Yoga Vasishta - Post 23

Vasishta said:—  The meeting of the two armies made the ground appear like a billowy sea, or like two clouds meeting in the sky with the appearance of two hostile forces.  The battle array of armored warriors, flashing like the fire of heaven, was followed by their commingled blows resembling the rattling of thunder above, deafening the ears and dazzling the sight. 

Leaders were drowned in thoughts of fear of bloodshed and massacre. Cowardly soldiers groaned in their hearts with the hoarse noise of croaking frogs.  There were many brave ones eager to yield their precious lives in a trice. 

The silence in anticipation of the first blow resembled the calm of the stormy main or the deep sleep of a city at the dead of night. 

A round phalanx attacked a host of wicked demons, and a squadron in garuda formation of right and left wings attacked a body of elephants. Warriors of many legions raised a tremendous noise, and the hands of combatants raised a host of large clubs. 

Now began the main battle, like the dashing of clouds upon clouds at the end of a kalpa age. War raged like sea whipped by a hurricane. Big elephants fell in the field like coal-black rocks hurled down by gusts of wind. 

(Next few chapters describe the war in detail and they have been skipped here.)

Vasishta related:—

The nocturnal fiends infested the gloomy field, and the attendants of Yama, the Lord of Death, roamed about it like marauders in the daytime. 

It was in the still hour of this gloomy night, when the host of heaven seemed to be fast asleep, that a sadness stole in upon the mind of Leela’s magnanimous husband, the warring King Viduratha. 

He thought about what was to be done the next morning in council with his counselors, and then he went to his bed which was as white as moonlight and as cold as frost. For a while his lotus-eyes were closed in sleep in his royal camp, which was as white as moonbeams and covered by the cold dews of night.

Then the two ladies issued forth from their empty abode and entered the tent through a crevice, like air penetrates into the heart of an untouched flower bud.

Rama asked, “How is it possible sage, that the gross bodies of the goddesses, with their limited dimensions, could enter the tent through one of its holes, as small as the pore of a piece of cloth?”

Vasishta answered saying that:—

It is impossible for someone who mistakes himself to be a material body to enter a small hole with that gross body. But it is possible to go anywhere one pleases if he understands that he is only pent up in his physical body like in a cage and obstructed by it in his flight, and if he does not believe that he is confined by his material body but has the true notion of his inner subtle spirit. He who perceives his original spiritual state to be the better half of his body may pass as a spirit through a chink. But whoever relies on the lesser half of the material body cannot go beyond it in the form of his intellect.

As air rises upward and the flame of fire never goes downward, so the nature of spirit is to rise upward, and that of the body to go down, but the intellect is made to turn in the way in which it is trained. 

One’s belief of a snake in a rope is removed by knowledge of his error. The habits of the mind and conduct in life are changed from wrong to right by the knowledge of truth. It is one’s knowledge that gives rise to his thoughts, and thoughts direct his pursuits in life. This is a truth known to every man of sense, even to the young.

Now then, the soul resembles something seen in a dream or formed in fancy. The soul is of the nature of air and emptiness and is never obstructed anywhere in its course. 

There is an intellectual and astral body which all living beings possess in every place. It is known as consciousness as well as the feelings of our hearts. It is by Divine Will that consciousness rises and sets by turns. 

Now you must know that the triple emptiness composed of the three airy substances — spirit, mind and space — are one and the same thing, but not so their receptacle the material body which has no ability to flow or extend.

Know this intellectual, consciousness body of beings is like the air, present with everything everywhere, just like your desire to know extends over all things in all places and presents them all to your knowledge. It abides in the smallest particles, and reaches to the spheres of heavens. It reposes in the cells of flowers, and delights in the leaves of trees. It delights in hills and dales, and dances over the waves of the oceans. It rides over the clouds, and falls down in the showers of rain and hailstones of heaven. It moves at pleasure in vast space and penetrates through the solid mountains. Its body bears no break in it, and it is as minute as an atom.

Yet it becomes as big as a mountain lifting its head to heaven, and as large as the earth which is the fixed and firm support of all things. It views the inside and outside of everything, and bears the forests like hairs on its body. It extends in the form of the sky and contains millions of worlds in itself. It identifies itself with the ocean, and transforms its whirlpools to spots upon its person.

Continued…

Love.

