Sat-darshana Bhashya (translation)

Verse 9.

धिया सहोदेति धियास्तमेति
लोकस्ततो धीप्रविभास्य एषः।
धीलोकजन्मक्षयधाम पूर्ण ।
सद्वस्तु जन्मक्षयशून्यमेकम् ॥

Thought and world together rise and together set.
Still by thought the world is lit.
In Existence Real, thought and world are formed and lost.
One and perfect, unborn is That, unending too.

The world appears and disappears with the I-thought which is the root of all thoughts, and both the world and the mind (thoughts) may be said to co-exist, to be inseparable. Yet this world’ of the senses is lit by the ’I-thought.’ For, thought represents a conscious principle and illuminates the world, the object that is illuminated or made known. As the world itself is stated to be mental in its form and is nothing but a grosser form of ’thought which is subtle, if all the thoughts are withdrawn and traced to their origin and support, then one can perceive the truth that both thought and world, subject and object, inner and outer, which appear and disappear together are really of one existence, and have a common source. Thus the latter half of the verse states ’In Existence Real, thought and world are formed and lost. Then what is the character of this Existence Real that brings forth, sustains and dissolves the subjective thought and the objective world? It is ‘One and Perfect, perfect and therefore not affected by the subtle thought and the gross world. It is ‘unborn and unending too’, while the inner (mind) and the outer (world) begin and end in It. It is substance, the cause, the material for all the subjective and objective manifestations. It is eternal, permanent and persistent and does not lose itself in its manifestations as thought in the subtle state or as thing in the gross. Though the source of the Manifold of the All, of world-expression and soul-formation, yet it is one.

NOTE:-In the commencement of the work meditation upon the existence Real, called niskala the Impersonal Brahman was enjoined and its character was suggested to be a normal supreme awareness of the self’s poise sahaja atma nistha. But the second verse suggested complete self-surrender to the Divine being, sakala brahman, the personal in a wide sense. A two-fold invocation was made in these two verses as the same Brahman can be viewed by our limited being as both Personal and Inpersonal. Then, in order to stress that really it is the one Purusha, the Spirit supreme, that becomes the world, the manifold existence, the third verse which is really the opening verse of the Shastra affirmed the cause to be a Lord of limitless power, ‘All are He’. The next verse, the fourth hastens to remove a possible misapprehension of the third verse by stating that the manifold is not the Absolute Truth of existence and that all religions begin with the triple truth of God world and soul, but find their culmination in a supreme reality, the ultimate Truth and thus reminds us of the Impersonal aspect. Thus the fifth verse proclaims that it is the exalted state of the Self alone which can transcend the ego and give us the Truth, and not all the intellectual gymnastics, the metaphysical speculations, the Shastraic disputations,—the whole dialectical machinery that is set to work to bring out the Truth for our realisation. Thus it appeals to the earnest mind and directs it to turn to the Self by means of nistha, some discipline of the inner life. In the next verse it is admitted that God, world and soul have all forms presented to the jiva; of whose existence each of us is directly and immediately aware, the soul that is embodied: but this is followed by the statement that these are really formless in the formless Ultimate Truth, the one supreme existence that transcends all forms. Thus this Shastra reminds us then and there of the truth that there is no real opposition between the Personal and the Impersonal, between saguna and nirguna and wherever the Personal, the iswara is mentioned, it is immediately suggested that the Impersonal aspect should not be lost sight of and that the Personal Brahman is an actual fact and must be admitted as tenable, and that the opposition between the Personal and the Impersonal aspects of Brahman, is not to be found in the One Indivisible which is both, but is a necessary creation of the analytical mind intoxicated with the pride of the subtle reasoning of its logic.

Similarly in the 7th, 8th and 9th verses, the Shastra proclaims the identity of the Individual with the Universal and suggests that the five-fold sheath or body of the jiva or the soul, is its five-fold world and that the five-fold universe is the body of the Lord. Then discussing the true nature of the mind as one of the five sheaths or koshas and of the world as mental in its form, it reduces the world of form to mind and mind to the I-thought and this I-thought is further traced to its source in the Supreme Reality, the One that is unborn and unending. Here it may be noted that the converse truth also is made clear that the Supreme Reality brings forth the I-thought which becomes the mind and this in its turn becomes the world of name and form.

Truth-Perception Sat-darshana is nothing but a stable poise in the Self, the Supreme Truth, by realisation of identity Tadatmya Nistha.