- 1. Brahmá of creation.
- 2. Vishnu sustentation.
- 3. Siva dissolution.
- 1. Sushupti—Sleep.
- 2. Swapna—Dream.
- 3. Jágrata—Waking.
- 1. Of the Mind Action.
- 2. Vishnu sustentation.
- 3. Of Life to operation.
- 1. Childhood Neutral.
- 2. Youth Active.
- 3. Old age co-operation.
CHAPTER CII.
On the Indivisibility and Immortality of the Soul.
Argument:—Fallacy of Egoism, and Rational Investigation into the nature of the Soul. The Means of curbing Egotism, and the flight of Fancy.
Vasishtha continued:—The ignorant are subject to errors caused by their false fancies, from which the wise are entirely free; and they by imagining and attributing perishable properties to the imperishable soul, beguile themselves like children, by taking their dolls for men. (It is the attributing of sensible properties to the conscious soul).
2. Ráma rejoined:—What is this perishable property, which is imagined of and imputed to the imperishable soul? Tell me, also O greatest of theologians! what is that misrepresentation, which misleads the mind to the erroneous conception, of the unreal world for a reality.
3. Vasishtha replied:—The soul by its continued association with unreal and perishable things, thinks itself as one of them, and takes upon it the title of an unreal and perishable egoism, as a boy by association of his thoughts imagines a false apparition to be a real ghost. (Egoism and tuism and suism, means the personality or personal reality of the three persons I, thou and this—aham, twam and sah, which in all systems of mystic philosophy, is denied of all finite beings. The absolute Ego is the supreme soul, and all other souls are but reflections of it).
4. All things being situated in one absolute reality, it is hard to account for one’s personal egoism; and to say how and whence this conception came to be in vogue. (The impersonal and universal soul is the true Ego, and has no personal existence what ever).