76. Again the apish mind is wandering through the woods on all sides,
+and passing fastly beyond the limits of its natal horizon in search of
+fruits; it outruns the bounds of its native land and country, and thus
+being bound to nowhere, he derides at the multitude, that are bound to
+their homely toil, and confined in their native clime and soil.</p>
+
+<p>77. The big monkey of the mind that sports on the tree of the body,
+with its eyes and nose as the flowers of the tree, and having the arms
+for its boughs, and the fingers for its leaves, ought to be checked for
+one’s success in any thing.</p>
+
+<p>78. The illusion of the mind rises like a cloud with the mists of
+error, for laying waste the good harvest of spiritual knowledge. It
+flashes forth lightnings from its mouth to burn down every thing and not
+to give light on the way: its showers are injurious to ripened crops,
+and it opens the door of desire (to plunge the boat of the body in the
+whirlpool of the world).</p>
+
+<p>79. Forsake to seek the objects of your desire, which are situated in
+the airy region of your mind; and exert your energy to drive off the
+cloud of your mind, in order to obtain the great object of your aim.</p>
+
+<p>80. The mind is as a long rope, that binds mankind to their incessant
+acts. It is impossible to break or burn its knots in any other way
+except by means of one’s self knowledge. Its bond of transmigration is
+painful to all, until they obtain their final emancipation.</p>
+
+<p>81. Break boldly, O Ráma! by the instrumentality of your <span class="pagenum" id="Page_959">[959]</span>
+inappetency
+the bondage of your mind, that binds fast in infinite number of bodies
+to the chain of their transmigration; and enjoy your freedom without
+any fear for evermore.</p>
+
+<p>82. Know avarice as a venomous snake, which destroys its votaries by
+the poison of its breath, and never yields to the good counsel of any
+body. It is this serpent that has ruined mankind, by its deceit and by
+laying in wait for its prey, it emaciates the body to a stick.</p>
+
+<p>83. Avarice which is hid in the body, and lurks unseen in its cells, is
+as a dark cobra or hydra in its form; it is to be burnt to death by the
+fire of lukewarmness, for your safety and security from all evil.</p>
+
+<p>84. Now put your heart to rest by the intelligence of your mind, and
+gird yourself with the armour of purity for your defence; forsake your
+fickle-mindedness for ever, and remain as a tree uninfested by the apes
+of passion.</p>
+
+<p>85. Purify both your body and mind with the sanctity of your soul,
+and be dauntless and quiet by the aid of your intelligence and calm
+composure of your intellect. Think yourself as lighter and meaner than
+a straw, and thus enjoy the sweets of this world by going across it to
+the state of beatitude in this life.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_960">[960]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LI.<br>
+<span class="small">DESIRE OF UDDÁLAKA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument, Uddálaka’s struggle for Liberation, amidst all his
+worldly attachments.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asishtha</span> said:—Rely no confidence, O Ráma! in the course of the mind,
+which is sometimes continuous and sometimes momentary, now even and
+flat and then sharp and acute, and often as treacherous as the edge of
+a razor.</p>
+
+<p>2. As it occurs in the course of a long time, that the germ of
+intelligence comes to sprout forth in the field of the mind; so do you,
+O Ráma! who are a moralist, grow it by sprinkling the cold water of
+reason over its tender blades.</p>
+
+<p>3. As long as the body of the plant does not fade away in course of
+time, nor roll upon the ground as the decayed and dead body of man; so
+long should you hold it up upon the prop of reason (<i>i.e.</i> cultivate
+your knowledge in your youth).</p>
+
+<p>4. Knowing the truth of my sayings, and pondering on the deep sense of
+these sayings of mine, you will get a delight in your inmost soul, as
+the serpent killing peacock, is ravished at the deep roaring of raining
+clouds.</p>
+
+<p>5. Do you, like the sage Uddálaka, shake off your knowledge of
+quintuple materiality as the cause of all creation, and accustom
+yourself to think deeper, and on the prime cause of causes by your
+patient inquiry and reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>6. Ráma requested:—Tell me sir, in what way the sagely Uddálaka got
+rid of his thoughts of the quintessential creation, and penetrated
+deeper into the original cause of all, by the force and process of his
+reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>7. Vasishtha replied:—Learn Ráma, how the sage Uddálaka of old, rose
+higher from his investigation of quintuple matter to his inquiry into
+their cause, and the manner in which that transcendent light dawned
+upon his mind.</p>
+
+<p>8. It was in some spacious corner of the old mansion of this world,
+and on the northwest side of this land, a spot of rugged hills and
+overtopping it as a shed.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_961">[961]</span>
+
+<p>9. Among these stood the high hill of Gandhamádana with a table-land on
+it, which was full of camphor arbours, that shed the odours of their
+flowers and pistils continually on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>10. This spot was frequented by birds of variegated hues, and filled
+with plants of various kinds. Its banks were beset by wild beasts, and
+fraught with flowers shining smilingly over the woodland scene.</p>
+
+<p>11. There were the bright swelling gems in some part of it, and the
+blooming and full blown lotuses on another; some parts of it were
+veiled by tufts of snow, and crystal streams gliding as glassy mirrors
+on others.</p>
+
+<p>12. Here on the elevated top a big cliff of this hill, which was
+studded with sarala trees, and strewn over with flowers up to the
+heels, and shaded by the cooling umbrage of lofty trees:—</p>
+
+<p>13. There lived the silent sage by name of Uddálaka, a youth of a great
+mind, and with high sense of his honour. He had not yet attained his
+maturity, ere he betook himself to the course of his rigorous austerity.</p>
+
+<p>14. On the first development of his intellect, he had the light of
+reason dawning upon his mind; and he was awakened to noble aims and
+expectations, instead of arriving at the state of rest and quietude.</p>
+
+<p>15. As he went on in this manner in his course of austerities,
+religious studies and observance of his holy rites and duties, the
+genius of right reason appeared before him, as the new year presents
+itself before the face of the world.</p>
+
+<p>16. He then began to cogitate in himself in the following manner,
+sitting aside as he was in his solitude, weary with thoughts and
+terrified at the ever changing state of the world.</p>
+
+<p>17. What is that best of gains, said he, which being once obtained,
+there is nothing more to be expected to lead us to our rest, and which
+being once had, we have no more to do with our transmigrations in this
+world?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_962">[962]</span>
+18. When shall I find my permanent rest in that state of holy and
