Yoga Vasishta - Post 13

Saraswati continues speaking to Leela:—

 

Soon after death occasions the lack of physical senses, the sight of the world appears to the soul as if he were seeing it with open eyes when he was living.  Before him is presented the circle of the sky and its sides with the cycle of its seasons and times. He is shown the deeds of his pious and mundane acts, as if they were to continue to eternity.  Objects never before seen or thought of also offer themselves to his view, like the sight of his own death in a dream, as if they were the prints in his memory. 

 

But the infinity of objects appearing in the empty sphere of the non-physical intellect is mere illusion, and the baseless city of the world, like a castle in the sky, is only the creation of imagination.

 

Memory of the past world makes it known to us. Therefore, the length of a kalpa age and the shortness of a moment are only false impressions proceeding from the speed and slowness of our thoughts.

 

Therefore knowledge based upon previous memories or otherwise is of two kinds, and things known without their cause are attributed to Divine Intelligence.  We are also conscious of thoughts that we have not thought of before in our minds, such as we often have in our dreams. Another may remind us of our deceased parents, so we think of them.  Sometimes genius supersedes the province of memory, as in the first creation or discovery of a thing, which afterwards is continued by its memory.

 

According to some, those visible worlds are said to have remained in their ideal state in the Divine Mind. According to others, there were no pre-existent notions of these in the mind of God. According to some others, the world manifested itself not from memory but by the power and will of God. Still others maintain it to be the production of a sudden, fortuitous combination of intelligence and atomic principles 

 

Completely forgetting the world is called liberation. That cannot be had if consciousness is attached to what is desirable or is averse to the undesirable. It is difficult to effect an entire negation of both one’s subjective and objective knowledge of his self and the existence of the outer world. Yet nobody can be freed without the obliteration of both.

 

As the fallacy of taking a rope for a snake is not removed until the meaning of the word snake is known to be inapplicable to the rope, so no one can have rest and peace of mind unless he is convinced of the illusory nature of the world. 

 

Even with that, a person who is at peace with himself cannot be wholly at rest without divine knowledge because, even though he has rid himself of the devil of worldliness, the ghost of his inner ignorance may overtake him. The world is certainly a monster in itself without the knowledge of its Author, but the difficulty of knowing the First Cause has rendered it an impassable wilderness.

 

Leela said, “If memories are the cause of one’s reincarnation, then, O goddess, tell me what were the causes of the birth of the brahmin couple, without the vestiges of their past memories?

 

The goddess replied:— Know that Brahma the first progenitor of mankind, who was absolute in himself, did not retain any vestige of his past memories in him. The first born, who had nothing to remember of a prior birth, was born in the lotus with his own intelligence (chaitanya) and not because of his memory. The Lord of Creatures being thus born by chance of his own genius or creative power, and without any assignable cause or design on his part, reflected within himself, “Now I am become another and the source of creation.”

 

Whatever is born of itself is like a nothing that was never produced at all, but remains as the absolute intellect itself in the clouds. 

 

The Supreme Being is the sole cause of both types of memories (those caused by vestiges of prior impressions, and those produced by prior desires). Both conditions of cause and effect are combined in Him in the sphere of his consciousness.  Therefore our tranquility can only come from knowing that cause and effect are the same and that the auxiliary cause is in Him.

 

 Continued.....

   

Love

Yoga Vasishta - Post 12

 

The goddess replied to Leela's question as to how can we be the brahmin couple when they died only eight days before and we have been reigning here for so many years?” 

 

Goddess said, "In reality, there is neither any limit of space or time, nor any distance of place or length of time. Hear me now tell you the reason why.

 

As the universe is the reflection of the Divine Mind, so are infinity and eternity but representations of Himself.  As soon as one feels the lack of senses after his death, he forgets his former nature and thinks himself to be another being. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, he assumes an empty form in the womb of emptiness and in that container he thinks within himself, “This is my body with its hands and feet.” 

 

Thinking about body, he finds it presented before him.  Then he thinks in himself, “I am the son of this father and am so many years old. These are my dear friends and this is my pleasant home. I was born and became a boy, and then grew up to this age. There are all my friends and in the same course of their lives.”  

 

Thus the compact density of the sphere of his soul presents him with many other images that appear to arise in it as in some part of the world. But they neither rise nor remain in the soul itself, which is as transparent as empty as air. They appear to consciousness like a vision seen in a dream.

Everything in the other world appears equally real, just like in his dream. The unreality of the world of dreaming and the reality of this physical world are alike. 

