Chapter 189 — The Creation of Brahma’s Thoughts
1 Vasishta continued:—
This spiritual body, as Prajapati Brahma, the primeval creator of all, being possessed of volition, by an act of chance and of its own motion, comes to think and brood on its thoughts. 2 It continues to remain in the same state as it is ever conscious of in itself and sees of its own nature this universe exposed before it as it had in his mind, nor is there any wonder in this. 3 Now this viewer, Brahma, and his viewing and the view of the world, must either all be false or they must all be true, having the spirit of Brahma at its foundation.
4 Rama asked, “Now sage, please tell me. How can this spiritual and shadowy sight of the primeval lord of creation be realized in its solidified state? What reality can there be in the vision of a dream?”
5 Vasishta replied:—
The spiritual view is ever apparent by itself within ourselves. Our continuous and ceaseless sight of it gives it the appearance of a solid reality. 6 As the sights in our dreams come to be realized by our continuous thinking about them, so the spiritual appears as real by our constant habit of thinking them as such. 7 The constant thought of the reality of our spiritual body makes it appear as a real object to our sight, just as a deer’s constant craving after water makes it appear in a mirage of a parched desert. 8 The sight of this world, like every other fallacy, has misled us, like the poor thirsting deer, to the misconception of water in the mirage. This and all other unrealities appear as real ones in our ignorance.
9 Many spiritual and intellectual objects, like a great many unreal things, are taken as material and real by the eagerness of their desires and ignorant admirers. 10 The impression that “I am this” and “that one is another” and that “this is mine” and “that is his” and that “these are the hills and skies about us” are all as false as a conception of reality in our dreams and the false phantoms of the brain.
11 The spiritual body was at first conceived in the sight of the prime creator of all, Brahma, as the material form of the cosmic egg. 12 The living soul of Brahma, being born of the cosmic egg in a corporeal body, forgot, or rather, abandoned thinking of his incorporeal intellectuality and thought himself as composed of his material body. He looked into his thought and thought that this thought was his body and the recipient of his soul. 13 Then he becomes confined in that body by his belief that his thought is a factual reality. Then he thinks of many things within himself, and goes on seeking and running after them all.
14 Then this god makes many symbolic sounds and forms, invents words for names and actions, and at last, upon his utterance of the mystic syllable Aum, the Vedas rang out and sang in currents of many words. 15 Then through the medium of those sacred words, the god ordained the ordinances for the conduct of all mankind. Everything turned out to be as he wished and thought it to be in his own mind.
16 Whatever exists in any manner is Brahma himself. Yet nobody perceives it as such owing to everyone’s predominant error of believing the unreal world to be a real existence. 17 All things from the great Brahma down are only false appearances like those of dreams and a magic show, yet this spiritual reality is utterly lost to sight under the garb of material unreality. 18 There is nothing such as materiality anywhere at anytime. All is only spiritual which, by our habitual mode of thinking and naming, is said to be substantial, elemental and material.
19 This, our fallacy of materiality, has come to us from our very source in Brahma, the creator who entertained the false idea of the material world and transmitted this error even to the minds of the wise and very great souls. 20 How is it possible, O Rama, for the intelligent soul to be confined in a piece of earth? All this must either be an illusory scene or a representation of Brahma himself. 21 There can be no other cause of this world except the eternal causality of Brahma who is self-existent without any action or causation of himself. The Supreme Soul is wholly devoid of the attributes of cause and effect. What can this world be other than an extension of the Divine Essence?