+transcendent thoughtlessness, and remain above all the rest, as a cloud
+rests over the top of the Sumeru mountain, or as the polar star stands
+above the pole without changing its pace.</p>
+
+<p>19. When will my tumultuous desires of worldly aggrandizement, merge
+in peaceful tranquillity; as the loose, loud and boisterous waves and
+billows subside in the sea?</p>
+
+<p>20. When will the placid and unstirred composure of my mind, smile in
+secret within myself, to reflect on the wishes of mankind, that they
+will do this thing after they have done the other, which leads them
+interminably in the circuit of their misery.</p>
+
+<p>21. When will my mind be loosened from its noose of desire, and when
+shall I remain unattached to all, as a dew drop on the lotus-leaf? (It
+is called <i>anasanga sango</i> or intangible connection).</p>
+
+<p>22. When shall I get over the boisterous sea of my fickle desires, by
+means of the raft of my good understanding?</p>
+
+<p>23. When shall I laugh to scorn, the foolish actions of worldly people,
+as the silly play of children?</p>
+
+<p>24. When will my mind get rid of its desire and dislike and cease to
+swing to and fro in the cradle of its option and caprice; and return to
+its steadiness, as a madman is calmed after the fit of his delirium has
+passed away?</p>
+
+<p>25. When shall I receive my spiritual and luminous body, and deride the
+course of the world; and have my internal satisfaction within myself,
+like the all knowing and all sufficient spirit of Virát?</p>
+
+<p>26. With internal equanimity and serenity of the soul, and indifference
+to external objects, when shall I obtain my calm quietness, like the
+sea after its release from churning?</p>
+
+<p>27. When shall I behold the fixed scene of the world before me, as it
+is visible in my dream, and keep myself aloof from the same? (as no
+part of it).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_963">[963]</span>
+28. When shall I view the inner and outer worlds, in the light of a
+fixed picture in the sight of my imagination; and when shall I meditate
+on the whole in the light of an intellectual system?</p>
+
+<p>29. Ah! when shall I have the calmness of my mind and soul, and
+become a perfectly intellectual being myself; when shall I have that
+supernatural light in me, which enlightens the internal eye of those
+that are born blind?</p>
+
+<p>30. When will the sunshine of my meditation, show unto me the pure
+light of my intellect, whereby I may see the objects at a distance, as
+I perceive the parts of time in myself.</p>
+
+<p>31. When shall I be freed from my exertion and inertness, towards
+the objects of my desire and dislike; and when shall I get my
+self-satisfaction in my state of self-illumination.</p>
+
+<p>32. When will this long and dark night of my ignorance come to its end?
+It is infested by my faults fluttering as the boding birds of night,
+and infected with frost withering the lotus of my heart (hrid-padma).</p>
+
+<p>33. When shall I become like a cold clod of stone, in the cavern of
+a mountain, and have the calm coolness of my mind by an invariable
+<i>samádhi</i>—comatosity.</p>
+
+<p>34. When will the elephant of my pride, which is ever giddy with its
+greatness, become a prey to the lion of right understanding.</p>
+
+<p>35. When will the little birds of the forest, build their nest of
+grass in the braids of hair upon my head; when I remain fixed in my
+unalterable meditation, in my state of silence and torpidity.</p>
+
+<p>36. And when will the birds of the air rest fearlessly on my bosom, as
+they do on the tops of fixed rocks, upon finding me sitting transfixed
+in my meditation, and as immovable as a rock.</p>
+
+<p>37. Ah! when shall I pass over this lake of the world, wherein my
+desires and passions, are as the weeds and thorny brambles, and
+obstructing my passage to its borders of felicity.</p>
+
+<p>38. Immerged in these and the like reflections, the twice-born Uddálaka
+sat in his meditation amidst the forest.</p>
+
+<p>39. But as his apish ficklemindedness turned towards sensible <span class="pagenum" id="Page_964">[964]</span>
+objects
+in different ways, he did not obtain the state of habitation which
+could render him happy.</p>
+
+<p>40. Sometimes his apish mind turned away from leaning to external
+objects, and pursued with eagerness the realities of the internal world
+or intellectual verities (known as sátwikas).</p>
+
+<p>41. At others his fickle mind, departed from the intangible things of
+the inner or intellectual world; and, returned with fondness to outer
+objects, which are mixed with poison.</p>
+
+<p>42. He often beheld the sunlight of spirituality rising within himself,
+and as often turned away his mind from that golden prospect, to the
+sight of gross objects.</p>
+
+<p>43. Leaving the soul in the gloom of internal darkness, the licentious
+mind flies as fast as a bird, to the objects of sense abroad.</p>
+
+<p>44. Thus turning by turns from the inner to the outer world, and then
+from this to that again; his mind found its rest in the intermediate
+space, lying between the light of the one and darkness of the other.
+(<i>i.e.</i> in the twilight of indifference to both).</p>
+
+<p>45. Being thus perplexed in his mind, the meditative Bráhman remained
+in his exalted cavern, like a lofty tree shaken to and fro by the
+beating tempest.</p>
+
+<p>46. He continued in his meditation as a man of fixed attention, at the
+time of an impending danger; and his body shook to and fro, as it was
+moved forward and backward by the tiny waves splashing on the bank.</p>
+
+<p>47. Thus unsettled in his mind, the sage sauntered about the hill; as
+the god of day makes his daily round, about the polar mountain in his
+lonely course.</p>
+
+<p>48. Wandering in this manner, he once observed a cavern, which was
+beyond the reach of all living beings; and was as quiet and still, as
+the liberated state of an anchorite.</p>
+
+<p>49. It was not disturbed by the winds, nor frequented by birds and
+beasts; it was unseen by the gods and Gandharvas, and was as lightsome
+as the bright concave of heaven.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_965">[965]</span>
+50. It was covered with heaps of flowers, and was spread over with a
+coverlet of green and tender grass; and being overlaid by a layer of
+moonstones, it seemed to have its floor of emerald.</p>
+
+<p>51. It afforded a cool and congenial shade, emblazoned by the mild
+light of the bright gems in its bosom; and appeared to be the secret
+haunt of woodland goddesses, that chanced to sport therein.</p>
+
+<p>52. The light of the gems that spread over the ground, was neither too
+hot nor too cold; but resembled the golden rays of the rising sun in
+autumn.</p>
+
+<p>53. This cave appeared as a new bride decked with flowers, and holding
+a wreathed garland in her hand; with her countenance fading under the
+light of the gemming lamps, and fanned by the soft whistling of winds.</p>
+
+<p>54. It was as the abode of tranquility, and the resting place of
+the lord of creation; it was charming by the variety of its blooming
+blossoms, and was as soft and mild as the cell of the lotus (which is
+the abode of the lotus-born Brahmá).
