Yoga Vasishta - Post 14

Leela said, “What a wonderful sight you have shown me, O goddess. It is as auspicious as morning light and as brilliant as lightning. Now goddess, please satisfy my curiosity until I become thoroughly familiar with this knowledge through my intense application and study. Kindly take me to that mountainous place where the brahmin couple, Vasishta and Arundhati, lived and show me their house.”

 

The goddess replied:—

 

If you want to see that sight, you have to be immaculate. You must give up your personality and your ego-sense and attain awareness of the unintelligible Consciousness within the soul. Then you will find yourself in an empty atmosphere situated in the sky that resembles the prospects of earthly men and the apartments of the firmament (i.e., nothing). 

 

In this state we shall be able to see them (the field of another’s imagination) with all their possessions and without any obstruction. Otherwise this body is a great barrier in the way of spiritual vision.

 

Leela said, “Tell me kindly, O goddess, the reason why do we not see the other world with these eyes, or go there with these our bodies.”

 

The goddess replied:—

 

The reason is that you take the true future as false, and you believe the untrue present as true. These worlds that are formless appear to your eyes as having forms, just like you see the form of a ring when its substance is gold. Gold, though fashioned into a circle, has no curve in it. 

 

The spirit of God appearing in the form of the world is not the world itself. The world is an emptiness full with the spirit of God. Whatever is visible is like dust appearing to fly over the sea.

 

The ultimate substance of the world is all a false illusion. The true reality is the subjective Brahma alone.  The believer in Brahma sees Brahma alone and no other anywhere. 

 

He looks to Brahma through Brahma himself, as the creator and preserver of all, and whose nature includes all other attributes in itself. Brahma is known not only as the author of His work of the creation of worlds, but as existent of Himself without any causation or auxiliary causation.

 

The practice of meditation trains you to disregard all duality and variety and to rely only on one unity. Until you are trained through your practice of meditation, you are barred from viewing Brahma in His true light. By constant practice of meditation, we become settled in this belief of unity, and we rest in the Supreme Spirit. 

 

Then we find our bodies to be an aerial substance that mixes with the air, and at last, with these our mortal frames, we are able to come to the sight of Brahma. Being endowed with pure, enlightened and spiritual frames (astral or subtle bodies), like those of Brahma and the gods, the holy saints are placed in some part of the divine essence.

Without the practice of meditation, you cannot approach God with your mortal frame. A soul sullied by physical sensation can never see the image of God. It is impossible for one to arrive at another’s castle in the sky, when he is unable to see the castle in the sky that he himself imagined.

 

Therefore, give up your gross body and assume your light intellectual frame. Immerse yourself in the practice of yoga so that you may see God face to face.  It is possible to labor and build castles in the air. In the same way, it is possible through the practice of yoga, and in no other way, to behold God, either with this body or without it.

 

Ever since the creation of this world (by the will of Brahma), there have been false conceptions of its existence. It has been attributed to an eternal fate, niyati (by fatalists), and to an illusory power, maya shakti (of Maya vadis).

 

Leela asked, “O goddess, you said that we both shall go to the abode of the brahmin couple, but I ask you, how is that possible? I am able to go there with the pure essence of my sentient soul. But tell me, how will you who are pure intellect (chetas) go to that place?”

 

 

Continued…. 

 

 

Love.