Yoga Vasishta - Post 22

Vasishta speaking:—  Within a moment they passed beyond the regions of the earth, air, fire, water and space and the tracks of the ten planetary spheres.  They reached boundless space from where the universe appears like an egg.  Under its vault they saw millions of luminous particles floating in the air,  like innumerable bubbles floating on the waters of the unlimited ocean of the sphere of Consciousness.  

These different motions were only apparent as they saw them from different sides.  Here there were no ups or downs, no upside or below, and no going forward or backward. There is only one indefinite space in nature, as there is only one consciousness in all beings. Yet everything moves in its own way, just like wayward children take their own course.

Rama said, “Tell me sage, why do we refer to up and down, forward and backward, if there is no such thing in space and nature?”

Vasishta said:— There is only one space enveloping all things. The worlds seen in the infinite and indiscernible womb of emptiness are like worms moving on the surface of water.  All these bodies that move about in the world by their lack of freedom are thought to be up and down relative to our position on earth. 

So when there are ants on an earthen ball, all its sides are reckoned below that are under their feet, and those as above which are over their backs.  Such is this ball of earth in one of these worlds, covered by vegetables and animals moving on it, and by gods, demons and men walking upon it.  It is also covered by cities, towns and mountains and their inhabitants and productions, like a walnut by its shell.

Like elephants appearing as pigmies in the Vindhyan Mountains, these worlds appear as particles in the vast expanse of space. Everything anywhere is produced from and exists in space. It is always all in all things, which are contained like particles in it. Such is the pure empty space of Divine Consciousness which, like an ocean of light, contains these innumerable worlds which are forever revolving in it like the countless waves of the sea.

The world is filled with creatures beyond the conception of even yogis. Even we cannot form even a guess of all the beings that fill infinite space. 

I have told you all about the grandeur of the universe to my best knowledge. I have no knowledge or power to describe anything beyond this.

Vasishta said:— After having seen the worlds in their aerial journey, the ladies arrived on earth and quickly entered King Padma’s inner apartment.  There they saw the king’s dead body lying in state under heaps of flowers, Leela’s spiritual body sitting beside the corpse. It was the dead of night and the residents had fallen into sound sleep one by one. The room was perfumed with the incense of resin, camphor, sandalwood and saffron.

Leela, seeing the house of her late husband and wishing to enter it, came to his tomb in her assumed body.  Then she passed through the fictitious spacious palace of her lord by breaking out of the confines of her body and head, that in yoga terminology, are called earthly and worldly environs. Then with the goddess she went again to the bright and spacious temple of the world and quickly entered. She saw her husband’s imaginary world (that of King Viduratha) like a dirty and mossy pool, just like a lioness beholds a mountain cave covered by darkness and clouds. Then the two goddesses entered that empty world with their airy bodies, like weak ants make their passage through the hard crust of the wood-apple.

During this time they saw a certain prince (the ruler of Sindh), strengthened by other chiefs, making an attack on this land which was the beauty of the world. They saw the air crowded by people of the three worlds who had assembled to see the conflict. 

Rama asked, “Tell me, sage, what sort of a warrior is called a hero and becomes a jewel in heaven, and who is an insurgent?”

Vasishta answered:— He who engages in a lawful warfare and fights for his king, whether he dies or becomes victorious in the field, is called a hero and goes to heaven. Whoever otherwise kills men in war for an unjust cause and dies is called an insurgent and goes to hell. 

Whoever fights for unlawful property and dies in battle becomes subject to everlasting hellfire. Whoever wages a war justified by law and custom, that warrior is called both loyal and heroic in deed. 

The king who is steadfast protecting his subjects and his own country is called just, and those who die in his cause are called brave. 

It was in expectation of seeing such heroes that the maidens of the gods were standing in the air and talking among themselves about becoming the wives of such warriors. 

The air was decorated by an illumination on high, and by rows of beautiful heavenly cars of gods and masters, and by the presence of celestial maidens who sang in sweet notes and decorated their hair with mandara flowers.

Love.

Yoga Vasishta - Post 21

 Vasishta speaking:—

Then the two goddesses sat on a cooling village seat, much like the two states of joy and liberation meet in the tranquil spirit of the man knowing the Divine Spirit. By this time Leela had become personified to the form of pure consciousness through her knowledge of meditation. She had become a seer of the three times presenting themselves before her.  She remembered the whole course of her past life and derived pleasure relating the events of her former life and death.

