Mokshadharma Parva — Individual soul, Nature and Supreme Soul

Janaka said O holy one, it has been said that the relation between male and female is like that which exists between the Indestructible and the Destructible.

Without a male, a female can never conceive. Without a female, a male also can never create a form.

On account of their union with each other, and each depending upon the qualities of the other, forms are seen to spring up. This is the case with all orders of being.

Through each other's union for purposes of (sexual) intercourse, and through each depending upon the qualities of the other, forms (of living creatures) flow in seasons. I shall tell you the indications thereof.

Hear what the qualities are which belong to the father and what those are which belong to mother. Bones, sinews, and marrow, O twiceborn one, we know, originate from the father.

Skin, flesh, and blood, we hear, originate from the mother. Even this, O foremost of twice-born ones, is what may be read of in the Veda and other scriptures.

Whatever is read as said in the Vedas and in other scriptures is considered as authority. The authority, again, of the Vedas and other scriptures, is eternal.

If Nature and Soul be always united together in this way by each opposing and cach depending on the other's qualities, I see, O holy one, that Liberation cannot exist. You, O holy one, are gifted with spiritual vision so that you see all things as if they are present before your eyes. If, therefore, there be any direct evidence of the existence of Liberation, do speak of it to me.

We are desirous of acquiring Liberation. Indeed, we wish to acquire That which is auspicious, bodiless, not subject to decrepitude, eternal, beyond the perception of the senses, and having nothing superior to it.

Vashishtha said What you say about the characteristics of the Vedas and the other scriptures is even so. You understand those marks in the way in which they should be understood.

O lord of kings, you only understand aright the texts of the Vedas and other scriptures without understanding the true senses or meaning of those texts, remembering them fruitlessly.

Indeed, one who remembers a work without understanding their meaning, is said to carry an useless load. He, however, who understands the true meaning of a treatise, is said to have studied that work to purpose.

Asked about the meaning of a text, one should communicate that meaning which he has understood by a careful study.

That person of dull intelligence who refuses to explain the meanings of text in the midst of an assemblage of the learned, that person of foolish understanding, never succeeds in explaining the meaning aright.

An ignorant wight, going to explain the true meaning of treatises, incurs ridicule. Even those endued with a knowledge of the Soul have to incurs ridicule on such occasions.

Listen now to me, O king, as to how the subject of Liberation has been explained among the great persons conversant with the Sankhya and the Yoga Systems of Philosophy.

That which the Yogins behold is exactly what the Sankhyas strive after to attain. He who sees the Sankhya and the Yoga Systems to be one and the same is said to be gifted with intelligence.

Skin, flesh, blood, fat, bile, marrow, and sinews, and these senses, which you were speaking to me, exist.

Objects originate from objects; the senses from the senses. From body one acquires a body, as a seed is obtained from seed.

When the Supreme Being is without senses, without seed, without matter, without body, He must be divested of all qualities; and on account of His being so, how, indeed, can He have qualities of any kind?

Ether and other qualities originate from the qualities of Goodness, Darkness, and Ignorance, and disappear in the end in them. Thus the qualities arise from Nature and disappear in Nature.

Skin, flesh, blood, fat, bile, marrow, bones, and sinews,-these eight, that are made of Nature, know, O king, may sometimes be produced by the vital seed alone (of the male).

The Individual Soul and the universe are said to both partake of Nature characterised by the three qualities of Goodness, Darkness, and Ignorance. The Supreme Soul is different from both the Individual Soul and the universe.

As the seasons, though having no forms, are nevertheless inferred from the appearance of particular fruits and flowers, similarly, Nature, though formless, is inferred from the Principles of Greatness and the rest that originate from it.

Thus, from the existence of Consciousness in body, the Supreme Soul, shorn of all qualities whatever and perfectly stainless, is inferred.

Without beginning and destruction, without end, the seer of all things, and auspicious, that Soul, only on account of its Oneness with the body and other qualities, comes to be taken as invested with qualities.

Those persons who are truly conversant with qualities know that only objects endued with qualities can have attributes but that That which is above all qualities can have none.

When the Individual Soul conquers all qualities born of Nature and which it assumes under mistake, only then does it see the Supreme Soul.

Only the highest Rishis conversant with the Sankhya and the Yoga Systems know that Supreme Soul which Sankhyas and Yogins and believers in all other Systems say is beyond the Understanding, which is considered as Knower and endued with the highest wisdom on account of its renouncing all consciousness of identi-fication with nature, which is above the attribute of Ignorance or Error, which is Unmanifest, which is beyond all attributes, which is called the Supreme, which is dissociated from all attributes, which ordains all things, which is Eternal and Immutable, which overrules Nature and all her attributes, and which, getting over twenty-four topics of enquiry, forms the twenty-fifth.

When men of knowledge, who stand in fear of birth, of the several states of living consciousness, and of death, succeed in knowing the Unmanifest, they succeed in understanding the Supreme Soul at the same time.

An intelligent man considers the unity of the Individual Soul with the Supreme Soul as consistent with the scriptures and as perfectly correct; while the man shorn of intelligence considers the two as different from each other. This forms the distinction between the man of intelligence and the man that is shorn of it.

The Characteristics of both the Destructible and Indestructible have now been said to you. The indestructible is Oneness or Unity, while multiplicity or variety is said to be the Destructible.

When one begins to study and understand property the twenty-five topics of enquiry, one then understands that the oneness of the Soul is consistent with the scriptures and its multiplicity is what is opposed to them.

These are the several characteristics of what is included in the list of topics is beyond that number and forms and twenty-sixth. The study or comprehension of created things according to their aggregates (of five) is the study and comprehension of topics. Above these is That which is eternal.