Chapter LXV - Nature of the living soul

Argument. The mind and its operations, the subjective and objective, and lastly the Divine Intellect.

Vasishtha continued:—

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The Mind sprang at first from the supreme cause of all; this mind is the active soul which resides in the supreme soul (the Ens entium).

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The mind hangs in doubt between what is and what is not, and what is right and what is wrong. It forgets the past like the scent of a fleeting odor by its wilful negligence. (Unmindfulness is the cause of forgetfulness).

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Yet there is no difference between these seeming contraries; because the dualities of Brahma and the soul, the mind and maya, the agent and act, and the phenomenal and noumenal worlds, all blend together in the unity of God. (All seeming differences converge in unvarying Mind).

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There is but one Universal soul displaying its Intellect as a vast ocean, and extending its consciousness as a sea of unlimited extent. (These extend to all beings in the universe).

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What is true and real shines forth amidst all that is untrue and unreal; so does the subjective essence of the mind subsist amidst all its airy and fleeting dreams in sleep. And thus the world is both true and untrue as regards its subsistence in God and its external phenomena. (The substance is real but the appearance is false).

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The erroneous conception either of the reality or unreality of the outer world, does not spring in the mind, which is conscious of its operations only, and of no outward phenomena. This conception is like the deception of a magic show, and is concomitant with all sensuous minds.

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It is the long habit of thinking the unreal world as real, that makes it appear as such, to the unthinking, as a protracted sleep makes its visionary scenes appear as true to the dreaming soul. It is the want of reflection, that causes us to mistake a man in a block of wood.

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Want of spiritual light misleads the mind from its rationality, and makes it take its false imaginations for true; as children are impressed with a belief of ghosts in shadows, through their fear and want of true knowledge.

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The mind is inclined of its own tendency, to assign a living soul (and also a body) to the Divine Spirit; which is devoid of appellation, form or figure, and is beyond comprehension (and is styled the Incomprehensible).

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Knowledge of the living state (personality), leads to that of Egoism which is the cause of intellection. This again introduces the sensations and finally the sensible body. (Ego is the subject of thoughts).

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This bondage of the soul in body, necessitates a heaven and hell for want of its liberation and then the acts of the body, become the seeds of our endless transmigrations in this world.

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As there is no difference between the soul, intellect and life, so there is no duality in the living soul and intellect, nor in the body and its acts, which are inseparable from each other.

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Acts are the causes of bodies, and the body is not the mind; the mind is one with egoism, and the ego is the living soul. The living soul is one with the Divine Intellect and this soul is all and the lord God of all.