Leela said, “By your favor, O goddess, and by sight of this place, I recollect all that I did and thought of in my past life. Here I grew up to old age, and here I withered and become lean and thin as a skeleton.”

“I was a brahmani here and had my body scratched by dried sacrificial grass (kusa). I was the legal wife of my lord and producer of his race. I was employed milking cattle and churning curd. I had been mother of many sons and a kind hostess to my guests. I was devoted to the service of the gods, brahmins and good people, and rubbed my body with cow milk and ghee.”

“I used to pick out worms from the ears of the milk cow, and was prompt to water the garden of greens with watering pots in hand. Every day I used to go to the lake and get fresh green grass to feed my tender calves. I used to wash and clean the house every morning, and paint the doorway with the white tints of pasted and powdered rice (gundi). I had to correct my servants with gentle rebukes and tell them to keep within their bounds like the waves in the rivers.”

“With my infirm body and ears shaking like dried tree leaves, and supporting myself on a stick, I lived here under the dread of old age.”

As she was speaking in this manner and walking with Saraswati about the village in the valley of the mountain, she was astonished to see her former seats of pleasure, and she showed them to the goddess. “This was my flowery tree garden, decorated by these torn patala plants, and this was my garden alcove of flowering asokas. This is the bank of the pond where the calves were loosely tied to the trees. 

“There I see the altar of my house, so beautifully decorated with flowering vines, clusters of fruits and flowers hanging over its windows. Here lived my husband, whose life in its aerial form has fled to the sky and became lord of the earth reaching the surrounding seas. I remember how he had fostered the fond wish of obtaining royal dignity, and how ardently he looked forward to its attainment. I see, O goddess, his royal dignity of eight days, which had seemed to be so long in duration.”

“I see the soul of my husband in the same form as his kingly state residing in the empty space of this house, invisible to all like the air in the sky, and like the odors borne by the winds. It is in this empty space that his soul is contained within the form of a thumb that contains in its bosom the whole extent of my lord’s realm stretching thousands of leagues in its circumference. I also see the spacious kingdom of my lord in the space of my consciousness which, by the miraculous power of God called illusion (maya), makes room for thousands of mountains.”

“O Goddess, now I wish to see the earthly city of my lord again. Let us therefore turn our course that way, as no place is distant to the resolute.”

Vasishta said:—

Having said so, Leela bowed down to Saraswati and entered the shrine. Then, like a bird, she flew into the air with the goddess. It was a region devoid of darkness and as fair as a sea of moonlight. Then it became as blue as the body of Narayana and as bright as the back of a locust. They passed above the regions of the clouds and winds, then beyond the spheres of the orbits of the sun and moon. 

Passing beyond the spheres of embodied living beings and of the bodiless souls of the dead, they proceeded far and farther to the unknown regions of empty space. 

 Vasishta said:—

There is no beginning, middle or end to that infinite space. It produces nothing, like a barren woman of her offspring. It is only an extended expanse, infinite, calm and without beginning, middle or end, situated in the Supreme Spirit.  Its immensity is as immeasurable as a stone flung with full force from its top. It is impossible for a garuda bird, flying with all his might at full speed over the course of an entire kalpa age, to reach from one end to the other.

Love.

Yoga Vasishta - Post 20

Leela’s Vision in Meditation; Description of the Mountain Hamlet

Rama said, “Tell me sage, how did the goddesses break out of the strongholds of their bodies and the prison-house of this world and pass through infinite space and survey the scenes beyond its confines?”

Vasishta replied:— Where is the world and where is its support or solidity? They were all situated in the region within the minds of the goddesses.  In their minds they saw the hilly tract where the brahmin Vasishta lived and had his desire for royalty.  They saw his deserted house and in their minds they saw the surface of the earth stretching to the seas.

 

In that imaginary spot of earth they saw the city of the king and the royal palace which he had enjoyed with Arundhati, his wife.  They saw how she was born under the name of Leela and how she worshipped the goddess of wisdom, Saraswati, by whom she was miraculously conveyed to the delightful region of the sky.  It was in the house situated in that hilly village that she saw the world placed within the space of her mind.

 

Having come out of her vision of the world, she found herself sitting in her house, just like one finds himself lying in his own bed after rambling from one dream to another. All that she saw was mere vision and void. There was no world, no earth, no house, and no distance. It was the mind that showed them these images, just like the mind presents the objects of our desire to our view. Otherwise, there is neither world nor earth in actuality.

