Chapter XLVII - Lecture on the density of the intellect

Argument: Interpretation of the Intellect compared with the Belfruit and carved stone and its further comparison with the Egg of a Peahen.

Vasishtha continued:—

1. [Sanskrit available]
The great category of the Intellect which is compared with the bel fruit or wood apple, contains the universe as its own matter and marrow within itself; and it broods upon the same: as in its dream (by forgetfulness of its own nature of omniscience before which everything is present).

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All space and time and action and motion being but forms of itself, there can be no distinction of them in the intellect. (Hence every part of creation and all created things, are but composite parts of the intellect).

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All words and their senses, and all acts of volition, imagination and perception, being actions of the intellect, they can not be unrealities in any respect. (Nothing proceeding from the real one is ever unreal).

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As the substance contained in a fruit, passes under the several names of the kernel, pith and marrow and seeds; so the pith and marrow of the solid intellect being but one and the same thing, takes many names according to their multifarious forms.

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A thing though the same, has yet different names according to its different states and changes of form; and as it is with the contents of a fruit, so it is with the subjects included under the intellect.

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The intellect reflects its image in the mirror of the world, as these sculptured images are exprest in a slab of stone.

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The brilliant gem of the supreme intellects produces myriads of worlds in itself; as the gem of your minds casts the reflection of every object of our desire and imagination.

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The casket of the intellect contains the spacious world, which is set in it as a big pearl of vast size; it is but a part of the other, though appearing as distinct and different from the other.

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The intellect is situated as the shining sun, to illumine all things in the world; it brings on the days and nights by turns, to show and hide them to and from our view.

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As the waters of an eddy whirl and hurl down into the vortex of the sea, so do these worlds roll and revolve in the cavity of the intellect;and though its contents are of the same kind, yet they appear as different from one another as the pulps and seeds of fruits.

11. [Sanskrit available]
The body of the stone like intellect contains the marks of whatever is existent in present creation; as also of all that is inexistent at present (i.e. the marks of all past and future creation. The omniscience of the divine intellect has all thing present before it, whether they are past and gone or to come to being hereafter).

12. [Sanskrit available]
All real essence is the substance of the apple-like Intellect, whether it is in being or not being and all objects whether in esse or non esse, obtain their form and figure according to the pith and marrow of that intellectual fruit. (All outward forms are the types of the intellectual archetype).

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As the lotus loses its own and separate entity by its being embodied in the stone, so do all these varieties of existence lose their difference by their being engrossed into the unity of the intellectual substance.

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As the diversity of the lotus changes to the identity of the stone, by its union with and entrance into its cavity; so the varieties of creation, become all one in the solid mass of the Divine Intellect.

15. [Sanskrit available]
As the mirage appears to be a sheet of water to the thirsty deer, while it is known to the intelligence to be the reflection of the solar rays on the sandy desert; so does the reality appear as unreal and the unreal as real to the ignorant; while in truth there is neither the one nor the other here, except the images of the Divine Mind.

16. [Sanskrit available]
As the body of waters fluctuates itself (owing to the fluidity of the element); so is there oscillation in the solidity of the Divine Intellect (owing to its spiritual nature).

17. [Sanskrit available]
The lotuses and conch-shells are of the same substance, as the stone in which they are carved and engraved; but the world and all its contents that contained in the intellect, are neither of the same substance nor of the same nature (because of their perishableness).

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Again the big block of stone which serves for the comparison of the divine Intellect, is itself contained in the same; and while the figures of the former are carved out of its body, those of the latter are eternally inherent in it.

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This creation of God is as bright as the autumnal sky, and it is as fair as the liquid beams of the moon. (It means to say, says the gloss, that God shines in his form of the world jagat-Brahma or God identified with the world which is the doctrine of cosmotheism).

20. [Sanskrit available]
The world is eternally situated in God, as the figures in the stone which are never effaced; the world is as inseparably connected with the Deity, as the god head of god with himself.

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There is no difference of these, as there is none between the tree and its plant; all the worlds that are seen all abouts, are not disjoined from Divine Intellect.

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These as well as the Intellect have neither their production nor destruction at any time, because of their subsistence in the spirit of God, which shows them in their various forms, as the heat of the sun exhibits a sheet of water in the sandy desert.

23. [Sanskrit available]
The world with all its solid rocks, trees and plants, dissolves into the Divine Intellect at the sight of the intelligent, as the hard hail stones are seen to melt into the liquid and pure water. (All solids vanish into subtle air).

24. [Sanskrit available]
As the water vanishes into the air, and that again into vacuum, so do all things pass away to the supreme spirit;and again it is the consolidation of the Intellect, that forms the solid substances of hills, plants and all tangible things. (Condensation as well as rarefaction, are both of them but acts of the great mind of God).

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The pith that is hidden in the minute substance, becomes the marrow in its enlarged state; so the flavor of things which is concealed in the atoms, becomes perceptible in their density with their growth.

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The power of God resides in the same manner in all corporeal things, as the properties of flavours and moisture are inherent in the vegetable creation. (Hence Brahma is said to be the pith or moisture of all—rasovaitata).

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The same power of God manifests itself in many forms in things, as the self same light of the sun shows itself in variegated colours of things, according to the constitution of their component particles.

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The supreme soul shows itself in various ways in the substance and properties of things, as the Divine Intellect represents the forms of mountains and all other things in the changeful mind.

29. [Sanskrit available]
As the soft and liquid yolk of the egg of a peahen, contains in it the toughness and various colours of the future quills and feathers; so there are varieties of all kinds inhering in the Divine Intellect, and requiring to be developed in time.

30. [Sanskrit available]
As the versicolour feathers of a peacock's train, are contained in the moisture within the egg; so the diversity of creation is ingrained in the Divine mind (as it is said in the parable of the Peahen's egg).

31. [Sanskrit available]
The judicious observer will find the one self same Brahma, to be present every where before his sight; and will perceive his unity amidst all diversity, as in the yolk of the peahen.

32. [Sanskrit available]
The knowledge of the unity and duality of God, and that of his containing the world in himself;is also as erroneous as the belief in the entity and nonentity of things. Therefore all these are to be considered as the one and same thing and identic with one another. (This is cosmotheism).

33. [Sanskrit available]
Know him as the supreme, who is the source of all entity and non-entity, and on whose entity they depend; whose unity comprises all varieties, which appear as virtual and are no real existences. (Hence the gloss deduces the corollary, that the unreal or negative is subordinate to the positive, and the variety to the unity).

34. [Sanskrit available]
Know the world to be compressed under the category of the Intellect, as the Intellect also is assimilated with the works of creation;in the same manner as is the relation of the feather and moisture, the one being the production and the other the producer of one another.

35. [Sanskrit available]
The mundane egg resembles the peahen's egg, and the spirit of God is as the yolk of that egg; it abounds with many things like the variegated feathers of the peacocks, all which serve but to mislead us to error. Know therefore there is no difference in outward form and internal spirit of the world, as there is none in the outer peacock and the inner-yolk.