The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, vol. 3 (of 4) part 2 (of 2)-4

27. The divine spirit is more rarefied than the subtile air, and

yet is not a vacuity having the chit or intellect in itself. It is as

the sun-stone with its inherent fire and the milk with the latent

butter unborn in it. (Hence the spirit of God is said to be embryonic

seed of the universe. [Sanskrit: brahmándavíjam]).

28. All space and time reside in that spirit for their development,

as the spark proceeds from the fire and light issues from

the sun in which they are contained. (The will or word of God

produces all things from his spiritual essence).

29. So all things are settled in the Supreme intellect, and

show themselves unto us as the waves of the sea and as the

radiance of gems: and so our understandings also are reflexions

of the same.

[Pg 49]

30. The Divine intellect is the store-house of all things, and

the reservoir of all consciousness (i.e., the fountain-head of the

understandings of all living beings). It is the Divine essence

which pervades the inside and outside of every thing. (All

things are dependent to the entity of God for their existence,

and there is no independent particle whatever).

31. The Divine soul is as imperishable as the air within a

pot which is not destroyed by breaking of the vessel, but mixes

and continues forever with the common and its surrounding air.

Know also the lives and actions of living beings to be dependent

upon the will of the God, as the mobility of the iron depends

upon the attraction of the loadstone. (This passage negatives

the free agency of man, and allows him an activity in

common with that of all living beings, under the direction of

the great magnet of the Divine spirit and will).

32. The action of the inactive or quiescent spirit of God, is

to be understood in the same manner, as the motion of the lead

is attributed to the causality of magnetic attraction, which

moves the immovable iron. So the inert bodies of living beings,

are moved by force of the intellectual soul.

33. The world is situated in that mundane seed of the universe,

which is known under the name of intellect attributed to

it by the wise. It is as void and formless as empty air, it is

nothing nor has any thing in it except itself, and represents all

and everything by itself, like the playful waves of the boundless

ocean.

[Pg 50]

CHAPTER X.

Removal of Ignorance.

Argument.—Ignorance and its bonds of Erroneous conceptions, and

reliance on temporal objects, and the ways of getting release from them,

by means of good understanding and right reasoning.

VASISHTHA continued:—Therefore this world with all its

moving and unmoving beings is nothing (or no being at all).

There is nothing that has its real being or entity, except the one

true Ens that thou must know. (all beings are not being except

the one self-existing Being. So says Sadi. All this is not being

and thyself art the only being. Haman nestand anchi hastitue,

so also the sruti Toam asi nányadasti. Tu est nullum est).

2. Seek him O Ráma! who is beyond our thought and imagination,

and comprises all entity and non-entity in himself,

and cease to seek any living being or any thing in existence. (In

Him is all life and every thing, that is or is not in Being and

he is the source of life and light).

3. I would not have my heart to be enticed and deceived by

the false attachments and affections of this world; all which are

as delusive, as our misconception of a snake in a rope. (All our

earthly relations with our relatives and properties, are deception

that are soon detected by our good sense and reason, and they

vanish as soon as our mistake of the snake in rope. Therefore

let no worldly tie bind down thy heart to this earth).

4. Ignorance of the soul is the cause of our error of conceiving

the distinctions of things; but the knowledge of the selfsame

soul puts an end to all distinctions of knowledge of the

reality of things, distinctive knowledge of existences—bheda

jnána is erroneous; but their generalization—abheda jnána

leads to right reasoning.

5. They call it ignorance avidyá, when the intellect is vitiated

by its intellection of the intelligibles or chetyas, but the[Pg 51]

intelligibles being left out, it comes to know the soul which is

free from all attributes.

6. The understanding only is the embodied soul purusha,

which is lost upon the loss of the understanding; but the soul is

said to last as long as there is understanding in the body, like

the ghatambare or air in the pot lasts with the lasting of the pot,

and vanishes upon the loss or breaking of the vessel. (The soul

lasts with the intellect in the body, but flies away upon the

intellect's desertion of it. This is maintained by sruti).

7. The wandering intellect sees the soul to be wandering, and

the sedate understanding thinks, it to be stationary, as one perceives

his breath of life to be slow or quick, according as he sits

still or runs about. In this manner the bewildered understanding

finds the soul to be distracted also. (The temperament of the

mind is attributed to the soul, which is devoid of all modality).

