Note:—The whole story of the fiendish Súchí is an allegory of the human mind, and its rapacity. The transformation of the huge to the thin pinnate body, and again its assumption of the big form, are allegorical of the change of the corporeal and spiritual bodies—the Sthúla and Súkshma saríras, in the course of the repeated transmigrations of the soul from its gross to subtle forms by the desire of the mind. Tired of the world the mind forsakes the gross body upon death, and assumes the finer spiritual form, but being soon dissatisfied with it reverts to its former gross form again. It is also explained to be the two states of animá and garimá, the minuteness and bulkiness, which the Yogi attains by his yoga.
[5] It is a curious fact in the theological works of Vedánta, that princes and ladies, employed themselves much more to the cultivation of their minds, and to the investigation of mental and spiritual Philosophy, than other persons and tribes. So we see Surúchi, Lílá, Visúchí and Sarasvatí were all female interlocutors in this work and some Upanishads also, though female education was subsequently abrogated by law.
[6] Samvitti is the superior or subjective consciousness personified as Viráj, and samvid or inferior consciousness of the objective as received in the personification of Viswa. Here Schelling says:—The absolute infinite cannot be known in personal or objective consciousness; but requires a superior faculty called the intuition.
The joint knowledge of the subjective and objective is had by Ecstasy, which discerns the identity of the subject and object in a series of souls which are as the innumerable individual eyes, which the infinite World-spirit behold, in it-self, Lewis Hist. Phil. II. 580.
[7] So says a spiritualistic philosopher. Think you this earth of ours is a lifeless and unsentient bulk, while the worm on her surface is in the enjoyment of life? No, the universe is not dead. This life—jíva, what is it but the pervading afflux of deific love and life, vivifying all nature, and sustaining the animal and vegetable world as well as the world of mind? These suns, systems, planets and satellites, are not mere mechanisms. The pulsations of a divine life throb in them all, and make them rich in the sense that they too are parts of the divine cosmos. Should it be objected that it proves too much; that it involves the identity of the vital principle of animals and vegetables, let us not shrink from the conclusion. The essential unity of all spirit and all life with this exuberant life from God, is a truth from which we need not recoil, even though it bring all animal and vegetable forms within the sweep of immortality. Epes Sargent.
[8] The unity of all phenomena was the dream of ancient philosophy. To reduce all this multiplicity to a single principle, has been and continues to be the ever recurring problem. To the question of a unity of substance the Greek science, repeatedly applied itself; and so did the sophists of Persia and India. It was the craving for unity, which led the white men of Asia, the ancient Aryan race, to the conception of God as the one substance immanent in the universe. At first they were polytheists, but with the progress of thought their number of gods diminished, and became the authors of Veda. At last arrived to the conception of a unity of forces, of a divine power as the ultimate substratum of things. They regarded the beings of the world, as in effect, composed of two elements; the one real and of a nature permanent and absolute, and the other relative, flowing and variable and phenomenal; the one spirit and the other matter, and both proceeding from an inseparable unity, a single substance. Ibid. According to Vásishtha this single substance is the chit or divine intelligence, which produces the Mind, which is conversant with matter.
[9] Note. The powers of the Intellect are, perception, memory, imagination and judgment. Ego is the subject of thoughts, or the subjective and really existent being. The personal God Brahmá is an emanation of God according to the Gnostics, and is like the Demiurgus of Plato next to God and soul of the world. Plotinus.
[10] The allegory of the three spheres, means no more than the triple state of man, as a spiritual, an intellectual and a physical or corporeal being. The intellectual state in the text, is properly the spiritual and highest state of a human being. The mental is next to the intellectual or midmost state of man, and the physical or corporeal state, is the lowest condition, in which the elevated nature of humanity is subjected like an inferior animal, to grovel upon the earth.
[11] Compare the adventure of the prince Tájul Malur in Guli Bakáwalí, and his bearing the burthen of his children by the Negro wife on his shoulders.
[12] The Text uses the terms jnána and ajnána, which literally signify knowledge and ignorance, and mean to say that, we know the subjective ourselves only (as-ego-sum) and are ignorant of the true nature of the objective, as whether they are or not and what they are. Though it would be more appropriate to use the words nischaya and anischaya or certainty and uncertainty, because we are certain of our own existence, and are quite uncertain of every thing besides, which we perceive in our triple states of waking, dreaming and sound sleep, which incessantly produce and present before us a vast variety of objects, all of which lead us to error by their false appearances.