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.