8. The mind wraps the inward soul with the coverlet of its

various desires, as the silkworm twines the thin thread of its

desires round about itself; which its wants of reason prevent it

from understanding. (The word in the text is bálavat boyishness,

which is explained in the gloss to mean nirvivekatwa or want of

reason, and applied to the mind, means puerile foolishness).

9. Ráma said:—I see sir, that when our ignorance becomes too

gross and solid, it becomes as dull and solid as stone; but tell me

O venerable sir, how it becomes as a fixed tree or any other immovable

substance.

10. Vasishtha replied:—The human intellect not having

attained its perfect state of mindlessness, wherein it may have

its supreme happiness and yet falling from its state of mindfulness,

remains in the midmost position of a living and immovable

plant or of an insensible material substance. (The middle

state is called tatastha bháva, which is neither one of perfect

sensibility nor impassivity).

11. It is impossible for them to have their liberation, whose

organs of the eight senses lie as dormant and dumb and blind

and inert in them as in any dull and dirt matter: and if they

have any perception, it is that pain only. (The puryastaka are

the eight internal and external organs of sense instead of the[Pg 52]

ten organs casandria. By dormancy is meant their want of reason,

and muteness and blindness express respectively the want of their

faculties of sensation and action, inertness means here the want

of mental action.)

12. Ráma rejoined:—O sir, that best knowest the knowables!

that the intellect which remains as unshaken as a fixed

tree, with its reliance in the unity and without its knowledge

of duality, approximates its perfection and approaches very

near to its liberation (contrary to what thou sayest now, regarding

impossibility of the dormant minds arriving to its freedom).

13. Vasishtha replied: Ráma! we call that to be the perpetual

liberation of the soul, which follows persuasion of one

common entity, after its rational investigation into the natures

of all other things and their false appearances. (or else the blind

torpidity of the irrational yogi, amounts rather to his bondage

to ignorance than the liberation of his soul from it).

14. A man is then only said to have reached to his state of

solity kaivalya, when he understands the community of all existence

in the unity, and forsakes his desire for this thing and that.

(But is said in sundry places of this work that the abandonment

of the knowledge of the subjective and as well as of the objective,

which constitutes the true liberation of the soul; which means

the taking of the subject and object of thought and all other

duties in nature in one self-existent unity and not to forget them

all at once). (So says Sadi, when I turned out duality from my

door I came to knowledge of one in all).

15. One is then said to recline in Brahma who is inclined to his

spiritual Contemplation, after his investigation of divine knowledge

in the sástras, and his discussion on the subject in the

company of the learned doctors in divinity. (The unlearned

religionist is either a zealot or an opiniatre—abhakta tatwa

jnáni).

16. One who is dormant in his mind and has the seed of his

desire lying latent in his heart, resembles an unmoving tree,

bearing the vegetative seed of future regenerations (transmigrations)

within its bosom.

[Pg 53]

17. All those men are called blocks who liken the blocks of

wood and stone, and to be like brains who lack their brain

work, and whose desires are gone to the rack. These men

possessing the property of dulness as of dull matter, are subject

to the pains of repeated births, recurring like the repetends of

their remaining desires. (The doctrine of transmigration is, that

the wish being father to the thought, every one meets with his

lot in his next birth, as it is thought of or fostered by him in

his present life. [Sanskrit: vásaná eva pratyávrittikáranam]).

18. All stationary and immovable things, which are endowed

with the property of dull matter, are subject to repeated reproductions.

(Owing to the reproductive seed which is inborn in

them, like the inbred desire of living beings), though they may

long continue in their dormant state (like images of saints in

their trance).

19. Know O pure hearted Ráma! the seed of desire is as

inbred in the breasts of plants, as the flowers are inborn in the

seeds and the earthenwares are contained in the clay. (The

statue says, Aristotle lies hid in the wood, and the gem in the

stone, and require only the chisel of the carver and statuary to

bring them out).

20. The heart that contains the fruitful seed of desire in it,

can never have its rest or consummation even in its dormant

state; but this seed being burnt and fried to its unproductiveness

(by means of divine knowledge), it becomes productive of

sanctity, though it may be in its full activity.

21. The heart that preserves the slightest remnant of any

desire in it, it again filled with its full growth to luxuriance;

as the little remainder of fire or the enemy, and of a debt and

disease, and also of love and hatred, is enough to involve one in

his ruin as a single drop of poison kills a man. (This stanza

occurs in Chánakyá's Excerpta in another form, meaning to say

that, "No wise man should leave their relic, lest they grow as

big as before" [Sanskrit: punasva bhavati tasmádyasmát sesam na kárayet]).

