44. It is impossible, O Ráma, to destroy this bodiless consciousness, without the weapon of a good understanding; it lies so very deep in the mind, that it continually nourishes the roots of action.
45. When by our great effort, we can nourish the seed of conscience, why then we should not be able to destroy the keen conscience by the same weapon that is effort.
46. In the same manner, we can destroy also the tree of the world with its roots and branches.
47. That One is only existent, which has no sensation and is no other than of the form of an endless vacuum; it is that unintelligible vacuous form and pure intelligence itself, which is the pith and substance of all existence.
CHAPTER III.
Disappearance of the Phenomenals.
Argument:—Admonition for ignoring the visibles, and the means of attaining the insensibility and inactivity of the wise.
Ráma said:—Tell me, O Sage, how it may be possible to convert our knowledge to ignorance, since it is impossible to make a nothing of something, as also to make anything out of a nothing.
2. Vasishtha replied:—Verily a nothing or unreality, cannot be something in reality; nor a real something can become an unreal nothing; but in any case where both of these (viz.; reality as well as unreality of a thing) are possible, there the cognition and incognition of something, are both of them equally palpable of themselves. (This is termed a Chátushkotika Sunsaya or quadruplicate apprehension of something, consisting, of the reality or unreality of a thing, and the certainty or uncertainty of its knowledge).
3. The two senses of the word knowledge (i.e. its affirmative and negative senses) are apparent in the instance of “a rope appearing as a snake”: here the knowledge of the rope is certain, but that of the snake is a mistake or error. And so in the case of a mirage presenting the appearance of water. (Here the things snake and water prove to be nothing, and their knowledge as such, is converted to error or want of knowledge).
4. It is better therefore to have no knowledge of these false appearances, whose knowledge tends to our misery only; wherefore know the true reality alone, and never think of the unreal appearance. (Do not think the visibles either as real or unreal, but know the deathless spirit that lies hid under them).