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Válmiki
Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 3: Utpatti-Prakarana (Evolution of the World). Chapter 63 - Immutability of the Divine Mind
Vasistha continued : The essence of Brahmā is all in all, and ever remains in every manner in every thing in all places. It is omnipotence, omniform and the lord God of all. 1
This Essence is the Spirit or Soul, whose omnipotence develops itself sometimes in the form of intellectual activity, and sometimes in the tranquility of soul. Sometimes it shows itself in the momentum of bodies, and at others in the force of the passions and emotions of the soul. Sometimes as something in the form of creation, and at another as nothing in the annihilation of the world. 2
Whenever it realises itself any where in any form or state, it is then viewed in the same manner at the same place and time. (The spirit realises itself in one form or other of its own free Will).
The absolute Omnipotence manifests itself as it likes and appears to us; and all its powers are exhibited in one form or other to our view and understandings.
These powers are of many kinds, and are primarily concentrated in the Divine Soul or Spirit. The potentialities (or potes esse) are the Active and Passive powers, also the Rational and Irrational and all others.
These varieties of powers are the inventions of the learned for their own purpose and understanding; but there is no distinction of them in the Divine Spirit. (All diversities are one and the same to the unity of God: (omne ens-to enest unum. And again, Qua ens est indivisum inse, dirsum ab omnialio).
There is no duality in reality, the difference consists in shape and not in substantiality. Thus the waves in the waters of the sea, the bracelets and wristlets formed of gold, area no more than modification of the same substances. 3
The form of a thing is said to be so and so, from its appearance only and not in its reality. The snake is affirmed of a rope, but we have neither the outward perception nor inward thought of a snake in it. Hence all appearances are delusions of sense.
It is the universal soul that shows itself in some form or other, to our deluded senses and understandings, and this also according to our different apprehensions of the samething: (as what appears as gold to one, seems as brass to another).
It is the ignorant only that understand the Omniform God, to be all forms of things; while the learned know the forms to be modifications of the various powers of the Almighty, and not the figures themselves.
Now whether the forms (of material things) be real or unreal, it is to be known that they appear to men according to their different apprehensions of those beings, which Brahmā is pleased to exhibit in any particular form to their minds and senses. 4
Footnotes
1. This is the to pan of Pantheism, that, God is All and All is God; that God and nature are one substance, and all its various modifications. (This is the doctrine of Vedānta, Plato, and Plotinus, and lately of Sufism and German philosophy)
2. This is the to on onton- the All of all; the eternal source of all existence; the Subjective as well as Objective both together.
3. All formal differences terminate in the material, and this again in the immaterial Spirit of God.
4. Some taking an abstract and other a concrete view of them, agreeably to their internal conceptions or external perceptions, of their various properties and qualities.
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