22. He who has burnt away the seed of his desire from any

thing, and looks upon the world with an even eye of indifference,[Pg 54]

is said to be perfectly liberated both in his embodied state in

this earth, as also in his disembodied or spiritual form of the

next world, and is no more subjected to any trouble (Subjection

to desire is deadly pain and freedom from it is perfect bliss. Or as

it is said:—Desire is a disease and its want is ease. [Sanskrit: áshabhai param dukham

nairáshyam paramamsukham]. Again our hopes and fears in constant strife, are

both the bane of pig man life [Sanskrit: bhayáshá jívapásháh] &c.)

23. The intellectual power which enveloped by the seed of

mental desire, supplies it with moisture for its germinating both

in the forms of animals and vegetables every where (i.e. The

divine power which inheres in the embryos of our desires,

causes them to develope in their various forms).

24. This inherent power resides in the manner of productive

power in the seeds of living beings, and in that of inertness

in dull material bodies. It is of the nature of hardness in

all solid substances, and that of tenuity in soft and liquid

things. (i.e. The divine power forms the particular properties

of things, and causes them to grow and remain in their own

ways).

25. It exhibits the ash colour in ashes, and shows the particles

in the dust of the earth; it shows the sableness of all swarthy

things, and flashes in the whiteness of the glittering blade.

26. It is the spiritual power which assumes the communal

form and figure, in which it resides in the community of material

things, as a picture, a pot (ghata-pata) and the like. (The

vanity of the unity is expressed in the words of Veda "the one

in many." [illegible Sanskrit])

27. It is in this manner that the divine spirit fills the

whole phenomenal world, in its universally common nature, as

overspreading cloud, fills the whole firmament in the rainy

season.

28. I have thus expounded to you the true nature swarúpa—of

the unknown Almighty power, according to my best

understanding, and as far as it had been ascertained by the

reasoning of the wise: that it fills all and is not the all itself,

and is the true entity appearing as no entity at all.

[Pg 55]

29. It is our want of the sight of this invisible spiritual

power, that leads us to erroneous conception of the entity of the

external world, but a slight sight of this almighty Ens, removes

all our pains in this scene of vanity.

30. It is our dimsightedness of Almighty power, which is

styled our blindness or ignorance [Sanskrit: avidyá] by the wise. It is this

ignorance which give rise to the belief of the existence of the

world, and thereby produces all our errors and misery.

31. Who is so freed from this ignorance and beholds the

glorious light of God full in his view; he finds his darkness

disappear from his sight, as the icicles of night melt away at the

appearance of solar light.

32. The ignorance of a man flies off like his dream, after he

wakes from his sleep, and wishes to recall his past vision of the

night.

33. Again when a man betakes himself to ponder well

the properties of the object before him, his ignorance flies

away from before his face, as darkness flies at the approach

of light.

34. As darkness recedes from a man, that advances to explore

into it with a lamp in his hand, and as butter is melted down

by application of heat, so is one's ignorance dispelled and

dissolved by application of the light and the rise of reason.

35. As one pursuing after darkness sees a lighted torch in

his hand, sees but a blaze of light before, and no shadow of darkness

about him; so the inquirer after truth perceives the light of

truth, shining to his face and no vestige of untruth left behind

him.

36. In this manner doth ignorance (Avidyá) fly away and

disappear at the sight of the light of reason; and although an

unreal nothing, she appears as something real, wherever there

is the want of reason. (Hence all unreasoning men are the most

ignorant).

37. As the great mass of thick darkness, disappears into nothing

at the advance of light; it is in the same manner that the substantiality

of gross ignorance, is dissolved into unsubstantiality[Pg 56]

at the advancement of knowledge. (so the advancement of inductive

science, has put flight the dogmatic doctrines of old).

38. Unless one condescends to examine in a thing, it is impossible

for him to distinguish it from another (as the shell from

silver and rope for the snake); but upon his due examination of

it, he comes to detect the fallacy of his prejudgment (as those

of the silver and snake in the shell and the rope).

39. He who stoops to consider whether the flesh or blood

or bones of his bodily frame, constitutes his personality, will at

once perceive that he is none of these, and all these are distinct

from himself. (The personality of a man consisting in his soul,

and not in any part or whole of his body).

40. And as nothing belonging to the person makes the persons,

but something beyond it that forms one's personality; so

nothing in the world from its first to last is that spirit, but some

thing which has neither its beginning nor end, is the eternal and

infinite spirit. (The same is the universal soul).

