Yoga Vasishta - Post 41

VASISTHA continued:

The yogi knows that it is one's own mentality that turns sweet things into bitter things and vice versa, and friends into enemies and vice versa. In the same way, by  changing the angle of vision and by persistent practice one can develop a taste for the study of scriptures and for japa, etc., which were uninteresting earlier. 

For these  qualities are not in the objects but only in one's own thinking: just as a sea­sick man sees the world go round, the ignorant man thinks that these qualities abide in the  objects. A drunken man sees empty space where a wall stands; and a non­existent goblin kills a deluded person.

This world is nothing but a mere vibration of consciousness in space. It seems to exist even as a goblin seems to exist in the eyes of the ignorant. All this is but Maya: for there is no contradiction between the infinite consciousness and the apparent existence of the universe. It is like a marvelous dream of a person who is awake.

O Rama, in the autumn the trees shed their leaves; in springtime the same trees sprout new leaves which were surely within the trees themselves. Even so this creation  exists all the time within the absolute consciousness. It is not seen: even as the liquidity that exists in gold is not always evident. If the creator of one epoch attains  liberation and if the creator in the next epoch projects the new universe from his memory, even that memory is none other than the infinite consciousness.

RAMA asked:

Lord, how is it that the king and also the citizens experienced the same objective facts?

VASISTHA replied:

That is because the intelligence of all the jivas is based upon the one infinite consciousness, O Rama. The citizens, too, thought that he was their king. Thought vibrations are natural and inherent in the infinite consciousness and they are not motivated. Even as it is natural for a diamond to sparkle, the king's intelligence thinks ''I am king Viduratha" and so do all  the beings in the universe. 

If 'one's intelligence is established in this truth concerning the infinite consciousness, it reaches the supreme state of liberation. This depends  upon one's own intensity of self­-effort. A man is pulled in two different directions: towards the realization of Brahman the absolute and towards the ignorant  acceptance of the reality of the world. That which he strives to realize with great intensity wins! Once he overcomes ignorance, the deluded vision of the unreal is for  ever dispelled.

Love.