 

The sphere of consciousness is infinite and without any covering. If agitated by the powers of one’s intellect, it presents all the objects of nature to his view, like the sky when agitated by heat produces the winds. The sphere of consciousness is uncreated. It is ever calm everywhere. Deluded minds suppose the world to exist. He who understands rightly sees the world is as unsubstantial as air. But whoever is misled by wrong judgment takes it to be like a solid mountain.

As a house and city are manifested to us in our dream, so this unreal world is presented as a reality to our understanding. It is like the misconception of water in the mirage and the mistake of gold in a bracelet. All this unreality appears as a reality to the mistaken mind.

 

Discoursing in this manner between themselves, the two charming ladies, walked out of the house with their graceful steps.

 

Being unseen by the village people, they viewed the mountain standing before them, kissing the vault of heaven and touching the orb of the sun with its lofty peaks. It was decorated with flowers of various colors and covered with a variety of trees of various colors. There were waterfalls gushing with their tremendous roaring on one side, and groves resounding with the warbling of birds in another. 

 

Standing on that spot, the ladies saw the hilly hamlet in the grass, like a fragment of heaven had fallen on the ground. There the rippling streams softly glided by, and here the brimming brooks wobbled in the ground. The birds of the air chirped on the sprays, and aquatic fowls flew about the holes of the seashore. 

 

There they saw herds of cattle slowly moving and grazing in the plains, filling the echoing woods with their loud lowing. They saw an open space broken with shady groves and trees and green meadows all about. The cliffs were white with snow, impenetrable by sunbeams. Hill tops were covered with bushy brambles, forming like braids of hair upon their craggy heads.

 

Cascades falling in torrents in the cavities of rocks, scattering their pearly particles afar like the churning of the Milky Ocean by Mandara Mountain. The trees in the glens, loaded as they were with their fruit and flowers, appeared like waiters upon the goddesses, standing to welcome their approach with their rich presents. Shaken by gusts of roaring winds, the forest trees were shedding showers of their honey sweetened flowers as offerings to the woodland gods and people.

 

Every morning flowering plants growing in the caves of the hills and around the house covered the ground heel-deep with heaps of flowers. There were whisk-tailed cattle and antelope grazing in one part of the forest, and tender young deer sleeping on beds of grass under gunja groves. There were young calves lying on their sides shaking their ears to drive away the flies that fluttered around their faces, milk dripping from the sides of their mouths.

 

A grove of green trees cast its cooling and undivided shade upon the ground where dewdrops trembled on blades of grass and glistened like twinkling stars in the blue sky. Trees constantly dropped their ripened fruit, dried flowers and leaves of various sorts, like showers of snow on whitened ground. Some clouds were seen to hang continually over the household compound, like aristocratic girls who never forsake their parents’ home. 

 

The altar here reverberated to the loud roaring of winds confined in the caves of mountains. The temple there was graced by twittering swallows and parrots that perched upon it from their numerous flights. 

 

Pearly dewdrops continually falling on the ground from the leaves of trees and blades of grass, the gleaming beauty of the ever blooming blossoms above, and the other everlasting charms of mountain hamlets baffle the description of poets.

 

Love.

 

Bhagawan Sathya Sai Baba

 

 

Seva is the highest form of worship

 

The four Purusharthas (life- goals)--Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha have been laid down to teach man that he should earn Artha (wealth) through Dharma (right means) and direct Kama (desire) towards Moksha (release from bondage). But man ignores Dharma and Moksha and struggles to direct Kama towards Artha. His sense of values has become topsy turvy; for example, he is delighted when the sun rises and happy when it sets, for he can work during day and rest at night. He does not realize that the sun is, with each passing day, shortening the time allotted to him for earthly existence. He does not remind himself that the earth is but a caravanserai and that he has to leave behind all that he claims to possess.

The wise ones use money, strength, intelligence, skills, aptitudes and opportunities for helping others and making their lives happier. Thus, they win Divine Grace, for Seva is the highest form of worship. There are millions who are hungry, desperate and miserable. I am directing you to limit the intake of food to actual need, so that you can share it with the poor. Do not waste food. Do not fritter away money for harmful purposes; use it for helping others. Do not waste time and energy; allow others to benefit by your skills.

