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They shook off all their thoughts and cares, and became as withdrawn as the faded blossoms of the lotus at the end of the day when their fragrance has fled.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