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_966">[966]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LII.<br>
+<span class="small">RATIOCINATION OF UDDÁLAKA:—</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Uddálaka’s Remonstration with himself, amidst the
+reveries of his meditation.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">V</span>asistha</span> resumed:—The saintly Uddálaka then entered in that grotto
+of Gandhamádana mountain, as the sauntering bee enters into the
+lotus-cell, in the course of its romantic peregrination.</p>
+
+<p>2. It was for the purpose of his intense meditation, that he entered
+the cave and sat therein; as when the lotus-born creator, had retired
+to and rested in his seclusion, after termination of his work of
+creation.</p>
+
+<p>3. There he made a seat for himself, by spreading the unfaded leaves
+of trees on the floor; as when the god Indra spreads his carpet of the
+manifold layers of clouds.</p>
+
+<p>4. He then spread over it his carpet of deerskin, as the bedding of
+stars, is laid over the strata of the blue clouds of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>5. He sat upon it in his meditative mood, with the watchfulness of
+his mind; as when an empty and light cloud alights on the top of the
+Rishyasringa mountain. (<i>i.e.</i> His mind was as fleet, as a fleeting
+cloud).</p>
+
+<p>6. He sat firmly in the posture of <i>padmásana</i> like Buddha, with his
+face turned upwards; his two legs and feet covered his private parts,
+and his palms and fingers counted the beads of Brahmá.</p>
+
+<p>7. He restrained the fleet deer of his mind, from the desires to which
+it ran by fits and starts; and then he reflected in the following
+manner, for having the unaltered steadiness of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>8. O my senseless mind! said he, why is it, that thou art occupied
+in thy worldly acts to no purpose; when the sensible never engage
+themselves, to what proves to be their bane afterwards.</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_967">[967]</span>
+
+<p>9. He who pursues after pleasure, by forsaking his peaceful
+tranquility; is as one who quits his grove of mandára flowers, and
+enters a forest of poisonous plants. (Thoughts of pleasure poisons the
+mind).</p>
+
+<p>10. Thou mayst hide thyself in some cave of the earth, and find a place
+in the highest abode of Brahmá, then yet thou canst not have thy quiet
+there, without the quietism of thy spirit.</p>
+
+<p>11. Cease to seek thy objects of thy desire, which are beset by
+difficulties, and are productive of thy woe and anxiety; fly from these
+to lay hold on thy chief good, which thou shalt find in thy solitary
+retirement only.</p>
+
+<p>12. These sundry objects of thy fancy or liking, which are so temporary
+in their nature; are all for thy misery, and of no real good at any
+time (either when they are sought for, or enjoyed or lost to thee).</p>
+
+<p>13. Why followest thou like a fool, the hollow sound of some fancied
+good, which has no substantial in it? It is as the great glee of frogs,
+at the high sounding of clouds that promise them nothing. (Hence the
+phrase “megha mandukika”, that is, the frogs croaking in vain at the
+roaring of clouds; answering the English phrases “fishing in the air
+and milking the ram, or pursuing a shadow &c.”).</p>
+
+<p>14. Thou hast been roving all this time with thy froggish heart, in the
+blind pursuit after thy profit and pleasure; but tell me what great
+boon has booted thee; in all thy ramblings about the earth.</p>
+
+<p>15. Why dost thou not fix thy mind to that quietism, which promises to
+give thee something as thy self-sufficiency; and wherein thou mayst
+find thy rest as the state of thy liberation in thy life-time.</p>
+
+<p>16. O my foolish heart! why art thou roused at the sound of some good
+which reaches unto thy ears, and being led by thy deluded mind, in the
+direction of that sound; thou fallest a victim to it, as the deer is
+entrapped in the snare, by being beguiled by the hunter’s horn.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_968">[968]</span>
+17. Beware, O foolish man! to allow the carnal appetite to take
+possession of thy breast, and lead thee to thy destruction, as the
+male elephant is caught in the pit, by being beguiled by the artful
+<i>koomki</i> to fall into it. (The female elephant is called <i>koomki</i> in
+elephant-catching).</p>
+
+<p>18. Do not be misled by thy appetite of taste, to cram the bitter gall
+for sweet; or bite the fatal bait that is laid, to hook the foolish
+fish to its destruction.</p>
+
+<p>19. Nor let thy fondness for bright and beautiful objects, bewitch
+thee to thy ruin; as the appearance of a bright light or burning fire,
+invites the silly moth to its consumption.</p>
+
+<p>20. Let not thy ardour for sweet odor, tempt thee to thy ruin; nor
+entice thee like the poor bees to the flavour of the liquor, exuding
+from the frontal proboscis of the elephant, only to be crushed by its
+trunk.</p>
+
+<p>21. See how the deer, the bee, the moth, the elephant and the fish, are
+each of them destroyed by their addiction to the gratification of a
+single sense; and consider the great danger to which the foolish man,
+is exposed by his desire of satisfying all his refractory senses and
+organs.</p>
+
+<p>22. O my heart! it is thou thyself, that dost stretch the snare of thy
+desires for thy own entanglement; as the silk worm weaves its own cell
+(cocoon) by its saliva, for its own imprisonment.</p>
+
+<p>23. Be cleansed of all thy impure desires, and become as pure and clear
+as the autumnal cloud (after it has poured out its water in the rains);
+and when thou art fully purged and are buoyed up as a cloud, you are
+then free from all bondage.</p>
+
+<p>24. Knowing the course of the world, to be pregnant with the rise and
+fall of mankind, and to be productive of the pangs of disease and death
+at the end; you are still addicted to it for your destruction only.</p>
+
+<p>25. But why do I thus upbraid or admonish my heart in vain; it is only
+by reasoning with the mind that men are <span class="pagenum" id="Page_969">[969]</span>
+enabled to govern their hearts
+(<i>i.e.</i> to repress all their feelings and passions).</p>
+
+<p>26. But as long as gross ignorance continues to reign over the mind, so
+long is the heart kept in its state of dulness; as the nether earth is
+covered with mist and frost, as long as the upper skies are shrouded by
+the raining clouds.</p>
+
+<p>27. But no sooner is the mind cleared of its ignorance, than the heart
+also becomes lighter (and cleared of its feeling); as the disappearance
+of the rainy clouds disperses the frost covering the nether earth.</p>
+
+<p>28. As the heart becomes lighter and purer by means of the mind’s act
+of reasoning; so I ween its desires to grow weaker and thinner, like
+the light and fleeting clouds of autumn.</p>
+
+<p>29. Admonition to the unrighteous proves as fruitless, as the blowing
+of winds against the falling rain. (<i>i.e.</i> Counsel to the wicked is as
+vain, as a blast of wind to drive the pouring rain).</p>
+
+<p>30. I shall therefore try to rid myself of this false and vacant
+ignorance; as it is the admonition of the sástras, to get rid of
+ignorance by all means.</p>
+
+<p>31. I find myself to be the inextinguishable lamp of intellect, and
+without my egoism or any desire in myself; and have no relation with
