Yoga Vasishta - Post 8

Queen Leela and King Padma lead an idyllic life, but as they age Leela fears he might die first, in which case her own life would be intolerable. She does tapas to Goddess Saraswati and obtains the boon to have her husband’s spirit always with her. She and the goddess astral travel and time travel to see the couple’s prior life as simple brahmins when her husband sees a lavish royal hunting party, creating a desire in him to possess the wealth of an empire. That desire manifests after King Padma dies and the queen and goddess see another reality in the deceased king’s mind. He is now King Viduratha ruling a vast empire with a second Leela as his wife.

 

Vasishta said, So saying, the goddess repaired to her heavenly seat and Leela sat gladly in her mood of steadfast meditation. Within a moment, she left the prison house of her body. Her soul broke out of its inner bound of the mind to fly freely in the air, like a bird freed from its cage. She ascended to the airy region of Consciousness and saw her husband sitting there, amidst a group of princes and rulers of the earth.

 

The sounds of brahmins chanting on sacrificial altars were drowned under the sound of tambourines, shouted announcements, and the loud praises of speakers, all re-echoed by the uproar of elephants. 

 

The vault of heaven resounded to the sounds of vocal and instrumental music, and the dust raised by the procession of elephants and chariots, and the trotting of horses’ hoofs, hid the face of the sky like a cloud. 

 

The fragrance of flowers, camphor and heaps of frankincense perfumed the air, and the royal hall was filled with presents sent from different provinces.

 

Then the ardent Leela entered the royal assembly hall of the ruler of men. She was unseen by any, just as one void mixes with another void, and as air is lost in the air. 

 

She wandered about without anyone there seeing her, just like a fair figure formed by false imagination of our fond desires is not to be perceived by anyone outside ourselves. 

 

In this manner she continued to walk about the palace unperceived by all, just like a castle in the air built in one’s mind is not perceived by another.

 

She suddenly saw the flames of wildfire spreading on all sides, even in broad midday light, and the sun and moon appearing both at once in the sky, and the clouds roaring with a tremendous noise, with the whistling of the winds. 

She saw trees, hills, rivers and cities flourishing with population, and the many towns and villages and forests all about. 

 

She saw her royal consort as a boy of ten years of age after shaking off his former frame of old age, sitting amidst the hall with all his former retinue, and all the inhabitants of his village.

 

Leela, having seen all these, began to reflect within herself whether the inhabitants of this place were living beings or the ghosts of their former individual souls.

Then having recovered her (ordinary) sense at the removal of her trance, she entered her inner apartment at midnight and found the residents fast bound in sleep. 

 

She woke her sleeping companions one by one and said she was anxious to visit the royal hall. She wanted to sit beside the throne of her lord and to clear her doubt by seeing the courtiers all alive.

 

The royal servants rose up at her call and obedient to her command they said, “Be it so” and attended to their respective duties. 

 

Dignified ministers and chiefs attended first and took their respective seats, appearing as if they were a set of newly created rulers of the various peoples of the world, or the regents of the quarters of the sky. 

 

There, Leela took her seat on a golden seat by the side of the throne. She appeared as beautiful as Rati seated in the joyous heart of Kama. She saw all the princes seated in their order as before, and the elders of the people and the nobles of men and all her friends and relatives seated in their proper places.  

 

She was highly delighted to see them all in their former states. Her face shone brightly like the moon to find them all alive again.

 

 

Continued.....

 

 

Love.

 

 

Yoga Vasishta - Post 7

Story of leela Continued...

 

 “I want to see my husband,” the queen said.

 

When Lila said she wanted to see her husband, she did not mean that she wanted to see the old man. She wanted to see that form which was dead in a room in a different place.

 

It so happened that the old king who had just died in battle also had a queen, and by chance her name was also Lila. This is a mystery which the Yoga Vasishtha does not explain.

 

Then Saraswati, the goddess, said, “Here is your husband. He has a queen like you, and she resembles you. Her name is Lila.”

 

“Oh! I did not expect that my husband would have another queen. I am the queen,” Lila said.

 

Saraswati replied, “In the relative cosmos, you cannot say ‘mine’. There is no ‘mine’, and neither you nor anybody else has any interconnection. This interconnection is a false operation of a dancing process of space and time, and you are confused because you are attached to a particular relationship of space and time.”

 

“Now, where am I finally?” said the queen. “I want my husband.”

 

Immediately Saraswati’s grace operated. She allowed the soul of the old king to enter the corpse which Lila had covered with a cloth. The king got up, as if from a long dream. He could not understand that he was ruling an empire in a different space-time, and that he had waged a war and had died there. Nothing was known to him. He simply shook himself and woke up.

 

Saraswati, for whatever reason, also brought the second Lila back to the very room where the king had died and re-entered his corpse, so now he had two queens.

 

Lila could not understand this. “I don’t understand anything. Don’t make me mad!”

 

“No, you will not be mad, by my grace. I am only trying to enlighten you,” Saraswati said.

 

Then King Padma ruled the kingdom once again, with two queens.

 

“I will tell you something more,” said the goddess.

 

“Don’t tell me anything more,” Lila said. “It is enough for me!”

 

“No, I want to illumine you properly. The entire kingdom of thousands of miles that your husband was ruling was actually inside the room of that Brahmin couple who died.”

 

Lila said, “The room was so small, approximately ten feet by twelve feet in that kingdom, whereas my husband’s kingdom was thousands of miles.”

 

“Space-time operations are mysterious. They can delude you into the belief of anything whatsoever, and you will not know what is really happening. The large kingdom of Padma was actually inside the room of the Brahmin couple, which was so small.”

