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VICHAR MALA.
99
"When a theosophist knows Self in this manner (f. e., each individuated non-distinct Brahma am I) what more desire can he have for whose gratification he is to continue attached to his body; [and since he has no more any desire, its remaining ungratified brings him no pain]."
If from internal cognition of the felicity of Self, a theosophist regards this material expanse as full of it, a like experience of its felicity ought to be felt by worldly persons as well as worshippers?
Happiness from material objects is
(the province of a man of) world;
That of prayer, is serving Hari; Of Brahma, is liberated in life, Freed from all desires.*
A man of the world is delighted with sensuous enjoyment, -garland, sandal, women etc.,-which is said to be short in duration; a religious man feels pleasure from worship when his mental function assumes the modification of the object worshipped or meditated; and inasmuch as it depends upon individual effort, it is not constant. Thus then, save and beyond the two conditions mentioned, there can be no perception of happiness to them, but with 'one liberated in life' it is otherwise; his felicity knows no break or interruption, it is constant: because from an absence of all sorts of impressions (better still, desires) the blissfulness of Brahma [ denuded of the envelopment of norance] is discovered, and as that
* Vasana popularly means desire but in the strict nomenclature of Vedantic writing it has been used to signify impression derived from memory-knowledge or present consciousness of past perceptions. I have retained both of them, for the fact that the author is writing in the popular Hindi dialect, and his commentator in the learned language of Spiritual Philosophy.
