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