 

Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Prashanthi Nilayam, 21 - 11 - 1985

Sri Sathya Speaks - Vol 18

Yoga Vasishta - Post 19

Vasishta speaking:— Then the two ladies disappeared from that place, leaving the brahmin family in their house in the mountainous village. The family exclaimed “We are highly favored by the woodland goddesses.” Then forgetting their grief, they returned to their domestic employments.

Then the ethereal goddess spoke to the aerial Leela, who stood fixed in the air over the brahmin’s house in a state of mute astonishment. They conversed with each other as familiarly as persons having the same thoughts and desires agree with each another in their views and acts, and as the dreamers of the same dream hold their mutual correspondence, like Usha and Anniruddha. Their conversation in their immaterial forms was of the same intellectual kind as we are conscious of in our dreams and imaginations.

Saraswati said, “Now you have fully known the knowable and you have become acquainted with whatever is visible and invisible. Such is the essence of Brahma. Say now, what more do you want to know?”

Leela said, “Tell me the reason why I was seen by my son, but wasn’t seen where the spirit of my departed lord is reigning over his realm.”

Saraswati replied, “Because then you were not perfect by your practice of meditation to have your wish fulfilled, nor had you lost your sense of duality which prevents perfection.  He who has not known unity is not entitled to the acts and benefits of faith in the true God, as no one sitting in the sun can enjoy the coolness of shade.”

“You were not practiced to forget your identity as Leela. Nor had you learned that it is not your will, but the will of God that is always fulfilled. Later you become pure desire and wished that your son might see you, whereby he was able to see you. If you should return now to your husband and do the same, you will undoubtedly be successful in your desire.”

Leela said, “I see within the sphere of this dome (of my mind) that the holy brahmin has been my husband before. I also see that after he died, he became a ruler of the earth. In my mind I see that spot of the earth, that city and his palace where I sat as his queen. Within myself I see my lord reigning in that place, and I can even see how he died afterwards. I see the glory of the ruler of so many countries on earth, and I also see the perfect frankness of his conduct throughout his life.”

“In the inner sky of my mind I see the worlds as they were placed in a casket, just like oil is contained within a mustard seed.  I see the bright orb of my husband ever wandering before me, and now I pray you to contrive some way to place me by his side.”

The goddess replied, “Tell me Leela, to which husband should you go? You have had and will have hundreds of them in your past and future lives, and now there are three of them confined in this earth. The nearest of the three is the brahmin here who is reduced to ashes. The next is the king lying in state and covered with flowers in the inner apartment.”

“The third is now a reigning king on this earth and has been buffeting in the waves of error in the vast ocean of the world.  His intellect is darkened and disordered by the splashing waves of worldliness. His intelligence is perverted to stupidity. He is converted to a tortoise in the ocean of the world. The strong chain of his thoughts has bound him to think that he is a lord, mighty and accomplished, and that he is happy and can enjoy his estates forever.”

“Now say, O excellent lady, to what husband do you wish to be led like the fragrance of one forest carried by the breeze to another?”

“Here you are in one place and they are in others in this vast universe. The states of their lives and manners differ widely from one another. These orbs of light in the heaven, though they appear to be placed so near to us, are situated millions of leagues apart from one another and they carry the departed souls. All these bodies are as empty as air, though they contain the great mountains Meru and Mandara in themselves.”

“All bodies are formed by a combination of atoms constantly proceeding from the Great Intellect, like particles of sunbeams over the universe. The great and stupendous fabric of the world is no more than a quantity of paddy rice weighed in a balance. 

As the spangled heavens appear like a forest full of brilliant gems, so the world appears to the contemplative mind as full of the glory of God and not composed of earth or other material bodies. In the intelligent soul, it is Consciousness alone that shines in the form of world and not any material body that was never brought into being. Like waves in a lake rise and set and rise again, so the rising and falling days and nights present these various scenes to our knowledge.”

Leela said, “So it is, O mother of mankind. I come to remember now that my present birth is of a royal kind, neither too pure nor gross in nature.  I, having descended from Brahma, have undergone a hundred and eight births and, after passing various states, I find myself still in existence.”

“I recollect, O goddess, that I was born before in another world, that I was the bride of a demigod (vidyadhara) and used to wander about as freely as a bee over flowers. Being debased by my lack of moral restraint, I was born in this mortal world and became the mate of the king of the eagle-feathered tribe.  Having lived in the woods, then I was turned to a woodman’s mate, wearing a garment of leaves on my loins. Growing fond of my life, I played wantonly about the forest and was changed into a guluncha plant, delighting the woods with my leafy palms and flowering eyes.  This small tree in a holy hermitage was held sacred by a group of saintly sages.”

