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.