Yoga Vasishta - Post 33

Saraswati continued:— Know Leela, that this Viduratha, your husband, will lose his life in this battlefield and his soul will return to the tomb in the inner apartment where it will resume its former state.

 

Vasishta:—  Upon hearing these words of the goddess, the second Leela, who was standing by, bent herself lowly before the goddess and addressed her with her folded palms.  The second Leela said, “Goddess! the genius of intelligence is ever adored by me and she gives me her visits in my nightly dreams.  I find you here exactly of her likeness. Therefore give me your blessing, O goddess with the beautiful face.”

 

Vasishta said:— The goddess, being addressed by the lady in this way, remembered her faith and reliance in her, then politely spoke to the lady standing as a suppliant before her.  The goddess said, “I am pleased, my child, with your unfailing and undiminished adoration of me all your lifetime. Now say what you want of me.”

 

The second Leela said, “Ordain O goddess, that with this body of mine I may accompany my husband to whatever place he is destined to go after his death in the war.”

 

The goddess replied, “Be it so my child who has worshipped me with flowers, incense and offerings with all diligence and without fail.”

 

Vasishta said:— The second Leela was cheered by this blessing of the goddess. The first Leela was much puzzled in her mind at the difference between their states.  The first Leela said, “Those who desire truth and they whose desires lean towards godliness have all their wishes fulfilled without delay and fail. 

 

Then tell me, goddess, why could I not keep company with my brahmin husband with my body of the brahmani, but had to be taken to him in the mountain home after my death.”

 

The goddess answered saying:— Know, O excellent lady, that I have no power to do anything. Everything happens according to the desire of the living being. Know me only as the presiding divinity of wisdom, and I reveal everything according to my knowledge of it. It is by virtue of the intellectual powers exhibited in every being that it attains its particular end. 

 

Rama said, “Tell me what Viduratha did after he got angry and left the ladies and the goddess having said what he did, and went out from the camp.”

 

Vasishta said:— Viduratha, accompanied by a large group of his companions, left his camp like the bright moon beset by a host of stars. He was in armor and girt by laces and girdles. Dressed in his military clothing, he went forth amidst the loud war cry sorrow to the vanquished like God Indra going to battle. He gave orders to the soldiers and was informed of the battle array. 

The iron hoops of its wheels flashed with their golden pegs, and the long and beautiful shaft of the car, rang with the tinkling of pearls which were suspended to it. It was drawn by long necked, swift and slender horses of the best breed and auspicious marks. Their swiftness and bearing made them seem like they were flying in the air pulling a heavenly car with some god in it.  

 

Viduratha collected his forces and, without considering the enemy’s superiority, pressed himself forward into them, as the great Mount Meru rushed into the waters of the great deluge. 

 

Two edged saws pierced the bodies of the warriors, and the flinging weapons hurtled in the air, clashing and crashing each other.  The darkness of the night was put to flight by the blaze of the weapons. The entire army was pierced by arrows sticking like hairs on their bodies. 

 

The fighting was stern without a cry or noise, like the pouring of rain in a breezeless sky. The glitter of swords in the darkened air was like the flashes of forked lightning in murky clouds. Darts were flying about with a hissing noise. Crowbars hit one another with a harsh sound. Large weapons struck each another with a jarring noise. The dreadful war raged direfully in the dim darkness of the night.

 

Love

 

Yoga Vasishta - Post 32

The goddess added, “Know further, O king, that you are destined to fall in this great battle and that will have your former realm presented to you in the same manner as before. Your minister and his maiden daughter will accompany you to your former city and you shall enter your lifeless corpse lying in state in the palace. 

 

Vasishta speaking:—

 

As the king and the goddess were going on with this sweet conversation, a man on horseback arrived before them in great hurry and confusion. 

 

He said, “Lord! I come to tell that the enemy is showering darts and discs, swords and clubs upon us like rain, and they have been pressing upon us like a flood on all sides.  They have been raining their heavy weapons upon us at pleasure, like the impetuous gusts of a hurricane hurls down fragments of rocks from the heads of high hills. 