 

But in reality, the appearance is nothing but a reflection of consciousness which, apart from the intelligible spirit, is merely an empty void. Although presided over by the intelligible spirit, creation itself is a mere void, its only substance being the intelligible soul, like water is to waves.

 

After the visible outer world has disappeared from sight, the soul, in its inner world of the mind, reflects on its memories of creation according to the proper time and place of everything. It remembers its birth, its parents, its age and its residence, with its learning and all other pursuits in their exact manner and order.  

 

It thinks of its friends and servants, and of the success and failure of its attempts. The uncreated and incorporeal soul, in its intellectual form, reflects on the events of its created and corporeal state.

 

However, it does not remain in this state for long. Soon after death it enters a new body to which the properties of the mind and senses are added afterwards in their proper times. It then becomes a baby, finds a new father and mother, and begins to grow. 

 

Thus whether one may perceive it or not, it is all the product of his former memories.  Then upon waking from this state of trance, like a fruit from the cell of a flower, it comes to find that a single moment appeared to it as the period of an age.

 

The vision of Leela, called samadhi in yoga and clairvoyance of spiritualism, was the abstract meditation of her lord in her memory that presented her with a full view of everything imprinted on it. Memory is taken for the whole consciousness (chit), which is identified with God in whose essence the images of all things are said to be eternally present.

 

Continued…

 

Love.

 

Yoga Vasishta - Post 11

Saraswati said to Leela, “That brahmin whom I described before, the one who become a monarch on earth, is the same as your husband. His wife Arundhati is no other than yourself, the best of women.  You two are the same pair now reigning over this realm, resembling a pair of doves in your nuptial love, and the gods Shiva and Parvati in your might.”

 

“I have related your past lives to you so that you may know the individual soul to be only air, and that knowledge of its reality is an error. False knowledge casts its reflection on consciousness and causes its error also. (Errors in the senses breed errors in the mind.) 

 

This makes you doubtful of the truth and untruth of the two states (of the material and intellectual worlds).  Therefore the question, ‘Which is true and which is untrue?’ has no better answer than that all creations are equally false and unsubstantial.”

 

Vasishta said:—

 

Hearing these words of the goddess, Leela was confused in her mind, and with her eyes staring with wonder, she addressed her softly.

Leela said, “How is it, O goddess, that your words are so incoherent with truth. You make us the same as the brahmin couple who are in their own house. We are sitting here in our palace. How is it possible that the small space of the room in which my husband’s body is lying could contain those spacious lands and hills and the ten sides of the sky?  It is as impossible as confining an elephant in a mustard seed, or a gnat fighting with a body of lions in a nutshell. 

 

It is as incredible as to believe a lotus seed contains a hill, or to be devoured by a little bee, or that peacocks are dancing hearing the roaring of clouds in a dream. O great goddess of gods, it is equally improbably to say that this earth, with all its mountains and other things, is contained within the small space of a sleeping room.  Therefore, O goddess, please explain this mystery clearly to me, because it is by your favor only that the learned are cleared of their questions.”

 

The goddess Saraswati said:— Hear me, fair maiden! I did not tell you a lie. 

The individual soul of the village brahmin saw within itself and in his own house the image of this great kingdom, just as his departed spirit now sees the same in its empty void. (Therefore both these states are equally ideal.) 

After death you lost the memories of your former lives, just like one loses memories of waking events when in the dream state. All are like the appearance of the three worlds in dream, or their formation in the imagination, or like the description of warfare in an epic poem, or like water in the mirage of a sandy desert. 

The hills and houses seen in the empty space of the brahmin’s house were nothing but the capacity of his own mind to form the images of its fancy and receive the external impressions like a reflecting mirror.  All these, though unreal, appear as real substances on account of the reality of consciousness which is seated in the cavity of the innermost sheath of the body and reflects the images. 

But these images derived from the memories of unreal objects of the world are as unreal as those objects which cast their reflections upon consciousness. Waves rising in the river of a mirage are as unreal as the mirage itself.

The spirit of the brahmin resided in the emptiness of his house (the body), with the seas, forests and the earth within itself, like a bee lives in the lotus. Thus the habitable earth with everything it contains is situated in a small cell in one corner of consciousness, like a spot of flimsy cloud in the sky. 

The house of the holy brahmin was situated in the same locality of consciousness which contains all the worlds in one of its atomic particles. Every atom of the intelligent soul contains unnumbered worlds within worlds, enough to remove your doubt of the brahmin being able to see an entire kingdom within the space of his intellect.

 

Leela asked, “How can we be the brahmin couple when they died only eight days before and we have been reigning here for so many years?”

 

Continued....

Love