END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Note. Nirvána or ultimate annihilation of the living or animal soul, being the aim and end of Buddhism, it is doubtful whether Vasishtha had derived his doctrine from the Buddhists or they from him.
[2] In this verse there is the continuation of the world shaking understood through the intermediate steps. Thus the noise startled the chiefs, which shook their bodies, and these shook their heads, which caused their helmets to shake: these again shook the garlands of flowers upon them, and at last shed their dust on the ground. This kind of figure is called Krama mála corresponding with Metalepsis gradation; as we have in the following instance of Dido's exclamation in Virgil. "Happy, Oh truly happy had I been; if Trojan ships these coasts had never seen." Here the first seeing is that of the ships and then of the Trojans in them, and afterwards of Æneas as one among them, and then of her seeing him, and his seeing her, and lastly of her passion at his sight.
[3] On the Simultaneousness of thought and Breath.
Swedenborg saw the intimate connection between thought and vital life. He says:—Thought commences with respiration. The reader has before attended to the presence of heaving over the body; now let him feel his thoughts, and he will see that they too heave with the mass. When he entertains a long thought, he draws a long breath, when he thinks quickly, his breath vibrates with rapid alternations; when the tempest of anger shakes his mind, his breath is tumultuous; when his soul is deep and tranquil, so is his respiration; when success inflates him, his lungs are as timid as his concepts. Let him make trial of the accuracy, let him endeavour to think in long stretches, at the same time that he breathes in fits, and he will find that it is impossible; that in this case the chopping will needs mince his thoughts. Now this mind dwells in the brains, and it is the brain, therefore, which spares the varying fortunes of the breathing. It is strange that this correspondence between the states of the brain or mind and the lungs has not been admitted in science, for it holds in every case, at every moment. "He says moreover—Inward thoughts have inward breaths, and purer spiritual thoughts have spiritual breaths hardly mixed with material."
See Col. Olcott's Yoga Philosophy Page 283.
[4] By a figure of speech light and knowledge are synonymous terms, and so are their sources the sun and soul interchangeable to one another. And as the Divine spirit is the creator of all things, so is the sun producer and grower of everything in the visible world. Hence has risen the mistake of taking the sun—the savitar or producer for the Divine soul the creator among the sun worshippers, who believe the sun to be the soul of the universe. (Súrya atmájagatah in the sruti). Hence has grown the popular error of address in the Gáyatrí hymn to the sun, which was used as an invocation of the supreme soul, and is still understood as such by theists.
[5] Should you think it a nullity by the Sruti which says neti-neti it is naught, you deny the creatorship of God, who has created it as something substantial and tangible.