 

Vasishta said:— As the royal marshal was delivering this unpleasant intelligence with trepidation, there arose a loud cry from outside that filled the sky with its uproar: the twanging of bow strings drawn to the ears, the rustling of flying arrows flung with full force; the loud roaring of furious elephants, and the shrieks of frightened ones;   All these were heard and seen by the goddesses and the king and his minister from an opening of the tent. The city was ablaze in the darkness of the night.

At this moment King Viduratha heard a voice from his soldiers who saw wives fleeing from the scorching flames. “O, the high winds that have blown flames to the tops of our houses with their rustling sound and that have hindered our taking shelter under cooling protection. Sorrow for the burning of our wives, who (by pacifying the smart of every pain) were as cold as frost to our bodies before, and whose ashes now rest in our breasts like the lime from burnt shells. 

 

Vasishta said:— At this instant the great queen, who was in the bloom of youthful beauty, entered Viduratha’s camp like the goddess of grace pops upon the lotus flower.  She was decorated with hanging wreaths of flowers and necklaces, and accompanied by a train of her youthful companions and handmaids, all terrified with fear.  

Then one of her companions informed the king about the fate of the warfare, which resembled the onset of demons upon the apsara tribe. “Lord!” she said, “This lady has fled with us from her harem to take refuge under your arms, like a tender vine seeks the shelter of a tree from a rude gust of wind. 

 

Hearing this, he looked at the goddesses and said, “Now, I will go from here to war and leave this my lady as a humble bee at your lotus feet.”  Saying so, the king rose in a rage from his seat and sprang like an enraged lion when pierced and pressed by the tusk of a furious elephant.

 

The widowed Leela saw the queen Leela to be exactly of her form and features, and took her for a true reflection of herself in a mirror. Then the enlightened Leela said to Saraswati, “Tell me, O goddess, how can this lady be exactly like myself? She is what I have been before. How did she come to be like me?”

Saraswati replied:— All our external perceptions of things are the immediate effects of our internal conceptions of them. The intellect has the knowledge of all that can be perceived in it, just like the mind has the impressions of mental objects in itself.  

The external world appears in an instant in the same form and manner to one who has its notion and impression in his intellect and mind, and no distance of time or place or any intermediate cause can create any difference in them.  

The inner world is seen on the outside, like the internal impressions of our minds appear to be seen outside us in our dreams. Whatever is within, the same appears without, as with our dreams and desires and in all our imaginations and fancies of objects.

 

So there is neither any entity nor a non-entity either. Both appear to us by turns as fallacies. For what after an kalpa one neither was nor will be cannot exist today or in any epoch (yuga), whether gone before or coming afterwards.

That which is never nonexistent is the ever existent Brahman, and That is the world. It is in Him that we see everything rise and fall by our fallacy, and what we falsely term as the creation or the created.

 

But to say both real and unreal are Brahman is a contradiction. Therefore it is He who fills the infinity of space and abides equally in all things and their minutest particles.  

Wherever the spirit of Brahman abides, and even in the most minute living particle, It views the whole world in Itself, like one thinking on heat and cold of fire and frost has the same sensation within himself at that moment. 

In this manner, Leela, know this world is only a shadowy reflection of the eternal ideas of God, and that this reflection is caught by or refracted in the consciousness of all animal souls like in a prismatic mirror.  Everything shows itself in every place in the form in which it is. So whatever is in the individual soul casts out a reflection of itself, and a shadow of it is caught by the intellect that is situated outside it.

 

Here is the sky containing the world in which you and I and this prince are situated like reflections of the One Ego only. Know all these are contained within the empty womb of Consciousness and remain as tranquil and transparent as emptiness itself.

 

Love.

 

Yoga Vaishta - Post 31

Vasishta speaking:— The man who is devoid of understanding, ignorant and unacquainted with the all-pervading principle, thinks the unreal world as real, dense and concrete.  Just like a child is not freed from his fear of ghosts until his death, so the ignorant man never gets rid of his fallacy of the reality of the unreal world as long as he lives. 

 

Just like solar heat causes the error of water in the mirage to both deer and unwary people, so the unreal world appears as real to the ignorant part of mankind.

 

As the false dream of one’s death appears to be true within the dreaming state, so the false world seems to be a field of action and gain to the deluded man.  Just like one, not knowing what is gold, sees a golden bracelet to be a mere bracelet and not gold, so the ignorant, without a knowledge of the causal substance, are ever misled by the appearances of form.