“I was a tribal (chandala, outcaste) hunter once, wandering by the side of the Charmanvati (Chenab River). When tired of roaming, I used to quench my thirst with coconut water. I also became a stork, delighting in lakes with my mate, filling the air with our sweet cries. In another birth, I rambled about in groves of palm and tamara trees and fixed my eyes with amorous looks and glances upon my lover.”

“Thus I passed through many births in the wombs of higher and lower animals and found them all to be full of pain. My soul has run over the waves of the irresistible current of life, like a fleet antelope pacing its speed with the swiftness of the wind.”

Love.

Yoga Vasishta - Post 18

Vasishta said:— After the excellent ladies had returned from their visit of physical sphere, they entered the house where the holy brahmin used to live.

There, the holy ladies, unseen by anyone, saw the tomb of the brahmin. The maid servants were dejected with sorrow, and the faces of the women were soiled with tears, faded like lotuses with their withered leaves. 

Then Leela, with her gracefulness of divine knowledge, the elegance of her perfections, and her devotion for truth, thought within herself that the residents of the house might see her and the goddess in their ordinary forms as human beings.  Then the people of the house saw the two ladies as Lakshmi and Gauri, brightening the house with the light of their being.

Wreaths of unfading flowers of various kinds adorned the two women from head to foot. They seemed like the personifications of spring season, perfuming the house with the fragrance of a flower garden. Their appearance seemed to sprinkle ambrosial dews all around and made the dry withered and brown branches of tamara trees sprout new tender leaflets.

On seeing them, the whole family with Jyeshtha Sarma, the eldest son of the deceased brahmin, cried aloud and said, “Hail to the woodland goddesses,” and threw handfuls of flowers on their feet. 

The goddesses addressed him gently, “Tell us the cause of your sorrow which has made you all so sad.”

Then, one by one, Jyeshtha Sarma and others described their sorrows owing to the death of the brahmin couple. 

They said, “Know, O goddess pair, there lived here a brahmin and his wife who had been the support of guests and a model for brahmins. 

They were our parents who recently died. They have abandoned us, leaving all their friends and domestic animals here. They have departed to heaven and left us quite helpless in this world.”

“Our prosperity has fled from us, and we sit here in dumb despair of hope. Our houses have become dark and gloomy as a desert. Here the humble bees are humming in grief upon the scattered flowers in our garden that now sends forth a putrid smell instead of their former fragrance.”

“Therefore, O Devis! reduce our excessive grief, because the visit of the great never goes for nothing.”

Hearing these words, Leela gently touched the head of her son with her hand, as the lotus bed leans to touch its offshoot by the stalk. At her touch the boy was relieved of all his sorrow and misfortune, just like the summer heat of the mountain is reduced by the showers of rainy season. All others in the house were as highly gratified at the sight of the goddesses as when a pauper is relieved of his poverty, or the sick are healed by a draught of nectar.

Rama said, “Remove my doubt, sage. Why didn’t Leela appear in her own form of Arundhati before her eldest son, Jyeshta Sarma?”

Vasishta answered:— You forget, O Rama, and think that Leela had a material body or could assume one at pleasure. She was in an astral form, her form of pure intellect, and it was with her spiritual hand that she touched the inner spirit of the boy and not his material body.

Belief in materialism leads one to think that his unreal earthly frame is real, just like a boy’s belief in ghosts makes him take a shadow for a spirit. But this belief in one’s materiality is soon over upon conviction of one’s spirituality, just like the traces of our visions in a dream are removed on the knowledge of their unreality upon waking. 

A dream presents the sights of cities, lands, air and water where there are no such things in actuality. A dream causes the movements of our limbs and bodies for no purpose.

As air appears as earth in dreaming, so the nonexistent world appears to exist in waking. It is thus that men see and talk of things unseen and unknown in their fits of delirium. Children see ghosts in the air and a dying man sees a forest in it. Others see elephants in clouds, and some see pearls in sunbeams. 

In this manner, everyone is of the form of whatever he thinks himself to be. It is only habit that makes him to believe himself as such. He is not so in reality. But Leela, who had known the truth of the nonexistence of the world, was conscious of its nothingness and viewed all things as false conceptions of the mind. 

