CHAPTER CLXXV.
Paramártha Gítá or Lecture on Trancendentalism or the solity.
Argument:—The appearance of the world in our Ignorance, and its Disappearance before the light of true knowledge.
Vasishtha continued:—The vacuity of the Intellect which presented the shadow of a dream at first, could not possibly assume the form of a causal and sensible body (as that of Brahmá), in order to be visible and form the visible world. For how is it possible for the intellectual vacuum, to have a bodily form at all.
2. In the beginning of creation, O Ráma, there was nothing except a shadow dream in the Intellect. And neither was there this creation nor the next world in visible existence.
3. The world appeared only in the form, of an unsubstantial notion of it; and the vacuous intellect remained as quiet with its ideal world, as the mind rests quietly with the nightmare in its dream.
4. Such is the essence of the Intellect, which is translucent and without its beginning and end; and though it is a clear void in itself, yet it bears the ideal model of the world in its mirror.
5. So long as this is unknown, the world appears as a gross substance; but being known as contained in the Divine spirit, it becomes a spiritual substance also; because how is it possible for any gross matter, to attach itself to the transcendent vacuum, of which there is no beginning and end?
6. This pure and abstract knowledge of the world, is as that of a city in dreaming; and such being the state of the world ere its creation, how can any earthly or other matter, be ever joined with the same?
7. The light of the Divine soul, shining amidst the vacuity of the Intellect, is termed cosmos or the universe; consisting as it is supposed, of matter, mind and faculties.
8. It is want of understanding only, which makes us suppose a thing, which is turning round like a whirlpool, and having the force of the wind in it as the stable earth, although it has no basis or stability of it.