+the false ignorance, which is the root of egoism.</p>
+
+<p>32. That this is I and that is another, is the false suggestion of our
+delusive ignorance; which, like an epidemic disease, presents us with
+such fallacies for our destruction.</p>
+
+<p>33. It is impossible for the slender and finite mind to comprehend the
+nature of the infinite soul; as it is not possible for an elephant to
+be contained in a nut shell. (Lit.: in the crust of a <i>bilva</i> or bel
+fruit).</p>
+
+<p>34. I cannot follow the dictate of my heart, which is a wide and deep
+cave, containing the desires causing all our misery.</p>
+
+<p>35. What is this delusive ignorance, which, like the error of
+injudicious lads, creates the blunder of viewing the self-existent one,
+in the different lights of I, thou, he and other personalities.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_970">[970]</span>
+36. I analysed my body at each atom from the head to foot, but failed
+to find what we call the “I” in any part of it, and what makes my
+personality. (It is the body, mind and soul taken together, that makes
+a person).</p>
+
+<p>37. That which is the “I am” fills the whole universe, and is the
+only one in all the three worlds; it is the unknowable consciousness,
+omnipresent and yet apart from all.</p>
+
+<p>38. Its magnitude is not to be known, nor has it any appellation of
+its own; it is neither the one nor the other, nor an immensity nor
+minuteness (but is greater than the greatest, and minuter than the
+minutest).<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
+
+<p>39. It is unknowable by the light of the Vedas, and its ignorance which
+is the cause of misery is to be destroyed by the light of reason.</p>
+
+<p>40. This is the flesh of my body and this its blood! these are the
+bones and this the whole body; these are my breaths, but where is that
+I or ego situated?</p>
+
+<p>41. Its pulsation is the effect of the vital breath or wind, and its
+sensation is the action of the heart; there are also decay and death
+concomitant of the body; but where is its “I” situated in it?</p>
+
+<p>42. The flesh is one thing and the blood another, and the bones are
+different from them; but tell me, my heart, where is the “I” said to
+exist?</p>
+
+<p>43. These are the organs of smelling and this the tongue; this is skin
+and these my ears; these are the eyes and this the touch—<i>twac</i>; but
+what is that called the soul and where is it situated?</p>
+
+<p>44. I am none of the elements of the body, nor the mind nor its desire;
+but the pure intellectual soul, and a manifestation of the divine
+intellect.</p>
+
+<p>45. That I am everywhere, and yet nothing whatever that is anywhere, is
+the only knowledge of the true reality that we <span class="pagenum" id="Page_971">[971]</span>
+can have, and there is
+no other way to it (<i>i.e.</i>, of coming to know the same.)<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>46. I have been long deceived by my deceitful ignorance, and am misled
+from the right path; as the young of a beast is carried away by a
+fierce tiger to the woods.</p>
+
+<p>47. It is now by my good fortune that I have come to detect this
+thievish ignorance; nor shall I trust any more this robber of truth.</p>
+
+<p>48. I am above the reach of affliction, and have no concern with
+misery, nor has it anything to do with me. This union of mine with
+these is as temporary, as that of a cloud with a mountain.</p>
+
+<p>49. Being subject to my egoism, I say I speak, I know, I stay, I go,
+&c.; but on looking at the soul, I lose my egoism in the universal soul.</p>
+
+<p>50. I verily believe my eyes, and other parts of my body, to belong to
+myself; but if they be as something beside myself, then let them remain
+or perish with the body, with which I have no concern.</p>
+
+<p>51. Fie for shame! What is this word I, and who was its first inventor?
+This is no other than a slip slop and a namby pamby of some demoniac
+child of earth. (<i>i.e.</i>, it is an earth-born word and unknown in
+heaven).</p>
+
+<p>52. O! for this great length of time, that I have been groveling in
+this dusty den; and roving at large like a stray deer, on a sterile
+rock without any grass or verdure.</p>
+
+<p>53. If we let our eyes to dry into the true nature of things, we are
+at a loss to find the true meaning of the word I, which is the cause
+of all our woe on earth. (<i>i.e.</i>, ignorance of ourselves is the cause
+of our woe, and the obliteration of our personalities obviates all our
+miseries).</p>
+
+<p>54. If you want to feel your in being by the sense of touch, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_972">[972]</span>
+then tell
+me how you find what you call I, beside its being a ghost of your own
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>55. You set your I on your tongue, and utter it as an object of that
+organ, while you really relish no taste whatever of that empty word,
+which you so often give utterance to.</p>
+
+<p>56. You often hear that word ringing in your ears, though you feel it
+to be an empty sound as air, and cannot account whence this rootless
+word had its rise.</p>
+
+<p>57. Our sense of smelling, which brings the fragrance of objects to the
+inner soul, conveys no scent of this word into our brain.</p>
+
+<p>58. It is as the mirage, and a false idea of something we know not
+what; and what can it be otherwise than an error, of which we have no
+idea or sense whatever?</p>
+
+<p>59. I see my will also is not always the cause of my actions, because
+I find my eyes and the other organs of sense are employed in their
+respective functions, without the direction of my volition.</p>
+
+<p>60. But the difference between our bodily and wilful acts is this,
+that the actions of the body done without the will of the mind are
+unattended with feeling of pain or pleasure unto us. (Therefore let all
+thy actions be spontaneous and indifferent in their nature, if thou
+shalt be free from pain or pleasure).</p>
+
+<p>61. Hence let thy organs of sense perform their several actions,
+without your will of the same; and you will by this means evade all the
+pleasure and pain (of your success and disappointment).</p>
+
+<p>62. It is in vain that you blend your will with your actions, (which
+are done of themselves by means of the body and mind); while the act of
+your will is attended with a grief similar to that of children, upon
+the breaking of the dolls of their handy work in play. (<i>i.e.</i>, boys
+make toys in play, but cry at last to see them broken).</p>
+
+<p>63. Your desires and their productions are the fac similes of your
+minds, and not different from them; just as the waves are <span class="pagenum" id="Page_973">[973]</span>
+composed of
+the same water from which they rise. Such is the case with the acts of
+will.</p>
+
+<p>64. It is your own will that guides your hand to construct a prison for
+your confinement; as the silly silkworm is confined in the pod of its
+own making.</p>
+
+<p>65. It is owing to your desires that you are exposed to the perils of
+death and disease, as it is the dim sightedness of the traveller over
+the mountainous spots that hurls him headlong into the deep cavern
+below.</p>
+
+<p>66. It is your desire only, that is the chief cause of your being
+attached to one another in one place; as the thread passing through the
+holes of pearls, ties them together in a long string round the neck.
