37. Yet is this state made intelligible to us by instructions of our preceptors, and by means of the entire removal of our error as well as by our intense meditation of it; else there is no body to tell us what it really is. (The sástras tell us, what it is not; by their dogmas neti neti and tanna tanna; but never say a word about its real nature as idamasti).
38. It is therefore proper for you to remain entirely extinct in the external one and tranquil as the Divine spirit by giving up all your fear and pride, your griefs and sorrows, and your covetousness and all errors besides. You must forsake with these the dullness of your heart and mind, as also of your body and all its members, together with the sense of your egoism and the distinctions of things from the one perfect unity. (Knowing that “all are but parts of the one undivided whole”).
CHAPTER XXXII.
Sermon inculcating the Knowledge of Truth.
Argument:—Liberation depends on self-exertion; and upon good company, study of good books, and the habit of reasoning.
Vasishtha continued:—Soon as intellection commences to act, it is immediately attended by egoism—the cause of the erroneous conception of the world; and this introduces a train of unrealities, as the stirring of air causes the blowing of winds. (It means to say that being misguided by avidyá or ignorance, we are liable to fall into all sorts of error).
2. But when intellection is directed by vidyá or reason, its fallacy of the reality of the world, does not affect us in any manner, if we but reflect it as a display of Brahma himself, (that he is all in all); but we are liable to great error, by thinking the phenomenal world as distinct from Him.
3. As the opening of the eyes receives the sight of external appearance, the opening of intellection doth in like manner receive the erroneous notion of the reality of the phenomenal world.
4. What appears on the outside, being quite distinct from the nature of the inner intellect, cannot be a reality as the other; and therefore this unreal show is no more, than the dancing of a barren woman’s boy before one’s eyes. (Which is nothing).
5. The intellect is perceived by its conception of the notions of things, but when we consider the fallacy of its conceptions, and its notion of the unreal as real, it appears to us as a delusion like the appearance of a ghost to boys.
6. Our egoism also is for our misery, from the knowledge that “I am such a one;” but by ignoring (or the want of) this knowledge of myself, that I am not this or that, loosens me from my bondage to it. Therefore I say, that our bondage and liberation, are both dependant on our own option. (But as the innate consciousness of the self or ego is impossible to ignore, yet it is possible to every body, to ignore his being any particular person whatsoever).