CHAPTER XXXVI.
Sermon on the Seed or Source of the World.
Argument:—Description of Avarice as the great Bondage of life and harmlessness of the common blessing of life obtained without avarice. i.e. Prohibition of avariciousness and not of ordinary enjoyments.
Vasishtha continued:—The false varieties of the world take us by surprise, as the eddies attract to them the passing vessels; but they are all found to be of the same nature, as the various waves of the sea. (As all the waves are but water, so all worldly appearances are mere enticing delusions).
2. The nature of the whole world, is as unknowably known to us; as that of the universal vacuum which rests in God alone, is imperceptibly perceptible to our eyes. (All we see of the sky, is but a blank which is nothing).
3. As I find nothing in the fancied cities of boys in the air, (which they think to abound with ghosts etc.); so doth this really ideal world, appear to be in real existence to boys alone. (But the wise know it as unreal).
4. The sight and thought of visible appearances, are as the visions and remembrances of objects in dream; and so is this world but an appearance to the sight, and a phantom and phantasy in the mind.
5. The phenomenal and the fancy, have no pith nor place except in the intellect; beside which there is nothing to be had save an unbounded vacuity only. Where then is the substantiality of the world?
6. The error of the world consists in the knower’s knowledge of it, and it is the ignorance (of the existence) of the world, that is free from this error; and the knowing or ignoring of it is dependant to thee, as the thinking or unthinking of a thing, is entirely in thy power. (Every one is master of his thoughts).
7. The vacuous intellect being of the form of the transcendent sky, is of the state of an extended space, to which it is impossible to impute any particular nature or quality whatsoever. (The gloss explains it by saying that, the intellect is neither any extended matter, nor entirely an empty vacuity, since it is the source of all intellectual powers and mental faculties).
8. The world also being of the form of the intellect (i.e. a formal representation of it); has no particular character or variable property assignable to it. It is seen to be existent, but having no particular feature of its own, it is not subject to any variation in its nature (i.e. Being a formless thing, it can have no vikára or change of form at all).