+(Every desire is a connecting link between man and man).</p>
+
+<p>67. What is this desire, but the creation of your false imagination,
+for whatever you think to be good for yourself; (though it may not be
+so in reality); and no sooner you cease to take a fancy for anything,
+than your desire for it is cut off as by a knife.</p>
+
+<p>68. This desire—the creature of your imagination—is the cause of all
+your errors and your ruin also; as the breath of air is the cause
+both of the burning and extinction of lamps and lightening the fiery
+furnaces.</p>
+
+<p>69. Now therefore, O my heart! that art the source and spring of
+thy senses, do thou join with all thy sensibility, to look into the
+nature of thy unreality, and feel in thyself the state of thy utter
+annihilation—<i>nirvána</i> at the end.</p>
+
+<p>70. Give up after all thy sense of egoism with thy desire of
+worldliness, which are interminable endemics to thee in this life. Put
+on the amulet of the abandonment of thy desires and earthliness, and
+resign thyself to thy God to be free from all fears on earth.
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_974">[974]</span><h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER LIII.<br>
+<span class="small">THE RATIONAL RAPTURE OF UDDÁLAKA.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Argument. Description of the Soul unsullied by its desires and
+egoism, and the Difference subsisting between the body and mind.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="upper"><span class="dropcap">U</span>ddálaka</span> continued:—The intellect is an unthinkable substance: it
+extends to the limits of endless space, and is minuter than the
+minutest atom. It is quite aloof of all things, and inaccessible to the
+reach of desires, &c.</p>
+
+<p>2. It is inaccessible by the mind, understanding, egoism and the gross
+senses; but our empty desires are as wide extended, as the shadowy
+forms of big and formidable demons.</p>
+
+<p>3. From all my reasonings and repeated cogitations, I perceive an
+intelligence within myself, and I feel to be the stainless Intellect.</p>
+
+<p>4. This body of mine which is of this world, and is the depository of
+my false and evil thoughts, may last or be lost without any gain or
+loss to me, since I am the untainted intellect.</p>
+
+<p>5. The Intellect is free from birth and death, because there is nothing
+perishable in the nature of the all pervasive intellect: what then
+means the death of a living being, and how and by whom can it be put to
+death?</p>
+
+<p>6. What means the life and death of the intellect, which is the soul
+and life of all existence: what else can we expect of the intellect,
+when it is extended through and gives life to all?</p>
+
+<p>7. Life and death belong to the optative and imaginative powers of the
+mind, and do not appertain to the pure soul; (which is never perturbed
+by volition or imagination).</p>
+
+<p>8. That which has the sense of its egoism has also the knowledge of its
+existence and inexistence (and that is the mind); but the soul which is
+devoid of its egoism can have no sense of its birth or death (since it
+is always existent of itself).</p>
+
+<p>9. Egoism is a fallacy and production of ignorance, and the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_975">[975]</span>
+mind is no
+other than a appearance as the water in a mirage; the visible objects
+are all gross bodies; what then is that thing to which the term ego is
+applied.</p>
+
+<p>10. The body is composed of flesh and blood, and the mind is considered
+as a nullity of itself; the heart and the members are all dull objects,
+what then is it that contains the ego?</p>
+
+<p>11. The organs of sense are all employed in their respective functions
+for supporting the body; and all external bodies remain as mere bodies;
+what then is it to which you apply the term ego?</p>
+
+<p>12. The properties of things continue as properties, and the substances
+always remain as substances; the entity of Brahma is quite calm and
+quiet, what then is the ego among them?</p>
+
+<p>13. There is only one Being which is all pervading and subsisting in
+all bodies; it exists at all times and is immensity in itself. It is
+only the Supreme Spirit that is the intelligent soul of all.</p>
+
+<p>14. Now tell me which of these is the ego, what is it and what its
+form; what is its genus and what are its attributes; what is its
+appearance and of what ingredients it is composed? What am I and what
+shall I take it to be, and what reject as not itself?</p>
+
+<p>15. Hence there is nothing here, which may be called the ego either as
+an entity or nonentity; and there is nothing anywhere, to which the ego
+may bear any relation or any resemblance whatever.</p>
+
+<p>16. Therefore egoism being a perfect non-entity, it has no relation
+to anything at all; and this irrelation of it with all things being
+proved, its fiction as a duality (beside the unity of God), goes to
+nothing whatever.</p>
+
+<p>17. Thus every thing in the world being full of the spirit of God, I am
+no other than that reality, and it is in vain that I think myself as
+otherwise, and sorrow for it.</p>
+
+<p>18. All things being situated in one pure and omnipresent spirit;
+whence is it that the meaningless word ego could take its rise?</p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_976">[976]</span>
+
+<p>19. So there is no reality of any object whatever, except that of the
+supreme and all-pervading spirit of God; it is therefore useless for
+us to inquire about our relation with anything which has no reality in
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>20. The senses are connected with the organs of sense, and the mind is
+conversant with the mental operations; but the intellect is unconnected
+with the body, and bears no relation with any body in any manner.</p>
+
+<p>21. As there is no relation between stones and iron nails, so the
+body, the senses, the mind and the intellect bear no relation with one
+another, though they are found to reside together in the same person.</p>
+
+<p>22. The great error of the unreal ego having once obtained its footing
+among mankind, it has put the world to an uproar with the expressions
+of mine and thine, as that this is mine and that is thine, and that
+other is another’s and the like.</p>
+
+<p>23. It is want of the light of reason that has given rise to the
+meaningless and marvellous expression of egoism; which is made to
+vanish under the light of reason, as ice is dissolved under heat of
+solar light.</p>
+
+<p>24. That there is nothing in existence, except the spirit of God is
+my firm belief, and this makes me believe the whole universe, as a
+manifestation of the great Brahmá himself.</p>
+
+<p>25. The error of egoism presents itself before us in as vivid and
+variety of colours as the various hues which tinge the face of the sky;