41. Thus ignorance being got over there remains nothing

whatever, except the one eternal soul which is the adorable

Brahma and substantial whole.

42. The unreality of ignorance is evident from the negative

term of negation and ignoring of its essentiality, and requires

no other proof to disprove its essence; as the relish of a thing is

best proved by the tongue and no other organ of sense. (The

term Avidyá signifying the want of vidyá—knowledge and existence

[Sanskrit: vidyámánatá]).

43. There is no ignorance nor inexistence except the intelligence

and existence of God, who pervade over all visible and invisible

natures, which are attributed with the appellations of

existence and inexistence. (The whole being God (to Pan—the

All) there is no existence or inexistence without Him).

44. So far about Avidyá, which is not the knowledge but

ignorance of Brahma; and it is the dispersion of this ignorance

which brings us to the knowledge of God.

45. The belief of this, that and all other things in the world,

are distant and distinct from Brahma, is what is called Avidyá

or ignorance of him; but the belief that all things visible in the[Pg 57]

world, is the manifestation of omnipresence, causes the removal

of ignorance, by presenting us to the presence of God.

NOTE TO CHAPTER X.

The following lines of the English poet, will be found fully to illustrate the

divine attribute of omnipresence in the pantheistic doctrine of Vedánta and

Vasishtha, as shown in this chapter et passen.

All are but parts, of one stupendous whole,

Whose body nature is, and God the soul;

That, changed through all, and yet in all the same;

Great in the earth, as in the etherial frame;

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze;

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;

Lives through all life, extends through all extent,

Spreads undivided, operates unspent;

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part.

As full as perfect, in a pair as heart:

As full as perfect, in vile man that mourns,

As in the rapt seraph, that adores and burns;

To him no high, now, no great, no small;

He fills, he bounds, connects and equals all.

Pope's Mortal Essays I. IX.

[Pg 58]

CHAPTER XI.

Ascertainment of Living Liberation.

Argument.—Instances of Living Liberation in Hari, Hara and others,

and its consisting in the oecumenical knowledge of the one Brahma in

all and every thing.

VASISHTHA said:—I tell you again and repeatedly O pious

Ráma! for your understanding, that you can never know

the spirit without your constant habit, of contemplating on it

in your self-cogitation. (So the Sruti. Atmá vára, mant

avyam, "the soul is to be constantly thought upon" and so

also the Vedánta aphorism "asakrit upadesat" the soul is known

by repeated instructions on spiritual knowledge).

2. It is gross ignorance which is known as nescience, and it

becomes compact by the accumulated erroneous knowledge of

previous births and past life (namely; the errors of the dualities

of matter and spirit and of the living and Supreme soul, and

the plurality of material and sensible objects).

3. The perceptions of the external and internal senses of

body, both in the states of sensibility and insensibility, are also

the causes of great errors or ignorance crasse of embodied beings.

(i.e. The sensible perceptions are preventives of spiritual

knowledge which transcends the senses and is called [Sanskrit: atíndriya]).

4. Spiritual knowledge is far beyond the cognizance of the

senses, and is only to be arrived at after subjection of the five

external organs of sense, as also of the mind which is the sixth

organ of sensation.

5. How then is it possible to have a sensible knowledge of the

spirit, whose essence is beyond the reach of our faculties of

sense, and whose powers transcend those of all our sensible

organs? (i.e. Neither is the spirit perceptible by our senses, nor

does it perceive all things by senses like ours). So the Srutis

He is not to be perceived by the faculties of our sense, who[Pg 59]

does and perceives all with our organs. ([Sanskrit: na tatra vaggacchati namani

ápanipádau yavanagtahítá]).

6. You must cut off this creeper of ignorance, which has

grown up in the hollow of the tree of your heart, with the

sharp sword of your knowledge, if you should have your consummation

as an adept in divine wisdom.

7. Conduct yourself Ráma! in the same manner in the practice

of your spiritual knowledge, as the king Janaka does with

his full knowledge of all that is knowable to man.

8. He is quite confident in his certain knowledge of the

main truth, both when he is employed in his active duties, in his

waking state as well as when he remains quiet at his leisure.

(The end of knowledge is to know God, and to rely on him both

in busy and in active life).

9. It was by his reliance on this certain truth, that Hari

was led to the performance of his various acts in his repeated

births or incarnations. (A god in human flesh does his works

as a god).

