18. What cause can there be for your sorrow, amidst the dangers and delights of this world, but that you have the one and not the other. But what thing is there that is delectable and delightful to be desired in this world, which is not evanescent and perishable at the same time, save yourself (soul), which is neither the active nor passive agent of your actions and enjoyments; though they attribute the actions and their fruitions to it by their error.
19. The importance of actions and passions to living beings, is a mistake and not veritable truth. Because by the right consideration of things, we find no action nor passion bearing any relation to the soul. Its attachment or aversion to the senses and sensible actions and enjoyments, is felt only by the sensualist, and not by them that are unconscious of sensuous affections (as the apathetic ascetics).
20. There is no liberation in this world for the worldly minded, while it is fully felt by the liberal minded Yogi, whose mind is freed from its attachments to the world, in its state of living liberation. (Jívan-mukta).
21. Though the Sage is rapt in the light of his self-consciousness, yet he does not disregard to distinguish the unity and duality, the true entity from the non-entities, and to view the omnipotence in all potencies or powers that are displayed in nature (for these display His power and goodness beyond our thought).
22. (Verse). To him there is no bond or freedom, nor liberation nor bondage whatever, and the miseries of ignorance are all lost in the light of his enlightenment. (Bondage and freedom here refer to their causes or acts (কর্ম্ম) by the figure of metonymy; and that these bear no relation to the abstracted or spiritualistic Yogi).
23. It is in vain to wish for liberation, when the mind is tied down to the earth; and so it is redundant to talk of bondage, when the mind is already fastened to it. Shun them both by ignoring your egoism, and remain fixed to the true Ego, and continue thus to manage yourself with your unruffled mind on earth. (The whole of this is a lesson of the Stoical and Platonic philosophic and unimpassioned passivity).
CHAPTER XXXIX.
ON THE UNITY OF ALL THINGS.
Argument. Explanation of Divine Omnipotence, and inability of Vasishtha to give full exposition of it.
Ráma rejoined:—(Prose) Tell me, O high-minded sage, how could the creation proceed from the Supreme Brahma, whom you represent to remain as a painting in the tableau of vacuity.
2. Vasishtha replied:—O prince, such is the nature of Brahma, that all power incessantly flows from him, wherefore every power is said to reside in him. (It is unvedantic to say, that Brahma is omnipotent or the reservoir of power, and not omnipotence or identic with all power himself).