 

Saraswati continued. “Now I shall go further. The large kingdom of the old king is inside this room where your husband died.”

 

“Sufficient,” Lila said. “I don’t want to hear anything more!”

 

The goddess said, “I am telling you all this so that you can understand that nothing whatsoever is existing independently. Neither are you existing, nor your husband, nor the world. Nothing is there. You cannot say what is there. Anything can be anywhere at any time, and in any form. Yesterday, today, tomorrow—there is no meaning in these things. 

A great chaos of perception has been presented before you by space-time. Because of this mysterious, unexpected, shocking operation of space-time, you are unable to know that you are also involved in it. If you are involved in the world of space and time, you cannot make any reference to the world of space and time because that reference will apply to you also. 

No one can say, ‘I am here’ or ‘that is there’ because this ‘I’ is vitally connected to the existence of ‘that’, and ‘that’ is vitally connected to the existence of ‘this’. What do you understand from this? Everything is interrelated in such a way that nothing can exist independently. Everything exists by the operation of all the things that are taking place in the universe, so that every individual, so-called, is a universal unit.”

 

Love.

 

 

Yoga Vasishta - Post 6

There was, in ancient times, a king called Padma. He had a queen called Lila, and ruled a large kingdom extending thousands of miles. The queen was so attached to her husband that she did not want him ever to die. With grief in her mind as to how the death of her husband could be averted, she consulted the courtiers, ministers and learned pundits of the king’s assembly.

 

“Is there any way to prevent the death of my husband?” the queen asked.

 

They all said, “There is nobody who can prevent the death of your husband. There is no remedy for that. Everybody who is born must die.”

 

Shocked to the core, weeping, striking her breast with grief, the queen went inside her room and burst forth in agony, deeply praying to the goddess of learning, Saraswati. Many days passed in the queen’s great austere prayer to have a blessing from the goddess of knowledge.

 

The goddess appeared and asked Lila, “What do you want?”

 

“I do not want my husband to die. Please bless me,” Lila cried. “Bless me with this boon.”

 

The goddess did not answer the question. She simply said, “When he dies, cover his body with a cloth, and remember me.”

 

After many years, the king died in a room of the palace. The queen was at her wits’ end. She again wept and cried, and called Saraswati, “Please come and bless me. I have lost everything.”

 

Again Saraswati, the great goddess, appeared. “What are you asking for?”

 

“I want to see my husband, wherever he is,” the queen replied.

 

“Oh, I see,” Saraswati said. “I shall take you to the place where your husband is living.”

 

Saraswati touched the queen’s head, and they were transported to another order of space and time where her husband had reincarnated and was ruling another empire.

 

The queen looked around. “Where am I?”

 

Saraswati, who was beside her, said, “This is the empire of your own husband who has reincarnated into another space-time.”

 

“Where is my husband? He was an old man, seventy-two years old,” the queen said. “And this husband is seventy-two years old though he died only yesterday.”

 

“Don’t ask questions. Just listen to whatever I say,” said Saraswati.

 

“No, it is not possible,” Lila cried. “What are you saying? A person who died yesterday has been reborn and is now seventy-two years old? Are you saying that he was born in this world seventy-two years ago, having died only yesterday? I cannot believe this. Don’t confuse my mind. Oh, Goddess, bless me. What are you saying?”

 

Saraswati said, “I will confuse you further. Somewhere in another space-time there was a Brahmin couple who were very poor, living in a little room. Poverty was their only property, misery was their fate. One day they saw a large procession in which the king of the country was being carried on a palanquin. ‘Oh,’ they said, ‘What a glory! If only we too could have that experience of being king and queen.’ With this deep thought, they died.”

 

Continuing her story, the goddess Saraswati said, “Listen to me carefully. This Brahmin couple who died eight days ago were reborn as yourself and your husband in another space-time, where your king ruled for fifty years, and died.”

 

“What are you saying?” the queen said. “People who died eight days ago have been reborn in a kingdom where the husband ruled for fifty years? What is the connection between eight days and the fifty years of our lives?”

 

“Keep quiet and listen to me further. This old man is your own husband, born again in another space-time. He is seventy-two years old.”

 

Again Lila was shocked. “How is it possible?”

 

Saraswati continued. “Don’t utter these words, ‘How is it possible?’ Yesterday can become tomorrow; tomorrow can become the present. There is no systematic arrangement of the order of space and time existing permanently everywhere in the cosmos. This idea of past, present and future is connected with the way in which the consciousness perceives the operation of space-time outside; and in the operational process of any individual observer being conditioned by space-time there is an interaction of relativity between seeing and the nature of the object, so that you cannot know what is actually happening. 

 

But if this relationship of the observer and the observed phenomena of space and time changes during the process of evolution, then immediately today becomes tomorrow, and a person can come tomorrow and leave yesterday. In this circumstance of there being an infinite number of space-time relations on the basis of infinite types of connection between the seer and the seen, there are infinite universes, and infinite gods are ruling these infinite universes.”

 

“Where is my husband now?” asked Lila.

 

Saraswati replied, “Here he is, a seventy-two-year-old man.”

 

As they were speaking, the empire of this seventy-two-year-old man was invaded by inimical forces. Suddenly war broke out, and the old king rushed with this military force and entered the barrage of military operations. In the Yoga Vasishtha this war is described in very great detail. Every little thing that happened in the war is described. Sometimes the invader appeared to win; sometimes the king appeared to win. Finally, the old king died.

 

Lila cried, “You tell me this is my husband, and now he has died a second time. Oh, I am going crazy. I don’t want to hear anything more.”

 

Saraswati said, “No, you cannot be crazy because of my grace. I am only enlightening you. Now, what do you want?”

 

Contd......

Love.