CHAPTER CLXXII.
Establishment of the Identity of the Deity And the World.
Argument:—The world a Pantheon or full with the fullness of God; and our erroneous conception of its materiality.
Vasishtha continued:—The world is devoid of any material element, as the earth and others; and I ween the first creator to be the Mind only, which is the fruitful tree of desires.
2. The word mind derived from the act of minding, came to be used afterwards as a name for the thinking power, as it was from the whirling of waters, that is got the name of a whirlpool.
3. It is by its connection with the Intellect, that it has its understanding and the other faculties; or else it would <be> as blank as the void of the air, which could have no dust were it not for the earth underlying it.
4. The mind is neither the body nor heart, nor the senses nor desires nor even has it any of these; and though these are commonly attributed to it, yet in its true sense, it is devoid of all properties.
5. How can reminiscence be the cause of reproduction of the world? The former creator or Brahmá, being liberated or extinct with the extinction of that world, could not have retained his reminiscence of it; nor could the new creator of the new world, possibly have any remembrance of what he knew not all. (There have been many by gone Brahmás before).
6. The holy and liberated souls, have neither their bodies nor reminiscences any more; nor the passing currents of other rivers, return or whirl back, like the whirlpools of some. (So the sruti:—The liberated souls, return no more to mortality).
7. Or if he have any body at all, owing to the reminiscence of his former state; it must be an unearthly and immaterial body, quite still and rarefied as in imaginary forms. (Such are the spiritual bodies of gods and angels).
8. As our imagination presents to us, a visionary mountain to the mind’s eye; such is the air-drawn body of the all engrossing Virát; presented unto us without any earthly form. (Virát is Pantheon).