10. May you, Ráma! be certain of the main truth, which conducted

the three-eyed god Siva in the company of his fair consort;

and which led the dispassionate Brahmá to the act of creation.

(i.e. the passionate and unimpassioned and those that

are active or inactive are equally assured of this truth).

11. It was the assurance of this eternal verity, which led

the preceptors of the gods and demons, even Brihaspati and

Bhargava, in their duties; and which guide the sun and moon in

their courses, and even directs the elements of fire and air in

the wonted ways.

12. This truth was well known to the host of Sages, including

Narada and Pulastya, Angira and Pracheta, and Bhrigu

Krutu, Atri and Suka, as it is known to me also.

13. This is the certainty which has been arrived at by all

other learned Brahmans and Sages, and this is the firm belief

of every body, that has been liberated in his life time.

14. Ráma said:—Tell me truly, O venerable sir, the true

nature of the truth, on which the great gods and wisest sages,[Pg 60]

have grounded their belief, and became freed from their sorrow

and grief (in this world of sorrow and tears).

15. Vasishtha replied:—Hear me tell you! O worthy prince

that art great in arms as in thy knowledge of all things, the

plain truth in reply to your question, and the certitude arrived at

by all of them (named above).

16. All these spacious worlds, that you behold to be spread

all about you, they are all that One or on, and are situated in the

immensity of Brahma. (In their real or spiritual nature, and

after obliteration of the erroneous forms in which they appear

to you. Their phenomenal appearances, being but the misconceptions

of our errors).

17. Brahma is the intellect, and the same is this world and

all its animate and inanimate creatures also; Myself and

Brahma and so art thou thyself, and such are all our friends and

foes beside us.

18. Brahma is the tripletime of the past, present and future,

all which are comprehended in his eternity; in the manner of

the continuity of waves, billows and surges, contained in the

immensity of the ocean.

19. It is thus the same Brahma that appears to us in all the

various forms of our perception, and in the different shapes of

the actor, action and its act, as those of the feeder, feeding and

the food, and of the receiver, reception and the thing received.

(There being but the only unity of God, the same is changed to

all forms of action and passion and so says the poet "that change

through all and yet in all the same" and also unvaried in all

with a varied name. This the vedánta says to be the vivarta

rúpa or the one changed in many form vividha many, and varta

let vertuus changed [Sanskrit: paribatta].)

20. Brahma expands in himself by his power of evolution,

or unfolding himself by his vivarta sakti; Hence He would be

our enemy if he would do any thing unfavourable into us. (God

is good and never does any evil to any one: all he does in and

to himself)?

21. Thus Brahma being situated and employed with himself,

does nothing aught of good or evil to any other. The attribution[Pg 61]

of passions to him, is as the planting of a tree in empty air.

(God is not capable of any human attribute, as it is usual with

anthropomorphists to load him with).

22. How very delighted are they that are dead to their desires,

to reflect on this truth, that they are continually living and

moving in the all pervading Brahma. (In Him we live and

move).

23. All things are full of Brahma, and there is naught of

pleasure or pain herein; Brahma resides in his self-same all and

is pleased with all in himself. (The one is full of bliss with all

in himself).

24. The Lord is manifest in his Lordship, and I am no other

person beside himself; this pot and that painting and I myself,

are full with the self-same Brahma.

25. Hence it is in vain to speak of our attachment or aversion

to worldliness, since we bear our bodies and dare to die in

Brahma only. (It is that something, for which we bear to live,

and dare to die, Pope).

26. Our bodies being the abodes of Brahma, it is as false to

think to our bodily pains, as also of our pleasure in bodily enjoyments,

as to take a rope for a serpent. (Hence we can have no

sense of our pleasure or pain, as long we know ourselves to be

situated in Brahma and He in us).

27. How say you, that this or that is your doing, when you

have the power of doing nothing. (The fluctuation of the billows

on the surface of the sea, cannot agitate the waters of the

deep below).

28. Myself, thyself and himself, and all others, are but the

breaths of the universal spirit; and they heave and then subside

to rest as waves of the sea; but the spirit of God, like the

water of the deep, neither rises nor falls as ourselves or the

fleeting waves at any time.

29. All persons returning to Brahma after their death, have

their bodies also reduced into Him and retain their personal

identity in Him in the same manner, as the moving and

unmoving waters rest alike in the sea.

[Pg 62]

30. All moving and unmoving souls and bodies, rest alike

in the supreme Brahma; as the Jíva and its form reside in God,

and the whirling and still waters remain in the same sea.

