63. The notion of myself, thyself and the objective world, are but effusions of our perverted understandings; and it is ignorance only that shows the One as many within the Sheath of the mind, according as it imagines it to be.
CHAPTER LXI.
On the Nature of the World.
Argument. Proofs of the unreality of the world, leading to the Quietism of the Spirit.
Ráma said:—Please sir, explain to me whence arises this error of our knowledge of the objective world, without a cause of this error. (The True God cannot lead us to the knowledge of untruth).
2. Vasishtha said:—Because we have the knowledge of all things (i.e. the objective), to be contained alike in our consciousness (as of the subjective self); it is plain that this eternal and increate self (or soul), is the cause and container of them all at all times.
3. That which has an insight or intuitive knowledge of all things, which are expressed by words and their meanings, is Brahma—the soul and no other; and nothing that is meant by any significant term, has a different form of its own. (It is the doctrine of nominalism that the notions conveyed by words have no realities corresponding with them in the mind, and have no existence but as mere names).
4. As the quality of a bracelet is not different from its substance of gold, nor that of a wave from the water; so the expansion of the world, is not distinct from the spirit of God. (The spirit inflated and produced the world out of itself. Sruti).
5. It is Brahma that is manifest in the form of the world, and not the world that appears as God; and so doth gold display itself in the form of a bracelet, and not the bracelet that takes the nature of gold.
6. As the whole is displayed in all its various parts, so the entire intellect shows itself in all the various operations of the mind composing the world. (The intellect displaying the mind, and this the world).
7. It is ignorance of the infinite and eternal Spirit of God, that exhibits itself as myself, thyself and the world itself in the mind. (i.e. The knowledge both of the subjective and objective results from ignorance of the only One—tanmátram).