Argument. Meditation on the Universality of the soul and Intellect.
Ráma said:—Venerable Sir! you are the sun of the day of spiritual knowledge, and the burning fire of the night of my doubts; and you who are the cooling moon to the heat of my ignorance, will deign to explain to me, what is meant by—community of existence, (that you said just now).
2. Vasishtha answered:—When the thinking principle or mind is wasted and weakened, and appears to be extinct and null; the intellect which remains in common in all beings, is called the common intelligence (or Nous) of all.
3. And this intellect when it is devoid of its intellection and is absorbed in itself, and becomes as transparent as it is nothing of itself; it is then called the common (or Samanga) intellect.
4. And likewise, when it ignores the knowledge of all its internal and external objects, it remains as the common intellect and unconscious of any personality.
5. When all visible objects are considered to have a common existence, and to be of the same nature with one’s self, it is designated the common intellect. (Or compression of the whole in one, like the contraction of the limbs of a tortoise).
6. When the phenomenas are all ingulphed of themselves, in the one common spirit; and there remains nothing as different from it, it is then called the one common entity.
7. This common view of all things as one and the same, is called transcendentalism; and it becomes alike both to embodied and disembodied beings in both worlds. It places the liberated being above the fourth stage of consummation.
8. It is the enlightened soul which is exalted by ecstacy (Samádhi), that can have this common view of all as one; and not the ignorant (who can not make this highest generalization).
9. This common view of all existence, is entertained by all great and liberated beings; as it is the same moisture and air, that is spread through the whole earth and vacuum.