17. You will be awakened by my sermons to know this certain truth, that all things proceed from Brahma into whom they ultimately return. (Brahma is the producer, sustainer, and recipient or the first and last of all. He is alpha and omega).
18. Ráma rejoined:—Sir, your affirmation of the first cause in the ablative case, “that all things proceed from Brahma,” is opposed to the negative passage in the Sruti in the same case, that “nothing is distinct from Him”; and is inconsistent in itself (in as much as, there cannot be all things, and again nothing but Brahma; and to say “the same thing comes from the same,” would be a palpable absurdity).
19. Vasishtha answered:—Words or significant terms are used in the Sástras for instruction of others; and where there appears any ambiguity in them, they are explained in their definitions. (Hence the ablative form “from Brahma” is not faulty, for what is in the receptacle, the same comes out of it; or as they say, “what is in the bottom, the same comes upon the surface”; and the one is not distinct from the other, as the wave differs not from the water whence it rises. This is downright pantheism).
20. Hence it is the use though not in honest truth, to make a difference of the visibles from the invisible Brahma (for the purpose of instruction); as it is usual to speak of ghosts appearing to children, though there be no such things in reality. (It is imagination that gives a name to airy nothing, and it is the devise of language to use words for negative ideas, as the word world to denote a duality and darkness for want of light, and not anything in itself).
21. In reality there is no duality connected with the unity of Brahma, as there is no dualism of a city and the dream that shows its apparition in sleep. Again God being immutable in his nature and eternal decree, it is wrong to apply the mutations of nature and the mutability of Will to Him. (Volition is accompanied by nolition (Volo and nolo) in mutable minds, but there is no option Vikalpa in the sankalpa—suo arbitrio of the unchangeable Mind).
22. The Lord is free from the states of causality and the caused, of instrumentality and instruments, of a whole and its part, and those of proprietorship and property. (The attribution of cause and effect or any other predicate or predicable, is wholly inapplicable to him, who is devoid of all attributes).
23. He is beyond all affirmative and negative propositions, and their legitimate conclusions or false deductions and elenches. (i.e. Nothing can be truly affirmed or denied or ascertained or negated of Him, by any mode of reasoning. Naisatarkenánaneyah).
24. So the attribution, of the primary volition to the Deity, is a false imputation also. Yet it is usual to say so for the instruction of the ignorant; though there is no change in his nature from its nolliety to velleity. (So it is usual to attribute sensible properties of speech and sight, to the immaterial spirit of God, by a figure of speech; and for the instruction of the vulgar, who cannot comprehend the incomprehensible).
25. These sensible terms and figurative expressions, are used for the guidance of the ignorant; but the knowing few, are far from falling into the fallacy of dualism. All sensible conceptions ceasing upon the spiritual perception of God, there ensues an utter and dumb silence. (We become tongue-tied, and our lips are closed and sealed in silence, to speak anything with certainty of the unspeakable).
26. When in time you come to know these things better, you shall arrive at the conclusion, that all this is but one thing, and an undivided whole without its parts, and having no beginning nor end. (The world is therefore self-same and co-eternal and co-existent, with the eternal and self-existent God).