CHAPTER CLXXIX.
The Doctrine of Pantheism or the One as All.
Argument:—The intellectuality and incorporality of the World, preclude the idea of its materiality.
Vasishtha continued:—Now as the triple world is known, to be a purely intellectual entity; there is no possibility of the existence of any material substance herein, as it is believed by the ignorant majority of mankind.
2. How then can there be a tangible body, or any material substance at all; and all these that appear all around to our sight, is only an intactile extension of pure vacuity.
3. It is the emptiness of our intellectuality, and contained in the vacuity of the Divine Intellect; it is all an extension of calm and quiet intelligence, subsisting in the serene intelligence of the supreme One.
4. All this is but the quiescent consciousness, and as a dream that we are conscious of in our waking state; it is a pure spiritual extension, though appearing as a consolidated expanse of substantial forms.
5. What are these living bodies and their limbs and members, what are these entrails of theirs, and these bony frames of them? Are they not but mere shadows of ghosts and spirits, appearing as visible and tangible to us. (Or very likely they resemble the phantoms of our dreams, and the apparitions that we see in the dark. Gloss).
6. The hands, the head, and all the members of the body, are seats of consciousness or percipience; where it is seated imperceptible and intangible, in the form of the sensorium or sensuousness.
7. The cosmos appears as a dream in the vacuum of the Divine Mind; and may be called both as caused and uncaused in its nature, owing to its repeated appearance and eternal inherence in the eternal Mind.
8. It is true that nothing can come out from nothing, or without its cause; but what can be the cause of what is eternally destined or ordained in the eternal mind. (Predestination and Preordination being the uncaused cause of all events).