31. The soul and the body, are the two states of the likeness

and unlikeness of Brahma, the one is the living soul of bodies,

and the other is the gross body itself.

32. Irrational souls, that are ignorant of this truth, are

verily subject to delusion; but the rational souls are not so, but

enjoy their full bliss on earth, while the other is ever doomed

to misery.

33. The blind behold the world all dark, while the eye-sighted

find it fully bright and shining; so the wise are blessed

with the knowledge of the one soul of the whole, while the

ignorant are immerged in misery, by their want of such

knowledge.

34. As the darkness of the night, presents its goblins and

spectres, to the sight of children only, and not those of the

grown up and adult; so the world presents its delusions to

ignorant and never to the wise, who behold one Brahma only in

all things before them.

35. There is nothing here that lives of itself, nor dies away

to nothing; all equally exist in God at all time, and nothing is

doomed to be born or perish herein to happiness or misery.

36. All beings are situated in the universal soul, as the

waves in the vast expanse of the ocean, therefore it is erroneous

to say the one reside in the spirit, and another to be beside it.

37. As there is an inborn light in the crystal, which is

capable of reflecting a variety of rays, so the spirit of God

dwells in his own spirit in the form of the universe, showing

various shapes to view by the inner light of the spirit.

38. As the particles of water flying from the waves, fall

into the sea and mix with its body of water; so the bodies of

dying people, fall into the body of Brahma, wherein they

subsisted in their life time. (So there is neither an increase

or diminution of the essence of Brahma, by the birth or death

or increase or decrease of beings in the world).

39. There is nobody nor being beside the being of Brahma,[Pg 63]

as there is no wave nor foam or froth of the sea beside the water

of the deep.

40. As the billows and waves, the surges and eddies, and

their froths and foams, and bubbles and minute particles, are all

formations of water in the great body of waters; so are all

beings but productions of the spirit in the Infinite spirit. (All

matter is reduced to the spirits, and the spirits are consolidated

to material substances by chemical process).

41. All bodies with their various modes, and organs of sense

and their several functions, and all visible objects and their

growth and decay, together with every thing conducing to our

happiness and misery, and all other energies and their gains,

are the works of Brahma in himself. (i.e. they are the self

reflective acts of gods and not done for the sake of others).

42. The production of these various beings in esse, is from

the essence of Brahma; as the formation of different ornaments,

is from the substance of gold. There is no other formal cause

or formation distinct from Brahma, and the distinction of the

cause and its creation, is the erroneous conception of the ignorant.

43. The mind, understanding, egoism, and the elemental

atoms, and the organs of sense, are all the various forms of

Brahma; wherefore there is cause of our joy or grief.

44. The words I, thou, he, and this and that, as also the

terms of the mind and matter, are all significant of the self-same

Brahma átmátmani, in the same manner as the roaring of

a cloud in the hills, resounds in a hundred echoes through their

caverns. (All words applied to every thing, relate to the one

self-same Brahma who is all in all to pan).

45. Brahma appears as an unknown stranger to us, through

our ignorance of him, as the visions seen in a dream by our

mind itself, appear foreign to us. (i.e. Our belief in the visibles

is the cause of our disbelief in the invisible God; as our familiarity

with the objects of our waking state, makes us reject our

visionary dreams as false).

46. Ignorance of Brahmá as Brahma or what he is, makes

men to reject divine knowledge altogether; as our ignorance of[Pg 64]

the quality of gold causes us to cast it off dross. (Brahma

to the brute is, as the gem in the dung hill cast away by the

silly cock).

47. Brahma is known as the Supreme spirit and sole Lord,

by those who are acquainted with divine knowledge; but he is

said to be unknown and involved in ignorance by them that

are ignorant of Him.

48. Brahma being known as Brahma, becomes manifested

such in a moment; just as gold when known as such, is taken in

due esteem.

49. Those who are versed in divine knowledge, know Brahma

as without a cause and causing nothing by himself, and

that he is free from decay, and is the Supreme spirit and sole

Lord of all.

50. He who can meditate in himself, on the omnipotence of

Supreme spirit of Brahma; comes to behold him as such in a

short time, even without a leader to guide him in his spiritual

knowledge (one's own faith in Divine Omnipotence, is the

surest means to the sight of his Maker).

51. The want of divine knowledge, that is called the ignorance

of the ignorant; whereas it is the knowledge of God, that

constitutes the true knowledge which removes the ignorance.