+it is better to obliterate it at once from the mind, than retain any
+trace of it behind (as I am this child, youth, old man, &c.).</p>
+
+<p>26. I have altogether got rid of the error of my egoism, and now
+recline with my tranquil soul in the universal spirit of God, as the
+autumnal cloud rests in the infinite vacuum of the sky.</p>
+
+<p>27. Our accompaniment with the idea of egoism is productive only of our
+misconduct and misery, by producing the great variety of our acts of
+selfishness.</p>
+
+<p>28. Egoism hath taken a deep root in the moist soil of our <span class="pagenum" id="Page_977">[977]</span>
+hearts, and
+sprouts forth in the field of our bodies with the germs of innumerable
+evils.</p>
+
+<p>29. Here is death closely following the course of life, and there is
+a new life hereafter awaiting upon our death; now there is a state of
+being distinct from its privation or not being, and again there is
+reverse of it in our transmigration, to our great annoyance only.</p>
+
+<p>30. This I have gained, and this I will gain, are the thoughts that
+constantly employ the minds of men; and the desire of a new gain is
+incessantly kindled in the minds of the senseless, as the ceaseless
+flame of the sun-stone is increased in summer heat.</p>
+
+<p>31. That this I want and this must have are thoughts ever attendant on
+egoism; and the dull-headed pursue dull material objects with as much
+ardour, as the heavy clouds hasten to halt on high-headed hills.</p>
+
+<p>32. Decay of egoism withers away the tree of worldliness, which then
+ceases to germinate in the manner of a plant on sterile rocks. (Or as
+seeds cast on sandy sounds).</p>
+
+<p>33. Your desires are as black serpents creeping in the hole of your
+heart; but skulking their heads, at the sight of the snake-eater Garuda
+of reason.</p>
+
+<p>34. The unreal world gives rise to the error of appearing as real; as
+the unreal I and thou (or ego and nonego) seem to be realities, though
+they are caused by mere pulsations of the unreal mind.</p>
+
+<p>35. This world rises at first without a cause and to no cause, how then
+call it a reality which is sprung from and to no cause at all. (The
+visible world is produced by, and continues with our error which, is no
+cause in reality).</p>
+
+<p>36. As a pot made of earth long before, continues in the same state
+at all times, so the body which has long ago come to existence, still
+continues and will continue the same. (The body being made of earth,
+remains in and returns to the earth again).</p>
+
+<p>37. The beginning and end of billows is mere water and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_978">[978]</span>
+moisture, and
+the intermediate part only presents a figure to view; so the beginning
+and end of bodies is mere earth and water, and the intermediate state
+is one of bustle and commotion.</p>
+
+<p>38. It is the ignorant only that trust in this temporary and
+fluctuating state of the body; which, like the billow, is hastening to
+subside, in its original liquid and quiet state.</p>
+
+<p>39. What reliance is there in any body, which makes a figure in the
+middle, and is an unreality both in its prior and latter states.</p>
+
+<p>40. So the heart also is as quiet as the intellect, both at first and
+in the end; and remains immerged in itself, both when it exists in the
+body or not. What then if it heaves for a little while in the midst?
+(<i>i.e.</i>, the palpitation of the heart between its prior and latter
+states of inaction).</p>
+
+<p>41. As it comes to pass in our dreams, and in our deluded sights, of
+marvellous things; and as it happens in the giddiness of ebriety, and
+in our journeying in boats:—</p>
+
+<p>42. And as it turns out in cases of our vitiated humours, and delusion
+of senses, and also in cases of extreme joy and grief, and under some
+defect of the mind or body:—</p>
+
+<p>43. That some objects come to sight, and others disappear from it; and
+that some appear to be smaller or larger than they are and others to
+be moving; so do all these objects of our vision, appear and disappear
+from our sight in the course of time.</p>
+
+<p>44. O my heart! all thy conduct is of the same nature, at the different
+times, of thy joy and grief; that it makes the long of short and the
+short of long; as the short space of a single night, becomes as tedious
+to separated lovers as an age; and an age of joyous affluence as short
+as a moment.</p>
+
+<p>45. Or it is my long habit of thinking that makes the untruth appear
+as truth to me; and like the mirage of the desert, our mirage of life,
+presents its falsehoods as realities unto us.</p>
+
+<p>46. All things that we see in the phenomenal world are unrealities in
+their nature; and as the mind comes to know the nothingness of things,
+it feels in itself its nothingness also.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_979">[979]</span>
+47. As the mind becomes impressed with certainty, of the
+unsubstantiality of external objects; its desire of worldly enjoyments
+fade away, like the fading verdure of autumn.</p>
+
+<p>48. When the mind comes to see the pure soul by means of its
+intellectual light, it gets itself ridden of its temporal exertions;
+and being thereby freed from its passions and affections, it rests with
+its calm composure in itself.</p>
+
+<p>49. And the heart attains its perfect purity, when, by compressing its
+members of sensational organs, it casts itself into the flame of the
+supreme soul, where all its dross is burnt away.</p>
+
+<p>50. As the hero boldly faces his death, with the thought of his
+ascending to heaven, by fighting bravely in battle, so the mind
+conquers all impediments by casting off all its worldly desires and
+attachments.</p>
+
+<p>51. The mind is the enemy of the body, and so is the latter an enemy of
+the former (because the growth of the one puts down the vigour of the
+other); but they both die away without the half of each other, and for
+want of desire which supports them both.</p>
+
+<p>52. Owing to their mutual hostilities, and their passions and
+affections towards each other, it is better to eradicate and destroy
+both of them, for our attainment of supreme bliss. (As the control of
+the body and mind leads to temporal happiness, so the utter extinction
+of both, is the means to spiritual bliss).</p>
+
+<p>53. The existence of either of these (<i>i.e.</i> of the body or mind) after
+death is as incapable of heavenly felicity, as it is for an aerial
+fairy to fare on earth. (<i>i.e.</i>, neither the body nor mind survives
+one’s death, as it is believed by many; and even if it does, its gross
+nature would not permit it to enjoy the pure spiritual felicity of
+heaven).</p>
+
+<p>54. When these things (the body and mind), that are naturally repugnant
+and opposed to one another, meet together in any place or person, there
+is a continued clashing of their mutual mischiefs, like the crashing of