 

The ignorant see a city, a house, a hill and an elephant as they are presented before them, so appearances are all taken only as they are seen, and not what they really are.  As strings of pearls are seen in the sunny sky, and various paints and taints in the plumage of the peacock, so the phenomenal world presents its false appearances as sober realities. Know life to be a long sleep, and the world with myself and yourself are the visions of its dream. We see many other persons in this sleepy dream. None is real, as you will now learn from me.

 

There is only one all-pervading, quiet, and spiritually substantial reality. It is of the form of unintelligible consciousness and an immense outspreading emptiness.  It is omnipotent, and all in all by itself. It is of the form manifesting itself everywhere. Hence the citizens that you see in this visionary city are only transient forms of men presented in your dream by that Omnipotent Being.

 

The mind of the viewer remains the same in the sphere of his dreams and represents images thought of by itself in that visionary sphere of mankind.  The knowing mind has the same knowledge of things, both in its waking and dreaming states, and it is by an act of the perceiving mind that this knowledge is imprinted as true in the conscious souls of men.

 

Rama said, “If persons seen in the dream are unreal, then tell me sage, what is the fault in the embodied soul that makes them appear as realities?”

 

Vasishta replied:— The cities and houses seen in dreams are nothing in reality. The illusion (maya) of the embodied soul makes them appear as true like those seen in the waking state in this ordinary world.  I will give you proof of this. In the beginning of creation and by the will of the creator, the self-born Brahma himself had notions of all created things in the form of visionary appearances, like in a dream, and their subsequent development. Therefore, their creator is as unreal as the notions and appearances in the dream.

 

Learn this truth from me, that this world is a dream and that you and all other men have your sleeping dreams contained in your waking dreams of this ordinary world. If the scenes in your sleeping dream have no reality in them, how can you expect those in your daydreams to be real at all?

 

As you take me for a reality, so do I also take you and all other things for realities likewise, and such is the case with everybody in this world of dreams.  As I appear an entity to you in this ordinary world of lengthened dreams, so you too appear an actual entity to me. So it is with all in their protracted dreaming.

 

Rama asked, “If both these states of dreaming are alike, then tell me. When the dreamer awakens, why doesn’t he think the visions in his dream were as real as those of his daydreaming state?”

 

Vasishta replied:— Yes, night dreaming is of the same nature as daydreams in that dream objects appear to be real in both. Upon a man’s awakening from sleep, the night dreams vanish in empty air. Upon a man’s death, his daydreams vanish in empty air. As the objects of your night dreams do not exist in time or place upon your waking, so also those of your daydream can have no existence upon death.  Thus everything that appears real for the present is unreal, and though it might appear as charming as a fairy form in a dream, at last it all disappears into an airy nothing.

 

There is one Consciousness that fills all space. It appears as everything both within and without everybody. It is only by our illusive conception of it that we take it in different lights. As one picks up a jewel he happens to see in a treasure house, so according to our own liking, we lay hold on anything with which the vast Consciousness is filled.

 

The goddess of intelligence, having caused the germ of true knowledge to sprout forth in the mind of the king by sprinkling the ambrosial drops of her wisdom over it, spoke to the king in this way at the end,  “I have told you all this for the sake of Leela, and now, good king, we shall take leave of you and these illusory scenes of the world.”

 

Vasishta said:— The intelligent king, being gently addressed by the goddess of wisdom, asked her in a humble tone. Viduratha said, “Your visit, O most bounteous goddess, cannot go for nothing, if when we poor mortals cannot withhold our bounty from those who petition us for help. I will quit this body to go to another world, as one passes from one chain of dreams into another. Look upon me, your petitioner, with kindness and grant me the favor I ask of you, because the great never refuse to grant the prayers of their suppliants. Grant that this virgin daughter of my minister may accompany me to the region where I shall be led so that we may have spiritual joy in each other’s company hereafter.”

 

Saraswati said, “Go now, king, to the former palace of your past life and there reign without fear in the enjoyment of true pleasure. Know king that our visits never fail to fulfill the best wishes of our supplicants.”

 

 

Love.

 

Yoga Vasishta - Post 30

Goddess Saraswati continues...

