“ ’On account of space …’ by which the following consideration, founded on reason, is meant. If I cut off the head of a human being or an animal, my sword goes through between the indivisible particles; for these particles it cannot, on account of that very indivisibility, cut through. What it cuts through, then, is the empty space which separates these particles. But to this space one cannot, on account of its very emptiness, do any harm. For to harm a nothing is just the same as not to harm anything. As a consequence, one cannot by this cutting through of space incur any responsibility, and a divine punishment cannot be meted out for it. But if this be true of killing, how much more then of deeds which are punished less severely by men?
“Thus far, reason; now comes scripture.
“The sacred Veda teaches us that that which alone has any true existence, is the highest godhead, the Brahman. But if this be true, then all killing is an empty deception. This the Veda also says in so many words, in the passage where Yama, the god of death, tells the young Naçiketas of this Brahman, and among other things, says—
“ ‘Who, slaying, believes that he kills,
Who, when slain, believes that he dies,
Astray is this one and that—
He dies not, nor does he kill.’
“But even more convincingly is this abysmal truth revealed to us in The Heroic Song of Krishna and Arjuna. For Krishna himself, having known no beginning, destined to know no end, the eternal, almighty, unthinkable being, the highest god, who for the salvation of all created beings suffered himself to be born as man—Krishna helped, in the last days of his earthly pilgrimage, the King of the Pándavas, the high-minded Arjuna, in the war against the Kauravas, because the latter had done him and his brothers grievous wrong. Now when both armies were drawn up in battle array, their bristling ranks opposed to one another, Arjuna espied among the hostile forces many a former friend, many a cousin and comrade of past days. For the Pándavas and the Kauravas were the sons of two brothers. And Arjuna was moved to the depths of his heart, and he hesitated to give the signal for battle, for loath was he to kill those who had once been his own people. So he stood there looking down from his war-chariot, his chin sunk on his breast, a prey to torturing hesitancy, undecided as to what he should do; and beside him stood the golden god Krishna, who was his charioteer. And Krishna guessed at the thoughts of the noble Pandaver king.
“Smiling, he pointed to the rival armies, and showed Arjuna how all those beings come into existence and pass—yet only in seeming—because in all of them only that One lives whose past has known no dawn, whose future shall know no sunset, untouched alike by birth and death—
“ ‘Who for a murd’rer holds the one,
Who deems him murdered that lies here,
He knows, and knows of either, naught—
For no one murders, no one dies,
Come then, the fight beginnest thou!’
“Taught in this way, the Pandaver king gave the signal for beginning the awful battle, and won. So that Krishna, the human-born, highest god, by the revelation of this great esoteric doctrine, changed Arjuna from a shallow and weak-hearted man to a deeply thoughtful, iron-hearted sage and hero.
“In truth, then, the following holds good:
“ ‘Whosoever commits a crime or causes it to be committed, whosoever destroys or causes to be destroyed, whosoever strikes or causes to be struck, whosoever robs the living of life or takes that which has not been given to him, breaks into houses, or robs others of their property—whatsoever it be that he does, he burdens himself with no guilt; and whosoever should, now and here, convert with a sharply ground axe every living thing on this earth to a single boneless mass, to one mass of pulp, would, on that account, be no way guilty, do no wrong. And whoso should on the southern bank of the Gunga take his way, laying waste and murdering, would, on that account, have no guilt; and whoso should on the northern bank of the Gunga take his way, distributing alms and making presents, would, on that account, have no merit. By means of generosity, gentleness, self-renunciation, one does nothing meritorious, nothing good.’ ”
And there now follows the astounding, yea, frightful
477th Sutra,
which, in its striking brevity, runs—
“Rather … on account of the Eater …”
The meaning of these few words, wrapped as they are in deepest mystery, the worshipful Vajaçravas discloses to us as follows:
“Far removed from any such idea as that of divine punishment threatening the robber and homicide, ‘rather’ is the opposite the case; namely, that he grows like to God himself, which becomes clear from those passages in the Veda, where the highest God is glorified as the “Eater,” such as—
“The Warrior and the Brahman both, He eats for bread,
When he with brew of death them sprinkles o’er.”
“As the world has its beginning in Brahman, so also its passing away; Brahman causing it ever to go forth anew and ever destroying it. So that God is not only the creator but also the devourer of all created beings, of whom here only ‘Warriors’ and ‘Brahmans’ are mentioned as the highest in rank—and who therefore represent all the others.
“So also it reads in another passage—
“ ‘I eat them all, but me they do not eat.’
These were the very words, as thou must know, of the Highest God himself when, in the shape of a ram, he carried the boy Medhatithi to the heavenly world. For, indignant at his forcible abduction, the latter demanded to know who his abductor was:
