42. Whatever the intelligent soul thinks in itself in this world, it retains the ideas of the same in the mind. Every thing is judged by one’s consciousness of it, as the same thing is thought as poison by one, what is believed to be nectar by another. CHAPTER LXXXXVII. ON THE RARITY AND RETIREDNESS OF RELIGIOUS RECLUSES. Argument:—The truth of _catholicity_, _carnality_ of Worldly people, and the retirement and Resignation of the godly. Vasishtha continued:—The world which is but a vision of the supreme soul, and situated in the vacuity of the Divine mind, appears in our consciousness, as the ectype of Brahma himself. 2. The delusion of the visionary world, being too palpable to our view, has kept the supreme spirit quite out of our sight; as the spirit of the wine is kept hid in the liquor, though it can never be lost. 3. The unreal phenomenal being discarded as delusion, and the real noumenal being incomprehensible; and the absence of any positive subsistence of existence, has necessitated our belief in the endless void and vacuity. 4. That the embodied Intellect, called the _purusha_ or soul, is the supreme cause (in the Sánkhya system); and the world proceeds from the unknown principle, known as the pradhána or its principal source. The truth of this view of the creation, rests wholly on the opinion of the philosopher (Kapila). 5. That the visible world is the form of the all pervasive spirit of God, is the thesis of the Vedántists; and this opinion of theirs regarding the formal world and its plasmic principle, depends solely on the conception of these philosophers. 6. That the world is a conglomeration of particles, is the position of the positive and atomic philosophers of the Nyáya system; and all these doctrines are relied upon and maintained, by the best belief of every party. 7. Both the present and future worlds are as they are seen and thought to be, is the tenet of some; while the spiritualist looks upon it neither in the light of an entity nor non entity either. 8. Others acknowledge the outer world only, and nothing besides which is beyond their eye sight; and these Chárváka atheists, do not avouch even for the intelligent soul, which is within their bodies. 9. There are others, who seeing the incessant changes and fluctuations of things with the flight of time, attribute omnipotence to it, and have become timists, with a persuasion of the evanescence of the world. 10. The belief of the barbarians, regarding the resurrection of the soul from the grave, which is built on the analogy of the sparrow flying away from under its covering lid; has gained a firm ground in the minds of men in these countries, and is never doubted by any. 11. The tolerant sage looks alike and takes in equal light all apparent differences; since they know that all these varieties in the world, are but manifestations of the One all pervading and invariable soul.