Chapter LXXVI: Section III: Kaivalya or Mental Abstraction

52. But as the phenomenals appear as no other than real to their observer, I will O Ráma! cleanse them now from thy mind as they do the soil from a mirror.

53. As the disappearance of an appearance makes the observer no observer of it, know such to be the state of the abstraction of the mind from whatever is real or unreal in the world. (This is called _Kevalíbháva_ or _non-chalance_ of all things).

54. This state being arrived, all the passions of the soul, and the desires of the mind, will be at rest, as torrents of rivers at the calm ensuing upon the stillness of the wind.

55. It is impossible that things having the forms of space, earth and air (_i.e._ material objects) will present the same features in the clear light (of induction), as they do to our open sight.

56. Thus when the observer comes to know the unreality of the phenomena of the three worlds, as well as of his own entity, it is then that his pure soul attains to the knowledge of _kaivalya_ or solity of divine existence.

57. It is such a mind that reflects the image of God in itself as in a mirror; while all others are as blocks of stone, and incapable of receiving any reflexion at all.

58. After suppression of the sense of _ego_ and _tu_ (or both the subjective and objective knowledge), and the error of the reality of the outer world the beholder becomes abstracted and remains without vision of external things in his sitting posture.

59. Ráma rejoined:—If the perception of entity is not to be put down, nor an entity become a non-entity nor when I cannot view the visibles (which are the causes of our error), as non-entities;

60. Then tell me O Bráhman! how to uproot this disease of our eagerness for the visibles from the mind, which bewilders the understanding, and afflicts us with a train of troubles.

61. Vasishtha replied:—Now hear my advice, Ráma, for the suppression of this phantom of phenomenon, whereby it will surely die away and become utterly extinct.

62. Know Ráma, that nothing that is, can ever be destroyed or become extinct; and though you remove it, yet it will leave its seed or trace in the mind.

63. This seed is the memory of such things, which reopens the ideas of the visibles in the mind, expanding themselves in the fallacious notions of the forms of big worlds and skies, mountains and oceans.

64. These (wrong notions) called _doshas_ or faults and defects of understanding, are obstacles in the way to liberation; but they do not affect the sages who are found to be liberated.

65. Again if the world and all other things are real existences (as the Sánkhyas maintain): yet they cannot confer liberation on any one; because the visibles, whether they are situated within or without us are perishable themselves.

66. Learn therefore this dreadful proposition (solemn truth), which will be fully explained to you in the subsequent parts of this work. (Note:—A dreadful dogma it is to physicists and “_ádivádis_” or asserters of the _encipientes mundi_ or beginning of the world).

67. That all things appearing in the forms of vacuity, elementary bodies, the world, and _ego et tu_, are non-entities, and have no meanings in them.

68. Whatever is seen apparent before us, is no other but the supreme Brahma himself, and his undecaying and imperishable essence.

69. The plenitude of creation is an expansion of his plenum, and the quiet of the universe rests in his quietude. It is his _beom_ which is the substance of vacuum, and it is his immensity that is the substratum of the immense cosmos.

70. Nothing visible is real, and there is neither any spectator nor spectacle here. There is nothing as vacuity or solidity in nature, but all this is but a piece of extended Intelligence.

71. Ráma rejoined:—The adages relating the grinding of stones by the son of a barren woman, the horns of a hare, and the dancing of a hill with its extended arms;

72. And the oozing of oil from sand, the reading (of books) by dolls of marble, and the roaring of clouds in a painting, and such others are applicable to your words (of the reality of an unreal essence of God).

73. I see this world to be full of diseases, deaths and troubles, mountains, vacuities and other things, and how is it sir, that you tell me of their non-existence?

74. Tell me Sir, how you call this world to be unsubstantial, unproduced and inexistent, that I may be certain of this truth.

75. Vasishtha replied:—Know Ráma, that I am no inconsistent speaker, and hear me explain to you how the unreality appears as real, as the son of a barren woman has come to rumour.

76. All this was unproduced before, and did not exist in the beginning of creation. It comes to appearance from the mind like that of a city in a dream. (_i.e._ They are all but creations of the mind and fancy).

77. The mind also was not produced in the beginning of creation and was an unreality itself. Hear me tell you therefore, how we come to a notion of it.

78. This unreal mind spreads by itself the false and changing scenes of the visible world, just as we dream of changeful unrealities as true in a state of dreaming. (Here the dreaming philosopher sees dreams in his dream).

79. It then exerts its volition in the fabrication of the body and spreads far and wide the magic scene of the phenomenal world.

80. The mind by its potentiality of vacillation has many actions of its own, as those of expansion, saltation, and motion, of craving, roving, diving and seizing, and many other voluntary efforts (the causes of physical operations).