+conflicting arms.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_980">[980]</span>
+55. The base man that has a liking for this world of conflicts is like
+one left to burn in a conflagration of showering flames.</p>
+
+<p>56. The mind stout with its avaricious desires loads the body with
+labour, and feeds upon its precious life, as a ghost-<i>yaksha</i> preys
+upon the body of a boy.</p>
+
+<p>57. The body being harassed and oppressed with toil, attempts to stop
+and stay the mind; as an impious son intends to kill his father, when
+he finds him to stand an open foe to his life. (It is lawful to kill an
+enemy of one’s life for self-defence). जघांशन्तं जिघांशियात । </p>
+
+<p>58. There is no one who of his nature is a foe or friend to another;
+but becomes a friend to one that is friendly to him, and a foe to him
+that deals inimically unto him.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+ <div class="stanza">
+ <div class="verse indent4">स्वभावान्नकश्चित्कस्यचिन्मित्रं नकश्चित कस्यचिद्रिपुः ।</div>
+ <div class="verse indent4">ब्यवहारोणजानन्तिमित्राणि रिपवस्तथा ॥</div>
+ </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>59. The body being put to pain attempts to kill the mind; and the mind
+is ever intent to make the body the receptacle of its afflictions. (The
+intimate connection of the body and mind causes them to participate in
+one another’s pains).</p>
+
+<p>60. What good then can possibly accrue to us from the union of the body
+and mind, which are repugnant to one another, and which of their own
+nature can never be reconciled together.</p>
+
+<p>61. The mind being weakened, the body has no pain to undergo; wherefore
+the body is always striving to weaken the mind.</p>
+
+<p>62. The body, whether it is alive or dead, is subjected to all sorts of
+evils by its hostile mind, unless it is brought under the subjection of
+reason. (<i>i.e.</i> The unreasonable mind is an enemy of the body).</p>
+
+<p>63. When both the body and mind become stout and strong, they join
+together to break all bonds, as the lake and rainwater join together to
+overflow on the banks.</p>
+
+<p>64. Though both of them are troublesome to us in their different
+natures, yet their union to one end is beneficial to us, as the
+co-operation of fire and water is for the purpose of cooking.</p>
+
+<p>65. When the weak mind is wasted and worn out, the body <span class="pagenum" id="Page_981">[981]</span>
+also becomes
+weakened and languid; but the mind being full, the body is flushed like
+a flourishing arbor, shooting forth with verdure.</p>
+
+<p>66. The body pines away with its weakened desires, and at the weakness
+of the mind; but the mind never grows weak at the weakness of the body;
+therefore the mind requires to be curbed and weakened by all means.</p>
+
+<p>67. I must therefore cut down the weed wood of my mind, with the trees
+of my desires and the plants of my thirstiness; and, having reclaimed
+thereby a large tract of land, rove about at my pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>68. After my egoism is lost, and the net of my desires is removed, my
+mind will regain its calm and clearness, like the sky after dispersion
+of the clouds at the end of the rainy weather.</p>
+
+<p>69. It is of no matter to me whether this body of mine, which is a
+congeries of my humours, and a great enemy of mine, should waste away
+or last, after the dissolution of my mind.</p>
+
+<p>70. That for which this body of mine craves its enjoyments is not mine,
+nor do I belong to it; what is the good therefore of bodily pleasure to
+me? (When I have to leave this body and that pleasure also for ever).</p>
+
+<p>71. It is certain that I am not myself the body, nor is the body mine
+in any way; just as a corpse with all its parts entire, is no body
+at all. (The personality of man, belongs to his mind and not to his
+person).</p>
+
+<p>72. Therefore I am something beside this body of mine, and that is
+everlasting and never setting in its glory; it is by means of this that
+I have that light in me, whereby I perceive the luminous sun in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>73. I am neither ignorant of myself, nor subject to misery, nor am I
+the dull unintelligent body, which is subject to misery. My body may
+last or not, I am beyond all bodily accidents.</p>
+
+<p>74. Where there is the soul or self, there is neither the mind, nor
+senses nor desire of any kind; as the vile Pamaras never <span class="pagenum" id="Page_982">[982]</span>
+reside in the
+contiguity of princes. (<i>Mahibhretas</i> mean mountains also).</p>
+
+<p>75. I have attained to that state in which I have surpassed all things;
+and it is the state of my solity, my extinction, my indivisibility, and
+my want of desires.</p>
+
+<p>76. I am now loosened from the bonds of my mind, body and the senses,
+as the oil which is extracted from the seeds of sesamum, and separated
+from the sediments.</p>
+
+<p>77. I walk about freely in this state of my transcendentalism, and
+my mind which is disjoined from the bonds of the body considers its
+members as its dependent instruments and accompaniments.</p>
+
+<p>78. I find myself to be now situated in a state of transparency and
+buoyancy, of self-contentment and intelligence, and of true reality; I
+feel my full joy and calmness, and preserve my reservedness in speech.</p>
+
+<p>79. I find my fulness and magnanimity, my comeliness and evenness of
+temper; I see the unity of all things, and feel my fearlessness and
+want of duality, choice and option.</p>
+
+<p>80. I find these qualities to be ever attendant on me. They are
+constant and faithful, easy and graceful and always propitious to me;
+and my unshaken attachment to them has made them as heartily beloved
+consorts to me.</p>
+
+<p>81. I find myself as all and in all, at all times and in every manner;
+and yet I am devoid of all desire for or dislike to any one, and am
+equally unconcerned with whatever is pleasant or unpleasant, agreeable
+or disagreeable to me.</p>
+
+<p>82. Removed from the cloud of error and melancholy, and released from
+dubitation and duplicity in my thoughts, I peregrinate myself as a
+flimsy cloud, in the cooling atmosphere of the autumnal sky.</p>
+<hr>
+<p class="center p2">END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOOTNOTES">FOOTNOTES:</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a>
+
+This colophon occurring at the end of many chapters, shows the
+intermediate chapters as parts of the lectures of a single day; and
+by enumeration of which, the whole space of time occupied in the
+delivery of these lectures may be fairly ascertained. This will serve
+to show that the delivery of the lectures occupied but a few months;
+and Válmíki’s writing of them, if he was a shorthand writer, embraced
+also the same length of time, contrary to the common belief of this
+composition’s being a work of many years.
