CHAPTER LX.
RESUSCITATION OF PRAHLÁDA.
Argument. On the necessity of the observance of duty, both in the secular as well as Religious Life.
The Lord continued:—It is the soundness of the body, which men call life; and it is the quitting of the present body for a future one, which they call death. (Activity is the life of the body).
2. You are released from both these states, O high minded youth! and have nothing to do with your life or death any more. (Because the living liberated are freed from the cares of life, and future transmigrations also).
3. It is for your acquaintance, that I relate to you the components of life and death; by knowledge of which you will not have to live nor die, like other living beings on earth (in pain and misery).
4. Though situated in the body, yet you are as unembodied as the disembodied spirit; and though embosomed in vacuity, yet are you as free and fleet as the wind, on account of your being unattached to vacuum. (Unattachment of the soul to the body and vital spirit, constitutes its freedom).
5. Your perception of the objects of the touch, proves you to be an embodied being; and your soul is said to be the cause of that perception; as the open air is said to be the cause of the growth of trees, for its putting no hindrance to their height. But neither the soul is cause of perception, nor the air of the growth of trees. (It is the mind which is the cause of the one, as moisture of the other).
6. But the perception of outward things, is no test of their materiality to the monoistic immaterialist; as the sight of things in a dream, is no proof of their substantiality, nor of the corporeality of the percipient soul. (All external perceptions, are as those in a dream).
7. All things are comprehended, in yourself, by the light of your intellect; and your knowledge of the only One in all, comprehends every thing in it. How then can you have a body either to take to yourself or reject it from you?
8. Whether the season of the spring appears or not, or a hurricane happens to blow or subside; it is nothing to the pure soul, which is clear of all connection whatever. (The soul is unconnected with all occurrences).