40. Remain always with a calm and quiet mind, unaddicted to anything in this world; know the vanity of worldly pleasures and pains, and go on with a contented mind where ever you will. Preserve your equality, and commit yourself to an indifferent apathy to every thing. CHAPTER LI. ON THE PERCEPTION OF THE SENSIBLE OBJECTS. Argument.--Erroneous Belief in the Reality of the Body and Mind; instead of believing the unity and Entity of Brahma as All in All. Vasishtha resumed:--Ráma, you have heard me relate unto you that, even the lotus-born Brahmá who was born long before you, had been without his organs of sense at first (_i.e._ Brahmá the creative power of God, was purely a spiritual Being, and had necessarily neither a gross body nor any of its organs as we possess). 2. As Brahmá--the collective agents of creation was endued only with his consciousness--_Samvid_ for the performance of all his functions; so are all individual personalities endowed with their self-consciousness only, for the discharge of all their necessary duties. 3. Know that as the living soul, dwelling in its body in the mother's womb, comes to reflect on the actions of the senses, it finds their proper organ supplied to its body immediately. 4. Know the senses and the organs of sense to be the forms of consciousness itself, and this I have fully explained to you in the case of Brahma, who represents the collective body of all individual souls. 5. At first there was the pure consciousness in its collective-form in the Divine Intellect, and this afterwards came to be diffused in millions of individual souls from its sense of egoism. At first was the Divine soul "the I am all that I am" and afterwards became many as expressed in the Vedic text "_aham bahusyam_". 6. It is no stain to the pure universal, undivided and subjective Divine spirit, to be divided into the infinity of individual and objective souls; since the universal and subjective unity comprises in it the innumerable objective individualities which it evolves of itself. (in its self manifestation in the universe). 7. The objectivity of God does not imply his becoming either the thinking mind or the living soul; nor his assuming upon him the organic body or any elemental form. (Because the Lord becomes the object of our meditation and adoration in his spirit only). 8. He does not become the Vidyá or Avidyá--the intelligible or unintelligible, and is ever existent as appearing non-existent to the ignorant; this is called the supreme soul, which is beyond the comprehension of the mind and apprehension of the senses. 9. From Him rises the living soul as well as the thinking mind; which are resembled for the instruction of mankind, as sparks emitted from fire. 10. From whatever source ignorance (Avidyá) may have sprung, you have no need of inquiring into the cause thereof; but taking ignorance as a malady, you should seek the remedy of reasoning for its removal.