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a>
+
+(It was Plato’s doctrine of the souls’ <i>reminiscence</i> of a former
+apprehension of truth awakened by the traces of ideas which sensation
+discovered in things).
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a>
+
+The Arhatas have seven categories:
+<ul>
+<li>1. The animated and intelligent body.</li>
+
+<li>2. The inanimate and insensible body as rocks &c.</li>
+
+<li>3. The organs of sense.</li>
+
+<li>4. Ignorance or austerities, called <i>Ávarana</i>.</li>
+
+<li>5. Tonsure of the head called <i>nirávarana</i>.</li>
+
+<li>6. Bondage to repeated births and deaths.</li>
+
+<li>7. Liberation or final emancipation.</li></ul>
+
+They are divided into seven schisms, according to their belief or
+disbelief in this last <i>viz.</i>
+
+<ul>
+<li>1. Sadvádis or believers in liberation. </li>
+<li>2. Asadvádis—unbelievers.</li>
+<li>3. Syadvádis—Sceptics. </li>
+<li>4. <i>Sada</i>—<i>Sadavádis</i>—misbelievers.</li>
+<li>5. Anirvachaneyavádis—Infidels. 6. Nástikas—Atheists. </li>
+<li>7. Súnyavádís—Vacuists.</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a>
+
+Hari in the form of <i>Krishna</i>, destroyed the demons chief Sambara
+or Káliya under his feet; as the son of God in the form of Christ,
+defeated Satan and bruised his head under his feet.
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a>
+
+Ceylon is said to be first peopled by the Yakkas (yakshas) who followed
+the train of the Rákshasa Rávana to that island.
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a>
+
+But these formal changes are phenomenal and not real. They are mere
+appearances. Gloss.
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a>
+
+So it is represented in Kumára Sambhava: दरीगुहाहिमेन समीरणेन, उद्गास्यतामिच्छति किन्नरीणां ।
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a>
+
+Airávata signifies both Indra, the god of <i>caelum</i> and the celestials, as
+also his vehicle, the elephantine clouds.
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a>
+
+It is recorded, that the forefathers of Bali to the fourth ascent, were
+all destroyed by Vishnu, who took upon him the first four shapes of his
+ten incarnations, namely: those of the fish, tortoise, the boar and the
+biform man and lion, to destroy them one after another; till he took
+his fifth form of the dwarf, to kill Bali also. Hence it was one family
+of the Asuras at Mavalipura in Deccan, that called down Vishnu five
+times from his heaven for their destruction.
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a>
+
+Instruction of abstruse knowledge from yoga to the impure, is pearls
+before swine; as it is said: पण्डिता एब उपदेष्टब्याः न च मूर्खः कदाचन ।
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a>
+
+Reason is a divine attribute and given to man for his discernment of
+truth from untruth, and of true felicity of the soul, from its fetters
+of the frailties of this world.
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a>
+
+The former figure of meditation was that of Virát, the god who with
+his thousand heads, hands and legs and feet “सहस्रशीर्षः पुरुषं सहस्र बाहु सहस्र पाद्,” shows
+the Daitya Titan Briareus with
+his hundred heads and hands; but the figure of worship in this chapter
+is that of Vishnu, with his four arms, one head and two legs only, as a
+more compendious form for common and practical worship.
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a>
+
+The flowers and offerings mentioned in this place, are all of a white
+hue, and specially sacred to Vishnu, as there are others peculiar to
+other deities, whose priests and votaries must carefully distinguish
+from one another. The adoration of Vishnu consists, in the offering of
+the following articles, and observance of the rites as mentioned below:
+<i>viz.</i> Fumigation of incense and lighting of lamps, presentation of
+offerings, of food, raiment, and jewels suited to the adorer’s taste
+and best means, and presents of betel leaves, umbrellas, mirrors and
+chowri flappers. Lastly, scattering of handfuls of flowers, turning
+round the idol and making obeisance &c.
+<p>
+सर्ब्बेधूपदाम नैवेद्यतम्बुलदर्पणच्छत्रचामर नीराजन पुष्पाञ्जलि प्रदाक्षण नमस्कारादिः ।
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a>
+
+<p>Brahmá was the god of Bráhmanas, and Vishnu was worshipped by the early
+Vaisya colonists of India; while Siva or Mahádeva was the deity of the
+aboriginal Daityas. These peoples after long contention came to be
+amalgamated into one great body of the Hindus, by their adoption of
+the mixed creed of the said triality or trinity, under the designation
+of the Triune duty. Still there are many people that have never been
+united under this triad, and maintain their several creeds with
+tenacity. See Wilson’s Hindu Religion.</p>
+
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a>
+
+The history of Sanskrit words derives the name Lakshmí from the
+appellation of king Dilipa’s queen, who was so called from her
+luckiness. Thus the words <i>lucky</i> and <i>luckhy</i> (valgs), are synonymous
+and same in sound and sense.
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a>
+
+(This is the doctrine of the indwelling spirit pervading all nature.
+Or as the poet says:—
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+ <div class="stanza">
+ <div class="verse indent4">A motion or spirit that impels </div>
+ <div class="verse indent4">All thinking things, all objects of thought, </div>
+ <div class="verse indent4">And rolls through all things</div>
+ <div class="verse indent14"> Wordsworth)</div>
+ </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a>
+
+Nor love thy life nor hate, but live while thou livest; How long or
+short, permit to heaven. <i>Dum vivimus, vinamus</i>.
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a>
+
+(<i>i.e.</i> As the work is known after it is worked out by the workman).
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a>
+
+So there is but dead matter without the enlivening soul, and every
+thing is full of life with the soul inherent in it.
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a>
+
+(The analogy of <i>matsya nyaya</i> or piscine oppression, means the havoc
+which is committed on the race of fishes by their own kind, as also
+by all other piscivorous animals of earth and air, and tyranny of the
+strong over the weak).
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a>
+
+अणोरणीयान्, महतो महीयान्. Sruti.
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a>
+
+नान्यपन्था द्वितीयकमनाय. Sruti.
+
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOGA-VASISHTHA MAHARAMAYANA OF VALMIKI, VOL. 2 (OF 4), PART 2 (OF 2) ***</div>
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