The hand that Leela laid on the head of Jyeshtha Sarma, her eldest son, was not lain from her maternal affection for him, but for his edification in intellectual knowledge. Consciousness being awakened, there is all joy attendant upon it. It is more subtle than ether and far purer than vacuum, and leads the intellectual being above the region of air. All other things are like images in a dream.

Love.

Yoga Vasishta - Post 17

Vasishta said:— After this conversation between Goddess Saraswati and the excellent Leela on that night, the two of them found Leela’s family and attendants fast asleep in the inner apartment.  Saraswati and Leela entered the shrine that was closely shut on all sides by latches fastened to the doors and windows, and which was perfumed with the fragrance of heaps of flowers.  

 

They sat beside the corpse decorated with fresh flowers and garments. Their faces shone like the fair full moon and brightened the place.  They stood motionless on the spot, as if they were sculptures engraved on marble columns, or pictures drawn upon the wall.

 

They shook off all their thoughts and cares, and became as withdrawn as the faded blossoms of the lotus at the end of the day when their fragrance has fled. They remained still, calm and quiet and without any motion of their limbs, like a sheet of clouds hanging on the mountain top in the calm of autumn.  

 

They continued in fixed attention without any external sensation, like some lonely vines shriveled for lack of moisture (in samadhi meditation). The two ladies became as quiet as inert nature herself, and as still as the sky before the stars rolled about in its ample sphere.

 

Then they began to move with their own bodies, the goddess of wisdom in her form of intelligence and the queen in her intellectual and meditative mood.  With their new bodies they rose as high as the width of a hand above the ground, then taking the forms of empty consciousness, they began to rise in the sky. 

 

They flew higher and higher by force of their intellect and arrived at a region stretching millions of miles in length.  The pair in their ethereal forms looked around according to their nature in search of some visible objects, but finding no other figure except their own, they became much more attached to each other by their mutual affection.

 

Vasishta continued:— Thus ascending higher and higher, and by degrees reaching the highest station, they continued viewing the heavens with their hands clasped together.

 

They saw a vast expanse like a wide extended universal ocean, deep and translucent within, but soft with ethereal mildness. A cooling breeze infused heavenly delight. 

 

They roved by the regions of spiritual masters (siddhas, adepts) and male nature spirits (gandharvas). They breathed the charming fragrance of mandara garlands and, passing the lunar sphere, they inhaled the sweet scent exhaled by the breeze from that nectar-like lunar orb.

 

They also roved under the vaults of some cloud fragments scattered by the winds, and raining like the cascade of the Ganges River, thinking them as shower bath-houses in the air. 

 

Over and over and higher and higher, they saw the celestial spheres filled with luminous orbs adorned with their ornamental stars wandering one above and around the other. 

They saw the minds of spiritual masters (siddhas) in flight faster than the swift winds. They heard the vocal music of the songs of heavenly nymphs in their aerial abodes. 

 

There were crystal lakes in some places and stagnant pools at others; and lakes with masters seated by them, and others hugged by the rising moon.  They saw the sun rising in one part and the darkness of night veiling the others; the evening casting its shadow on one, and the dusky mists of dusk obscuring the other. 

 

A number of peacocks of Kartikeya (Subramanyan) were seen dancing amidst the clouds, and a flight of greenish parrots was seen in the sky appearing as a green plain. 

 

Vasishta speaking:— Then these ladies in their forms of intelligence alighted from the sky and, passing over the mountainous regions, saw the houses of men on the surface of the earth. They saw the world appearing like a lotus in the heart of Nara (the primeval Man or eternal Spirit pervading the universe). Its eight sides form the flower petals, the hills its pistils, and the center contains its sweet flavor. 

 

The rivers are the tubes of its filaments, covered with drops of snow resembling their pollen. Days and nights roll over it like swarms of black-bees and butterflies, and all its living beings appear like gnats fluttering about.

 

The earth, like a lotus, is situated on the surface of the waters of the ocean. At times the motion of the ocean makes the earth shake causing earthquakes. The earth rests upon the serpent Sesha as its support, and is girt about by demons as its thorns and prickles. 

 

Thus Leela, having seen the seas and mountains, the rulers of the worlds, the city of the gods, the sky above and the earth below in the unlimited vault of the universe, suddenly returned to her own land and found herself in her room again.

 

Love