In reality you were neither born nor dead at anytime or any place, but ever remain as pure consciousness in the tranquility of your own soul. You seem to see all things about you, but you are seeing nothing real in them. Your all-seeing soul sees everything in itself.  

The soul shines by its own light like a brilliant gem. Nothing that appears beside it, whether this earth or yourself or anything else, is a reality.

These hills and cities, these people and things, and ourselves also, are all unreal and mere phantoms, appearing in the hollow vault of the brahmin of the hilly district.  

The kingdom of Leela’s husband was only a picture of this earth, and his palace with all its grandeur is contained within the sphere of the same hollow shrine. The known world is contained within the empty sphere of that shrine, and it is in one corner of this mundane house that all of us here are situated.

The sphere of this vaulted shrine is as clear as emptiness itself, which has no earth or house in it.  

It is without any forest, hill, sea or river, and yet all beings are found to rove about in this empty and homeless abode. Here there are no kings, no royal retinue, and nothing else that kings have on earth.

Viduratha asked, “If it is so, then tell me goddess, how did I happen to have these dependents here? A man is rich in his own mind and spirit. Is it not so ordained by Divine Mind and spirit? 

If not, then the world must appear as a mere dream, and all these men and things are only creatures of our dreams. Tell me goddess, what things are spiritually true and false? How are we to distinguish the one from the other?”

Saraswati answered:— Know prince that those who have known the only knowable One and are assimilated in the nature of pure understanding view nothing as real in the world except the empty consciousness within themselves. 

The misconception of the serpent in a rope being removed, the fallacy of the rope is removed also. The unreality of the world being known, the error of its existence also ceases to exist. Knowing the falsity of water in a mirage, no one thirsts after it anymore. 

Knowing the falsehood of dreams, no one thinks himself dead as he had dreamt. The fear of dreaming death may overtake the dying, but it can never assail the living in his dream.

He whose soul is enlightened with the clear light of his pure consciousness is never misled into believing his own existence, or that of others, by the false application of the terms “I”, “you”, “this” or the like.

Valmiki speaking:—

As the sage was lecturing in this manner, the day departed to its evening service with the setting sun. The assembly broke with mutual greetings to perform their evening rituals, and it met again with the rising sun, after dispersion of the gloom of night.

Love

Yoga Vasishta - Post 29

  

The goddess replied:—Know O king that after the fit of unconsciousness attending your death was over, your soul continued to remain in the emptiness of the same place where you still reside. This royal pavilion, where you think yourself living, is situated in the empty space within the house of the brahmin in that hilly district. 

 

It is inside that house that you see the appearances of your other homes present before you, and it was in that brahmin’s house that you devoted your life to my worship. It is the shrine within that same house and on the same spot that contains the whole world which you are now seeing all about you. This abode of yours is situated in that same place and within the clear firmament of your mind.

 

It is a false notion of your mind, which you have gained by your habitual mode of thinking,that you are born in your present state of the race of Ikshvaku. Mere imagination has made you suppose yourself to be named so and so, and that such and such persons were your ancestors; that you had been a boy of ten years; that your father became an ascetic in the woods and left you governing the realm; that you have subjugated many countries under your dominion and are now reigning as the lord paramount over them; and that you are ruling on earth with these ministers and officers of yours, observing sacrificial rites and justly ruling your subjects.

 

You think that you have passed seventy years of your life and that you are now beset by very formidable enemies, and that having waged a furious battle, you have returned to this tent of yours where you are now seated and intend to adore the goddesses who have become your guests here. You are thinking that these goddesses will bless you with your desired object, because one of them has given you the power of recollecting the events of your former births; that these goddesses have opened your understanding like the blossom of a lotus, and that you have the prospect of getting rid of all questions; that you are now at peace and rest, and enjoy the solace of your solitude; and that your long continued error (of this world) is now removed forever.

 

You remember the many acts and pleasures of your past life in the body of King Padma before you were snatched away by the hand of death. You now perceive in your mind that your present life is only a shadow of the former, as it is the same wave that by its rise and fall carries one onward. The constant current of the mind flows like a river and leads a man, like a weed, from one whirlpool to another. The course of life now runs alone as in dreaming, and then accompanied by the body as in the waking state, both of which leave their traces in the mind at the hour of death.

