48. It is the lustre of the Divine Luminary, that casts its reflexion into the Intellect, and emblazons the intellectual sphere supremely bright. Tell me therefore what are we and this pageant of the world, any more than a réchauffé or a print of that archetype.
49. If there is a resuscitation of ourselves after our demise, then what is it that is lost to us; and should there be no regeneration of us after death, then there is a perfect tranquility of our souls, by our utter extinction, and emancipation from the pains of life and death. Or if we have our liberation by the light of philosophy, then there nothing here, that lends to our woe in any state whatsoever.
50. The ignorant man alone knows the state of the ignorant, wherein the wise are quite ignorant; as the fishes alone know the perilous state of the stag, that is fallen amidst the waves and eddies of the sea.
51. It is the open sphere of the Divine Intellect only, that represents the divers images of I, thou, he and this and that in its hollow space; as a tree shows the sundry forms of its leaves, fruits, flowers &c., in its all producing body or stem.
CHAPTER C.
Refutation of Atheism.
Argument:—Refutation of the Atheistical doctrine of the materiality of the soul.
Ráma rejoined:—Please to tell me, sir, what are your arguments, for allaying the miseries of this world, against the position (paksha) of others who maintain in that:—
2. A living being is happy so long, as the dread of death (either of himself or others) is out of his view; and that there is no reappearance (revivification) of the dead, that is already reduced to ashes. (Hence there is no happiness either for the living or dead (according to them)).
3. Vasishtha replied:—Whatever is the certain belief of any body, he finds the same in his consciousness; and that he feels and conceives accordingly, is a truth that is well known to all mankind (that every one thinks according to his belief).
4. As the firmament is firm, quiet and ubiquitous, so also is the ubiquity of the Intellect (i.e. the vacuous intellect is also allpervading), and are considered to form a duality by the ignorant dualist, while the sapient take them as the one and same thing, from the impossibility of conceiving the co-existence of two things from eternity.