45. The belief of this, that and all other things in the world, are distant and distinct from Brahma, is what is called Avidyá or ignorance of him; but the belief that all things visible in the world, is the manifestation of omnipresence, causes the removal of ignorance, by presenting us to the presence of God.
NOTE TO CHAPTER X.
The following lines of the English poet, will be found fully to illustrate the divine attribute of omnipresence in the pantheistic doctrine of Vedánta and Vasishtha, as shown in this chapter et passen.
All are but parts, of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul;
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same;
Great in the earth, as in the etherial frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze;
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part.
As full as perfect, in a pair as heart:
As full as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As in the rapt seraph, that adores and burns;
To him no high, now, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects and equals all.
Pope's Mortal Essays I. IX.
[CHAPTER XI.]
Ascertainment of Living Liberation.
Argument.—Instances of Living Liberation in Hari, Hara and others, and its consisting in the oecumenical knowledge of the one Brahma in all and every thing.
VASISHTHA said:—I tell you again and repeatedly O pious Ráma! for your understanding, that you can never know the spirit without your constant habit, of contemplating on it in your self-cogitation. (So the Sruti. Atmá vára, mant avyam, "the soul is to be constantly thought upon" and so also the Vedánta aphorism "asakrit upadesat" the soul is known by repeated instructions on spiritual knowledge).
2. It is gross ignorance which is known as nescience, and it becomes compact by the accumulated erroneous knowledge of previous births and past life (namely; the errors of the dualities of matter and spirit and of the living and Supreme soul, and the plurality of material and sensible objects).