 

The sun of consciousness being hidden under the mist of ignorance, there arises a network of a false world which makes a moment appear like a hundred years. Our lives and deaths are mere phantoms of imagination, just like we imagine houses and towers in aerial castles and icebergs. The world is an illusion, like the delusion of moving banks and trees to a passenger in a vessel on water, or a rapid vehicle on land, or like the trembling of a mountain or quaking of the earth to one affected by a convulsive disease.  As one sees extraordinary things in his dream, such as the decapitation of his own head, so he views the illusions of the world that can hardly be true.

 

Continued….

 

Love.

 

Yoga Vasishta - Post 28

Leela & Saraswati enter King Viduratha’s Tent; He Remembers His Past Lives; Everything Is within the Temple of the Mountain Brahmin; Discrimination of Error

 

Vasishta said:—When the ladies entered the tent, it appeared like a bed of lotuses. Its white ceiling seemed as graceful as the vault of heaven with two moons rising at once under it. 

 

The cooling and moon-bright radiance of the ladies roused the king from his sleep as if he had been sprinkled with the juice of ambrosia. He saw the forms of two apsaras sitting on two stools, appearing like two moons risen on two peaks of Mount Meru.  

 

The king saw them with wonder and after composing his mind, he rose up from his bed like God Vishnu rises from his bed of the serpent.  Then advancing respectfully to them, with long strings of flowers in his hands, he made offerings of them to the ladies with handfuls of flowers flung at their feet.

 

Leaving his pillowed sofa in the midst of the hall, he sat with folded legs on the ground. Lowly bending his head, he addressed them saying, “Be victorious, O moon-bright goddesses who by your radiance drive away all the miseries and evils and pains and pangs of life, and who by your sun-like beams dispel all my inward and outward darkness.” 

 

Then the goddess, desiring to reveal the ancestry of the king, inspired his minister, who was lying nearby, to relate it to Leela.  Upon waking, the minister saw the nymphs manifested before him, and advancing humbly before them, threw handfuls of flowers upon their feet. The goddess said, “Let us know, O king, who you are and when and of whom you are born.”

 

Hearing these words of the goddess, the minister spoke saying, “It is by your favor, O gracious goddesses, that I am empowered to relate of my king’s ancestry to your kind graces.”

 

“There was a sovereign born of the imperial line of Ikshvaku named Mukundaratha, who had subjugated the earth under his arms.  He had a moon-faced son by name of Bhadraratha, whose son Viswaratha was father to the renowned prince Brihadratha.  His son Sindhuratha was the father of Sailaratha, and his son Kamaratha was father of Maharatha.  His son Vishnuratha was father of Nabhoratha, who gave birth to this my lord of handsome appearance.”

 

“He is renowned as Viduratha and is born with the great virtues of his sire, as the moon was produced of the Milky Ocean to shed his ambrosial beams over his people. He was begotten by his mother Sumitra like the god Guha of Gauri. He was installed king of the realm in the tenth year of his age, owing to his father taking himself to asceticism. He has been ruling the realm with justice since that time, and your appearance here tonight indicates the blossoming of his good fortune.”

 

“O goddesses, whose presence is hard to be had, even by the merit of long devotion and a hundred austerities, you see here present before you the lord of the earth, famed Viduratha. After saying these words, the minister remained silent with the lord of the earth.

 

They were sitting on the ground with folded legs, clasped hands and downcast looks when the goddess of wisdom, by her inspiration, told the king to remember his former births. So saying, she touched his head with her hand and immediately the dark veil of illusion and oblivion was dispersed from over the lotus of his mind.  It opened like a blossom by the touch of the genius of consciousness and it became bright as the clear sky with the rays of his former memories. 

 

By his intelligence, he remembered his former kingdom, of which he had been the sole lord, and recollected all his past play with Leela.  He was carried away by the thoughts of the events of his past lives, as one is carried away by the current of waves, and reflected in himself that this world is a magic sea of illusion.

 

He said, “I have come to know this by the favor of the goddesses, but how is it that so many events have occurred to me in course of one day after my death? Here I have passed a lifetime full of seventy years and remember having done many works and having seen my grandson. I recollect the bygone days of my boyhood and youth, and I remember well all the friends and relatives and all the clothes and attendants that I had before.”

 

Love