Chapter LXXV: Section II: Nature of the Mind

36. Then Ráma addressed the most eloquent of sages Vasishtha, with his mellifluent words regarding the subject under investigation (the nature of the mind).

37. He said:—Tell me plainly, O venerable sir! about the form of the mind, which developed itself in all things of the universe, as they were offshoots of it (or manifestations of the mind).

38. Vasishtha replied:—Ráma! there is no form whatever of the mind, that may be seen by any body. It has nothing substantial besides its name as that of the formless and irremovable vacuity: (with which it is compared in its all-comprehensiveness, all-diffusiveness and all-pervasiveness).

39. The mind as an _ens_ or entity (sat), is not situated in the outer body (or any part of it), nor is it confined in the cavity of the inward heart or brain. But know it O Ráma, to be situated everywhere, as the all encompassing vacuum. (Being all-pervading and all-diffusive in its nature as vacuity itself).

40. This world is produced from it, and likens to the waters of the mirage. It manifests itself in the forms of its fleeting thoughts, which are as false as the appearance of secondary moons in the vapours.

41. The thinking principle is generally believed as something intermediate between the positive and negative, or real and unreal, you must know it as such and no other (_i.e._ neither material as the body, nor immaterial as the soul, but a faculty appertaining to the nature of both).

42. That which is the representative of all objects is called the mind: there is nothing besides to which the term mind is applicable.

43. Know volition to be the same as the mind, which is nothing different from the will, just as fluidity is the same with water, and as there is no difference between the air and its motion in the wind. (The inseparable property answering for its substance).

44. For wherever there is any will, there is that attribute of the mind also and nobody has ever taken the will and the mind for different things.

45. The representation of any object whether it is real or unreal is mind, and that is to be known as Brahma the great father of all.

46. The incorporeal soul in the body is called the mind, as having the sensuous knowledge or everlasting ideas of the corporeal world in itself. (_i.e._ The sentient and thinking soul is the same with mind).

47. The learned have given the several names of ignorance, intellect, mind, bondage, sin and darkness, to the visible appearance of creation.

48. The mind has no other image than that (of a receptacle and reflector of the ideas) of the visible world, which, I repeat to say, is no new creation (but a reflexion of the mind).

49. The visible world is situated in an atom of the great mind, in the same manner, as the germ of the lotus plant is contained within its seed.

50. The visible world is as innate in the all-knowing mind, as the light is inherent in the sun-beams, and velocity and fluidity are inborn in the winds and liquids.

51. But the visionary ideas of the visibles are as false and fleeting in the minds of their observers, as the form of a jewel in gold, and water in the mirage; and as wrong as the foundation of a castle in the air, and the view of a city in a dream.